Destiny Glimmer – Page 6

Will Support PS4’s Suspend/Resume Feature After Patch 1.1.2 From Destiny

Yesterday, Sony released PlayStation 4 firmware 2.50, which added the long pending “Suspend/Resume” feature. This feature will be supported nearly all PlayStation 4 gamers, however PlayStation 4 owners will need to turned it ON manually as it is not Turned ON By Default In Firmware 2.50, and requires PS4 owners to select “Keep Application Suspended” Setting. Check out our guide on how to activate PS4 Suspend/Resume feature.

Destiny players will have to wait a bit longer to make use of this Suspend/Resume feature on PlayStation 4. According to details shared by Bungie, Destiny will work with the Suspend/Resume feature after the patch coming in April 2015. The message from Bungie reads:

“The PlayStation 4 2.50 Firmware update will implement a Suspend and Resume function on 3/26. This function will not work with Destiny at this time. For the time being, when suspending the game to Rest Mode a message will read: Cannot enter rest mode with the following application suspended. The PS4 will close this application and then enter rest mode.

There will be an icon of the application and then underneath a prompt: “The PS4 will automatically close the application in 30 seconds” with an OK and a Cancel button if you do not wish to close the game.

Functionality for the Suspend and Resume feature will be enabled for the 1.1.2 Update.”

Designer Leaving Bungie for Bethesda From Destiny

He’s leaving Bungie to join Bethesda Game Studios. “Next Friday, after nearly 6 amazing years and w/ REACH & Destiny on the shelf, I say goodbye to my Bungie family. A new adventure awaits!” he wrote. Before joining Bungie, Hamrick worked at Midway Austin.

Thanking fans and his Bungie family, Hamrick said that he was “super stoked” about joining Bethesda. However, he didn’t disclose what game he has been hired to work on. VG247 reports that the company is currently involved in multiple projects including Doom, Fallout 4, and reportedly Dishonored 2.

Vault Expansion Was Limited

Sci-fi shooter Destiny will be getting the House of Wolves downloadable content pack soon, and Bungie has revealed more information on the patch players will be getting prior to its release. Detailed on the official Bungie site, the update makes a few tweaks to the game, including increasing players’ in-game vault space.

Update 1.1.2 will increase vault space for weapons from 20 slots to 36, but this required a compromise for PS3 and 360 versions of Destiny.

Update 1.1.2 will increase the vault dimensions for armors and item to 24 slots and for weapons to 36 slots. Prior to this, all vault item spaces were capped at 20 slots each. The expansion of the vault was limited by “memory constraints on older generation hardware,” which required a compromise to expand storage space. For Destiny players on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, the item comparison feature will no longer function in the vault. PlayStation 4 and Xbox One players will remain unaffected.

PlayStation 4 owners are getting the 2.50 Yukimura update today, which introduces a Suspend and Resume function. While Suspend and Resume won’t immediately work with Destiny, the 1.1.2 Update will enable its function.

Patch 1.1.2 will be out in April, before the House of Wolves DLC hits. The update will also bring new audio options, a feature for colorblind players, and various gameplay fixes.

“The Results are So Much Better” With Pre-Made Teams

While Bungie did change some things around for the Heroic Strikes, Raids still require parties to be created outside of Destiny, and it looks like Bungie is finally attempting to explain why.

In an interview with VG24/7, Community Manager David “DeeJ” Dague explained, in a nutshell, that matchmaking simply cannot compare to pre-made teams, and pre-made teams make challenging Raids or activities easier to deal with.

The community always engineers the best solutions for bringing players together. While Matchmaking is a great resource for introducing total strangers who can share a Crucible match or a Strike, we believe there’s no substitute for a pre-made team. The most challenging activities in Destiny require communication and teamwork.

He continued, further elaborating on what he meant by “there’s no substitute.”

When like-minded players with complimentary play-styles seek each other out and make an expressed commitment to work together, the results are so much better than when they meet anonymously through a matchmaking algorithm. In our experience, enabling smaller clusters of players to support each other is far more effective than trying to create a system that works for everyone.

What do you think? Do you wish that matchmaking could be implemented into Destiny Raids, or are you happy creating your own teams outside of the game?

FIFA 15: Nightfall And Weekly Heroic Strike Reset

Bungie has once again reset the “Destiny” servers to provide gamers a fresh challenge for the week. The latest Nightfall and Weekly Heroic Strike is The Summoning Pits, which takes place on the Moon and sees gamers going up against Hive Ogre; Phogoth the Untamed.

The Nightfall changes things up a bit from last week too switching out a couple of modifiers. The “Destiny” subreddit indicates players can expect Epic, Nightfall, Acr Burn, Lightswitch and Angry modifiers on their journey. Epic throws large numbers of highly aggressive, shielded enemies at players, while Arc Bun multiplies damage taken from any source.

PlayStation Universe notes that the Heroic Strike also takes place in The Summoning Pits, with Arc Burn and Heroic modifiers, the latter meaning aggressive enemies appear in larger numbers. In order to emerge victorious, players must enter the Hive fortress, repel the waves of Hive minions, locate and enter the Summoning Pits and defeat Phogoth himself.

Besting Phogoth is no easy task though. Gamers can choose to wear him down from a distance using Rocket Launchers, or decide to take out the waves of Hive mobs that appear first, in order to battle him one on one. Once unchained, Guardians are advised to aim for the critical hit area on his chest to inflict the most damage. A video, hosted on the DestinyFollower YouTube channel provides a helpful guide on how to kill Phogoth.

As previously reported, the team at Bungie has recently outlined the features included in the 1.1.2 update. The update will focus on increasing Vault Space for guardians, giving players more space to collect items and gear gained on missions. Raid fixes will also be implemented as the team seeks to squash annoying bugs and make missions more fun. New audio and visual options are also on the docket, as are changes to the way ammo drops are handled during Crucible matches.

As part of 1.1.2, Bungie will also be making changes to strikes themselves. The team has gone over a lot of data which shows that some players complete certain missions far less than others, though the studio hasn’t shared what sorts of changes gamers can expect. Bungie warns that gamers will need to be patient, as 1.1.2 is still weeks away. Till then, gamers will have to be content with the Nightfall and Weekly Heroic Strike resets.

Stats Remind Us Just How Casual Playerbase From Destiny

Just how tiny? Now we have some idea, thanks to a clever fan who decided to show us just how top-tier many of our problems with the game really are.

Redditor btg7471 decided to hunt through his PS4 Destiny trophies and looked at the overall stats on a few of them. The result shows us a rough estimate of how many players have done what in Destiny, and more specifically, what they haven’t done. Here’s the list:

Only 31.1% of Guardians have equipped a piece of Exotic gear.
Only 23.8% of Guardians have worn Legendary/Exotic armor in every slot.
Only 24.2% of Guardians have earned max Vanguard marks in a week, while just 16% have maxed their Crucible marks in a week.
Only 23.1% of Guardians have reached rank 3 with the Vanguard.
Only 19.2% of Guardians have completed a Raid.
Only 16.9% of Guardians have maxed out a Warlock or Hunter subclass, and just 15.2% have maxed out a Titan subclass.

Granted, we see this in many games, where top-tier content is crafted for only a select handful of players, but I think Destiny’s exclusivity problem is exacerbated by the structure of the core game itself, and it’s something that could be improved upon in future installments.

What I’m talking about is what I’ll call “The Gulf.”

“The Gulf” exists as a space of time between beating the game’s story mode/reaching level 20, which are usually roughly the same time, give or take a few hours, and the promised land “endgame” where players are able to take on pretty much all the content the game has to offer.

In the levels between 20-26 or so, Destiny puts players in a weird sort of purgatory. They’ve beaten the main story so there’s no real way to progress there, other than doing the daily “special” story missions, and they’re trapped in the bottom-to-mid-tiers of the Strike playlist, where rewards are relatively sparse.

Eventually, you get to the promised land. After bridging the Gulf, even if you’re not max level, you still exist in a space where you can reliably save up for Legendary vendor gear, earn enough coins to occasionally buy something from Xur, or see a lot of Engram drops from the Strike playlist. This is a pretty fun place to be, but many players will find themselves swallowed by the Gulf, quitting out of frustration or boredom.

Destiny’s item system is disproportionately skewed toward the late game to the point where the rest of the game is largely pointless before level 20. There are simply no Legendary or Exotics before then. There is no “lower tier” of high end weapons to get players excited.

This is contrary to say, a game like Diablo, where the game has a max level of 70. Destiny power leveling make you upgrade easy, yet players can find Legendary drops at level 5 if they’re lucky, which will be better than whatever they currently have, and make the game more fun. Obviously drop rates increase as time goes on, and Legendary gear gets way more powerful, but at least until then there’s something to look forward to during gameplay.

Finally, the 20% Raid stat makes perfect sense, assuming it’s due to a combination of what we’re talking about above, and a lack of in-game matchmaking for the mode.

It’s probably too late for the game to change many of the things discussed here, but it’s definitely something to think about for the longer term health of the game, and particularly how Destiny 2 is structured. The game needs to put its best foot forward from the start, and being yet another game where “the real game doesn’t start until you beat it” means there will be many, many dropouts along the way.

Destiny Share Spent 1200 Hours In The Game

Destiny has only been on the market since September, but one hyper-dedicated player has managed to sink more than 1200 hours into the game.

A Reddit user named comphermc posted a screenshot of his inventory, and, surprisingly, 1200 hours isn’t enough time to collect every item that Destiny has to offer. Though, the faction ships/shaders are the only things left on his list.

Here are a few highlights, as told by comphermc:

I have all the Iron Banner gear for all classes, except for the helmets and the pulse rifle, since they’ve not been sold.
I have gotten all the raid gear from both raids, but for one reason or another, I broke down my titan’s VoG gauntlets. I regret that now.
I have gotten all exotic weapons and armor, and all but the titan’s No Backup Plans are post-DLC versions. I just never use No Backup Plans, so haven’t bothered to upgrade.
I was using my mailbox to hold duplicates of Hard Light and Plan C, and deleted those I actually had in my inventory, so my vault had room to breath. During Iron Banner, I collected too many things on my titan, and Plan C was deleted from the mailbox. Moral: keep a few open slots in your mailbox.
Each character has their own Vision of Confluence, Icebreaker, and Gjallarhorn. I would probably have done this for other weapons, but using bungie.net to move items around makes it less necessary to have character-specific items.

My wife hates Destiny

You’re probably wondering how it’s possible, to spend that much time in a game while still maintaining a healthy lifestyle. But, that depends on your definition of “healthy.”

I did the math. Here’s the breakdown:

About 4700 hours have passed since the game was released, so comphermc has spent roughly 25 percent of his life playing Destiny.
This means that he averages about six hours of gameplay per day, without taking a day off. So, if he took weekends off, this would be the equivalent of a full-time job.
According to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, the average American gets about 507 minutes of sleep per day and spends about two hours preparing and consuming meals. After sleep, eating, and Destiny comphermc has just under eight hours left in the day for work, family, friends, and other interests.

Most wives probably wouldn’t stand for this, but it sounds like she’s got her own obsession. Here’s comphermc:

My wife is a teacher who binge-watches Netflix. I won’t say I haven’t gotten in trouble a few times, but she is usually pretty busy with school stuff and/or whatever show she’s currently obsessed with.

Surprisingly enough, several hardcore Destiny players commented on comphermc’s post, revealing that they too have logged around 1200 hours. In fact, a user named BeefaloCL has about 1500 in-game hours.

Crazy

Whenever I see reports like this, the comments are filled with people who liberally use phrases like “what a loser” and “get a job,” but I hope we can avoid that stuff with comphermc (and anyone else, actually).Comphermc loves Destiny, so he’s playing Destiny. We don’t know anything about his personal life or his work situation, so lets not judge.

Comphermc seems like a dude who has some extra time and wants to spend it playing a game. I’m cool with that.

Bungie fights back against data miner from Destiny

Destiny’s success is based on a simple premise: keep people playing. The gameplay is good, the story is…not so much, but where Bungie Inc’s sci-fi shooter really excels is dangling the carrot of better gear in front of players’ noses in a manner similar to what MMO fans have called “the gear treadmill.”

While some players could grind for weeks or even months to gain certain items, the game has a built-in shortcut that a players can take advantage of to jump a few feet ahead on the gear treadmill. Every Friday, a vendor named Xûr appears somewhere in the game’s hub zone, the Tower. Xûr sells an assortment of rare items for incredibly cheap prices, Destiny power leveling to make upgrades easier and cheaper price, but he may not offer everything players want since his stock is random. Or at least, it is supposed to be.

Over the past month, Japanese-speaking Reddit user Megamanexe4 has accurately predicted not only the location where Xûr will show up each week, but also the specific items the vendor will have in stock. This undermines Bungie’s previous insistence that Xûr’s inventory and location are completely random.

The knowledge of what items will be sold by Xûr does not significantly affect the game itself, but it does mean fewer players log in on Fridays when they already know that the vendor will not be selling any of the items they need. On the other hand, it also means some players will play more in the week leading up to the new items so that they can afford to by them when Xûr shows up. Apparently, that is enough to spur Bungie into changing the system so that Megamanexe4’s predictions no longer work.

According to his most recent Xûr prediction post on Reddit (with a rough translation by Reddit user balderm), Megamanexe4 is no longer able to query individual items from Xûr’s inventory, meaning that he cannot see what items will be in stock. He believes that Bungie may be stocking Xûr’s inventory manually to prevent the data from being mined and predicted.

Again, this seems to undermine Bungie’s previous stance that it could not affect Xûr’s items, which has some fans criticizing the studio for previously allowing the vendor to sell only items available to people who own the game’s DLC.

Megamanexe4 has hinted at Xur’s items from FIFA 15

Renowned “Destiny” player, Megamanexe4 has correctly predicted “Xur: Agent of the Nine” exotic items well ahead of its official announcement for past so many weeks. Megamanexe4 exposed Bungie, who claimed that development team has no control over “Xur: Agent of the Nine” items, and it is spawned at random.

Gamepur noted that last week was a bit different as the developer took some measures to put the leak of Xur’s stocks prior to its official announcement, to a screeching halt. That said, Megamanexe4 has shared some more interesting update on what new measure Bungie has took as well as whatever or not he will be able to leak future Xur’s inventory and items alongside many more things. According to iDigitalTimes, this week, Xur can be found standing in Tower North, across from the Speaker’s observatory.

Megamanexe4 claims there are two different types of Xur: Agent of the Nine. While one has a standard list of goods for sale that can solely be changed by patches, the other is managed by “Destiny” developer, Bungie, who can upload his data straight to the game without patches. Gamerpur notes that the Xur that appeared on March 15 was the latter type i.e. it was directly controlled by Bungie.

Accessing items/stocks of Xur that is controlled by the developer isn’t quite a piece of cake as this Xur has his data directly uploaded on the day of his appearance, making it impossible to obtain data about this Xur on any other day, Megamanexe4 explained. SegmentNext listed Xur’s inventory noting that his recent visits have been a disappointment for players as his inventory has been repetitive.

MK. 44 Stand Asides
Type: Leg Armour
Class: All
Cost: 13 Strange Coins
Mask of the Third Man
Type: Helmet
Class: Hunter
Cost: 13 Strange Coins
Apotheosis Veil
Type: Helmet
Class: Warlock
Cost: 13 Strange Coins
Hard Light
Type: Auto Rifle
Class: All
Cost: 23 Strange Coins

Players have been crying out for Hard Light since Megamanexe4 revealed that the weapon would make an appearance at some point over the next week. GamesPresso noted that each week Xur offers upgrade for 300 cap weapons.

This week Xur has:

Truth & on PlayStation platforms Hawkmoon, Gjallarhorn, Patiance & Time, Universal Remote, Heart of the Praxic Fire, Hard Light, Red Death, Crest of Alpha Lupi, Skull of Dire Ahamkara, A Insurmountable Skullfort, Mask of the Third Man.

Consumables

Emerald Coil & heavy ammo synthesis, Machine Gun Telemetry, Plasma Drive, Scoot Rile Telemetry, Pulse Rifle Telemetry. What do you think about this entire Bungie vs Megamanexe4 battle on Xur Agent of the Nine? Let us know in the comment section below!

Upcoming Nightfall And Heroic Strikes Detailed From Destiny

Reddit user Megamanexe4 has been up to his usual data mining activities in an attempt to try and find out more about upcoming gameplay details for Destiny. Such is his reliable nature, he has managed to turn up the Strike missions for next week, both of which we will detail below for you.

Though despite his efforts, it would appear that he can no longer get accurate returns on predicting Xur’s upcoming stock, this is thought to be caused by alleged changes in how Bungie operates Xur now. A translation from his original post, which is in Japanese, reads “Apparently he can’t query for single items in Xur inventory anymore, whenever he tries the server just returns the same items from this week, all he can do now is predict the Exotic Engram and some of the items in the Upgrade Exotic list.”

The translation goes on to talk about his thoughts on the recent difficulties, saying “He’s not sure if this happens because Bungie is controlling Xur directly or because of the server side changes that have been implemented recently, but if this happens again next week, or the following, he’ll most likely be unable to predict Xur anymore.”

Now, regarding those Strikes. Next week fireteams of 1 to 3 players can take to the Ocean of Storms on the Moon Nightfall Strike where they will take part in a Very Hard difficulty Strike Mission. As per usual, players can expect modifiers to be in play, this time around there are the Epic, Nightfall, Arc Burn, Lightswitch and Angry modifiers in effect.

On the other end of the spectrum in the Weekly Heroic Strike, players will be taking to the Ocean of Storms on the Moon for a Hard difficulty Strike Mission that will have only the Heroic and Arc Burn modifiers in effect. Rewards for this mission include Strange Coins, Cryptarch Engrams, Vanguard Marks and Vanguard Reputation.

Some of the items in the Upgrade Exotic list (rest of the items such as Exotic Gear are similar to what Xur had on 20th March, 2015):

27th, March 2015: