#pvpve

[s3c0ndx]

#beautifulView #HuntShowdown #bounty #doublePistols

[taintedco]

Skull and Bones

We played Skull and Bones beta and honestly we have no complaints. This game is so much fun and it has a lot of things. It is kind of like Sea of Thieves but different with a twist.

You basically are out there sailing the seas, completing quests, and leveling up but we ran into the endcap of the beta where your level is as high as you can get it until launch.

Although you are as high as you can get, you can still go around sinking AI ships and complete other quests.

The map is HUGE. We haven’t really seen any PVP only PVE and either way it is fun. You can join up with other players that are out in the sea and invite them to your group which is chill if you need someone to play with. In the settings there is something called auto harvest and it is a life saver with trying to sail beside the island and cut and mine things.

There are all kinds of different items floating at sea and if someone dies, you can go get their loot and stuff that is floating in the sea. Some of the stuff you gather from the sea can be used to repair your boat or you can just hang on to it for quest items.

Trying to board enemy ships is a pain since you have to weaken them down and get up to them and then try to board, then sometimes you are moving to fast and then they move to fast for you to get on. As long as you get one rope on them you are golden but if not you have to keep trying to get on or if you are like me just destroy them and pick up loot afterwards.

Trying to turn the ship is a pain but after awhile you can get use to it.

This game reminds us of Assassins’ Creed Black Flag, Lost Ark and sea of thieves’ just the way it plays.

I highly suggest instead of buying this game, get it through Ubisoft ultimate that way you can test the game before you throw money into it and if you don’t like it, there are other games you can play on the pass.

https://rumble.com/v4c4aa9-skull-and-bones-open-beta.html

https://rumble.com/v4cb5al-day-2-of-skull-and-bones.html

https://rumble.com/v4cb7lc-skulls-and-bones.html

https://rumble.com/v4ci75c-january-24-2024.html

[patricksteel]

Starsiege Deadzone a PvPvE Game like the Cycle Frontier

[linuxgamenews]

Gene Shift Auto: Deluxe Edition makes a debut with a sale

Gene Shift Auto: Deluxe Edition GTA-inspired PvPvE battle royale game launches on Linux and Windows PC. Which is the result of the work from developer Ben Johnson. Available no Steam along with a discount. Gene Shift Auto has been in Early Access since 2017. Now the Gene Shift Auto: Deluxe Edition launches. Providing extra content without giving unfair pay to win advantages online. While including the full singleplayer survival mode (including 4 player online co-op). It also gives more kill coins, bonus challenges, the ability to customize your skill build, private bot matches, exclusive cosmetics and more!

Gene Shift Auto: Deluxe Edition Trailer

Features:

Solo & Co-op Survival Runs Become insanely overpowered in full-length survival runs. Customize your Gene Shift Auto: Deluxe Edition experience. Doing so with game-changing difficulty modifiers and test your skills in hardcore mode. Play singleplayer or in 4 player online co-op. Your friends can join your co-op game even if they don't have the DLC

+1000 Kill Coins & 2x Coin Rate Instantly get +1000 bonus Kill Coins. You'll also get 2x as many Kill Coins every time you complete a daily challenge or level up.

Extra Challenges & Kill Coins Attempt 70 ridiculous challenges due to earn bonus Kill Coins. And earn coins even faster in Gene Shift Auto: Deluxe Edition by unlocking an additional daily test every day.

Customize Your Skill Build Play with your favorite skill every game due to ensuring that it appears at level 1 in the skill draft.

Exclusive Cosmetics & Medals Show your support with the Supporter's medallion next to your name while in the game and in leaderboards. You can also progress your skill medals beyond level 4 up to level 20, to flex your most played skills.

Create Private Bot Games Create local games of all game modes. Play vs bots with custom difficulty and 0 ping. Add a password and as a result invite your friends for a private game.

Gene Shift Auto: Deluxe Edition GTA-inspired PvPvE battle royale game on Steam. Available on Linux and Windows PC. Discounted 20% dropping the priced to $11.99 USD / 11,83€ / 11,83€.

[sangfielle]

Nadeem's Big Febuary 2024 Next Fest Roundup

I've done these little demo roundups for the past couple of nextfests in a more informal capacity, but I wanted to make this one more of an actual Thing and do something like this going forward, since I tend to play around 70-100 of the demos for each nextfest. This is going to be (hopefully) mostly a list of recommendations, but I also have some ones that I'm not strictly recommending that I think are still worth pointing out. I have over 20 games I wanted to point out from this round of demos, so the meat of this post will be below the cut.

The Best

Cryptmaster is a dungeon crawler typing game. It's genuinely laugh out loud funny, and it was a blast to play through with a person looking over my shoulder and commentating. There's not much to say about it that can't be figured out by picking up the game for a few minutes yourself, and there's no reason not to when it's got a free demo. I would recommend this game to basically anyone, and will be playing it as soon as it comes out. Probably the most across the board appealing game that I played from this collection.

Gatekeeper is just plain good. This was the most immediately fun game I played for this. I grow more and more irritated with rogue-lites every next fest, but Gatekeeper is fresh, fun, and fast-paced enough to get away from any distaste for the subgenre I have. Like basically all of the other optional multiplayer games on this list, GK seems to heavily benefit from a second player, but after my friend kept eating shit and dying I still had a fantastic time with this game by myself. Buy this game.

I don't play as many rhythm games as I do a lot of other genres, so if I'm totally wrong and this is just standard fare slop, you'll have to excuse me, but to my mind ADEN is a very unique and fun experience. A sidescroller rhythm/beat-em-up/bullet hell with charming art and fun music, it feels unlike basically anything I've played before, and it's wormed its way into my heart very quickly (even if I'm not quite as good at any of those types of games as I'd like to be).

The Pretty Good

Rotwood is a co-op roguelike game that's a lot of fun to play with friends. While technically 1-to-4 players, it feels like it's definitely meant to be played with at least a second party. If you do have that second party, the game goes by quickly and feels great to play - our 20 minute runs didn't feel like more than 5 minutes during our time with it. Pick it up if you want a non-PvP co-op game, but make sure at least one of your friends is picking it up too.

Cabernet is a narrative RPG set in eastern Europe in the late 1800s. You're Liza, a newly-turned vampire and a prospective doctor before your death. You don't actually get much more than that in the demo, but it gives you enough time to decide if you're interested in the full game or not. I am - it seems neat, and I'll likely be picking it up upon release, but it's not going to be for everyone. If you're into games where the meat of it is walking around and talking to people, it'll likely be a safe choice for you.

Vellum is a charming, if a little janky, co-op action roguelike where you play as fountain pens who are also wizards. As loathe as I am to compare games to others if they aren't ripoffs, it reminded me of playing Tiny Tina's, which I wasn't expecting, but made it more endearing to me. It seems like it would be less fun to play alone, but like Rotwood, just make sure you're making one of your friends grab it when you do, and it should be a lot of fun.

Dungeonborne is a game that speaks for itself very immediately when you start playing. PvPvE dungeon crawlers aren't the most popular genre, to my knowledge, but this game felt very oddly similar to another PvPvE dungeon crawler that was on display 1 or 2 next fests ago. If you and your friends want to dick around in a dungeon and kill skeletons, this is going to be a game that satisfies, and it's funny to play when you're getting yourself and your friends killed. I don't know how much long term value it'll manage to hold.

Children of the Sun is a very stylish puzzle-shooter that is not for me, but will probably be very good to whoever it is for. I would suggest trying out the demo and seeing how you feel about it. I don't have a lot to say about it beyond that, since it isn't a game I spent a lot of time with, beyond that it's very cool looking.

There is a notable absence of platformers & metroidvanias on my list of games that I played for this next fest, and it's not because there weren't any to play. I'm just very very bad at these games, moreso than any other type of game by a huge margin, and so I do not play them. Ever. There are ones I want to play quite badly, but I pick them up and put them down very quickly because I am worse at them than your average eight year old with an Xbox. I downloaded Tales of Kenzera: ZAU at the behest of a friend without knowing anything about it, and I'm glad I did. Even being as bad at this type of game as I am, I played this demo and had a lot of fun with it. I won't pick up the full game, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't. If you're anyone who has a less tragic experience with the genres than I do, you should definitely try this game out.

Love In a Bottle is a refreshing change of pace as far as romance VNs go - there are vanishingly few of them for/about lesbians and bisexual women compared to games for & about straight women & games about gay men (though these are usually also for straight women... which is not the point of this, so I digress). It's very cute! LIaB follows an only-kind-of-succubus as she moves to a new town and flirts with attractive women. I'm not quite the target audience for this, but not every game needs to be for me, and I enjoyed poking around in it regardless.

Alcyone: The Last City is a game that's hard to get much of a handle on from the very short demo alone, but you get just enough to know it's interesting. What I can glean from the game that you get in the demo is about the same as the steam description: a sci-fi interactive novel set at the end of the universe. I love this kind of shit, so I'm pretty sure I'll like Alcyone.

Pacific Drive is a game about driving your car around while some weird shit happens. That's not a dismissive summary, I'm just not sure how else to categorize it. It seems cool if you like this type of game! Unfortunately my distaste for the wretched automobile extends to video games, so this is not quite my speed, but it seems very charming.

TRIBES 3: Rivals is a PvP FPS game that seems like a lot of fun! There's just one problem with it - this type of multiplayer game isn't in the limelight anymore, and won't attract a lot of players who aren't tryharding. I don't like tryharding in multiplayer games, but it felt good enough to play that I'm willing to give it a shot regardless. I'm worried about Tribes 3's ability to survive longterm in this era of gaming, but I'm holding out at least a little hope for it. I think you should help give it a better chance of survival.

TOUCHSTARVED is a "dark romance visual novel" with five romanceable characters that look like they've either come from Dragon Age concept art or from someone's D&D campaign. If you're not into romance VNs, this game will not be for you. If you are, and you're either attracted to men or like to play romance games with them, this one feels actually better than a lot of them. The worldbuilding, though somewhat sparse in the demo, seems interesting, and the game is weirdly actually gay for a VN where the protagonist doesn't have a set gender. There are no women who are characters in this game. That's not surprising, it's just worth noting. Its dialogue is corny and the way the romanceable characters act irritating, but that's par for the course for the genre, so it's probably not going to be a dealbreaker for you if you're already playing this type of game. I'd say give it a shot if that's already the kind of game you're into, otherwise it's really not worth looking at. I doubt this game is going to win over any new fans to the genre.

The Otherwise Noteworthy

Islands of Insight is... A puzzle MMO with very bad puzzles and similarly bad online play. I don't understand why it exists. I don't understand the type of person who they think will play this. I don't understand why it's a MMO? There's no aspect of the puzzles that I saw that would be served by multiplayer, and the multiplayer functionality is so limited as to be worthless anyway. The most possible interaction you can have with another person is following them around and emoting at them while they do their own set of puzzles. This game is obviously fated to die in obscurity. Why is it a Behaviour game?

Case Files: Behind Closed Doors was the only actual FMV game that this next fest had to offer. The FMV tag is the first section of any given next fest that I look at - I'm a big fan of them, and I think they're really underappreciated, especially in today's gaming world. As a consequence, I'm normally much nicer to them than I am to most video games, but this one fell flat on its face for me. There doesn't feel like there's anything there to actually grab the player or to keep their attention, and I found myself bored with it very quickly. It doesn't help that I get more irritated with the inundation of cop games as opposed to literally anything else in the world of FMV games as time goes on, but I think even if I wasn't sick and tired of them, this game wouldn't feel worth the time it asks you to invest. It's a damn shame.

#BLUD is a game that I wanted to check out, but didn't get to actually play, because I didn't realize this demo was going to shut down after nextfest! That's on me. It seems cool, and I'll be checking it out once it's properly available, but I can't say more than that because I missed the window to play it :(.

Longstory 2, similarly, is a VN I couldn't actually play during this fest, but this one isn't my fault - despite steam having a page for the demo, it wasn't ever actually available? This one is just going on the list because I loved the original Longstory when I was 15. I'm excited for the reminder that it exists, and I'll be going back to the original to see if it holds up to my nostalgia. If it does, I'll be picking up the sequel for sure.

Bewitching Sinners is a trashy romantasy VN. There's not that much else to it. If you like trashy romance VNs, it'll be for you, and if you're not, it won't be. It gets a place on this list because there were a lot of VN demos that I opened and then very quickly closed, and I actually played all the way through this one, so it's a cut above the rest in at least its ability to keep the player from immediately ducking out of due to the evidently garbage writing.

Diets & Deities is noteworthy only in that it's the most blatant ripoff of Everhood that I've seen. It's also a significant downgrade. I like the gameplay of Everhood a lot, and I was hoping that even if this game was a ripoff, it would give me more of the same. I wouldn't love it if it did that, but I would have had a little bit of fun with the demo. It's not more of the same. It feels way worse to play, and I don't know why, but I hate it.

Meta-Ghost: The Breaking Show is all style & no substance. It's very good looking, but it offers little beyond graphics that you couldn't get in a less tired package elsewhere (read: in Hades. This game wants to be Hades so bad it overwhelms any other personality it could possibly hope to have). Similarly to Diets & Deities, it fails to improve on the game it's aping's gameplay & feeling & instead makes it worse, though not to the extreme that D&D does. The only real value I can see in this game that you couldn't get with another game is the multiplayer gimmick, but as that wasn't available in the demo, I can't say whether that makes it worth even taking a second glance at.

Serum is a survival horror adventure game that seems really cool, except it's completely fucking unplayable from how shitty the framerate is. I'd love to recommend it, because I really am interested in this game, but it is in desperate need of some fixes before I can play it, much less tell you to buy it.

Mouthwashing is also a horror game that I hesitate to recommend, but it is at least playable. The demo just shows so little of its hand that I can't even tell if it's worth playing. It clocks in at about a 20 minute runtime, and in those 20 minutes, zero things that were scary or even mildly unsettling happened. It showed a little bit of gore at the end? But that's not really much of anything. I'll be keeping an eye on its development, but I have no idea whether it'll release as a gem of the indie horror scene or as a wet fart.

You can kill me for how many VNs I've put on this list and how many I've enjoyed. Beat me, take my blood, whatever. Glam Pursuit is a game about becoming a star in a not-Hollywood fake setting. The dialogue feels like it was ripped out of Life is Strange, it's corny beyond measure, and it's just all around not very good. However... Something about it captivates me. Sifting through the extreme amount of subtitle errors and typos in this game and the painfully awkward interactions with all the characters around you, I feel like there's something of worth to be found, even if I didn't stumble upon it in the demo. Is it going to be worth it for you to pick up this game? I don't know. Do you like eating garbage if it's shiny? I do. I'll play Glam Pursuit when it comes out. I don't know if you should unless there's something wrong with you.

[farcillesbian]

hello gamers my gf helped work on a game called No Love Lost that just came out (made by an indie studio!) and its a free to play PvPvE game on steam so if that sounds like the kind of game u might like u should check it out 💖 I haven't played it yet but I'm gonna try it tonight!

[sapphic-haymaker]

>Mecha PvPvE extraction shooter with an emphasis on in-depth customization for mechs and characters

>You seemingly only get to customize the AI companion and have to play a boring generic anime boy who the cutesy AI waifu calls Sir

whyyyyyyyy

[kaszual]

character class silhouettes for my personal project 'Shallows: Bewitched' a concept combining the PvPvE monster hunting extraction game formula with a hero based shooter team composition

[sophiebaybey]

Thank you everyone who came to my stream to see the unveiling of CouplesCraft: APOCALYPSE!

Let me summarize everything I talked about on-stream!

APOCALYPSE is a Minecraft gamemode custom-built from scratch by myself and @dukeofash​. It will feature a completely unique Minecraft experience that features a tense PVPVE environment, working as a marriage between the gameplay of MineZ and Escape From Tarkov The gamemode has a completely revamped melee system inspired by Minecraft Dungeons, including combo attacks with differing hitboxes, damage values, and effects. To pair with this melee system is a redesigned roster of enemies with stun states and clearly telegraphed attacks. The game will take place with a primary hub world that allows players to have a plot of land that they have permission to build on, and will serve as their base of operations. From there, a portal can be traversed taking them to the dangerous overworld. The overworld will be separated into 4 distinct areas with neutral ground separating them, with the different biomes and themes mixing together as you get closer to the center of the map. Different areas will contain unique loot and enemies. Here's some concept art of some of the enemy variants you might encounter in the final release (made by @dukeofash​):

In the overworld, building and health regeneration will be disabled. Your only hope of surviving with the loot you've collected is to make it to a portal back home, marked with beacons to help you find your way to them. If you die, all of the items on your person will be lost. Don't fret, though: You can still heal with potions and other medical supplies, as well as avoid combat entirely with our stealth system, designed specifically for APOCALYPSE by @charlotonne

Progress for the gamemode will wipe completely every few months, giving all players a fresh start, and putting them on equal ground with each other. However, players can earn a special currency to purchase titles and cosmetics which persist between wipes.

The gamemode will require ZERO MODS, even with the custom modeled and animated mobs. Not even Optifine, like last time. You could play this thing on a school computer. All you'll need is the included resource pack.

Take a look at our development roadmap which shows everything currently done, as well as everything that still needs doing (click here! It’s too big to morally put it on a tumblr post!)

Unlike the first CouplesCraft server, APOCALYPSE will not require a subscription to myself or @dukeofash​. It will be completely free to play. Development will take at least another year, so please consider supporting my dev streams on my Twitch channel

Thank you all for giving me the chance to introduce this to you! The foundation for the server is nearly all implemented, and future development just needs to focus on creating the raw content. I can't wait to be able to play this with you all.

[mousepokes]

wow driving really is just an pvpve mmofpd smh

[patricksteel]

undefined

Jumpscare Misery Mountain in the Cycle Frontier, with a Nice No Scope kill at the end

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ID23pyJbwBM

[citytrialost]

random game superlatives for 2023

I just wanted a space to talk about the games that were special to me. I'll be updating it now and then, and even when finished will not be removing my Geocities Under Construction gifs.

game of the year - Pizza Tower, and it's not even close. I can't believe we got just a blisteringly fast platformer with this level of animation and such an incredible soundtrack. It is one of the best handling platformers I've ever played and it just lends itself to wanting to master the gameplay like nothing else.

mod of the year - Archipelago! Archipelago hosts cross-game randomizers for you and your friends. Want to play Pokemon Emerald while your friend plays Kingdom Hearts 2? Great! Instead of a gym badge, Norman gives Donald the ability to shoot lightning out of his ass (I don't play KH2) while your Surf HM is in some random treasure chest in their game. It really is incredible being able to play your favorite single player games with the goal of helping your friends progress. The game list is still growing, too, so definitely worth keeping tabs on.

weird game that heals my soul in the way that only something like Katamari could manage of the year - HUMANITY. Not a surprise coming from the devs of Tetris Effect, HUMANITY is just a fun, surreal experience where you play a shiba that tries to guide a crowd of people that at best behave like liquid and have a propensity for running off cliffs. I haven't finished the game yet, but it's been a beautiful experience that I've been saving for whenever life gets too stressful.

genre twist of the year - Your Only Move is Hustle (FKA YOMI Hustle). A turn-based fighting game experience that emulates fighting games so well I still panic at the exact same spots in the neutral whether it is YOMI or a traditional fighter. It's a time consuming and stressful experience, but still very rewarding when you have a good friend to play with. Also a decent Discord scene from what I hear. Also fuck it, YOMI gets fighting game of the year.

Spiritfall gets honorable mention here as a platform fighter roguelike. Honestly feels like a decent blend of floaty platform fighting and Hades. A lot of fun, and the dev team have been both openly communicating and updating the game frequently.

best character of the year - AKI (Street Fighter 6). Fighting games have such little room to add personality, but Capcom stepped their game up with SF6. AKI is just as weird and quirky as FANG (SFV), but a lot more sadistic. The added quirk of idolizing FANG goes a long way to giving her some fun flavor. I'm already biased towards characters with a poison archetype, but AKI is just fun in a "this character is delusional beyond saving" sort of way.

best game released from early access of the year - 30XX. It is a great roguelike that builds on 20XX in just about every way possible. It's improved graphically, in terms of gameplay, challenge, overall design. If 20XX asks "what if Mega Man was a roguelike?" then 30XX confidently tells you "Mega Man works as a roguelike." Fun solo, way better with co-op.

best 7/10 of the year - Exoprimal. Saw this concept trending and I think it's a great way to highlight an overlooked title this year. Among huge Capcom news like SF6 and a newly announced Monster Hunter, "what if Dino Crisis but it's a co-op hero shooter with muddled PvPvE and PvP modes" really doesn't stand out. Maybe it would have as a budget title, given how much it popped off on Game Pass. Regardless, the game was a lot of fun. I finished it's campaign, did a few of the challenge maps, found characters and archetypes I liked, and even had the familiar/classic TF2 "our team has four snipers, would somebody like to play a different class" conundrum. I'm glad I spent as much time on it as I did, and I hope I feel motivated to give it another run while it's still active.

best return to form - Armored Core VI. I honestly never thought we'd get another one of these. Waited a decade, and after the runaway success of the Souls series I never thought I'd get a new one. Some things have changed, but from the first mission I felt like I was a kid with a PS2 playing Silent Line all over again. Honestly got emotional from the nostalgia. Still need to finish the game, but I waited eleven years to play it so the game can wait a few months for me to get through it.

game that refuses to die award - Grim Dawn. Normally this game has a fixed statue of Terraria in its place, but after a huge community patch and the reveal of an entire expansion one or two years after claiming the game was dead, Crate Entertainment have given a seven year old game something new to look forward to.

Runner up goes to Killer Instinct. So happy for the sickos in the community that wouldn't let it stay dead, and even a balance patch is more than I expected. Had so much fun getting to see it at Evo. Fuck Rash lmao

[theemceebee]

A Two-Year-Late Review of Destiny 2: Beyond Light

Pray tell, why am I writing this? Can you guess? This expansion for Destiny 2 dropped like a warhead onto Destiny 2 in November of 2020, not because it blew everyone's mind, but because it took 65% of the game's previous content with it. If you don't know what I mean, it's because you probably have at least 50 IQ, so it doesn't make any sense that an expansion would take a bunch of content AWAY from a game. So, almost two years late, what's the point of the review? The newest expansion Lightfall is coming up, and Bungie made the game, and all expansions, free to play until August 30th. I stopped playing Destiny 2 about a week after the Shadowkeep expansion (released Oct 2019). Having not played in years at this point, I figured I'd give it a try. Once I was done, which was about two hours ago at this time, I thought it might be healthier to write this review, instead of perform an occult ritual to wipe my memory back to 2015. Back then, The Taken King expansion was either coming, or already out. I had optimism then. Had. Pretty ballsy for Bungie to lead off any returning players with Beyond Light, an expansion I would say ranks among the worst of Destiny's expansions. I wouldn't say it quite hits the depths of Warmind and Curse of Osiris, but when the bar's at rock-bottom you'd have to start putting real physical effort into putting it any lower. I would've sunset that nonsense, automatically granted returning players the Stasis subclass, and pretended like the game ACTUALLY started with Witch Queen. This is Bungie, though, and the only time "Bungie" and "good decision" belongs together in one sentence is when it involves not playing their game anymore. Beyond Light's plot is a reconfiguration of the Forsaken expansion. In it, a Fallen captain has vague, poorly defined ambitions about using the "Darkness," also poorly defined to date, to unite the Fallen houses. In the mean time, the gray area of morality and the line between Light and Dark is constantly spoken about. That's right, the same premise as Forsaken, but now instead of the Gambit gametype, which was great for PvP, we get the Stasis subclass, which destroyed it. Now that I think about it, Forsaken was just a successfully implemented mulligan of Destiny 1's House of Wolves DLC too, so I guess they're really stuck on rehashing the Fallen unification concept until the game dies. It's a fair gamble, because Destiny fans only have memory that stretches back to the beginning of the current DLC cycle or season. Forsaken had some personality, added to the lore in substantial ways, had a enjoyable story (though it doesn't hold up to scrutiny) and also had a ground breaking PvPvE mode Gambit, which was my favorite thing to play at the time. SPOILERS ARE COMING. YOU ARE WARNED. CHARACTER FOR THIS PLAYTHROUGH: WARLOCK, primarily using solar and lightning subclasses. Beyond Light does none of these things. It exists solely as a vehicle to give the Darkness subclass to the player. You can skip the dialogue! No, I mean it. Skip it. You will learn basically nothing that you didn’t already know about any character, and all that happens is you neutralize the villain after killing her entire cadre. At the end of the final fight, the third generation Kel of Kels is Stasis-frozen after...losing control of her powers? I think? It's never actually explained why it happens, or why your character doesn't blow her up after she's frozen. See, Stasis freezes enemies in place on contact with it's abilities. Killing them while frozen is not only possible, it detonates them violently, which can chain to other frozen enemies. Your character could just permanently neutralize the Kel right there, which would not be any different than the rampage through her ranks you already committed, included her entire chain of command. But if your character did that, Bungie wouldn't have a returning foe for the Season of Plunder, in which Eramis (the Fallen Kel that's frozen) breaks out of her icy prison. Stasis is ill-suited to the game's high mobility and high enemy counts. Typically speaking, raw lethality through either directed damage or AoE is more important, because mob enemies are not that threatening without their numbers. Its not that Stasis can't neutralize groups, it's that it does nothing that other subclasses don't already do better. The most interesting facet of it, the creation of physical barriers, is not fully explored, even though it would have allowed for some interesting abilities. For instance, imagine creating a platform sniper post that generates damage resistance to whoever is standing on it, as well as giving Cold status effects to their shots. Is that potential team synergy I see? A tool for boss nuking? No. It's a mirage. Come back to reality, this is a modern triple-A game after all. All of these things could be forgiven, and will be, because at it's core Destiny's combat is what people play it for anyway. They'll even tell you as much the instant you make a complain on anything that isn't battle-related. That's fine, and in fact if the combat is good enough, even I'll overlook all of it's worst aspects if I at least have fun shooting things. After all, I played all of Destiny 1, and Destiny 2 up until Shadowkeep. My standards for Destiny aren't high. Is running through levels with no threat to your well-being fun? Is standing on top of a box while enemies come at you, from long range, from one direction, for three waves before doing the exact same thing from the opposite direction fun? Where's the encounter design here? Linear hallways with no verticality transition you from two-level arena to two-level arena, and they mix this formula up by having you fight no less than a dozen engagements in an open, mostly flat area with no cover or obstacles at all. In many cases, I spotted parts of the arenas that weren’t being effectively used at all, in the middle of a fight. Sometimes, the enemy types thrown at the player during a fight were so basic it required little more than standing in one spot and sequentially gunning them all down as they all spawned, in front of me, with none of the support enemies that might otherwise make the fight interesting. At least force me to MOVE AROUND THE MAP. It’s like catching a plot hole of a movie at the very moment it happens. It’s jarring, and it removed me from any sense of immersion in the action.  I'm not exaggerating when I say this is one of the most braindead series of levels any FPS has ever put out. There is virtually no effort put into either the level design, or the encounters. I don't expect REAL difficulty out of normal-difficulty Destiny. It's never been a hard game, raids and nightfalls aside, but between set-piece battles and reasonably decent design of each fight, I've never thought it could be this utterly uninspired. Has Destiny always been this way? Perhaps it has, and I've just been too tuned-out to really think objectively about most of what I was playing. How can one focus on the game's core problems when you've got content sunsetting, overly aggressive pricing, and constant extra monetization (with in-game benefits by the way) in the Silver shop? Why would level design be my first thought instead of the obviously broken plot and vacant world-building? It's only now that I'm thinking that Destiny's combat might not even be THAT good, and that maybe the combat aesthetics were enough to convince me the combat was the only thing Destiny could do right. In reality, Beyond Light is the most obvious example of a problem Destiny is consistently plagued with in it's normal campaign missions. In any case, I won't be continuing my playthrough of Destiny during it's free period, because I'm reminded starkly of the core problems this game has. These problems won't be resolved just because the directors of the story can competently put together some A-to-B plotpoints for an expansion or two. Lightfall is coming, and just like with the Witch Queen, there's a big bad of the year to get hyped beyond reason for. There's the promise of some mildly interesting gimmick, there are changes that have been requested for years and only now acted on, and there are features that should have been in the game at launch that will come with Lightfall. Is the game improving? Putting a fancy saddle on a horse doesn't magically make your neglect of it's health go away. For some, however, they'll be too distracted by the saddle to see the thing's ribs clearly visible through it's dirty skin. Lucky you, Bungie, that you don't need a good game to make money - just a popular one.