After my last post about being ‘stuck’ in Destiny 2 I watched this video:
Towards the end the author talks about how to get unstuck:
1) Create a new character of the same class
2) Level it to 200 before doing the campaign
3) Swap all your best gear from your old character to the new one
3) Do the campaign and special missions and get gear scaled to be better than the gear you’re wearing, i.e. get better gear
I decided to try it but I took the guy too literally. I did enough of the campaign to unlock EDZ then I spent 20 levels running around that zone, grinding out Lost Sectors (tip: Lost Sectors aren’t random and by the time I was done I had the location of the mobs in the Lost Sectors near the church memorized) and doing whatever public events spawned, or jumping into that battle between NPCs that happens in one corner. The dude in the video says it’ll take about 4 hours but I suspect he did it when EDZ was the Flashpoint zone. This week Nessus is the Flashpoint Zone, and Xur is on Nessus, so EDZ was pretty dead and I think that impacted how often Public Quests spawned. (Heroic Public Quests can get you a TON of exp and will level you quickly.) It took me until Sunday afternoon to get to 20.
When I finally made it and swapped my gear over I started the campaign and you get no rewards from the first few missions. I did EDZ, Titan and Nessus before I ran out of weekend and no rewards. I now wish I’d played through at least that much of the campaign before grinding. Then I could planet hop and find populated zones and stave off boredom.
The end result was that after playing all day Saturday and Sunday I now have 2 level 20 Titans stuck at 267 power. Well technically my old Titan is down to 265 or so since I swapped the best gear to the new dude. But an entire weekend spent spinning my wheels. Ugh.
[Update: Monday night I finished the campaign on my 2nd character. There is ONE reward, at the very end of the campaign, that scales to your character. The information in the video above is completely wrong. There is no reason to grind your way to level 20 before starting the campaign. Just make sure you are there and wearing all your best gear before you do the last mission. So far, spending 3 days on character 2 has netted me ONE piece of improved gear. We’ll see if there’s anything in the milestones that scale.]
And as I went to bed last night I was just really depressed. What a waste of a weekend. Why am I doing this? Why do I even need more power on my Destiny 2 character? To do the Raid? I’m NEVER going to do the raid. Jumping into a high-stress game event with a bunch of strangers, wearing a mic so they can shout at me about how much I suck is the exact OPPOSITE of fun.
I’m just desperately trying to find a reason to stretch out my time in Destiny 2. I got this far so I may as well finish the campaign on character 2 just to see if I get ‘unstuck’ but basically now I feel like I’m just wasting my time. I need either a new game to play, or maybe even better, a new hobby. I think I’m relying on gaming too much to eat up my leisure time. See also my post about getting the Platinum Trophy in Assassin’s Creed Syndicate. I keep devoting huge chunks of time to doing things in games that wind up feeling unsatisfying and I’m not really having fun doing them. I know Bungie will increase the Power Cap and add more content eventually. I should just set the game aside until that happens.
I know this will go in one ear and out the other because “social” and “playing with other humans” but the PS4 AGE clan does not yell at anyone. The Xbox clan does have a couple guys (or at least one I know specifically) who are nice guys except they turn into That Hardcore Guy in the raid and start yelling and calling names, etc.
PS4 gang is a lot more chill and patient.
That said, it’s like any other game where both skill and RPG elements come in: if you’re gonna bother, it’s assumed you’ve done the gear grind and you have a modicum of skill to bring to the table. It’s not like the old 40-man raids where there were enough numbers to carry the weaker players through. On the other hand, it’s AGE so we’re all grown ass adults with jobs, most of them with family too, so we can’t sit and play Destiny 18 hrs a day to become the Headshot King of the Universe. One of the guys (HBR) raids all the time, and he can’t make a jump to save his life. We’re always waiting on him to get through the jumping stuff, and that’s ok.
I think when you get to a point like this, it’s really worth asking yourself what -does- feel satisfying in a game (to you) and specifically go seek out those experiences instead.
For example, try as I might to force myself every so often to brave a pickup group, by the end of it, I’m usually exhausted and drained. If I’m lucky, the experience was “ok, not too bad” but there’s a 75% chance that I’ll be feeling “meh” or “that was terrible” by the end of it.
If I go off and hermit by myself somewhere, 90% of the time I’d feel happier puttering around by myself and 10% neutral or down instead.
Stat number progression and itemscore leaves me feeling absolutely nothing, probably the same emptiness as you looking at trophy/achievement completions. All I think is, “why am I hamster-wheeling like this to go up numbers to get better numbers, yet do the same old thing with higher health bars? I want to play games where I actually learn things and improve my skill/knowledge in order to play better.”
Yet give me a string of achievements and trophies and in lieu of any novelty / fun secrets to discover, I am quite content with checking them off slowly in a step by step guided list to do activities I might not have done without the list… and when it’s all done, I get this small happy buzz of “Yay, all the colors are filled in. I got 100% on this. Other people don’t have this.”
It’s not as big a buzz as seeing an awesome landscape of beauty, or finding/knowing some secret knowledge that others don’t know about, but it’s enough that I’m ok doing it as a secondary thing.
You’ll get a buzz out of different things, so go look for games/activities that give you more opportunity to enjoy them, rather than buying into the majority view of what makes them happy.
“why am I hamster-wheeling like this to go up numbers to get better numbers, yet do the same old thing with higher health bars?”
Holy smokes does that ever hit close to home? That’s exactly the question I’m asking myself now. There’s no new narrative to uncover (and though D2 has a ‘better’ story than D1, that’s a low bar to clear..it still isn’t very compelling) no new landscapes to explore. It’s just doing the same thing in the same place over and over and hoping RNG gives up a better reward.
And yeah re: pickup groups. At best I feel “OK” usually like “OK well I didn’t let them down TOO much.” Rarely have I felt “That was really fun and I helped others succeed.”
Basically I need to nice big juicy open world game to get into with lots to do and explore and a story to be told.
Thank you for the comment!