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Old New Guns: An Irrelevant Post (Criticism)

by INSANEdrive, ಥ_ಥ | f(ಠ‿↼)z | ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ| ¯\_(ツ)_/¯, Sunday, July 12, 2020, 18:30 (1593 days ago)

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Dear Bungie, and as you may know dear folks of DBO...

IT'S. JUST. SO. STUPIiiiiD!

Confession time, I was planning on having a far different post on Bungie Day. Far, FAR less wholesome. As I sit here boiling not in rage but a deep befuddlement, I want to say five things at the same time in a screaming calm, a steady astonished tone, and so much more which all may show a deep down hold in the emotions, where some sort of rage may be tied down from the weight of all this I wish to say, and the waste such rage-like emotion may be. That was a run on sentence for effect folks. So exasperated, so very deep is my bewilderment, that I don't WANT to post anything. Than... I do. Than... I don't. IT KEEPS HAPPENING! GAA!

Just when I think I got this, and I fight making a post about this... BUNGIE pulls in a ringer across the face. It just... it makes NO SENSE... I...

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... you know what, instead of trying to find words in speechlessness...

There. That has to be, like, 20,000 words right there in expression to the my sheer height of my jaw drop in what I have observed. In fact... I need... I need one more...

Oh yes. That's better. Hope you have that popcorn at the ready. In the event you have any Covid-19 prevention kit, eyewear and what not, you may want to put it on as you may otherwise feel a spray coming though your screen.

That shit ain’t goin’ to be holy water there folks! ಠ‿↼

Part 1: *SIGH* Yes. This is About Sunsetting. SON OF A BIT-...

So Look, I know. I know. I KNOW. I... know. Heavens above, I know, this topic has been ranted about there and back again. TL;DR Life is shit sometimes, sometimes we make that shit. It's a great life lesson. While I would love to forget the whole thing and move on... there is this ONE THING. This one thing that keeps PRICKING ME, because its SO STUPID, that thought of my trying to explain WHY it is STUPID would be stupid. Why would I waste time to explain? If it's stupid enough to publish into the live game, it's irrelevant to even explain. So I won't.

What I will at least explain though is when I first realized this PRICK design... "choice(?)". You know what, ehF it, CHOICE! Maybe it's the pandemic, but I'm fresh out of "Benefit of the Doubt".

Part 2: Arc Logic & Thunderous Idiocy

It is the 19th of June, 2020. I’ve been playing the Nightmare Hunts so that I can get a Powerful Drop.

Of that Powerful Drop, this is what I received.

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In the event the image embed doesn’t work; It is an Arc Logic Auto Rifle.
It has (Arrowhead Brake / Fluted Barrel) / (Accurized Rounds / Alloy Magazine) / Overflow / Rampage

I finally got it. I finally got the combo I wanted to play with since Shadowkeep started. With Overflow (a.k.a Walkover Stacked Reload) & Rampage (a.k.a Kill make easier Kill) this thing looked like it could be a PRIMARY ammo variant of by far my favorite legendary heavy machine gun, the “Pinnacle Weapon” 21% Delirium. It’s just so much fun to use, as well as effective, and now I got a PRIMARY Variant of that game play style. So what did I do? I went and PLAYED! When you get a new toy you want to try it out. And YEAH! It was FUN! Plus there is an Auto Slot with the Artifact this Season for Champions so… YAH! Good Stuff!

Fun was had, and then… and then I had this LITERAL thought; “Well, it’s a good thing that this dropped for me in this season.” I had this thought because I know in this season, there are old weapons being dropped with the exact same set of perk pools as “newer” weapons with a Sunset light level of 1360 (a yet another admittedly rant worthy topic in ID-I-OH-CEE with Sunsetting).

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So… regardless whether the image of my “Arc Logic Auto Rifle” is working above, you may already know where this is going, yes? ‘Cause I didn’t then. I suddenly had this filling dread, bubbling over. A realization that I needed to confirm my thoughts, is the cat alive or dead? Then as I saw that black spot of a number, that my NEW toy had a time bomb, my heart… (as I move my closed fist top of reach slowly down bottom)

…

*whistle*

…

*whistle*


…

*whistle*

…

…

*whistle*

…

…
*whistle*… CRASH! (Open Palm.)

Like some cartoon, there is a heart shaped crater from hence it landed. A pool of glittering disco shards that was once a heart in shape. Technically, Arc Logic may be old, as Arc Logic is an Auto rifle from Shadowkeep launch almost a year ago now, but actually, it’s new. I could not use this play style with it, until I got the perks that allowed me to do it in this roll! In witness of this I uttered the question; Why is anything dropping THIS SEASON that will be Sunset at the end of it? Why does this have a Sunset Light Level of 1060 (The Season 11 Cap)? Where is my YEAR to play with this Bungie? I just got this! WHO THE FUCK AT BUNGIE THINKS THIS IS A FUCKING GOOD GAMEPLAY DESIGN?! WHY DO THEY PERSIST ON KEEPING THE FUCKING IDIOT WHO KEEPS FUCKING OVER 95% OF THE REST OF THE STUDIO with their BRAIN DEAD DESIGN CHOICES!

Yet than I'm, being me, pulling back... maybe the issue just isn't high enough in the bug seriousness rating? Y-eh... no... this is just awful. What the actual fuck.

I think this is what initially pissed me off the most about all this. Destiny is a fantastic game when it is allowed to be, and sometimes designed to be, but it keeps stepping on splinters, some small little things that reverberate pain through out which ruins the capacity of fun in the moment or more. Suddenly use for the whole foot and everything that relies on it becomes a little more a chore. After a while it’s become a SHOCKINGLY relevant question… Bungie, ARE YOU ACTUALLY RETARDED!?

Part 3: Uh Oh, the Rant is Evolving.

We’re well past insanity. We are well past the part where "learning from the fans" on various aspects of gameplay is a thing. BUNGIE! You PLAY this right!? I KNOW you do, I VERY VERY occasionally have been able to play with some of you folk... DO YOU SEE THIS!?!?!? IS THIS... OK to you!? I mean, I suppose that's irrelevant unless its your department, I don't know, just... It’s NEVER the ART TEAM. Nor hardly even the folks in charge of back-end, even with all the baked in “animal” or “food” errors. Yes, it can get rather obtuse at times, but it involves networking factors beyond much of Bungies control on a global scale. It's annoying, sometimes VERY annoying, but it's forgivable. We had “one world” reset done twice, but when it happened we got a post explaining - “Here is what went wrong”. It was professional and refreshing. All forgiven.

BUT this SHIT!

This "gameplay" bullshit, which keeps bringing about these rants, which keep leaving we fans aghast is apparently ALWAYS ACCEPTABLE! That's what I recall, after at least half a decade of playing this game, it's always something in the rules that doesn't add up. Rules that are deeply incongruent but are published into the game as if otherwise. AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN. We the fans make posts around the net that can be described as constructively asking “ Uhhhhh Bungie, WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING”! BUT IT KEEPS HAPPENING. AGAIN AND AGAIN! AND AGAIN! WHAT THE FUCK NEEDS TO HAPPEN AT BUNGIE SO THIS DOESN’T KEEP HAPPENING AGAIN AND FLIPP’N AGAIN!

Yes, I know it's the internet... I know. In fact, many at Bungie may "know" it better than I do, thank heavens. But I and others are not bringing forth these questions and rants as some request for impossible perfection. We bring these these questions and rants in the hopes for a consent degree of competency. THAT'S ALL! With that said, I still have this "new car", and you Bungie have already totaled it. Did you get your "make games" degree from a cereal box? Do I need a ring to decode your brilliant choices!? How much Silver does that cost? Hmm? ...

"BUY MORE SILVER"

Ah shit. :P

I wanted to put the above Arc Logic into the races, but now I never can after this season is done. That SUCKS, arguably...ish even more than Sunsetting in its own right. If I want to play the parts of the Game that are New or Updated with this weapon, AKA the things I tend to play, I can't. You gave me newly rolled loot, but it's filled with asterisks. It makes NO Sense, either for me to make a build with this, or to even enjoy the weapon at all if it's going to be irrelevant anyway. Is... is that not already OBVIOUS!?!?!

It's like Bungie is blind to how we play. It's like they don't care. Isn’t it part of your job to create enjoyable experiences? DO you enjoy stealing candy from toddlers too, you SICK FUCKS!?

And you know what, fuck off with that false choice bullshit too (which is yet ANOTHER rant).

Part 4: More to say, do you?

You ever notice… er… when you notice something, you can suddenly see it everywhere? Such can occur frequently with new words, and in this case it's this 1060 number. The season 11 cap where I can only use a weapon anywhere I wish this season.

I got a really cool roll on a Dust Rock Blues a few days ago. 1060. Some other weapons with cool rolls, you know already, 1060. And each time… I felt it. It’s just SO STUPID. But I kept it to myself.

And THEN!? And then Bungie made their TWAB post on the 25th of June, 2020. In it, they mentioned the starting date of Iron Banner for this season, as well as showing of the new and old within it. And among all this it was said, and I quote verbatim…

All weapons listed below are considered “reissued” and will have Season of Arrival Max Infusion Caps.

  • Shining Sphere
  • Swarm of the Raven
  • Talons of the Eagle
  • Bite of the Fox
  • Orewing’s Maul
  • Crimil’s Dagger

Reissued? Reissued. Is that the word you're useing?

Confession. When I read “Season of Arrival Max Infusion Caps”, I thought it meant that these weapons would drop at 1060 cap. Was unpleased. What it really dropped was that these old weapons were dropping at 1360 cap. Even still, this than really just peeved me off. I just had to rant... you've read some of it in part 2 & 3. You may be sporadically reading some if it here now. I kept it all to myself, because, part of my formerly undisclosed rant was how fruitless all of this ranting will likely be.

What lives? What dies? What gladiator choices denotes what the end infusion cap will be?

*deep breath* *whhhhhhhhh*

The WORLD IS CRAZY, and I come to a pastime that I enjoy to decompress from all THAT CRAZY IGNORANCE, only to find that here too I can not escape people in power making choices that effect us all, with results that should have never of been a thing at all.

I mean... look at this. THIS IS A Quest FOR THIS SEASON! THIS SEASON! THIS RIGHT HERE!! LOOK AT THIS!!!!!

THAT is a weapon dropping at 1060 light cap.

And... OH my goodness... Just looking at this again I... can't... speak... words...

I can't recall if I've ever cringed at a game play rule before, but THIS, I'm cringing. HARD. Like, I feel it deep down oh-my-heavens why-is-this. Worse than that, there is MORE of this! Look LOOK!

Let's Overview all the weapons showcased shall we;

Huh!? Organization in this game undefenseably sucks. Now that we have the same guns dropping, but some are 1060 while some are 1360, DOES NOT HELP! In game it feels ALL OVER the place. And that is why they fail.

Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.

What I am about to say is... rather out there. It is not just because of all this which I rant of now. It hads been slowly built. I think, at this point, with this crew, Bungie is not going to change in any applicable degree. The proof is the published pudding and it keeps getting mixed -SOMEHOW- with literal shit. All this sweetness in quality, and effort, hours and hours of fantastically competent work sabotaged with literal shit choices or oversights. Before hand it was a joke in my mind, but as I put it to the page I am dead serious. Someone at Bungie is a saboteur and needs to be fired six months ago. Why? Because they are INCOMPETENT at the job they have been tasked to do. This consent splinter, this mole, this saboteur, this flippe’n chuckle nuts over there who makes these mechanisms that require you to... double take, I suppose is how I'll describe it. Not just for this, a straw that keeps break'n me, but for repeated proofs in lackluster design choices. At least.

It's... it's suddenly funny. "It's not really hurting anything". The game will continue as it has. As it will. But that's NOT GOOD ENOUGH. YOU ARE BETTER THAN THIS BUNGIE. Or at least, you were.

Maybe it’s one person, maybe its a group, maybe it’s Luke and/or Noseworthy and/or whoever else, but someone – probably in the game play design team – needs to go. This is flipp'n ridiculous.

Part 5: Apathetic Sadness

As I mused in the very beginning of this post, I didn’t want to make a post. I’m just… so done with this shit, and I suppose many of you may be as well. I didn’t want to post this. I’m so very tired of reading about anything connected with "Sunsetting" and I presume you may be as well. Twice so if you've managed to slog through this ramble here. Shoot, I am tired of it now, here, as I push to finish what I have written about. I’m tired of ranting about this game, but I know that won't stop a darn thing. I’m tired of RANTING about this game and I didn’t want to post this because I didn’t want to contribute any effort in making yet another rant. I didn’t want to make it, as I didn’t want to waste any more effort upon the topic of Sunsetting “anything”, as there has already plenty enough words uselessly placed upon said topic. Please note that this is not a criticism on the efforts and observations that have already been declared, as some have been fantastic to read, and I am glad to have read them. Yet I am not those writers. Your scroll wheel or number of taps across of screen shall confirm that much. Plus I simply wonder if, regardless the quality of whatever positions made, if it even really matters at all.

Yet… here it is. All this text.

I didn’t want to waste any more effort because whatever I put here, regardless the quality I can tend towards giving and all the effort I’m to make... it at this point feels irrelevant. It’s a redundant question, of “What more do you need?” “What else must you take for the creation of a consistent understanding of your job?” “How do you choose your choices? Your impacts upon the global populous who play your game, Bungie?”

What you read here now, is some heat of social entropy in sadness where when something feels WRONG, you speak up so that it may possibly be changed. Unfortunately, I do enjoy this game a great deal. I’ve done what I felt was right, and have forgiven choices made again and again. I’ve unquestionably exhaustively given so many a chance for Bungie to learn from their mistakes, and the response from we the fans. I keep giving a mad hope that the sound or fury shall give a power or direction to cause a content change. A competent change. Somehow. Someway. But it doesn’t matter what I have to say here, as the (lower g) gods at Bungie have their own timetable and must work in their “mysterious” own way. Should it even be that my words can even move the slightest heartbeat, I’m convinced it doesn’t matter. Speak otherwise all they wish; Shipped Actions are louder.

Yet… here I am.

*Sigh*

A stupid kid who expects better from so called adults.

Part 6: Ending with a High Note

If anything good came out from all of this, it's that in constructing my rant on again, off again, on again, off again, I've realized what Bungie sucks at in the scale for which Destiny requires. I've realized I’m not ranting about Sunsetting. Nor have I been ranting about any of the other topics I’ve brought to bare in the past. PvE, Communication (though that is still vital), How much fun Supers are or could be... all symptoms. In my epiphany I realized It’s always been the same thing. It might not be the WHOLE studio, but if any one section sucks at it, the whole group – THE WHOLE GAME – feels it. And I also know why they shouldn't have an excuse on why they suck at it.

It’s 2018. I’m going to GDC’18 in part so I can go and see the "Translating Art into Technology: Physically Inspired Shading in 'Destiny 2'" Talk by Graphics Technical Art Lead… well… around these parts he goes by Veegie. Gotta say, not as short as ya made your self sound WAAAAY back then there brother. Than again, a lot of things can change in over a decade, yes? Whatever, happy for ya. While there on the ground in San Francisco, I got a chance to talk to some of the good folk at Bungie who are less than known rock stars, but still very important. In fact, apparently, if it wasn’t for this person, Destiny 2 would have been Halo 2, but worse – if you catch my drift.

Her name is Linda Fane, and you can watch her GDC Talk "Epic Sync: Wrangling the Work of Highly Interdependent Dev Teams at Bungie" right here if you so choose.

If you watched it, it’s pretty good right? Nice thing about being there is that after the Talk is done, if there is time you can go up and chat about the topic. Unlike with Veegies Talk, I and a bunch of other folk had time to chat in the meeting space… third floor in the building with restaurant across the street as I recall. It was a lovely discussion about SCRUM and organizing things. Yeah, about Destiny 2, ironic I know. It's about back end, not the front end, obviously. It's because of this experience, and others I was able to have among folks who work or worked at Bungie, I know through simply how they hold themselves they are folks who are in-fact very competent. Thus, it's been deeply frustrating and at times bewildering watching mistakes made and published that, to me, should have never of been. That the only constancy I've been able to get from them as a fan in the years of Destiny is that what they make (which I say with the pitfalls of the broad brush) has been so inconsistent that to vent my bewildered frustrations reduced to writ in creating snarky-ish and far too large posts.

As far as I can tell, Bungie should not be this bad at pre-planning. And yet, it seems at this end they always have been. Last Season was unquestionably the worst in the history of the game, including Destiny 1 because they put all their time in PvP, and... we saw the results of that. Sure didn't look like two or whatever years of effort.

That's the question I will leave this rant with, if there was Pre-Planning for Sunsetting, for PvP, for all of these different modes and ways to find some fun, would everything be so all over the place as it appears in game?

I leave it to you.

Part 7: Sponge Shreds Rock

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