Eating Crow on Mercury

I guess I needed to wait before posting the "I'm done with Destiny" post. Frankly, this has been the punctuation of my relationship with Destiny for years now. I'm all in, and then I get disillusioned, or bored, or both, and drift off to another game. And yeah, I was pretty grumpy about getting hit with pretty bad bugs two consecutive releases. But did you see that Forsaken trailer? Holy cow. Three months from now, it's going to be a whole new ballgame.

So yeah, I'm back. I think I was gone a whole three days. I've already run my warlock through Clan XP and Flashpoint, and it was productive. If he wears his best gear, he can pop up to 350. But that's his Arc set, and I don't know if it'll work for Strikes, and then there's those missions on Mars, so it might take another week to get to 350 comfortably.

I ran my Hunter last night, doing Clan XP and Flashpoint on Mercury. We're in the middle of the Faction Rally, which is weird this time, because you pledge all of your characters to the same faction, instead of being able to pledge the characters individually. So my hunter, who has been Dead Orbit since launch, is suddenly working for Future War Cult. I've slowly started moving her wardrobe away from black and white to a more muted purple and white.

The new wrinkle with Faction Rallies this season is a Renown system. I think this is something that started in Crucible. I've seen different messages from the game about Renown in Crucible, but since I never go into the Crucible, I don't know what they meant. Renown in Faction Rallies is a PvE element that makes things, well, interesting.

As you do things in the world, cool things like taking out High Value Targets or participating in Public Events, you gain Renown for your Faction. You can get up to 5 levels of Renown, shown by a series of filled boxes on you HUD, and by a cool aura effect on your back. As far as I can tell, you are the only one who can see the aura -- otherwise, all the guardians I was running with on Mercury hadn't pledged a Faction.

As you earn Renown, the biggest change that you'll notice is that you become more fragile. Your health takes longer to regenerate, making it easier for the baddies to hurt you. Like I said, it makes the game more interesting. I'm pretty used to be able to move through the PvE environment pretty much unchallenged. Even an HVT just means more time, but not really a threat. But once you've built up some Renown, things become harder.

Every time you die, you lose some Renown, but if you're able to hold on to five levels, you can cash them in by completing a Lost Sector. I've been getting 10 Faction tokens per lost sector, but there was a special the other day that rewarded 25 for completing a lost sector with 5 Renown. And the lost sectors are a lot harder when you can't take damage. I hadn't realized how much damage I usually take when I play until every hit hurt. I had to modify my play style, and it became an extra challenge to complete the lost sector with five Renown without dying. And u haven't been challenged by lost sectors in a long time.

Also, the Faction engrams seem to be dropping a little higher than your average engrams, at least one point higher. And now the levels are cumulative across all of your characters, making it a little easier to unlock the Faction rewards. All in all, it feels like things have been tuned to be a little more engaging, at least for me.

I started out a Warlock, and I'll probably always main a warlock, unless they radically change things in a future release, but I have a lot of fun with the Hunter. It's just a matter of thinking differently. Jumping is different. A warlock does a sort of lazy float, while a hunter jumps, really jumps, and then jumps again. I'm also not as familiar with the Hunter supers. I do all right with the arc staff, but I have some issues with the void bow. My shots don't seem to cause as much damage as other players I've watched play. But I think it takes more practice.