My week with Destiny on the XBone... (Destiny)

by Korny , Dalton, Ga. US. Earth, Sol System, Saturday, July 04, 2015, 23:58 (3241 days ago)

Felt like it was a darn shame to be unable to play with some old friends, so I caved and got Destiny for the Xbone. It's been quite a week, and going back to basics to start over from scratch has actually been refreshing and fun (My vault is completely empty).

I've noticed (and discussed with fellow DBOers) a number of differences between the two consoles; mainly with player behaviors, Crucible experiences, and the general "vibe" of the game. It's an interesting thing, feeling like an outlier in pretty much all aspects, but again, it's refreshing and fun.

In fact, pretty much the only three things that I didn't have fun with were:

• The crazy amount of orbit-drops (I've been dropped more times in this one week than in the entire year on PS4. I can't imagine it's always this bad, but man, dat Weasel..), and I don't think I've played a single Crucible game yet where someone didn't drop or quit.
  
  
• The Xbone's bumpers, which have nearly brought me to tears out of Frustration (I wanted to Super, not melee!). In fact, I initially switched the bumpers and triggers, but my fingers got pretty worn out in no time, even if the experience did improve a little. Alas, I think I'm mostly used to the controller by now, so I should be able to deal with its shortcomings.
  
  
• The abysmal DVR, for which I've found numerous workarounds to help get around a number of issues. PS4 folk, you have no idea how good we have it. Cherish it! I really hope Microsoft overhauls the whole thing (namely no auto-upload, which would help increase file length to fifteen minutes, and allowing players to trim before sharing). Anyway, I've been able to get a number of fun clips of my experiences so far.

Fun Clips!

I didn't know how to unlock the Crucible until I was a level 9. It was confusing, but I later found out that Shaxx is supposed to send you an invitation, and you're supposed to go talk to him. I received no invite (bug?), so I was left to grid story missions for a while.
When I finally did get into the Crucible, I found that I had an easier time than expected, which genuinely surprised me. I thought Exotics would destroy my white-tier weapons during encounters, but that was hardly the case.

Had a great down-to-the-wire game with Mal, where we were tied at 19800 until the final second. I had no idea that people can get up on that window. First time that I've ever seen that.

Gotta give a shoutout to my level 12 PSI Tempus III, which got the job done all the way to level 20, and had just enough bite to help me get through situations like this (Note how I was still getting used to the Bumpers with that horrible grenade throw).

It's always an interesting feeling when you know that the game is fixing to drop you...

And sometimes the network decides to do funny things without dropping you.

My favorite moments!

Guardian (Speedracer on the Bone) and I thought it would be funny to go into the Iron Banner as a 22, but when you do 3 points of damage on a crit, and a nova bomb to the face takes off half of an enemy's shield, you gotta get creative. I mainly focused on distracting the enemy at all costs. Believe it or not, I ultimately had six kills to my name in IB.

Back to regular Crucible, I had a moment that reminded me of Hawkmoon's glory days, where Luck in the Chamber made it possible to counter a sniper with a handcannon (with old Hawkmoon, this was normal).

Maybe it's an issue with Trueskill not catching up to me yet, but for the most part, Crucible on the Bone has felt much, much easier than on PS4 (even going up against 34s). I think it also might have to do with the aforementioned window trick, where common strategies on one console are relatively unknown on the other, as enemy players don't seem to follow expected strategies (except for the ridiculous amount of shotgun sliders), and feel easier as a result (I felt like I could go on the offensive much more often).
On a similar note, looking at my recent games is kind of funny. See if you can figure out which of them were Iron Banner. :P

The initial wall when you hit 20 is rough. It's very difficult to advance quickly, so I hopped on to the Vanguard playlist hoping for drops, and found that Strikes are very fun when you're not just going through the motions (bringing to mind a recent thread). Doing a 26 strike as a 23 with two 25s was tough, but never overly frustrating, and I really wanted to send them friend requests at the end (for sticking through with me), though I sadly didn't. Real fun, though.

Ultimately, unable to level up, and with Xur being my only hope, I managed to scrounge up enough coins to buy enough motes to buy one exotic engram. What were the odds that it would turn into a Warlock helmet? Much less a useful one?
I bought the engram, and as I headed to Rahool, I wondered to myself what Warlock helmet I would even find useful, as I never wear them.
I got up to him, took a deep breath, and said "Sir, I'd like a Ram, please."

...

So, anybody want to do a VoG?