I hate this game, it’s my favorite.

I just wanted to gather some of my thoughts and feelings about this first week of Edge of Fate Season 27. These are all just personal subjective opinion and experiences which I have no intention of swaying people to agree with me on. We all play the game very differently and it is obviously never going to be perfect for every single player.

As I’m writing this, I realize that I generally lean way more towards the elitest-side of the community in my opinions despite being a lowly casual. I suspect this might get me into some trouble [nervous “haha”] but, again, we all play a different version of the game to satisfy what we need to personally enjoy ourselves.

I took a bit of a break generally from the game (around four months) leading up to EoF and returned about three weeks ahead of release. Mostly due to a large work project but also, I was enjoying Tarkov at the time. While I usually try to complete Titles and as much content as possible, S26 was the first season in quite a while where I had to tell myself, it’s okay to not finish these.

But I’m back now and I’m extremely excited to see if some of these changes shift how I want to play the game. I mostly enjoy challenging PvE content but I also enjoy and play PvP.

Overall:

• I absolutely applaud Bungie for trying all the new things within the game. Everything new will require refinement or potentially redesign. We want Destiny 3? I think this is what it looks like.
• I finished the main campaign story and have done almost none of the side content on Kepler. I attempted the raid day 1 on Contest, got my ass beat but had a fantastic time. I have completed the raid on Normal and am still having a fantastic time.
• Regarding the new power grind, I’m divided and need some more time with it. I love the customization in difficulty in such a granular way and I like that there are goals to meet which usually drive me to play more. But I’m currently under 200 power and The Portal activities are locked to “Easy” experiences until I unlock the Advanced tiers. This just isn’t very fun to me and has actually slowed my drive.
  • There is a very high probability that I’m just doing it wrong and maybe I should be finishing stuff on Kepler first. I just fear that hitting 200 power will result in the same problem until the next threshold is reached.

Campaign:

• I’m very intrigued with the story and its implications on the coming years of the game narrative.
• It took me about 50% of the campaign to start feeling that intrigue so I may have missed some early context, mostly around The Archon and the reason we’re on Kepler to begin with.
• Campaign abilities, while not my favorite part, were new and initially interesting but I’m okay with them being only used for Kepler. As I said above, I’m glad they tried new things. I am guessing this will just be confined to the expansion as stand-alone gimmicks and we’ll see something entirely new again with Renegades that will be equally polarizing. Keep trying new things.

PS5 audio issues:

• Known issue to Bungie, immediately was very disorienting on day one of the campaign.
• Extremely frustrating to have to abstain from specific mechanics out of respect for the fireteam where I couldn’t be as efficient, very specifically the raid Wyvern timer but who knows how many other missing audio cues would have helped me to perform more effectively.
• Just wanted to complain, audio is incredibly important to me.

The Raid:

• Overall, and especially for the final boss, it feels very good to have mechanics that reward efficient execution with faster, consistent paths to damage. In addition, efficient management of the damage extension mechanics allow for very manageable two phases and extremely safe three phases
• Contest aside (I’m curious and following the discussion on potential power delta discrepancies), the normal raid was very fun and engaging and not (yet) a mindless experience. You will die, you will fail mechanics, and you will wipe your team.
• At first, I was shocked to see Tier 1 gear dropping from the Raid (and even more shocked to hear that included Contest). But I am definitely okay with lower tiers dropping to incentivize trying to increase difficulty with the feats themselves. I would also be okay with Tier 2 as the base level for drops in a raid.
• The final boss animations…

Loadout swapping during the raid:

opinions

• I actually welcome swaps as a game mechanic and part of the skill ceiling. “Menu play” doesn’t bother me, I’m a nerd and have external spreadsheets for the most general of gameplay.
• The point is to spend as little time in menus during combat as possible; loadouts allow for that. The time I spend in menus is during the build crafting and refining between encounter attempts.
  • Most of us are doing this anyway
• A personal peeve, fireteam members “menu play” in fashion menus when I would rather just go right back in to combat for another attempt at an encounter as fast as possible.
• If contest was NOT designed around loadout swaps, the players already doing it would still do it and
• Why are we convinced console players are at a disadvantage for loadout swaps? I play PS5 and have absolutely zero issue swapping, even mid super animation. If people aren’t aware, push D-pad left and it puts the cursor over the top-left slot. I generally leave my top three or four open to be used for the current encounter requiring swaps.
• Loadout swaps were absolutely not needed after contest. I’m curious to see how quickly they become required again in custom feat versions of the raid.

Conclusion

I’m sure there’s more I want to say but we can probably stop there for now.

I have spent 4x the time in the raid this weekend compared to the time I’ve spent playing the core game. I’m going to spend more time with it and my opinions may change. Either way, I hope everyone is finding something to enjoy today.

Thanks for reading. – JoshUndefined

> hello, world!

Hey, friends! My name is Josh and welcome! I don’t exactly know what I want to write this first post about so maybe I’ll just start with a list of random facts that I feel will introduce who I am.

In no particular order:

• Canadian
• Video Game enjoyer
• Dad and Husband
• Elder Millennial
• Twitch Streamer/YouTube Creator
  • Note: one of my favorite things to tell people is that I play video games semi-professionally
• Amateur Nerd Tech Enthusiast (what does that even mean? Future post to elaborate)
• Professional Nerd
• Aspiring Destiny 2 PvE Sherpa
• Hobby Collector with a specialization in Hyper focusing

What is this place?

As I stated above, probably my biggest hobby is to collect hobbies, then to hyperfocus and obsess about them for a while. The major result is a tendency to learn a lot of stuff which I then want to share with others.

I have been wanting to create a space to post on [potentially random] topics, maybe just discussions or case studies, or even tutorials. I am hoping that this becomes that space.

Some examples of the types of content I wish to post about:

• How do I, someone with no technical training or degree, learn how to make things?
• Streamer.bot project tutorials
• OBS project tutorials
• API stuff in general, but especially the Bungie/Destiny 2 API
• Backend server setup and admin

This GitHub repo is also a way for me to learn some new-to-me technologies like GitHub pages, static site generators (Jekyll), Markdown syntax.

Probably the most important reason that I am going to try to post here is to try to salvage some thoughts from the chaos in my brain. I hear journalling is pretty therapeutic, let’s try it.

Let’s keep it short

I had initially started to write a bit of an autobiography here (I think possibly to share context as to why I am the way that I am?) but then I realized that this post has been sitting in drafts for an entire week.

One thing I will say about myself is this: I have a lot of ideas and desires to create and do and learn, but I struggle with both execution and completion of these ideas. Nothing is ever finished, in my mind, so I am actively fighting myself to cross that impossible goal line.

So, I am going to do something scary. I am going to say to myself, “You know what? This is [probably] good enough.” And even if I don’t fully believe it, maybe the next one will start to feel easier.

Here we go:

git commit && git push

Thanks for reading. – JoshUndefined