Tag Archives: House of Wolves

commentary, Entertainment, gaming, Video games

Bungie’s New Low: Your Own Team Required for Etheric Light in H.o.W

3 Comments

Someone asked with the Help tag at Bungie’s Destiny site where one can get etheric light.  Since the Trials of Osiris started today, we found that there is NO way of getting etheric light – a requirement for upgrading new game gear – if you don’t have your own play team.  In other words, you can’t get it as a single player and there is no in-game matchmaking for the activities where etheric light can be found.  Regulation of the gaming industry is needed at this point.  Consumers should not be deceived into buying a product that they have little or no chance of getting a refund for.

We preordered the game and the season pass, based on what we knew of the game pre-release.  Well, the game has changed a lot since then.  The amount of play time a single player can get out of the game is less and less, and the latest dlc makes single player useless.  With the House of Wolves you CAN get new gear that is as high or higher than the previous gear, but if you don’t have your own teams to play the meat of the dlc, what’s the point?  To just play the old stuff that happens to have matchmaking over and over again?

Continue reading Bungie’s New Low: Your Own Team Required for Etheric Light in H.o.W →

Entertainment, gaming, Video games

House of Wolves is Only for Those who have their Own Teams

Leave a comment
The Terminus, an elevator to one of the House of Wolves' story missions (Polygon.com).
The Terminus, an elevator to one of the House of Wolves’ story missions (Polygon.com).

Note:  For those searching for the religious, or any possible biblical, aspect of Destiny, please see Destiny’s Story: The Nature of Evil and It’s Corrupting Influence.

Updated/edited on May 20, 2015.

If any of you have read my various Destiny articles, you might have guessed that I have a love-hate relationship with the game.  Well, you might walk away with more of the hate side of my feelings, but, I do LOVE the feel of the game.  I stopped playing it for a while because I had nothing else to do in it.  I don’t play the Crucible, and my son got tired of that part of the game, too, and I don’t do my own match-making in order to play the harder aspects of the game, so . . . there’s nothing to do in Destiny after a certain point for players like me.  And guess what, despite what the trailer may have said or implied, House of Wolves only makes matters worse.  You cannot level up without doing your own match making/team gathering.  At least that’s what is known right now.

I had recently started playing again (and my son followed suit), gearing up for the new House of Wolves dlc that was to come out.  I started a new character, too, leveling her up to 29.  We stopped leveling gear up since we didn’t want to waste our materials prior to the dlc.  So, my son has played today’s Destiny dlc a while this morning, checking out the new social area in The Reef, and doing a number of the dlc’s missions and strikes.  The new crucible matches, called the Trials of Osiris, are only available Friday through Monday, basically, so he has to wait for those.  He was able to get through the whole new story in a matter of hours.

Continue reading House of Wolves is Only for Those who have their Own Teams →

Christian, Entertainment, gaming, Video games

Don’t Buy Destiny . . . Unless

Leave a comment
Despite the amazing beauty of Destiny's environments, it's a lousy game (as least for the cost).
Despite the amazing beauty of Destiny’s environments, it’s a lousy game (as least for the cost).

Note:  For those searching for the religious, or any possible biblical, aspect of Destiny, please see Destiny’s Story: The Nature of Evil and It’s Corrupting Influence.

Update of May 20, 2015, based on the House of Wolves expansion:  Don’t buy Destiny unless you are willing and able to make your own teams, period.  And have a mic to communicate with others with, too.  Despite the sound of the trailer, there is only one low-level match making in the Prison of Elders, and items and gear for leveling up will not be found at that level.  Unless you team up youself and like spending hours banging away at enemies, there is no point on spending your money on Destiny.  There is literally nothing else to the game.

Based on the beta, we pre-purchased Destiny with the two DLCs, or expansions, but everyone in our family is very disappointed with Destiny and Bungie, the maker of the game.  During the pre-purchase phase, as far as I am aware, Bungie never let on that to fully play the game players would have to assemble their own teams of six (and have microphones, which isn’t too surprising for an MMO).  Bungie has no customer service to speak of, either, so all in all, buying Destiny was a real waste of money.   Their marketing during the pre-purchase phase was deceptive, with a few players STILL referring to the game as an RPG, which at this point it very clearly is not.

Going back to the teams issue (the only way to be able to play the whole game):  in order to assemble your own team of six you need to have six same-console friends with the game (who have microphones) who are able to do a big raid (the “Vault of Glass”) all at the same time.  This was annoying enough as part of the original game, as purchased, but now – with the first expansion, The Dark Below – Bungie did the same thing.  There is a second such raid, called “Crota’s End,” that one apparently has to do in order to finish the DLC quest line (and there is no matchmaking).

Continue reading Don’t Buy Destiny . . . Unless →