Destiny

You won't lose your marks. You just can't earn more than 100 per week.
You need to clear the weekly heroic strike for coins, do bounties for reputation, play the Vanguard strikes and Crucible for marks, do the weekly nightfall strike for a legendary/exotic, the daily heroic mission and the public events for ascendant materials, etc.

Yeah, it's a grindfest.

Do you lose marks when you buy the items that require you to have a certain amount of them? I'm assuming you do.

Yeah, they're just currency/tokens.

Just beat the single-player campaign, and got a Mote of Light. Yes, yet another item that is glorified currency. How many different kinds of currency does the game have?!

Neo wrote:

Maybe exotic primaries are 23 coins from Xur but others are 17? I swear I got something for 17 coins once.

i think the bottom row (sparrow upgrades) are 17

SimianWonder wrote:

Just beat the single-player campaign, and got a Mote of Light. Yes, yet another item that is glorified currency. How many different kinds of currency does the game have?!

if you hover over where it says level 20 you still get XP & level up, although you dont go past 20 regular levels you get a mote of light everytime now instead

SimianWonder wrote:

Seventeen coins sounds a lot. I've currently got one. Do they drop in various strikes / dailys etc, or are they simply legitimately that hard to come by?

you can get 9 strange coins by doing weekly heroic strike on level on the hardest setting, also you can get them from the first public mission of the day. you can do all three characters to get even more coins

SimianWonder wrote:

Just beat the single-player campaign, and got a Mote of Light.  Yes, yet another item that is glorified currency.  How many different kinds of currency does the game have?!

Glimmer.
Vanguard marks -> vanguard vendors.
Crucible marks -> crucible, future war cult, dead orbit and new monarchy vendors.
Strange coins -> Xur's gear (13), weapons (17) and sparrow upgrades (23).
Motes of light -> Xur's engrams (23) and Speaker's customization items.

Just played and Solo'd my first Daily Heroic, and it wasn't that hard really. I've somehow managed to level up to 21, despite not realising I'd done it, but am still unsure about whether or not to proceed with the Weekly Strike, which advises level 22. I don't think I'm good enough yet to not be a burden to my fireteam.

SimianWonder wrote:

Just played and Solo'd my first Daily Heroic, and it wasn't that hard really.  I've somehow managed to level up to 21, despite not realising I'd done it, but am still unsure about whether or not to proceed with the Weekly Strike, which advises level 22.  I don't think I'm good enough yet to not be a burden to my fireteam.

weekly strike is very hard but ill have a go with you if you want to. level 21 comes from the "light" number on your armour

Neo wrote:

Maybe exotic primaries are 23 coins from Xur but others are 17? I swear I got something for 17 coins once.

Just to add to this as there seems to be some disagreement here, Neo's correct. There have been exotic items for 17 coins, I've seen them as well.

Spent a few hours today playing (yay for a week off work!), did the Daily Heroic twice, spent some time in the Crucible, and on Patrol.

On the subject of the Heroic, I'm not sure what time it updates, around 10.00am UK time I'd guess, as I did the first run in the morning around 09.00am, finished the level checked back a little later, and the mission had changed but it was offering no rewards. Checked back four or so hours later, and rewards were a-go.

Crucible wise, I'm woefully inconsistent. I did a couple of games where I was highest scoring player on the team by a fair margin, yet there were others when I barely scraped a thousand points and was bottom of the barrel. Also, I'm strongly of the opinion that some of the levels are poorly designed, at least in terms of playing Control. Why? Well, some levels (the one on Mars springs readily to mind) have the zones scattered unevenly, so that one team starts much closer to them than the other. There's nothing more frustrating than dying and realising that your nearest control zone is 150m away, whereas the other team have two inside 100m. This essentially gives one team a tangible advantage, and is something that needs addressing. I also tried one game of Skirmish, but my team was decimated - two of the opposing teams were using the Mythoclast, and even post-nerf it was simply overwhelming.

Patrol was kinda fun. Found a few high-level yellow-health Hive enemies kiding in the Cosmodrome, one of which took a hell of a lot of putting down (he must have had at least ten thousand hitpoints), and did a few Public Events, a couple of which I did complete, a couple more I couldn't.

Haven't found any new body armour pieces yet, which is a shame as that's the only bit of my gear that doesn't have a light rating. Found plenty of helmets, gauntlets and boots, but all were inferior to my existing equipment. Boo!

The large map on Mars is terrible and the large Moon one isn't much better, aside from that the only problem I have with the maps is that on the smaller Mars one if you hold B and C while letting the enemy keep A and never going near it you can force them to spawn on that side permanently and dominate the game with ease.

E: It sounds like you just got outplayed in PvP, the mythoclast has a terrible effective range and since it was changed to do far less damage but have a higher headshot multiplier your shots need to be perfectly on target or you won't accomplish much. It's still a good gun but it's far from best in slot like Suros, Fatebringer, Visions of Confluence etc are - it's actually going to be buffed soon.

Neo wrote:

The large map on Mars is terrible and the large Moon one isn't much better, aside from that the only problem I have with the maps is that on the smaller Mars one if you hold B and C while letting the enemy keep A and never going near it you can force them to spawn on that side permanently and dominate the game with ease.

Yeah, there's definitely some balancing to be done. It may be a touch predictable to suggest this, but the best way to do so would surely be to have the teams swap spawn points after five minutes or so

Quote :

E: It sounds like you just got outplayed in PvP, the mythoclast has a terrible effective range and since it was changed to do far less damage but have a higher headshot multiplier your shots need to be perfectly on target or you won't accomplish much. It's still a good gun but it's far from best in slot like Suros, Fatebringer, Visions of Confluence etc are - it's actually going to be buffed soon.

I've got no issue being outplayed, or admitting to such when it happens, but I'm using a fully upgraded Stranger's Rifle (which is still the strongest thing I've yet found myself, barring some hand cannons that outscore it in pure damage terms by a point or two) and it felt like I was unloading a whole mag into the guys only to be put down with a single shot. Regardless, I got spanked.

Why would you play Control?
Use any shotgun with upgraded range or fusion rifle with short charging time to oneshot people from close to mid range and an auto-rifle with high rate of fire and stability or a hand cannon as your primary (I haven't played the game since the patch though).

Bastion and First Light are fun stages if you have patience and time.

I finally found some more chest armour today, and it had sufficient Light points to increase my level to 22. However, that came at the expense of defence; the new piece of armour had nearly fifty defence points less than my currently equipped piece (which sadly has zero light points). Which is more beneficial at this stage of the game, another level or those fifty defence points?

Light is much more important than any other stat if you can get a level out of it.

Fair enough. Why though? What does that extra level actually do to benefit me?

when using light, defence & offence scale to it so if you was using a fully upgraded exotic weapon (300 damage) you would do more damage with it at level 22 than 21, also goes for hit points on defence. Also if you look your previous armor i assume is upgraded but this one isnt so it wont be 30 points difference when you're finished

testtubebaby wrote:

when using light, defence & offence scale to it so if you was using a fully upgraded exotic weapon (300 damage) you would do more damage with it at level 22 than 21, also goes for hit points on defence. Also if you look your previous armor i assume is upgraded but this one isnt so it wont be 30 points difference when you're finished

Ah, so damage scales level dependant?

Also, the armour difference is huge, hence why I questioned it. The new chest armour piece (level 17) has base defence of 180, though it does upgrade to 194. The previously equipped piece was only level 14 oddly, but upgraded to offer 223 defence. That's a current difference of forty three points, and it'll still be a twenty nine point swing even when the newer, higher level part is upgraded.

On an unrelated note, I've been forcibly disconnected twice in the last two hours. Firstly the game tells me it cannot connect to the server, then it tells me it cannot connect to PSN, despite the fact that when I go to dashboard, PSN is working just fine. I've been booted out of the Daily Heroic twice this morning. Grr.

if you click the vanguard but on the world select & do some of the strikelist you should get better armour than that, you should be getting level 20 stuff which will give a lot more defence figures. I gotta go town soon but ill msg you when im bk if you're still on & ill help with some strikes to try & get you some better stuff

I'll likely be out myself shortly, got some boring house-things the Mrs wants, but should be back on later and any help, as always, would be much appreciated.

Thanks for the help, Jay, sorry I had to bail.  Incidentally, I got two blue engrams from that run, both Chest Armour pieces, which is what I needed - only, one was level sixteen, one was level eighteen and both were crap!

Edit: also, meant to ask, what on earth was the Handcannon you were using? It looked evil as ****, and was carving through the Fallen faster than I could aim!

People still play Destiny?

I thought we threw it in the "Overhyped shit" with Watch_Dogs and Titanfall

SimianWonder wrote:

Thanks for the help, Jay, sorry I had to bail.  Incidentally, I got two blue engrams from that run, both Chest Armour pieces, which is what I needed - only, one was level sixteen, one was level eighteen and both were crap!

Edit: also, meant to ask, what on earth was the Handcannon you were using?  It looked evil as ****, and was carving through the Fallen faster than I could aim!

next time try the level 24 one, it will be harder but the rewards will be much better for you, that hand cannon is the thorn, it's an exotic fully upgraded, it has damage over time & the last shot does almost double damage

Empirewild wrote:

People still play Destiny?

I thought we threw it in the "Overhyped shit" with Watch_Dogs and Titanfall

How very constructive.

Destiny isn't perfect, far from it, but it is a lot of fun (despite my earlier reservations) and I love the setting.  Titanfall wasn't exactly revolutionary, but again it was an awful lot of sheer fun.

testtubebaby wrote:

next time try the level 24 one, it will be harder but the rewards will be much better for you, that hand cannon is the thorn, it's an exotic fully upgraded, it has damage over time & the last shot does almost double damage

I didn't go for level 24 as I though it likely I'd simply be struggling to contribute. As it was, I died more and killed a lot less than yourself or the other random. Granted you were both five levels higher than me, but still.

Edit;The Thorn? Looked great, but looking at all the hoops you have to jump through to get it, I don't think I'll ever have it myself!