Video Game Tuesday: Destiny 2

This week for Video Game Tuesday I’m going to cover the topic you all knew I would eventually. It’s all about Destiny 2!

Destiny 2: It was announced on March 30th that Destiny 2 was a real thing and would be released this year, but there were some big “surprises” announced. It would release on the PC and everything, or close to everything, wouldn’t transfer from the first game and it’s “expansions”.

PC?!?: Yea color me not that surprised, it was rumored for months prior to the announcement that it would release on PC, so I’m really not that surprised. It was a surprise it didn’t release on the PC in the first place to be honest. And just to clarify I probably won’t be playing it on PC as my main platform if I should happen to receive codes for both PC and PS4.

Wait our stuff?: Yea all that time you spent on gearing up your characters, getting cool things like Exotics, fancy looking ships, awesome Shaders, and cool Emblems was wasted. The only confirmed thing that will transfer over is the appearance of your characters, but that’s hardly a thing to be excited about. It’s not like we were ever all that attached to our characters since Destiny never had much of a story. I’d hope at least cosmetic stuff like Shaders, Emblems, Ghost Shells, Sparrows and Shaders would transfer over, but that isn’t confirmed and probably won’t happen.

My Hopes?: I hope the game transfers over the cosmetic stuff, has a story that isn’t a piece of crap, and has a loot system that doesn’t exploit players. My expectations that any of those will be met is very low, and all of them being met? Practically non-existent. I hope Bungie can redeem themselves, but I highly doubt that is possible at this point.

Video Game Tuesday: Transmog Systems

This week for Video Game Tuesday I’m continuing last week’s theme of customization. It’s all about Transmog Systems!

Transmog Systems?: Transmog, or Transmogrification is a term used in World of Warcraft that was introduced in Patch 4.3. It was a system that allowed the player to change the appearance of their armor to match other armor that they owned. It wasn’t the first of it’s kind, but it’s the one that gets pointed at the most in my experience. There might be other names in other games, in Final Fantasy XIV for example it’s called the Glamour System, but it’s pretty much the same thing.

What’s your favorite one?: Personally I’m a fan of Final Fantasy XIV’s system although World of Warcraft has the advantage of a library system to go with Transmog. Final Fantasy XIV’s is much less rigid, and allows you to modify almost any item to look like most others. Many items aren’t restricted by class, but there are some like the Artifact gear. I’d love to see a library system added to Final Fantasy XIV, but I know that doing so takes a lot of time to create and given that Final Fantasy XIV has a dye option as well, it’d be very hard to implement. However in FFXIV unlike WoW, you can wear ridiculous outfits into battle, do you want to be dressed up in a metallic gold pig suit as you run into battle swinging a big axe? Go ahead, that’s completely ok. WoW doesn’t allow for that which is a pity.

What games would you like to see a glamour system in?: Destiny for one would be a great place, but given how small of a pool of options that game has it’s probably not going to happen soon, although who knows with Destiny 2 supposedly coming out this year.

That’s it for this week’s Video Game Tuesday, what is your favorite transmog system? What games do you wish had transmog? Leave your thoughts in the comments below!

Video Game Tuesday: Character Customization

This week for Video Game Tuesday I’m covering a topic that is a bit contentious. It’s Character Customization!

Character Customization?: Yes, the ability to change your player character’s appearance either during creation or later in the game. To make yourself look unique, or like a famous person, or yourself, or just plain ridiculous.

Give me examples of good customization!: Well there’s always MMOs, with more recent ones getting some pretty awesome character creation abilities. Final Fantasy XIV has a fairly large character customization feature, and you can even go back and change some of it later on. Other games like the Elder Scrolls games have always had a pretty good customization ability.

Some bad examples?: Earlier MMOs had some okay character creation screens, but they limited a lot of options. For example, World of Warcraft had an okay system, but frankly every race choice was limited to a single height, no options to change height were available. They said it was due to PvP limitations, but frankly I don’t know if that’s an okay response in todays market. I’m leaning towards no, but I’m not certain on that. It was certainly useful to be able to call out “Kill Undead Mage” in flag room in Warsong Gulch for example.  No one would get confused about not killing the giant Tauren Warrior instead of that smaller and skinnier Undead Mage. An example of a bad single player character customization are examples like Sword Art Online Lost Song, which had such a terrible character customization system that it might as well have been removed to allow for something more useful.

Variety: I personally think having a great variety of options is always great, but some people find it overwhelming, while others love spending hours upon hours making the “perfect” character for themselves. Personally I’ll spend a bit of time on it, but if it gets past the 15 minute mark, I’ll start to hurry it up.

That’s it for this week’s Video Game Tuesday! What are some of your favorite character customization in games? How long do you typically spend in character customization? Leave your thoughts in the comments below!

Video Game Tuesday: That Destiny 2 Rumor

This week for Video Game Tuesday I’m going to talk about something I heard being discussed and argued over a few weeks back. It’s That Destiny 2 Rumor!

What Rumor?: The one where Destiny 2 is not only coming to the PC, a change that might be great or it might not, and that we will lose our characters in Destiny 2.

What does that mean?: Well for it to come to PC that means more players will get to play the game, frankly I could care less about this as I’m personally not a huge fan of FPS games on the PC, sorry I grew up playing Goldeneye not Doom and I enjoy having a level playing ground when it comes to FPS games. A PC can never offer that, someone else always has a better system than you and that split second advantage might change whether you win or lose.

What about that character loss part?: This is the real kicker and why I’m not even bothering with Destiny: Rise of Iron trying to get geared up for a raid I don’t really want to participate in if I’ll lose everything in the end. I understand why they would do this, and approve of doing so. But it’s a punch to the stomach for those players who have put as much time into Destiny as I have, or more.

I don’t mind losing access to my character, she’s ugly as hell anyways, but those guns I spent days searching for are going to be missed. Like Gjallarhorn, Hawkmoon, Vex Mythoclast and Touch of Malice. That’s not even mentioning the cosmetic items like Ghost Shells, Emblems, Shaders and Ships (I really don’t want to lose my ships and emblems Bungie.) Why would they do this? Because it’s better to completely remake something than have old, broken aspects screw up new content. I’m looking at you “Jump and Die Randomly for No Reason” bug….

That’s it for this week’s Video Game Tuesday.

Video Game Tuesday: Destiny’s Failure (Again)

This week for Video Game Tuesday I’m explaining why I find Bungie’s actions once again unfathomable. It’s all about Destiny’s Failure (Again).

What Now?: Well they announced that we’d have one set of endgame PvE content, that we already have, for an entire year. This is a common practice in real MMORPGs, because the Developers are working on the next expansion, but Destiny has never been a real MMO. The fact that Destiny has a extreme lack of end game content is unacceptable for a game that has a 10-year $500 million contract with Activision. Though I’ve never been fan of Activision or their practices, (Blizzard is essentially an entirely separate existence thankfully) they do know how to pump out content at a pretty decent pace. It’s not amazing content mind, but it’s content at least.

Yeah but they have their free timed events: Funny thing about that, it’s timed events not a permanent addition to the game. I’d not mind if Sparrow Racing was a full feature that stayed around forever, and was built upon in the future. I had a blast this last weekend playing with 5 other friends and trash talking while I kicked their asses in a race. But the fact that this is a temporary feature and not constant is annoying. The additional facts that Bungie has gutted their own economy, a fact that even Forbes noticed, destroyed all semblance of balance in PvE content and left a fan favorite weapon class absolutely destroyed in their pursuit of “Balance” and even failed to correctly communicate the correct percentages about their most recent update trying to achieve said “Balance” is laughable. It shows a severe lack of staffing in a company that shouldn’t have such a lack, ever.

I’m not even going to get into the Kotaku article which was a very interesting read, but regardless it’s a pity that Bungie has once again shoved their feet into their mouth after shooting them a good dozen times. What was once a highly beloved developer is quickly becoming the laughing stock of the Game Developer world.

Once I earn that King’s Fall raid ship I’m done until I get asked to review the next release. I’ve got better developed games to play like Tales of Zestiria and Final Fantasy XIV: Heavensward.

That’s it for this week’s Video Game Tuesday!