#i just wanted to share how i think about tf2’s lore

[bluekiivi]

i think, even with the comic finishing and all, both of these stories can be true. valve focused on the relationships and generational trauma aspect, but you don’t have to.

to me, tf2 doesn’t have and never will have one true canon lore. it’s all just whatever you make of it. tf2 wasn’t made with a proper fleshed out lore in mind, and it stays that way even now. it just needed something to make the game more appealing / interesting. i definitely think it would have been a very interesting and real path to go down with talking about corporate greed, but considering the tone they’d set at the start, it would’ve been one hell of a shift. (and also so, so ironic for a game that helped popularise loot boxes / crates)

you can absolutely go down the gritty realism end of the spectrum, but i think it’s important to also remember you’re building on a game that was never meant to be taken seriously. weapons that let you triple jump, rockets you can shoot at your own feet and not die, an übercharge that makes you indestructible. there’s so much more in there that simply follows no real logic.

tf2 in all it’s officially released content has always been (or at least remained/returned to being) lighthearted. comical, even. you don’t have to take it as such, but you also can’t forget it. the game contradicts the videos which contradict the comics which contradict the update comics.

in the end, just use the mercs and the pieces you like to tell the story you wish to tell, because that’s what valve did with the comics, that’s what emesis blue did, that’s what the sfm animators, artists, writers in the community do and will continue doing even post comic 7.

Ohh... The tf2 lore was about generational trauma. And I for some reason always expected it to be about victims of mega corporations treating humans as expandable meat.

That's what the source of my frustration was. I'm looking at the opposite fucking direction.

[cadevader]

Destiny 2 year 1 thoughts

overall I think D2 is a bit underrated. the only issue I have with it is how the micro-transactions were handled in a couple of situations, namely the dawning event and the throttling they did around that time. I’m pretty sure Bungie learned from that mistake which is great. Plus, I’m confident activision is the main reason behind all of that. 

In terms of mechanics and combat I think it is a very welcome improvement over Destiny 1′s mechanics. D2 adds some much needed personality that D1 lacked. The changes to the weapon inventory added a lot of variety so not everyone is using the same handcannon, sniper, rocket launcher combo. Overall, I think the only weapon types that suffered from this change were shotguns and snipers. with shotguns they aren’t nearly as used as in D1 but recently they added one that has seen a ton of use. with snipers they all kinda suffer from lack of damage and difficulty of use, but all of the exotic snipers are incredibly good. And as for the pvp, a lot of the problems D1 had are almost entirely fixed by D2. And speaking of pvp, there is a problem with how prominent and powerful the exotic pulse rifles are in pvp. Pulse rifles can be countered fairly easily, however, so it isn’t a huge problem, but a problem nonetheless.

The combat feels a lot better with the weapon changes since, to deal with enemy shields now you can switch to your secondary energy weapon to take them down easier, with a weapon that you have better options for. On D1 if you wanted to more easily take down an enemy’s shields you would either have to use a shotgun in sneezing range, snipe them, or use a slow firing fusion rifle. Or, you could use a rocket launcher or a machine gun, but that costs ammo better used on tougher enemies like bosses and such. It really didn’t feel good to do. in D2 you can use any of the primary weapon types; a semi-auto scout rifle, hand cannon, side arm, burst fire pulse rifle, medium range auto rifle, and a short range submachinegun. This variety and choice makes D2 feel a lot better to play.

To specifically address the micro-transactions, I’m fine with them for the most part, as I haven’t had a whole lot of trouble getting what I want from them especially since I haven’t spent any money on them. I don’t like the lootbox style form that they take and I would prefer If you could just buy stuff outright at any time, but you can technically buy certain stuff from a selection on a weekly rotation. The system is pretty good about cycling through everything and I don’t really ever see something that isn’t a part of that rotation cycle at some point. There was a bit of shenanigans during the 2017 Christmas event where you basically had to spend money to get anything from it, but other than that you have been able to earn plenty of the lootboxes without spending anything. And you can get a special currency from the lootboxes that allow you to buy things from the rotating selection previously mentioned. The lootboxes also tend to not give you anything you already have so you tend to get new items every time. Due to this system I haven’t really felt pressured to spend money on them and I think that’s pretty good. This system isn’t nearly as toxic and abusive as the system in overwatch, battlefront, counterstrike, and TF2, and for that I am pretty happy with it. I don’t think It is perfect however but I’m not sure how you could make micro-transactions perfect, especially for a game such as destiny.

The lore could have been handled a lot better, they got rid of the grimoire from D1 since the whole “game lore but not in the game” isn’t really a good idea. They decided they would double-down on the scannables that were added in the taken king expansion of D1 and to put grimoire-esque entries on weapons and armor instead. This is good on paper but in practice it is kind of annoying and tedious since, none of the lore is categorized now and to see it you either have to go to the scannable in the game world, or find the particular gun with the text you are looking for from your bank inventory and hope that you kept it. The best way to have this system is if they just kept the grimoire on their website and the phone app, but also made it accessible through the game. They could still have the scannables since they can be a neat bit of world-building, but they should also either have the scannables unlock lore entries also or just hide collectables throughout the world that hold lore entries, like in D1. I really enjoyed being able to read the grimoire of D1 on my phone in my spare time since my ADHD makes it kinda hard to read books and so the shorter bits of text are way easier for me to digest. 

I like that Bungie is trying to cater to the more casual audience a lot, since I like to play other games and do other things besides playing destiny. I don’t enjoy feeling like I have to play a particular game every week just so I don’t fall so far behind that I get locked out of content by the elitist communities of the internet.

The reward system in D2 is now based around tokens that you can trade in for gear, which I think is just kind of silly. It feels like you are at some arcade earning tickets for an Item that you really don’t need. The rewards are supposed to feel empowering and important, but that isn’t the case when I earn a bunch of tokens that only really allow me to get the same pair of boots that I have no interest in. And the raids are great, and I like the idea of having more, smaller raids instead of fewer, slightly larger ones, but the rewards ar just kinda bad? like, the base raid has its oen set of armor and weapons except for the shotgun, fusion rifle, sniper, and grenade launcher. those weapons were pushed to the raid lairs. the raid lairs also have their own armor sets, but they both share the same set, but with different color patterns on them, and they don’t really go with the lairs. Like, one lair is centered around the vex, a very robotic type of enemy, but the armor is based around the cabal, which are very large and militaristic brutes. The other raid lair is actually based around the cabal though so the armor fits, but it is still the same armor from the vex raid lair so it just doesn’t feel right.

For the most part everything else is pretty much the same between D1 and D2. I mean, they did improve the reward for matching your damage element to the element of their shields, but If I talk about all of the little changes between the games, this post would be way too long and I have to end it somewhere. 

Overall, I really like Destiny 2 and I am excited to see what Bungie has in store for it.