Right so. This is mostly about like. Okay. So the game has both pve and pvp modes, with story happening in pve. So a lot of the time, bungie likes to pretend that pvp is optional. At the same time, they make pvp mandatory for many a quest progress. Now that'd be infuriating enough, but they also have made pvp *extremly* hostile to new or casual players. They switched from skillbased matchmaking (kill-death-assist ratio) to connection based, meaning you get yote with people close to you. In theory, this should make for shorter loading times and less ribberbanding. In practice, this means that new or casual players frequdntly find themselves in a match against seasoned endgame-pvp (called Trials) players. Which, as you can imagine, makes for a deeply discouraging experience if you thought 'hey i stick my toes into tjis' only to get farmed for kill by a professional twitch streamer with a shotgun for the next ten minutes and no way to retaliate. On top of that, some pvp Moses are sweatier than others, meaning that's where the pvp specialists live. If you do the intro quests to the game, they try and make you go into those modes, while still randkmly matching you with the pros. As a result, the pvp pool has been bleeding players real Bad, which only makes bungie knuckle down harder on forcing you into it by waving quests and rewards at you. And on top of all of that, a recent change displays your KDA to everyone in your team as you load in, in effect publically shaming ypu for being a casual pvp player. And let me tell you, it feels fucking awful to be the person with the lowest number by far in any matvh you load into. And it doesn't really motovate you to improve because the meta rn favours two types of gun and if you don't like those, you might as well just stand there and let people kill you and safe yourself the wrust strain. In short: it's not fucking fun. And i used to like destiny's pvp before they made those changes. Back in skillbased i could hold my own. I was improving. Rn i'm just suffering for quest progress.
yeah that sounds like absolute ass ngl if you're going to call pvp optional it better damn well be optional
Also as someone who can´t play PvP bc my internet is too shit: Damn fucking right stop making it mandatory.
That is the worst fucking matchmaking idea. Comp needs dedicated matchmaking and matchmaking of all sorts needs to be skill based. Because the ideas of fun that comp players and casual players have are just so strikingly fucking different. Like. This is why ranked modes exist???
But you see, some streamers had trouble finding matches bc not many people were in their skill bracket anymore. /s
Yeah, they´re just. Loud, because large followings. On the Positive side, Bungie did walk back a massively disliked decision they made around the same time, there is some hope? Maybe.
For one of the sweaty modes (iron Banner) they....sorta halfway walked it back? Kinda? Like what happens in solo IB is that the game pulls 12 people for a match and spilts them into Teams 'best person on Team A. 2nd and 3rd best person on team B. 4th best on A' And do until until you have six people in each team. It doesn't do much in my experience? Like, you still get and overwhelming amount of matches mercy-ruled and you still have 'one player per team kicks everyone else's ass real hard' It becomes a game of 'whose team has the biggest sweatlord pvper' for deciding who wins. As an example how this entire bullshit impact me: i went from a KDA of somewhere just over 1 (1.2 or so) to 0.7 basically the Moment they changed to connection based. Oh! And! People who are very good at Trials get special weapon rewards which kill you extra hard , which is fine and dandy but they then get to freely take those weapons into basic casual pvp. Because that's fair.
Laz and Cody doing all the worldbuilding writing so i gotta join 'em. So. Basically. The relationship between vampires and necros is...very strange in various ways. Because for the most part, a lot of vamps like to see themselves as apex predators. Top of the food chain and all that, even if donors these days are treated well. And then there's necromancers, who fuck that view of self right up. Because necromancers....especially capital N ones... they can influence vamps. All necromancers are...alluring to vamps. They're attractive in a way that has nothing to do with looks or charming personality or anything. They just Draw on vampires - and undead, really - like moths to a flame. Vamps can very well say 'well fuck that' after that first initial 'owo' reaction but they can never really get rid of it. And the thing is...any necro does that, just by existing. The more powerful they are, they more control they have over the effect, and the more control they can have over the undead. Matt's an outlier in many ways, but here he isn't. Any Necromancer can do that thing he can do where he could walk into a fullblown barbrawl between vamps, say 'stop' and put power behind it...and have them stop. Just for a moment maybe, they don't want to stop, or if the Necromancer doesn't have the juice to keep such a command steady. But they all can do that initial stop, that instant time out. It's part of why Necromancers are so important in keeping vampires from doing Dumb Shit. They can literally force a standstill. They can even, if they're pissed enough, force a geis and slap a vampire down if they really, really misbehave, with the geis potentially forbidding them from doing certain things. And then there's blood. Necro blood is intoxicating to undead in the ways that regular blood, even fae blood isn't. Because necromancy as a type of magic is close to how vampires...function, in the end. It gives them a powerboost in the way almost nothing else can, even if they just take a little. It's part of why Matt rewards vamps who behave with it. The twins get some fairly regularly because they're young and like it and they do a very good job keeping their house in order and with it, part of the city. At the same time, exchanging blood between a Necromancer and the vampires living in their sphere of influence is...not quite a blood oath, but it's a promise, and a connection, it lets both the necro and the vamp pull on the connection if they're distressed, to get help. It allows the Necro more control but it also gives the vampire more power and a way to fall back on a necromancer's protection. It's pretty common that if a Necromancer invites vampires to a party, everyone gets a token amount of blood, usually just a drop or two, but still. Ideally, it's a balanced situation. The necromancer works as a mediator in conflict in the community, as a neutral party, and also as a mediator between undead and mortals, or even between dead, undead and mortal. They're supposed to be the balancing factor to ensure that humans in the area don't just get killed, but also that vampires don't have gang fights in the street, or that humans take up pitchforks against them. The vampires should mostly run their own thing, with the Necromancer only intervening if necessary (ideally rarely) and otherwise just keeping in touch with everyone. Of course it doesn't always shake out like. Nobody's free of sin, and if one side of the equation wants power, or is an asshole, it can easily topple into bullshit, though usually everyone is at least united in 'no more pitchforks' and people who go counter to THAT usually find themselves kicked to the curb one way or the other. Often lethally, to ensure they don't come back.
Hey you wanna see how bad pvp in Destiny 2 by Bungie is? Spoiler: once more i must bitch That's two consecutive matches. I'm Alisette. Look at that KDA and tell me that's anything even REMOTELY like fair and balanced matchmaking
things managed today: groceries, dishes, technical translation of sewing instructions for items that won't need a pattern for friends, helped a friend out with a game thing, french lessons, cooked food, progressed on latest sewing project. Can my brain please stop insisting i'm lazy???
