Source: https://www.bungie.net/en/News/Article/50095
This week at Bungie, we revealed Season of the Chosen.
A new Season is upon us. Next week, Season of the Chosen goes live on February 9. Empress Caiatl has arrived to fight against the Hive. She has proposed an alliance, but the cost is too high, and whether he wanted it or not, Zavala is faced with a difficult choice. Check out the trailer to see how that conversation went down.
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We have a whole page dedicated to details about the new Season. Give it a visit to learn about the new private staging ground called the H.E.L.M., our new matchmade Battlegrounds activity, and more.

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Here is the full Seasonal calendar laying out what you can expect from Season of the Chosen, and what dates to carve out for universe saving.

Spoils of War

Season of the Chosen is delivering some shiny new things for you to collect.
We already spilled the beans that for the first time, some of the favorite weapons from Destiny 1 are showing up in Destiny 2 as rewards for completing Nightfall: The Ordeal. Here is the lineup:

• The Swarm
• Palindrome
• Shadow Price

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Nightfall: The Ordeal weapons have a chance to drop at the end of the activity depending on your medal (Platinum, Gold, etc.) and difficulty. Master difficulty will give you the highest chance at a drop of the base versions of these weapons.
Adept difficulty weapons have a chance to drop at the end of a Grandmaster Nightfall when they go live later in the Season. Drop chance also dependent on your medal. Slay enough Champions to hit Platinum and you will have a high chance at an Adept weapon.

Hot Pursuit

Similar to Season of the Hunt, we will have a new Pursuit weapon for you to earn from your quest of choice. Choose between strikes, Crucible, or Gambit to earn the new Breech Loaded Grenade Launcher, Salvager’s Salvo.
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After you have obtained your new tool of destruction you will be able to earn three different ornaments for it from additional quests picked up from Zavala, Lord Shaxx, and the Drifter.

Trials

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You may have already seen some teases of the new rewards for the Trials of Osiris coming with Season of the Chosen. We also have three new Trials weapons.
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Here is another shot of the new armor you will be able to start earning when Trials goes live on February 12.
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Each weapon will also have an Adept version with special mods, you can read more about those here, as well as a special shader that can be applied to any Adept weapon, even the ones from the Grandmaster Nightfall.
For the first week of Trials, armor and adept mods will be in the Flawless Chest. The second week is when you'll have your first chance of the Season to grab an Adept weapon.
Along with these new weapons and armor, Trials has some new cosmetic rewards to show off as well. The Ghost Shell drop chances increases as you win matches and increases when you hit the 3/5/7 win and flawless milestones each week. The ship and Sparrow drop chances increase every time you go flawless. Here is a look at the rewards!
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But wait, there’s more. Season of Chosen has several new additions to your arsenal ready for the taking.
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Cult of Aeon

The team has some cool plans to shake up the Aeon suite of Exotics. Here it is straight from the Destiny Dev team on what you can expect when you equip these arms.

Destiny Dev Team: In redesigning the Aeon Cult Exotic armor pieces, we wanted to lean hard into the idea that these are the Exotics you and your fireteam wear when you really want to work together as a team. With that in mind, we had three main goals for the revamped mechanics:

• Create role-based mechanics that reward you for doing the things that your role is supposed to be good at.
• Create mechanics that reward other players on your fireteam when you fulfill your role.
• Give your fireteam incentive for each player to take on a different role.

Instead of having a single, monolithic Exotic perk to handle this, we opted to take a page out of the Armor 2.0 book and give the Aeon Cult Exotics their own, unique mod socket and mods, which are all unlocked as soon as you acquire the Exotic and each of which is tied to one of the different Aeon Cult roles. These mods are identical across the Exotics for all three classes, so you can choose any role regardless of what class or subclass you are playing.
The three Aeon Cult mods, and their associated mechanics, are as follows:
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Each of these mods has one perk that focuses on the user, and one perk that grants benefits to their allies. Additionally, the second perk includes an extra benefit for anyone in your fireteam that has not chosen the same role, so for maximum efficiency each member of the 3-player fireteam should choose a different mod to reap the most benefits.

Catalyst Comeback

In a previous TWAB discussing the Destiny Content Vault we mentioned that some of the content being vaulted would affect several Exotic weapon catalysts and we would be temporarily removing them while we worked to update their drop and upgrade sources.
Catalysts for the following weapons have had their drop sources and objectives updated to not be associated with Vaulted content:

• Bad Juju
• Izanagi's Burden
• Sleeper Simulant
• The Huckleberry
• Worldline Zero
• Polaris Lance
• Telesto
• Legend of Acrius
• Skyburner's Oath

The catalysts for Whisper of the Worm and Outbreak Perfected are still unobtainable for anyone who hasn’t already earned them and will be added in a future update.

Prime Gaming

Last week, a new set of rewards were made available through Prime Gaming. Once you sign up here and link your Bungie.net account, you can go and claim your rewards. They will be waiting for you in the safe care of Amanda Holliday in the hangar portion of the Tower.

• Graviton Lance
• Carina Nebula Exotic Weapon Ornament
• Cosmos Shell Exotic Ghost Shell
• Avalon Courser Legendary Sparrow

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Check back next month and we will have a new shipment of Prime Gaming rewards for you to pick up from Amanda.

ALL GOOD THINGS…

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As the Seasons change our team of experts have the important info you need to know.
This is their report.

SEASONAL TITLES AND BUNGIE REWARDS

Season of the Hunt ends on February 9. View our Update 3.1.0 timeline below for what time it will end, and Season of the Chosen begins.
Before the Season ends, player who earned the Flawless and Conqueror titles should claim and equip them to ensure that they don’t get removed.
Multiple items from Bungie Rewards should also be earned in-game before February 9, 9 AM PST, and claimed on the Bungie Rewards site by February 12, 9 AM PST:

• Free Stranger Papercraft Figure
• Stasis T-Shirt
• Warden Seal Pin (players should equip the title to ensure that it’s earned)
• Hawkmoon Mini Replica

ITEM AND QUEST REMOVAL

As we announced earlier this week, before Season of the Hunt ends on February 9, it’s recommended to turn in the following items and quests or they will be removed from player’s inventories or will no longer be able to be used:

• Weekly Bounties: Strikes, Crucible, Gambit, Gunsmith, Crow
• Crucible Tokens and Crucible Token Gifts
• Memory Fragments for Stasis
• All Crow Bounties
• Planetary materials: Alkane Dust, Phaseglass Needles, Seraphite, Simulation Seeds
  
  • You will be able to turn these into Spider for Glimmer.

SAVE YOUR HALO DATA

A few weeks ago, we announced that on February 9, the halo.bungie.net website will be taken offline permanently. As a result of this, personal custom Halo avatars that are currently used on Bungie.net will be removed due to the functionality living on halo.bungie.net. We welcome everyone to go to their Bungie.net profile and save their avatars to their computer as we’re exploring options to possibly allow them to be uploaded to your profile in the future.
Additionally, we welcome everyone to save their Halo stats and files on halo.bungie.net however they wish, such as using screenshots, saving the pages to your PC, or using third-party archive sites.

SDR CONSOLE UPDATE

Steam Datagram Relay is coming to consoles during Season of the Chosen, but we need to do more testing and fixes before it's ready to go live.
SDR is used to mitigate against DDOS attacks. You can learn more about it from a previous TWAB.

UPDATE 3.1.0 AND MAINTENANCE TIMELINE

Next Tuesday, February 9, maintenance for Update 3.1.0 will begin. Below is a timeline of events:

• 8 AM PST (1600 UTC): Maintenance begins.
• 8:45 AM PST (1645 UTC): Players are removed from activities. Destiny 2 is brought offline.
• 9 AM PST (1700 UTC): Update 3.1.0 will be available across all platforms and regions. Players will be able to log back into Destiny 2.
• 10 AM PST (1800 UTC): Destiny 2 maintenance is expected to conclude.

Below are some issues that will be resolved with Update 3.1.0. A complete list will be shared when the update goes live.

• The Crucible Valor and Gambit Infamy New Light quests can now be completed after resetting ranks.
• Ahamkara Bones will now spawn in the Agonarch Abyss and Cimmerian Garrison Ascendant Challenges.
• Triumphs: Lore of Luna, Wisdom of the Witch, Run the Gauntlet in Cimmerian Garrison.
• The Altar of Sorrows bosses will now rotate each day.
• The Warsat Public Event in the Cosmodrome’s Mothyards will now count toward bounties.
• The lift tube in the Warden of Nothing strike will now open for every player.
• The boss from The Insight Terminus strike will now always teleport away after scanning the Vex terminal.
• Lake of Shadows will no longer become blocked if players bypass trigger volumes.
• Sturm will once again reload any equipped Energy slot weapon on kills.
• Merciless will once again increase its charge rate on non-lethal hits.
• Thunderlord, Reckless Oracle, and other weapons will once again render their scope and/or reticle.

KNOWN ISSUES

While we continue investigating various known issues, here is a list of the latest issues that were reported to us in our #Help Forum:

• We continue to investigate PC FPS and Stuttering issues.
• The Lightseeker Triumph is not unlocking after players have found all weekly feathers for the "Bird of Prey" quest, and feathers no longer appear after completing the Bird of Prey quest.
• The black Blight Orbs left behind by the High Celebrant won't open portals if shot by Sidearms, and sometimes won’t open when in a fireteam.
• We’re continuing to investigate various error codes, including ARUGULA and PRUNE.

For a full list of emergent issues in Destiny 2, players can review our Known Issues article. Players who observe other issues should report them to our #Help forum.

Big Screen

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It’s about time we watch some movies, right? Let's get to it, no reason for me to dilly dally on about nothing. Just rambling and taking up time when we could be enjoying popcorn and flashing lights. Speaking of flashing lights, wait... what was I talking about? Oh right, here are the winners.
Movie of the Week: Titans vs Taniks
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Movie of the Week: Journey
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This week’s winners will be receiving a special MOTW emblem to show off to the world. If you are one of the winners, congratulations! Please make sure you post a link to your Bungie.net profile in the description of the video.
As always, if you'd like to submit your creation to be featured in a future TWAB, make sure to create a post on the Community Creations portal of Bungie.net.

Expression

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Damn I love me some Destiny art. It’s always a great time scrolling through all of beautiful creations from the sea of talented artists in this community.
Let’s share some love for these artists’ beautiful creations.
Art of the Week: Crow

pic.twitter.com/zIs607knc0
— 젬 Gem (@gemkimart) February 3, 2021

Art of the Week: Stalk thy prey

Stalk thy prey and let loose thy talons upon the Darkness. #destinyart #Destiny2 pic.twitter.com/SI21bhabWj
— Kim Mihok (@hapicatART) January 28, 2021

If you see your art above, congratulations! Please make sure you reply to your post with a link to you bungie.net account and we will ship your emblem to you.
Here we are, the last TWAB of the Season. It’s always and exciting time when new Destiny content is only a few sleeps away. With new story content, a new strike, two strikes from the DCV, a new matchmade activity, [Redacted] and so much more, this Season is jam-packed. We will see you on the Battlegrounds.
Season of the Chosen, I choo choo choose you.
<3 Cozmo

Source: https://www.bungie.net/en/News/Article/49751
This week at Bungie, we’re beginning our descent to Europa.
Every release, we have a long conversation about what we should show players leading up to launch, and what we should leave for players to discover. We want to build up the sense of wonder as a new Season or expansion makes its approach without spoiling everything that’s coming. With just a week to go before launch, we’ve almost reached our destination.
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Our Beyond Light Launch Trailer went live last week. A ViDoc, exploring Beyond Light and Season of the Hunt, is available for your viewing pleasure. We’ve released our Season of the Hunt calendar to help you plan out your days for the next few months.
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All that’s left is a quick preview of patch notes and a maintenance timeline. After that, we leave the rest to you.

It’s All in the Patch

Over the last few weeks, our goals have been to set expectations. We’ve covered the Destiny Content Vault, upcoming Sandbox changes, Gambit tuning, and more. These updates aren’t mind-blowing or overly game changing, they’re just nice little morsels to chew on in the final days leading up to launch. In any case, we hope you like the following quality of life appetizers before your meal is delivered on November 10.
Archives
Beginning November 10, two new kiosks will be available in the Tower. First up, the Quest Archive will be found next to the Postmaster. Our hope is that this removes some of the confusion when trying to track down the odd quest that you previously discarded. Additionally, this will be the place for any veteran players to pick up the New Light Quest on November 10, if they have a strong desire to experience new player tutorials and the (re-)introduction to the Cosmodrome.
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Next up, the Monument to Lost Lights Exotic Archive will be found by the Vault. Here, players may acquire various Exotics and Legendary Pinnacle/Pursuit weapons that were once available through now-retired quests. As many of these Exotics were tied to lengthy quests or difficult objectives, we wanted to make sure their prices reflected those previous efforts. Players will need an amount of Glimmer, destination materials, masterworking materials, and an Exotic Cipher or Ascendant Shard in order to purchase the Exotic or Legendary which they desire. We’re also introducing a currency, Spoils of Conquest, which can only be acquired when completing raids. This currency will be required for Exotics previously tied to Vaulted raids.
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In the past, Exotic Ciphers were very limited in nature. While you can expect one to be available as part of the Season Pass, Xur will also offer a quest to earn one Exotic Cipher on a weekly cadence.
Now, let's move on to some traditional patch notes...
Crucible

• Trials of Osiris
  
  • Trials of Osiris Power level requirement increased to 1210.
  • Added ADEPT weapons and weapon mods to Flawless chest rewards.
  • Additional information here (link TWAB).
• Maps
  
  • Added physics blockers to some out-of-bounds areas on Altar of Flame.
  • Added physics blockers to some out-of-bounds areas on Exodus Blue.
  • Added physics blockers to some out-of-bounds areas on Cauldron.

Player Identity

• Login screens now have a dark background.
• Updated the full-screen menus to have a dark background style.
• Player waypoints now display Season Rank, HUD waypoints.
• Added toggle functionality to the character screen, allowing the player to make a choice between Light and Dark subclasses.
  
  • Character screen visuals updated depending on player choice between Light and Dark.

Character Creation

• Changed selection from "Male" & "Female" to "Masculine" & "Feminine."
• Guardian head and hair models have been replaced with improved versions.
  
  • Several color swatches have been changed to better represent the applied color.
  • Player’s previous head selections are still used.

Misc

• Fixed a bug that prevented online friends from showing up in the roster on Stadia for players with more than 100 friends.
• Fixed a bug that occasionally prevented players from earning progress on bounties when joining an activity in progress.
• This most notably impacted Iron Banner bounties and could cause players to have their Artifact Power bonus enabled during Iron Banner matches.

A few Sandbox changes that we missed in our Sandbox preview

• Traveler's Chosen
  
  • Reduced muzzle flash intensity.
• Point of the Stag
  
  • Increased Point of the Stag's Max Power Level to 1310.
• Divinity
  
  • Fixed a bug that prevented some weapons from dealing precision damage to the Divinity cage (e.g. Eriana's Vow).
• Hunter Dodge
  
  • Increased Hunter's Dodge cooldown by a few seconds.
  • (E.g. Tier 4, old cooldown: 22 sec. New cooldown: 26 sec.)
• Anti-Champion Mods
  
  • Anti-barrier rounds will now penetrate Taken Phalanx shields.
  • All Anti-Champion mods have been shifted to armor, rather than taking a weapon mod slot.
• Orbs of Light have been changed to Orbs of Power as they can now be consumed by Light and Dark subclasses.
  

Before we end our patch note preview, we do want to call out the collectors among you who have been talking about the impending removal of Expired Ramen Coupons from your inventories. We know this one stings a bit. It’s a byproduct of us cleaning up inventory systems and doing general maintenance.
We want to a provide a parting gift before these coupons are tossed into the bin. These coupons can’t be redeemed for spicy ramen, but they can decorate your desktop for as long as you desire.
[4k – SPICY RAMEN COUPONS]
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…and there we have it. Full patch notes will be released on Tuesday around launch time. Stay tuned!

Novembrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

With a new expansion coming next week, we also have a fresh update coming to Bungie Store! We’re entering the holiday season, so it’s a pretty good time to start gift shopping for your favorite Guardians out there in the world.
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Starting November 9, upgrade your arsenal of collectibles and gifts at Bungie Store with new exclusive products and free in-game emblems with purchase, including the Destiny 2: Beyond Light Original Soundtrack!
Cosmic Alignment (Available November 9 through December 4, 2020)
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Between Stars (Available November 9 through February 9, 2021)
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Shattered Harmony (Available November 9 with purchase of Destiny 2: Beyond Light Original Soundtrack)
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Follow @BungieStore on Twitter for more deals and discounts to be announced every Friday in Novembrrrr from The Drifter, The Exo Stranger and Variks.

Let’s Talk Maintenance and Pre-Loads

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Next Monday, November 9, Destiny 2 will go offline for an extended maintenance period. We want to give everyone ample time to download Destiny 2 Update 3.0.0. Our teams are prepping for the launch day assault on our servers. Destiny Player Support has the full timeline for maintenance, downloads, and more. Read up, spread the word, and get ready for Beyond Light.
This is their report.

UPDATE 3.0.0.1
Next Monday, maintenance for Update 3.0.0.1 will begin. Below is a timeline of events:

• November 9, 3:30 PM PST (2330 UTC): Background maintenance for Update 3.0.0.1 will begin.
• November 9, 4:00 PM PST (0000 UTC): In preparation for downtime, players will be removed from activities and will be required to download a small update before logging in again.
• November 9, 6:50 PM PST (0250 UTC): Sign-on for Destiny 2 will be disabled.
• November 9, 7:00 PM PST (0300 UTC): Destiny 2 will be brought offline for expected maintenance. Players will be removed from activities and won't be able to log back into Destiny 2 until 9 AM PST on November 10.
• November 10, 9:00 AM PST (1700 UTC): Destiny 2 Update 3.0.0.1 will be available across all platforms and regions. Players will be able to log back into Destiny 2.
• November 10 12:00 PM PDT (2000 UTC): Destiny 2 maintenance is expected to conclude.

For more information, please visit our Destiny Server and Update Status help article.
BEYOND LIGHT PRE-LOAD
Pre-load for Update 3.0.0.1 will be available prior to the game’s release. Below are pre-load timelines and instructions based on platform:
PlayStation
Beginning on November 8 after 8 PM PST (0400 UTC), users can start pre-downloading Update 3.0.0.1 by:

• Navigating to Destiny 2
• Pressing the “Options” button
• And selecting “Check for Updates”

In an effort to decrease server load, some PlayStation Plus users may be able to pre-download Update 3.0.0.1 starting on November 7 after 8 PM PST (0400 UTC) if they have auto update/download enabled on their PlayStation 4. For instructions on how to setup auto update/download, please click here.
PLEASE NOTE: BUNGIE RECOMMENDS THAT PLAYERS SHOULD NOT DELETE THEIR CURRENT VERSION OF DESTINY 2 ON THEIR PLAYSTATION CONSOLE TO SPEED UP THE PRE-DOWNLOAD PROCESS.
Xbox
Pre-load for Xbox will be available shortly after Destiny 2 is taken offline for expected maintenance at 7 PM PST (0300 UTC) on November 9. For instructions on how to setup auto update, please click here.
PC
Pre-load for PC will be available shortly after Destiny 2 is taken offline for expected maintenance at 7 PM PST (0300 UTC) on November 9. Update 3.0.0.1 should automatically be put in the Steam download queue once it is available to pre-load. For more information on managing Steam downloads and updates, please click here.
STORAGE REQUIREMENTS
Below are the updated storage requirements for Beyond Light:
Platform |Destiny 2 Install Size |Storage Space Needed for Installation | |--|--|--|--|--|--|--|--|--| Xbox Series X|S|65.7 GB|65.7GB| PlayStation 5|70.78 GB|70.78 GB| PlayStation 4|70.78 GB|171.68 GB| Xbox One|65.7 GB|65.7 GB| PC|69.7 GB |186.2 GB** |
** PlayStation 4: Includes current installed version of Destiny 2 (100.9 GB) + Update 3.0.0.1 pre-load (70.78 GB) = 171.68 GB*
*** PC: Destiny 2 Install Size may vary based on languages installed, size shown is maximum size possible *
** PC: Includes current installed version of Destiny 2 (up to 116.5 GB) + Update 3.0.0.1 pre-load (up to 69.7 GB) = 186.2 GB*
DESTINY CONTENT VAULT AND THE END OF SEASON OF ARRIVALS
With the start of Year 4 and the introduction of the Destiny Content Vault on November 10, certain items will be deprecated from player inventories that correspond with Vaulted destinations, activities, and campaigns.
Players should review our help articles on items being deprecated at the start of Year 4 and items being removed at the end of Season of Arrivals for more information on items, quests, and currencies that will be removed from player inventories at the start of Year 4. Some items listed can be used or turned in for rewards, such as Glimmer, weapons, and armor, so be sure to do that before November 10.
Additionally, certain Titles will become Legacy Seals and unavailable to earn at the start of Year 4. Players should be sure to equip the following Titles before November 9 at 7 PM PST (0300 UTC), after which they will be unavailable to earn. For more information, please visit our Year 4 Triumphs Update help article.
Seal |Title | |--|--|--|--|--|--|--|--|--| A Shadow Rises|Shadow| Reckoner|Reckoner| Black Armory|Blacksmith| Destinations|Wayfarer| Lore|Chronicler| Undying|Undying| Dawn|Savior| Almighty|Almighty| Arrivals|Forerunner| Moments of Triumph 2020|MMXX|
BUNGIE REWARDS
With the release of Beyond Light on November 10, certain Bungie Rewards will no longer be available to earn. These include the ‘Eclipse Sunset’ and ‘Sunset’ emblems, the Year of Shadowkeep Artifact Coins, the Moments of Triumph t-shirt, the Raid Ring, the Prophecy Dungeon Hoodie, the MMXX Seal, and the Forerunner Seal.
Players should be sure to earn these rewards by November 9 at 7 PM PST (0300 UTC) and claim these rewards from the Bungie Rewards page before November 13 at 8 AM PST (1600 UTC).

Encore

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Before we kick off a new year of Destiny content, we have a final round for Movie of the Week. 2020 isn’t over yet, but we’ve had a blast watching community-created content throughout Shadowkeep and its associated Seasons. Many thanks to those who’ve submitted their footage (and art!), as it’s kept us sane week over week.
Here are your final Movie of the Week selections before Beyond Light brings some Darkness to the table.
Movie of the Week: Thanks, Taken!
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Movie of the Week: Festival of the Lost, Parting Shot
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Movie of the Week: Give ‘em a hand
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Movie of the Week: SEVENTH COLUMN!!! ...AND ANOTHER ONE!
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Movie of the Week: It isn’t over until it’s over

OMG can someone explain this please?!?! Like wtf just happened🤷‍♂️🤷‍♂️ @A_dmg04 @Gladd @BungieHelp @Xbox pic.twitter.com/aYNfaeG7WM
— TG DuAc (@TGDuAc1) November 2, 2020

Next week, we’ll have a new companion section for Movie of the Week. We felt it important to give the same spotlight to the artists of our community as we’ve been giving to those who create fun videos.
To throw your hat in the ring, submit your content to the Community Creations portal on Bungie.net. If you also post your content to social media, tag it with #DestinyMOTW or #DestinyArt. We’ll snag a few winners each week and grant them some fancy new emblems.
We’ve been here a few times. What was once months became weeks. Weeks have become mere days. Five more sleeps stand between you and Beyond Light. Well, that’s if you can even sleep the night before launch. I know I probably won’t. Many of you have been on this journey with us from the start. In the last year, numerous Guardians have begun their journey through New Light. No matter how long you’ve been a Guardian, we can’t thank you enough for playing.
Stay hydrated. Be healthy. Treat yourself well.
We’re almost there.
See you starside.
-dmg04

Source: https://www.bungie.net/en/News/Article/49722
This week at Bungie, there is just a lot going on right now.
What a week. It started out with a brand new ViDoc showcasing Bungie developers giving you a behind-the-scenes look at what we’ve been cooking up from home. Now we’ll pause the TWAB for 15 minutes so you can go watch it in all its glory. Even if you already watched it, go watch it again. Don’t worry, we’ll wait on you.
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That was your first look into Season of the Hunt, as well as a deeper dive into Beyond Light, Stasis, New Light, and our plans for Year 4. We also mentioned that most Seasonal content is going to be sticking around throughout the year and showed off a new calendar for Beyond Light and Season of the Hunt. Start writing these dates in your calendars, or I guess like - programming them into your virtual calendars. You do you.
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We followed that up by pushing out the Beyond Light launch trailer this morning featuring some good vibes and a familiar soundtrack. It’s one of the last action-packed previews of Beyond Light you’ll get before it launches in less than a fortnight. We'll pause the TWAB one more time so you can watch it, but this is it. No more pauses after this!
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That’s all we got for you this week...
Nah, just kidding. We got a lot more to cover. Let’s get to it.

Progression Changes

The start of any new Destiny expansion begins with a Power climb as you experience the campaign and play through the story missions. After finishing that up and completing some additional quests and activities, you’re usually around what we call the “Soft Cap” and will need to start earning Powerful rewards to continue to increase Power so you can tackle some of the more aspirational activities in the endgame. After you reach the “Hard Cap” then there is an additional 10 Power you can earn through earning pinnacle rewards if you choose to hit the “Pinnacle Cap.”
Here are the new Power Caps you are aiming for when the next Season begins on November 10:

• Soft Cap: 1200
• Hard Cap: 1250
• Pinnacle Cap: 1260

When you first log in next Season, all of your weapons and armor will be at 1050 Power or higher. If you have anything already over 1050 it will be unchanged, and anything under will be brought up to 1050. All new players will start at 1050 as well.

Powerful Reward Changes

We’ve heard a lot of feedback from players for more opportunities to earn Powerful rewards from the activities you enjoy most. We have a change coming that will allow you to have a chance to earn Powerful rewards from strikes, Gambit, Crucible, and from Seasonal drops all the way up until the Hard Cap. It will still be much quicker to continue to complete all the Powerful reward sources each week, but if you just want to play strikes or Crucible matches all day every day, you can continue to earn Powerful rewards.
We hope this helps you to continue increasing your Power during the period when you are still close to the Soft Cap and may find completing some of the Powerful sources like The Ordeal very difficult.

Tokens and Collections

Destiny is at its best when you are shooting aliens, getting loot, and becoming more powerful. That gameplay loop breaks down when the best way to increase your Power can be standing in the Tower, handing tokens to Lord Shaxx.
Starting next Season, gear received from Collections and turning in tokens and will have a lower Power than in previous Seasons. Gear earned through token purchases will be 20 Power below your Power Level and Collection buybacks will be capped at 1050 Power.

Economy Changes

Some currencies and items have changes coming either at the end of this Seasons or in the near future. Here is what to expect when you login next Season.

Materials with No Home

With several destinations going into the Destiny Content Vault, many of you have been wondering what is going to happen to the currencies found in the areas currently underneath the Pyramids. The simple answer is that there are no changes to these currencies in Season of the Hunt, and you will be able to continue to spend them at vendors normally.
Starting in Season 13, Phaseglass Needles, Alkane Dust, Simulation Seeds, and Seraphite will be no longer accepted by vendors. For those of you that still have unspent stockpiles at the end of Season of the Hunt, Spider will be kind enough to offer a small Glimmer exchange to take them off your hands. But you’ll realize the best value by spending them before that point, so make sure you turn in your stockpiles before the end of next Season.
There are other items that will be removed from your inventory at the end of Season of Arrivals. Some, like Faction Tokens, have not had a purpose in quite a while, and others, like Expired Ramen Coupons, never really had a purpose but held some sentimental value. We know that it might hard to part with those, but it’s time to let them go.
Check out this Help article for the full list of items that will no longer be in your inventory at the start of Season of the Hunt.

Bounties

Back in late April, we shared some plans on how to tackle the problem of “bounty fatigue.” We have made some shifts to seasonal bounties and reduced their importance on earning seasonal currency and seasonal progress. We’re happy with these changes, but still want to continue to improve the bounty system overall.
One of the plans we previewed was to eventually replace weekly bounties with a new mechanism to provide players with a set of non-expiring and account-scoped objectives each week that will grant lots of Season rank progress. We’re still working on that system and will share more on it before its targeted release of Season 13.

Season Pass

The Season Pass you've come to know since Shadowkeep is largely staying the same. There will be new weapons and armor to earn off both the free track and the owned path. One big change we are making is adding Bright Dust to the Season Pass.
As mentioned before, we wanted to change the way you earn Bright Dust and move more towards account-specific paths to give players with only one character significantly more Bright Dust than they've been earning over the last year. Here is the high-level look at the changes coming next Season.

• Season Pass free path will now offer 7,500 Bright Dust
• Season Pass owned path will now offer 3,000 Bright Dust
• Weekly Bounties will now award 100 Bright Dust

With these changes, the vast majority of players will be earning more Bright Dust than before. One of our goals here is to not have a system that pushes you to try to grind out every weekly bounty on all three characters every single week. Whether you are a three-character player or only play a Hunter, Bright Dust will be more available when earning ranks on the Season Pass. We will also be making a change to the timing of Season Pass rank purchases which will be available starting in week five instead of week nine.
We have more plans for improving how you earn Bright Dust coming in Season 13 and will continue to monitor your feedback.
I’ve been talking a lot. Let’s change it up. Here is Design Lead Justin Dazet to tell you about some changes Spider is making to his wares and to answer a question we have been seeing about the customization updates we are making to your Ghosts.

Spider’s Dealings

Justin Dazet: Spider is going through some changes in Beyond Light. Though a notoriously savvy black-market dealer, our favorite four-armed friend has been largely the same for quite some time now. But the impending journey to Europa has finally given him a reason to tune up the materials exchange and make two key changes.
First, Spider will no longer be selling Legendary Shards. This exchange was removed mainly because it was not seeing enough use, particularly when compared with the other exchange offers. After reviewing player balances and the frequency with which this exchange was accessed, it was an easy decision to free up the space for something much more interesting.
In place of the Legendary Shard exchange, Spider is now selling Enhancement Prisms. These highly valued items come at a cost – 400 Legendary Shards per Prism – and he’s stingy with them so you can only purchase three a week. But we wanted to give those of you with higher balances a way to transmute your Legendary Shards into something a little more valuable than planetary materials and Upgrade Modules.
Second, we’ve taken another look at how the Enhancement Core exchange works and made some changes. The ascending cost mechanism has been removed, and in its place, Spider will now sell you five Enhancement Cores a day for fixed price of 30 Legendary Shards each. While this does limit the number of Cores you can acquire from him each day, we feel a consistent price is a clearer experience with less chance to accidentally spend large quantities of Legendary Shards.
More importantly it’s also cheaper. In the old purchase model, you’d pay 310 Legendary Shards for five Enhancement Cores (10, 20, 40, 80, and then 160). In the new model you’ll only pay 30 Shards each, which equals out to 150 Legendary Shards for five Enhancement Cores. So, while it does limit your acquisition rate, it actually will save you 160 Legendary Shards every five Cores!

Got to Go Fast

Finally, we’ve seen a few people wondering if you’ll be able to equip the Ghost mod Speed Demon with other mods like Guiding Light in the new system, and we have some good news for you: You won’t need to. Starting in Beyond Light all Sparrows, both Legendary and Exotic, will innately summon instantly, even without the Transmat Preloader perk. As a result, there is no need for a Ghost mod to impact this functionality, so Speed Demon was not carried forward into the new system.
If you’re already driving around a Sparrow with Transmat Preloader, you can keep using it and it will work just fine. Or you can pull it from Collections again and get two new perks. Newly created Sparrows will no longer roll on Transmat Preloader, so you have a chance to get yourself an extra perk and still retain that instant summon speed.
Hop on that newly instant-summoning Sparrow and zip on over to check out Spider’s new offers. He’s ready and waiting to wrap those four greedy arms around some of your wealth and make you a deal you can’t refuse.

Eververse

Starting in Season of the Hunt, Bright Engrams will now contain all Eververse content from Season 1 to three Seasons prior to the current Season (excluding content from special events like Festival of the Lost, the Dawning, etc.). Here are some practical examples:

• Season 12: Bright Engrams contain all content from Seasons 1 through 9.
• Season 13: Bright Engrams contain all content from Seasons 1 through 10.

As always, as you open more Bright Engrams, your chances for earning things you don't own increases. There will be instances of duplicate drops, but the Engram will be weighted to grant you things you might be hunting.

Down to the Wire

Image Link^imgur
It’s time now to check in with our Player Support team for the latest on known issues and important information on the state of the game.
This is their report.

WORLD ACTIVITIES

When Beyond Light and Update 3.0.0 release on November 10, 2020, some world activities will be removed. These removals are not related to the Destiny Content Vault but are general game updates.
Players should complete any activities and quests they have left if they want to claim rewards from them.

• Flashpoints (Weekly Engrams should be claimed before November 10 or they will be removed).
• All Destination Adventures.
• World Quests from Year-1 locations, such as Enemy of my Enemy, Exodus Black, and Data Recovery.

INVENTORY ITEM REMOVAL

With the start of Year 4 and the introduction of the Destiny Content Vault on November 10, certain items will be deprecated from player inventories that correspond with Vaulted destinations, activities, and campaigns.
Click here to review a list of items, quests, and currencies that will be removed from player inventories at the start of Year 4. Some items listed can be used or turned in for rewards, such as Glimmer, weapons, and armor, so be sure to do that before November 10.

14-HOUR DOWNTIME

On November 9, Destiny 2 will be taken offline for maintenance.
Maintenance will begin at 7 PM PST (0300 UTC), ending on November 10 at 9 AM (1700 UTC) with the launch of Destiny 2: Beyond Light and Update 3.0.0.
Stay tuned to Help.Bungie.net and @BungieHelp on Twitter for updates.

PlayStation 4 COLLECTOR’S EDITION CODES

Earlier this week, we informed PlayStation 4 players who purchased the Destiny 2: Beyond Light Collector’s Edition that they may have received an email about a possible account lockout if they used their Collector’s Edition codes. The issue resulting in account lockouts for early code redemption has now been resolved, and players can now safely redeem their codes prior to November 10.

TITLES AND SEALS

With Moments of Triumph and Season of Arrivals coming to a close, players are strongly encouraged to claim and equip the titles located in their Seals so that they will correctly count as claimed.

KNOWN ISSUES

While we continue investigating various known issues, here is a list of the latest issues that were reported to us in our #Help Forum:

• The Warlock’s top tree on the Dawnblade subclass can trigger the Icarus Dash cooldown when playing on PC.
• Players can’t dismount from their Sparrow using the dismount button on a controller if their Ghost is out.
• Some players report that they’re receiving the Baboon error more frequently.

For a full list of emergent issues in Destiny 2, players can review our Known Issues article.
Players who observe other issues should report them to our #Help forum.

Nominees

Image Link^imgur
It’s now time for our Movies of the Week. For those unfamiliar with our weekly tradition, this is where we find a few of our favorite fan films to feature. To enter, just make a Destiny 2 related video and upload it somewhere we can see. Our Creations page is always a good place we like to pull from. If you win, we will send you a special emblem as a reward for your effort. Without further interruption, here are this week’s winners!
Destiny 2: The Series
Destiny Lo-Fi/HipHop Beats to Wait for Beyond Light to
Video Link
Memories
Video Link
It’s been a fun week filled with several early mornings for us on Pacific time. It’s always nice to start off your day delivering a new ViDoc or exciting new launch trailer. The train carrying the hype is nearing its destination though, and Beyond Light will be arriving in less than two weeks! It’s almost time to start counting the sleeps until the big launch.
Next week we will have a preview of some of the patch notes coming with the big update on November 10. We want to leave plenty for you to discover on your own in Beyond Light and Season of the Hunt and are excited to let the game do the talking, but we will still check in next week for one last TWAB before launch.
See you then!
<3 Cozmo

Check this, Swinger! For my final play through of 2020, I decided to play the automotive dog-fighting sim Interstate '76. I originally played Interstate '76 (I'll date myself here) back in middle school when it dropped, and loved the hell out of it, but spent my time in Melee mode, and never completed the story. Time to change that!
Interstate '76 is the original 3D vehicle combat game. You play as Groove Champion, auto vigilante cruising through west Texas and New Mexico on a quest to avenge the death of your sister Jade. You accomplish this quest by driving your Packard Piranha (Barracuda analog) modded out with armor, guns, missiles, landmines, and cannons and dog-fighting various baddies "Somewhere in the southwest....". All to a hi-def 70's funk soundtrack.
Once you get the game patched up for modern computers, it is absolutely fantastic. The soundtrack is incredible, and the graphics (though limited to 1024x768) are still charmingly simple. Actually, this game is now my number one choice for "Game that needs a remake/remaster." There isn't really another way to put it: dog-fighting in a 60's/70's muscle car is just rad af. The game's physics are surprisingly good, and vehicle weight and things like flat tires actually cause noticeable performance changes. there are a number of other really cool mechanics that make the game much more than just an arcade shooter like the later Vigilante 8 or Twisted Metal series as well. Firstly there is a Battletech-esque salvage system where you acquire upgrades by stripping them off of your vanquished foes. This is then repaired by Skeeter, your mechanic on your loadout screen where you manage your car's armor and armament, and handle repairs where you have to budget your time. If you're good, you can use your .45 once a vehicle is in the red to kill the driver and recover salvage in better condition. I prefer just blowing the car up and repairing myself. The weapons are really surprisingly different and varied, and you can tweak your setup between variety, or double up and link like weapons (such as 2 .50cal MG's on the roof) to double your damage output. Your loadout and armor settings actually matter a lot and vary mission to mission. They included some other cool mechanisms such as shutting your engine off and coasting to thwart guided missiles and gimbal turrets. This leads to a couple "stealth" missions, which one doesn't think of normally when thinking of big block Hemi engines, but here they are! And they actually work quite well and add some really intriguing variety to the missions. Your map is hand drawn for each level on a piece of paper, sometimes the paper liner from your Whataburger tray, which adds some era-correct immersion.
Interstate '76 is a pretty quick play. It took me a couple days to beat, but I've seen the play time listed at 5 hours, and I'm pretty sure I could hit that time now since the levels are pretty short. But wait! Arsenal also comes with the Nitro Pack, which is the expansion set. This set adds a scenario for previous supporting cast: Jade, Taurus, Skeeter, and a magical mystery cast member you unlock after completing the other three (shhhh). The expansion pack actually adds a lot, and adds a bunch of new cars for use in Melee (on or offline) mode as well. There surprisingly is a small but dedicated I76 community that still plays multiplayer, but I haven't had an opportunity to play it yet.
For $5 (or less!) this game is a steal, a true classic gem!
Enjoy some screenshots, ya dig?
https://imgur.com/gallery/y3AFQ09
ISSUES AND FIXES
(This game is somewhat of a labor of love to get running, but hey... welcome to gaming in 1997)
Interstate '76 has been re-released on GOG as the Interstate '76 Arsenal which was the initial bundle of the game plus the Nitro Pack expansion. Punchline up front: it's available for 5 bucks on GOG, on sale usually for $1.50, and if you're willing to take 15 minutes to install the unofficial fan patch (more on this below), it's absolutely worth it. I also highly recommend a controller or joystick. That being said, you have to map the controllestick like you would in 1997: by button number. I use an Xbox controller, so the buttons aren't numbered, but I've linked a button map below that lays them all out by number. I also found one for the PS4 controller, but I can't attest to weather its useful or not. I also have a screenshot of my preferred controller scheme to stave you some time and get you in game. Its kinda of a pain, but that was gaming back in the day.
PATCHES:
Interstate '76 was originally released in 1997. In 1997, if you wanted to play a 3D game in silky smooth 1024x768, you had your choice of a 3Dfx chip-set (which went out of business and was bought by NVIDIA), an ATI (which sold off to AMD), or a brand spanking new 4MB NVIDIA Riva 128 (which was a beast that could accelerate 2D AND 3D graphics). It was the early days of 3D games, and the programmers used instruction sets that are long since obsolete. This causes Interstate 76 to run abysmally straight off GOG. But this is PC Gaming, and modding/fixing busted stuff is kinda our thing, so... enter the AiO (All in One) patch! A fan made unofficial patch that makes the game compatible with modern Windows OS's and hardware! There's also a dgVooDoo2 patch that allows you to play the game at native resolution, but it is VERY buggy, and I uninstalled it after about 20 minutes. AiO works flawlessly though, and I highly recommend just sticking with it even though it's limited to 1024x768.
https://community.pcgamingwiki.com/files/file/1349-interstate-76-nitro-pack-aio-patch/
CONTROLLER: Firstly, a controller makes this into a completely different game, and I highly recommend it. That said, you're going to have to set up the controller like you would back in 1997... by button number! I play on an Xbox controller, so the buttons aren't exactly numbered. But follow the number guide below and you'll have your controller mapped in no time. Yes it's a pain. Welcome to gaming in the 90's. I included a screenshot of my config in the imgur link. Of note: The game recognizes the D Pad as "Hatswitch". The game also doesn't recognize the analog triggers as buttons, but it will recognize them as Axis 5. I had no use for a 5th axis so I just didn't map them. I also have Special 1 mapped to the Y button. This is so I can put Nitrous Boost into Special 1 on my car and have a button for it on the controller.
XBOX: https://joytokey.net/en/posts/button-mapping-for-xbox-controlle
PS4 (I have no way of testing this for those of y'all who use PS4 controllers, but it looks legit) https://www.reddit.com/Unity3D/comments/1syswe/ps4_controller_map_for_unity/
My control scheme: https://imgur.com/a/ix1dQ7e
Whew. Well congrats! You made it to the end of the review! Press C in game if you're bored or driving down a long lonely stretch of road somewhere in the southwest...

This is being posted on reddit as an attempt to allow people to make their own decisions about the claims of admin abuse on the Keneti cluster.
It cannot be handled in the cluster's discord channel as that promptly leads to bans and deletion of any messages debating the matter.
This situation happened over several months and numerous tribes were affected in varying capacities.
There was a previous reddit post made a couple days ago which got removed, but not before it brought up some serious accusations of infractions made by the admin against his own cluster.
This lead to other people investigating or questioning the matter, all of whom ended up banned on the cluster and the entire discord channel where the conversation happened was removed and replaced.
​
This is not intending to slander any individual.
The goal of sharing this information is for people to have a chance to know what happened and what the accusations are, and hopefully to inspire those still playing on the cluster to push for more transparency, such as admin command logging.
Most of the information shared here was available to the public via the Keneti discord's "general_chat" channel (which is now wiped).
Anything said here has evidence to back it up, and if it was not supplied in the post - feel free to ask.
​
There is no evidence to suggest that this admin abuse is ongoing, but the admin's inability to leave the information out for people to decide for themselves indicates that they would rather hide from the truth than admit any mistake was made.
They even seem to be unwilling to introduce admin command logging as a way to show their committment to being honest and accountable.
​
Backstory:
The cluster's alpha was in the close friend group of the admin and his girlfriend on the cluster.
Over a period of several months, the cluster was plagued consecutively by 3 separate tribes that were considered toxic by many players.
These tribes were considered verbally abusive, ruthless and sometimes questionable in their raid tactics. A good few tribes stopped playing on the cluster because of their actions.
Despite this, the admin asked the alpha's tribe specifically NOT to engage these tribes, to encourage other tribes on the cluster to PVP.
One of these tribes just stopped playing (BlackBarbie), the admin said the next tribe stopped playing because one of them was in the hospital (JesusLives), and the last remained active until the following events unfolded (ObeseAF).
​
Some of the complaints against these tribes were about suspicious ORP removals, being shot via rail gun through tek forcefields, and massive base wipes in time frames that seemed questionable.
Throughout the time on the cluster there have also been numerous complaints or questions surrounding certain privileges of the admin's girlfriend, who they insist is just a player on the cluster, despite being immune to pvp and having permissions for certain admin commands.
Due to the questioning of her admin privileges, the admin created an entire post clearly stating that she had "no permissions to use spawn commands or any like it", and could only perform wild dino wipes or kill the server process.
This post is still available in the announcements discord channel (at the time of this posting).
No evidence was given for how these commands were restricted. It was always a source of suspicion, but they clearly didn't like being questioned about it.
​
Then towards the end of 2020, it came out on the cluster that the identity of the remaining active member of the last toxic tribe was actually the alpha of the cluster on an alt account.
He got banned for playing on an alt account as soon as this information made it to public discord channels, along with several of his friends (some without any reason given for their bans; they seemed to be banned simply for being his friends).
The banning of the alpha was briefly addressed by the admin, in a rather unclear statement including phrases such as "he broke a very long agreement that we had" and "he has changed his attitude toward inciting issues that are better left alone".
This was in one of the public channels that was recently wiped, but a screenshot of the original post is supplied below.
​
Our Story:
My tribe was one of the last to be followed and raided by the alpha via his alt tribe (ObeseAF).
Shortly after he was banned from the cluster, we were provided with screenshots of the alpha and the admin's girlfriend discussing our base and her sharing spectator-mode screenshots from inside the base.
In the public channels, the truth of the alt account of the alpha was claimed to be a surprise to the admin and he was written off as being a solo agent.
However at this time, another friend of the alpha, and long time player on the cluster, commented in the discord posting the screenshots of her using spectator mode, and stating that the alpha was actually in all 3 of the toxic tribes with the admin himself in 2 of them and the admin's girlfriend in one.
Those comments were removed and the person posting them was banned within minutes.
​
These screenshots clearly indicated that she not only knew of the alpha having an alt account (which is clearly against the cluster's rules) but also that she directed him to raid our tribe to regain drakes we had acquired from raiding one of the other inactive tribe bases (JesusLives).
This seemed to make sense, as there was always some level of suspicion to how much inside information she had on players, given she was just a player herself.
While trying to dodge ObeseAF, we watched her on BattleMetrics join the maps we were moving loot to (at this time the server was low pop and she rarely ever frequented these maps so it caught our attention).
This aligned to his claim that she had been watching us for hours in spectate mode and how he, as the alt account, could find our base within minutes despite not having been on that map for months.
She was confronted about this situation and she apologized to my tribe mate via DM for asking the alpha to raid us, admitting her fault in the situation and promising it would not happen again.
In a DM with the admin, he claimed this situation would not happen again as "Spectate mode is now restricted to just myself (as before it was just myself and [girlfriend's username])".
Due to personal concerns, we did not want to push the situation further and decided to give them benefit of the doubt. Both the admin and his girlfriend had assured this would not happen again.
​
The banned alpha reached out to several people to give his side of the story, ourselves included. He admitted to everything, but claimed that the admin not only knew, but also participated in these tribes.
He said the admin had been his partner in JesusLives, sometimes raiding people with the spawned in gear (such as the original reddit post).
According to the alpha, us being raided was because the admins girlfriend feared we had acquired some spawned in OP weapons from the JesusLives base, which was operated by the alpha and the admin under their alt account.
Alternatively, the admin's girlfriend claimed she asked him to raid us because we had acquired some max level drakes from raiding the inactive JesusLives, and that she didn't want her own high level dinos in anyone's hands.
He stated that the admin was also one of the members of ObeseAF, before he stopped playing Ark as much.
He also had screenshots of the admins girlfriend in a DM talking about using a "red cryopod". Someone had noticed it in a picture she shared, and she admitted it had no cooldown and that she took it from the admin.
It was also supposed to have additional functions such as unlimited dino cloning.
​
The alpha said he got banned because he and the admins girlfriend had some sort of falling out, and he decided to start talking about the admin abuse to some friends which led to him being banned.
He also showed a screenshot of a chat with him and the admin, where the admin insinuated that his reason for banning the alpha was due to "more the screen sharing of more sensitive things that has ultimately crossed a line and i think you know full well what I'm referring to."
​
Over the next couple months, things quieted down a good deal on the cluster.
Then on the first of January, there was a 1-day notice server wipe.
Shortly after the wipe, a few people were arguing about a pvp situation, and one of them complained about being tracked by the other players.
The admin mentioned in passing (for the first time in the discord chat history) that there was a beta test site he was working on and "some people" were using it, and shared the link.
He claimed it was an "early tool" that showed various information, in addition to "alternate characters, steam shared accounts etc"
After looking at the beta site, we could see it shared players steam name, character name, tribe name, level, hours played, as well as their maps and online status.
Basically a souped-up stalking site that made BattleMetrics redundant, and it was not ever given to the entire cluster before this, despite the fact that it was already in use by certain players.
​
This information also fit with the alpha's claims that the admin had been able to mask the fact that he was alting on a shared account.
There was also a discord channel linked to the beta site, and some members showed as having joined at the start of the year, but a few (such as the admin's girlfriend and a couple other of their closer friends) did not have any notification of when they had joined.
When my tribe mate commented that it was good to have this transparent, the admin brushed it off as though nothing was being hidden since it was just in the beta stage.
At that point we reviewed our DMs and realized the admins girlfriend had deleted her messages to my tribe mate, the ones where she was apologizing and admitting guilt.
Thankfully my tribe mate had saved screenshots of the conversation before.
​
Then, A Few Days Ago:
A reddit post was made by another player who had, at one point, been raided by the JesusLives tribe.
He was warning people against the cluster, and explained about his tribe getting wiped suspiciously fast, and that he was told the raid was funded and participated in by the admin.
He also mentioned the red cryopod and that the admins girlfriend apparently used it frequently for breeding. She is known to have max level dinos, and has sold them or offered them to friends for raids.
What was particularly interesting is that this post included the admin commands of the Keneti-specific OP weapons that the alpha had talked about months ago.
This reddit post got added to the Keneti discord channel and was removed within minutes. A few people managed to see it however and this started a debate on the reddit post.
​
Within half an hour of the reddit post being made, there was an unannounced update made to the Keneti Add Ons mod which claimed to be mitigating tek weapon damage to hatch frames.
This came before he responded to the reddit post.
Note that the change log entry for this update was then modified on January 25th, when he made another update to the mod, during which time he added additional comments to describe the changes (before and after pictures will be posted below as well as zips of the mod content).
​
The admin then posted his response to reddit in discord (as someone had commented about it) - he dismissed it as lies from the alpha, and clearly stated that some of the items existed, but most did not.
He stated that the alpha had been alting on the cluster again, and the admin said he had been watching him on this new alt for a couple weeks.
An argument ensued and the admin insisted the claims were all false, just a personal vendetta of the banned alpha.
The admin first admitted that his girlfriend has used his cryopod and that "it has no cooldown, and that's the only use of it", then minutes later (after being questioned more) admitted that the dino clone worked as well.
This conversation all took place in the general_chat and screenshots will be added below.
The alpha (under his new alt) then began posting screenshots of his conversation with the admin into the general_chat, to support the claim that the admin condoned and participated.
In these screenshots, all of the admins messages had been deleted, but the alpha was clearly talking about his alt character in ObeseAF.
He continued to claim that he and his girlfriend had no idea of the alpha's identity and that the screenshots were photoshopped.
The alpha's alt account stated that he would post a video of the chat log to prove it wasn't photoshopped and he got banned again.
​
Screenshots aside, we knew firsthand that it was a lie about neither of them knowing of his alt account.
At that point, my tribe member and I stated that this was not true, as his girlfriend had apologized to us for sending the alpha (as ObeseAF) to raid us, which was ignored by the admin.
The admin continued to claim people were speculating without facts. My tribe member stated that he could provide facts and proof, as we had screenshots of the conversation with his girlfriend when it happened (in case she tried deleting the messages, which she did).
My tribe member got immediately banned. I challenged the admin for his reason for this and he claimed he would remove anyone who continued the conversation as he had to go to work.
By the end of this conversation, two other people got banned and the only involvement they had was to agree with comments questioning the situation.
I stated that I'd wait, but I wanted my tribe mate to be unbanned since he didn't break any rules.
​
We heard about the stealth update to the Keneti Add Ons mod before I turned on my PC, so I was able to disconnect from the internet and launch Ark in offline mode before the mod could be updated.
I wanted to see if any or all of the reddit post commands worked. My tribe mate had the updated version of the mod, so we both launched Single Player to test the commands.
Every single command spawned in an item for me, and worked without the DevKit. For him, only the Keneti C4 could be spawned. We recorded us testing this, and a youtube video is posted below.
You can see the cryopod works perfectly to infinitely clone dinos without ever having a cooldown and the weapons were insanely powerful.
​
The next day, the admin came back online. He didn't say anything in the chat, but instead was streaming on one of the channels (later stating this was him demoing the devkit functionality of the tools to those in the channel).
I asked if he would reinstate my tribe mate, given that no rule was broken.
Another player who had been banned in game the day before (due to connection to the alpha) was still in discord asking why he got banned in game, but he was promptly banned from discord as well (these are some of the deleted comments being replied to in the screenshots being shared).
He said he didn't plan on unbanning anyone and did not respond to my questions of what the grounds were for my tribe mate being banned in the first place.
He also continued to insist that he and his girlfriend had no clue about the alt accounts, that she did not send the alpha to raid us on his alt.
So I posted the screenshots of her apologizing to us, as well as few screenshots the alpha had found of conversations (before they were deleted!) between him and the admins girlfriend, both of which showed they were aware of who he was and wanted it kept a secret.
His response to all this was "ok, so where is it that i had anything to do with that, where is the admin abuse?" then "i cant even find those in my DMs and cant ever remember seeing those." and that the apology from her to us was "interesting".
I attempted to call him out on it further and of course I got banned as well.
I'm quite certain the only reason I wasn't banned right away as well was due to me being a Patreon supporter of the Keneti cluster, which was refunded shortly before he banned me.
This entire conversation took place in the general_chat public discord channel on the 22nd and the 23rd of January.
This channel and the salty_whiny_chat had chat history going back before the last wipe, with many snippets of information about this situation (including original messages from all 3 of the alt tribes).
After this happened and everyone involved was banned, both the general_chat and salty_whiny_chat got archived with new versions replacing them.
​
All screenshots, as well as videos of the mod demo before and after the stealth update, are added below in separate comments.
This is only intended to provide people with the information that has been systematically scrubbed from the server's discord.
While the details and validity can be debated on end, one consideration to take is whether any effort has been made by the admin to ensure this situation will not happen again.
​
As the admin once said, "Power corrupts, but absolute power corrupts absolutely".
​
​
Link to Pictures of general chat conversations that were wiped and a summary of evidence to support claims made in this post (see photos numbered 1-20 first):
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1eQtb10PqIsRe8XZ2f_t2DpQC5OYRcHaX?usp=sharing
General chat conversations before they were wiped. Admin denies abuse and bans innocent people for discussing claims of admin abuse:
General Chat Day 1: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1r2Alb8pyepRR4GBO-mH8s5iVpA_QA_3q
General Chat Day 2: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/173xI7hkADYGnAIEgUKjkO7CCt4q15-PG?usp=sharing
​
Link to video from banned alpha, scrolling through the allegedly photoshopped messages:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eWU3RXr_iag&ab_channel=MarkvanderOuderaa
​
Link to video of the mod being demoed before stealth update:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7C1O5xFpUo8&feature=youtu.be
Link to video of mod being demoed after stealth update:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UqvBM-_oHxw&feature=youtu.be
​
Link to Mod Zip Before Update:
https://mega.nz/file/GJhxzIrB#7wJSEhHcjnxAgqRuklRLKjI3RFCKXzk74CEtxml1tWY
Link to Mod Zip After Update:
https://mega.nz/file/aVpHySwS#-CswdQH0Krs-qMJgU-EhdAhH6mSGws_3pD1fJ7CufJY

There are alot of doom and gloom threads but honestly those are pretty standard for anime fighters. Granblue is not doing as bad as people think. It debuted as the top seller on its release as reported by Famitsu last year.
The community is also split between PS4 and PC, while NA sees some empty lobbies (they are ok right now because Yuel), Japan is still pretty populous. The game also has a fairly large unsung casual player base. While hardcore fighters may not like it, the RPG mode and single player content is pretty significant full with unlocks and unique raid bosses. I know quite a few Granblue VS players that play that but don't necessary go online to get owned by high tier players that dominate the scene.
SALES AND PREDICTIONS:
Sales wise, GBVS was a success in both NA and Japan, mostly Japan. The game actually outsold some other significant ArcSys IPs (I cannot confirm but this may even include GGXRD:REV2, which is ArcSys' flagship).
Evidence: https://www.gematsu.com/2020/02/granblue-fantasy-versus-shipments-and-digital-sales-top-150000-in-japan-and-asia
Evidence 2: https://www.eventhubs.com/news/2020/ma28/granblue-fantasy-versus-sales-cross-200000-copies-japan-alone-cygames-announces/
So let's math this out:
59.99 x 200,000 (in just Japan) = $11,998,000. If there were 40 people working on this game with 50k salaries, your looking at 2,000,000 in overhead. Advertising in the US has been minimal, so your looking at just japan promotions. Even if this was 4,000,000 in costs you still have a pretty significant profit of several million -just in Japan. This is not counting NA, PC port, or season pass/microtransactions.
During interviews it was stated that the GBVS player base in Japan is an even split between GB mobile fans and fighting game players of varying skill levels. The GB japanese mobile community is absolutely rabid, large, supportive, and loves seeing their favorite characters get the ArcSys treatment.
Despite what people say, as a fighting game that has not seen a major price drop, GBVS is doing quite good. The fact that the price is still high and has not seen massive markdowns shows confidence from ArcSys and Cygames in GBVS's selling power.
The health of the hardcore fighting game and tournament scene (which has been fatalitied by COVID) is not a reflection of overall GBVS health.
Sales wise, I already think GBVS has done well enough to carry it all the way through S3's character pass.
CHARACTER PASS 2 AND 3:
GBVS will 100% get a 3rd character pass that will cover the "What makes the skies blue (WMTSB)" angel arc. After season pass 2, the story will shift to the Sandalphon and Lucillius to kick off and cover WMTSB. WMTSB is arguably the most memorable and epic story told in GB, there is no way that it won't make it into GBVS in some form. In fact I would say that the ENTIRE game is building up to GBVS' own flavor of WMTSB and the final face off between Sandalphon and Lucillius.
Predictions:
Season pass 2 after Anre we will get a random assortment of characters that don't necessarily fit into the story of the WMTSB.
When GBVS S3 drops Sandalphon will 100% be the flagship character just like Belial was for S2. This will rekindle the game and was always planned.
I do think S3 will be the last character pass to GBVS. With the first character being Sandalphon and the final character being the last boss (Lucillius) this neatly wraps up the game roster and full story. I fully believe that WMTSB as the final arc to conclude the story and roster of GBVS was always the original plan.
WHAT HAPPENS AFTER GBVS IS COMPLETE?
Following GBVS and the WMTSB story, GBVS will be considered "complete" by Cygames and ArcSystem works. This was the plan and lines up with the release of GB:ReLink, which gives people who want to a medium between the mobile game and fighter with action combat a place to go.
GB:ReLink will release sometime in 22 and by the time GBVS ends, it will have establishment to accept more players interested in the GB world.
At this point we can expect to see a "complete edition" of GBVS go on sale which has all the content and the full roster. At this point and after this complete edition goes on sale, we can start seeing major discounts to the game (same thing happened to Street Fighter 5 with World Championship Edition).
WHAT ABOUT ROLLBACK?
GBVS has no chance on getting rollback outside of when the "complete" edition hits. Throughout the lifetime of the game, Cygames/Arksys will analyze the situation and make a decision on rollback. If any rollback will be added, it will be for the complete edition. The addition of rollback depends on how strongly the game is followed and its forecasted health when complete edition drops. By then a decision would have already be made and rollback would have been worked on for a significant time period.
DBZ Fighter Z is ArcSys's most successful game ever, with a playerbase of THOUSANDS not hundreds but THOUSANDS of players. If the technical limitations are preventing rollback in that game, which is heavily supported and bankrolled, prospects don't necessary look good for GBVS.
However, technology changes and there may be forms of rollback that are compatible with GBVS that require less work. We know ArcSys is experimenting with this on STRIVE.
If GBVS Complete does not have rollback, the prospects of the game officially getting rollback support will be significantly decreased and will need to be community driven.
What I mean by this is that just like GG:XX Accent Core + R and other older titles, the modding community will need to take matters into their own hands once complete edition is released and work it themselves. If there is enough interest, ArkSys/Cygames may step in.
ENDING THOUGHTS:
The future for GBVS looks relatively decent. Doom and gloom and spreading FUD don't necessary help the game. The game is not in any immediate danger of being discontinued or unsupported. It has a clear plan that has an end, and I fully believe it will reach that end.
What is important is how the community continues the game. The greatest contribution any player can make is to play, play online, support your scene (online + post COVID offline) and bring new players in.

Hello Stadians,
First post here. I joined the cult not long ago after extensive research and since my post on red flag deals about Stadia has gained much traction, I decided to post it here for future Stadians or people who might be interested. Information is spread out across many sources, so I am trying to bring all current cloud services together into one giant post. If you want to spread the message to people who are on the fence, please use this post as you like, you are free to share this. Please correct me if I got anything wrong since I am still new to the game. Here goes :
PART #1 :
Stadia is still very new to a lot of people but have gained quite a bit of attention recently due to Google freely handing out hardware. However, it is still largely misunderstood.
Unlike what many people think there it's either one or the other, Stadia is so versatile that it can complement anything (ps5, xbox, pc, mobile gaming). It doesn't have to be one or the other. You can sub, or you can just buy a game and play it whenever and wherever you want as long as you have a stable Internet connection.
The most important thing is to test it out for FREE. Go on your chrome browser, log in with your gmail account, and click on Destiny 2. No downloads, no load times, no patches, no wait times, no hidden fees, no hardware requirements, just play it for free indefinitely on any toaster computer you are running as long as you have a stable connection.
Like it ? Then don't be afraid to buy some games during their sales if they are cheaper on Stadia than other platforms. You will be able to play is as long as you have an stable Internet connection.
Don't listen to people who says Stadia is going away like some of Google's retired products. If anything, it's expanding and the future of gaming is streaming. Say goodbye to overpriced hardwares that expire or games that don't run properly on newer hardwares. Say goodbye to having to buy the same game on xbox, pc, mobile. Say goodbye to load times, storage limits, hardware problems like the ps4 pro making absurb noise.
Don't listen to people wo says Stadia has awful lag - they either have a bad connection or only tested Stadia at launch. With a good reliable connection with at least 35mbps download, there is absolutely no way the input lag will bother you unless you do competitive gaming. Everyone has their own experience with Stadia and best is to try it out yourself and not listen to people - it's free anyway with zero hurdles.
Don't listen to people claiming Stadia has a very limited library. Stadia launched roughly 1 year ago compared to xbox / steam / ps who have been there for ages. Obviously, you won't have the same library. Stadia is about to lock in 400+ games this year alone and more to come. Library size shouldn't matter since you do not have to pay or commit to anything. If you don't like what Stadia has to offer right now, just set it aside - you aren't losing out or anything. Your hardware is not going to expire, you aren't paying a dime to have a Stadia account, you have zero commitment necessary.
I hope this sums up the debate and why everyone should at least give Stadia a chance and try it out on your browser right now and experience the future of gaming. Zero commitment needed.
​
PART #2 : This is the part where I try to summarize each available streaming service and compare it to Stadia as of today.
PS Remote Play, which has pretty much been given up by Sony because they want to focus on PS5 hardware, is basically a service that allows you to connect to your own hardware to play games you own on your PS4 / PS5. You have the same limitations than your current hardware. Therefore, if your game only runs on 30FPS on PS4, it will only run 30FPS remotely. Your hardware will also eventually expire as new games get developed that require more juice. Last time I checked, remote play on PS4 Pro is capped at 720p. Since the connection has to jump through 2 loops (from your PS to Internet, and from the Internet back to your device), you will definitely feel a latency while streaming your games. Stadia is running off of a dedicated hardware and servers straight to the device you're streaming on, while the PS4/5 remote play has no server and uses your hardware.
PS Now is a service you need to pay either 12.99$ CAD a month or commit to $79.99 CAD for a whole year (20% off during BF sale, good value). It has its own dedicated servers so latency should be better. However, as of now, games are still being streamed at 720p only, and hopefully 1080p soon. A plus side is the access to a bigger library, potentially bigger than what xbox game pass ultimate has to offer. You can also download PS4/5 games to play offline unlike Stadia where a stable connection is required at all times. However, you need an online check every 7 days and the offline service only works on your PS4/5 hardware. if you use this service, some games can leave the platform on a rotation basis (about 10 out of 800 games available) and you don't own any games unless you buy them on the PS store. If your subscription expires, you'll lose access to the downloaded games and any DLC associated with it. As noted by redditors here, you do get plenty of time to finish the game and a notice ahead of time before rotation begins.
Xbox Game Pass Ultimate cost 16.99$ CAD a month and provides the best library of games on a rotation basis, and is now combined with xbox gold meaning you can claim free games every month that you can keep as long as you are subbed, like Stadia Pro. The game selection is arguably better than PS Now, and is much more varied than Stadia. The biggest downside is that Game Pass Ultimate only offers 720p streaming as of now and I have noticed many more players reporting latency issues with Game Pass compared to Stadia. Just like PS now, Game Pass Ultimate is like a rental service where you don't get to keep any games unless you keep paying a fee. The difference with Stadia is that your money is exchanged for games you can keep with regular Stadia. You keep the games you bought and they do offer some free to play games like Destiny 2 and more to come eventually. However, free version of Stadia is capped at 1080p 60fps with stereo sound.
Geforce Now from Nvidia costs 6.49$ CAD a month to play, or offered free but you are limited to 1-hour sessions only, which is quite stressful in my opinion. It basically uses your steam games library and allows you to stream them using their cloud servers. If you have a big library of steam games, I can see a good reason to use Geforce Now. However, their cloud servers are much much smaller than Google (obviously). For new games, you have to wait for them to become available on the service if the game requires different specs, since Nvidia has to make Steam games compatible with their service first. Due to their small servers, 2 years after their launch, they have yet announced support for 4k streaming and yet to have their own exclusives. This is only a good option if you have a huge amount of steam games and want to access those games outside of your PC.
Luna offers game streaming for 7.99$ CAD (note that this is their entry price, and I will guarantee you this price will get a bump once their service is more widely known) . They have a bigger game library than Stadia but a lot of players claim that their games aren't as quality (filled with indie games and less AAA titles). However, Stadia has much better latency because Amazon servers are more tailored towards enterprise usage rather than customer. Another downside to Luna is that it doesn't offer a free service compared to Stadia, but time will tell.
To me, the main selling point for Stadia is this : no commitment required.
With other services, you either have to pay to use their service or buy their hardware, or both. A paywall is the highest obstacle to a new user base and Google knows that. No other services would allow you to create a free account, go on your chrome browser, and play Destiny 2 (other free games will be announced soon) right away without any hardware check. You can play Destiny 2 on a toaster computer, a TV with a Chromecast Ultra dongle and all you need is keyboard + mouse, or any controller you can find. Stadia can accommodate those with little to no interest to build a 1,000 $ CAD PC to keep up with current games (to eventually expire and have to upgrade again) and Stadia doesn't require you to buy consoles, have console hardwares expire, compatibility issues with previous games, update games, run out of storage room.
All you need to ask yourself is : do you want to play this game or not ?
You are not pressured to finish a game before it rotates out.
You are not forced to pay to play - you buy and own.
You don't have to think about compatibility issues nor hardware issues.
If Stadia manages to secure more AAA and exclusive titles, they will be an even more fearful competitor to other game streaming services.
Cloud gaming is still very young but it is the future. We don't know when it will happen, but one day, it will be the Netflix of gaming.
​
2020-11-26 EDIT : Thank you so much for all the feedback guys, I stand corrected on many points you guys put forward and I appreciate the time you put to read through my wall of text.
EDIT 2 : Updated PS Now to include 10 games out of 800 that gets rotated out and library size potentially bigger than xbox's.
EDIT 3 : correction on stadia servers vs amazon luna's

So, I've felt like I had to get this off my chest for a while. It's not a rant, but apart from that, I'm unsure about how it'll turn out. It's likely going to be about what Monster Hunter has meant for me, and what its put me through, so if you don't want to read it, then I understand, and encourage you to go look at memes or something instead. For those of you who stay, please just... try to understand. That's all I can ask.
First off, I'd like to say that I'm not a pro Hunter. I started on World in early 2020, and even though I've got to finished the main story of Master Rank (or G-Rank if you veterans prefer), I am not a good player. I'm not just inherently bad at the game, although that is a part of my problems. I have mild Asperger's Syndrome and Executive Dysfunction, although you wouldn't be able to tell if you just met me on the street. This means that I have trouble understanding body language (meaning what a monster is about to do in this case, even after learning their patterns) due to the first condition, and a slower processing time for my mind to understand what's going on because of the second.
In short, I'm just not good at MHW. And, as time wore on, that's really started to hurt.
Secondly, I'm not a min-maxer. Many of you out there would probably call me a 'filthy casual' and tell me to 'git gud'. And that... that hurts. But I don't like being forced to squeeze every possible iota of damage out of my build that I can. I generally just get Critical Eye and Agitator as high as I can before turning to more skills that make the hunt more comfortable, like Health Boost, Blight Resistance, and Divine Blessing. And while making hunts more enjoyable, it hasn't really worked in my favour. However, I didn't use the Defender Gear.
Oh, and thirdly, I play with a PS4 controller plugged into my PC, so I may be suffering from input lag, but if I am, I haven't noticed. I also never played any games like Monster Hunter before. Nothing Soulsborne-related. The closest thing I had was Warframe, and that's like sticking an apple next to a banana and saying that they're the same, so I was chucked into the deep end when I first began playing.
With those points out of the way, onto what I've been doing in the Fifth Fleet.
Back in base World, I really, really struggled against Nergigante, as did a lot of other people. It must have taken at least seven runs to finally down him. Runs, mind you, not carts. I ran him solo, because my friends (I won't be naming names) said that Nergigante would be a good challenge. Was he a challenge? Yes. Was he a good one?
Not for my mental state.
I completely forgot about the SOS flare. I got stuck in this mindset that I had to kill Nergigante solo. I kept failing.
I've only briefly told my friends what I'm gonna say next. And this isn't even the whole story of it. It's just the best I can write it. And if they're reading this, then... I'm sorry for making you guys seem like assholes. You aren't.
The peer pressure that I felt was... immense. I freely admit to breaking down and crying in front of my monitor several times, even when other people were in the room. I was scared of what my friends would say when they found out that I couldn't do what they had all done easily- within their first two/three runs at the most. I was terrified of their disappointment. Of their realisation that I wouldn't be the prized fourth member of their hunts. That they'd find someone else who could do a better job than I can.
And that fear was funnelled into Nergigante himself.
I had nightmares about him. The first time I'd had nightmares in about 5 years. I woke up in cold sweats a lot. Every time his music came on, my mind just blanked and I kept panicking. I just ran around, scared of even approaching him. I didn't even really understand how the Dual Blades (which I'd been using against him at the time) worked, despite watching numerous tutorial videos for them.
I was terrified that he'd cart me again. That he'd make me fail again. Even if I hear his theme- or the AT version- now, my heartbeat still speeds up and I begin to panic, even if I'm the one watching someone else play the game.
After a while, those ideas merged. To face Nergigante became synonymous with failure.
And then, eventually, after the seven runs that stretched out over the course of IRL weeks... I finally beat him.
I can't overstate my relief. I'd won, and I was a valuable team member who could hold their own in a fight. My friends congratulated me, telling me that I'd done a good job, and I was happy. I was vindicated of my self-doubt and peer pressure that had been building and building over the course of weeks, and it felt amazing.
Back then, Monster Hunter: World was what I played whenever I could. I loved the game's style, the monster design, and just how everything felt. It was like I was actually in Astera, or the Ancient Forest, or the Wildspire Waste. MHW was perhaps the first game that made me feel fully immersed in its world, and I loved that feeling.
For the rest of World, there weren't any big problems. My friends told me to do Xeno'jiiva solo. He was nowhere near as hard as Nergigante was, and while he took a while to learn, I eventually beat it on my third run.
So that was World done. I kicked around the place a bit, discovered Deviljho, got splattered by the Final Fantasy Kulu (I later went back with MR gear to kick its butt), and enjoyed the Witcher crossover, despite not knowing the source material.
Then I took the step into MR.
Everything was new, strange, and often kicked my butt. But my friends helped me through it, and once again, nothing was as bad as Nergigante. Velkhana was annoying, but after she went down, I was pretty confident that I could get a hunt done on the first run.
However, pride comes before a fall. Said fall being a literal drop into the 'arena' of Ruiner Nergigante.
The fear was back. The panic was back. The sense of hopelessness was back. Oh, and I didn't know that Astera Jerky stopped bleed back then.
After I died a fair bit, I eventually managed to just survive as my friends slapped Ruinerg with Greatswords and other various objects. Then we faced Shara Ishvalda and had a good time.
I took a few days to get to the Guiding Lands and the Safi'jiiva siege, and tried out Heavy Bowgun somewhere around that time, having got the Safi Spread one. I equipped some shields and had a good time with a pseudo-shotgun.
Then we reach the time when my friends and I hunted a Zinogre in the Ancient Forest.
Two friends were with me. One mained Greatsword, and one was using Hammer at the time, but liked to switch around. Greatsword friend is an easygoing guy who played the older generations of Monster Hunter. Let's call him Veteran. Hammer friend is a min-maxer, and likes to do as much damage as possible. Let's call him Max.
So, Max likes his high damage, and I'd just discovered Wyvern Ammo. And while Zinogre was down, I tried blasting it, not knowing that I'd blast Max away on his final hit of the Big Bang combo. Rather rightfully annoyed with me, he told me to let him go for the head, which I did, apologising for hitting him.
I did not, however, have the presence of mind to use a different ammo type.
Next time Zinny went down, I targeted the tail, and shot Wyvern Ammo again. Despite being as far from the head, as I could, I still somehow accidentally hit Max. And he absolutely exploded at me in the voice chat that he, Veteran and I were in. Trying to argue that I had tried to do as he said, I was yelled over, and was basically told that I was a dumbass, but in much ruder words.
I promptly closed the game after that, feeling miserable and half-believing what Max had said. I stayed offline in the social media platform we shared, and as we live in different countries, it was pretty easy to stay on my own, and out of MHW. Eventually, Veteran managed to tell me that Max had had an argument with his family before logging on to play with us. Understanding that, all was forgiven.
Things went back to normal after that, and I eventually reached MR 100 and faced off against Ruinerg in the Guiding Lands. Once again, I was terrified, and just built my setup to be able to just survive against the Durian of Doom. My setup was Urugaan and Nargacuga armour for Guard Up and Spare Shot with my Safi Spread HBG. Full shields on that thing.
I killed Ruinerg without carting. It felt good. Like I'd triumphed over something that I'd struggled long and hard against.
In many ways, I'd done just that, but I didn't feel like I was the Hunter I thought I was before. I wasn't some guy who could storm through the game, slaying monsters left and right like so many others. And after the reality set in that my skill level was 'bad' to 'mediocre', that began to sting.
Seeing all the amazing things that other Hunters shared here and on Youtube, I began to feel that even my best, I just couldn't begin to compare with them. They were like gods, soaring through the sky before landing hits on monsters that would always result in knockdowns and a proper ass-whooping. And then there was me, a peasant who dragged their Longsword and HBG through the dirt as they stumbled their way forwards. Someone who couldn't even hope to get to their level.
I'm not saying this to bring down those amazing people. They've put in a lot of hard work to get to where they've got. To do all those amazing things, it likely took hours. And they deserve to celebrate their accomplishments. It's just that for someone like me, who struggles to even survive some fights, it's... demoralising to see.
After a few months, Alatreon came out. And that was a struggle.
I don't know how many times I tried to solo Ala. I always carted after his second Escaton, and that was even if I managed to do enough elemental damage on him to survive both, as well as breaking his horns.
He didn't scare me the same way that Nergigante or Ruinerg did. There wasn't any peer pressure to his fight. Everyone struggled with it, and after a few months, I'd resigned myself to the fact that I just couldn't hunt him solo.
So I went Multiplayer, like I'd become accustomed to doing by then.
After carting the first few runs, where people thought that they could take in blast weapons and everything would be fine, I slowly, slowly improved at the fight. And then, as luck would have it, I managed to take him down with three random Hunters in a lobby, on the last day of the summer holiday before returning to college.
That felt amazing. Utterly amazing.
I know that, so far, this post has mostly made it seem like I dislike MHW. I don't. I like the game. I'm just bad at it. But it's moments like that, where the pain and suffering against a monster and learning a new weapon (Charge Blade) just to take it on are worth it. It's just bliss. And I know that its because of the struggle that makes those victories worth it, but... they're only just worth it. The euphoria that I feel after killing a hard monster is usually barely enough to offset the pain and self-doubt that hits me as I try, fail, try again, and fail.
It's a self-destructive cycle until I finally kill the hard monster. And even then, the kill is mostly because I've gone into multiplayer for help from others. It's never purely my achievement.
The self-doubt and self destructiveness didn't affect my daily life much. It was just when I played. And when things happened that enforced those feelings, it just made me feel like I couldn't bring anything to the table in hunts. I'd never be skilled enough to be wanted. I'd never deal enough damage to be wanted. I'd never be good enough to be wanted. And I just wanted to stop playing, but the game just kept bringing me back to face more, and occasionally have some personal victory.
There was an time like that where Max asked me to come and play with him in a Safi'jiiva lobby. However, when I got there, there were no free slots. I asked Max to switch lobbies so we could play together. He replied by saying that the host of the lobby was a good one who kicked people who weren't doing the Safi Siege, making the lobby valuable enough to stay in.
He picked the certainty of having a good host, good Hunters, and more rewards over me. It stung, and I felt cheated somehow, but I... understood his logic, at least, even though it made me feel wretched.
Then there were other times where I messed up in hunts and Max yelled at me. Times like not detonating the Barrel Bombs while a monster was asleep because I thought that another Hunter had gone back to camp for more explosives. Times where I didn't do something as Max wanted me to. Times when I was just trying to do my best.
I reached my limit a little after Fatalis came out. Max didn't want to play with me the times when I pretty much begged him for help. I couldn't do enough damage to win the fight solo, and multiplayer was just asking for cartfests. Max did one Fatalis hunt with me. Just one. Then he went off to do something else as I crafted two pieces of its armour.
Another day, I asked for Max's help with Fatalis again so that I could finish the armour set and get the Longsword. Max said, and I quote, "I don't want to play with people who can't pull their own weight."
That hurt me far more than he realised. I felt useless. That I couldn't do anything right. That I'd never amount to a good Hunter, no matter what gear or how much practise I had.
Depressed and upset, I had to ask Veteran for help to get the entire armour set and the fully upgraded Longsword. The few other kills I had were with random people and lucking out.
I don't play with Max any more. His yelling and need to have the highest damage numbers and shortest hunt he could get are just... too much for me. We're still good friends, but I just can't play like he does. I can't take it any more.
I'm not saying that Max is a jerk, even if he might come off that way by what I've written, and I don't want people to see him that way. He's just a min-maxer who's way too competitive.
So yeah, now we've reached where I am now. AT Velkhana is... around. I'm still not too great at the game, despite trying my best. I'd class myself as 'alright' to 'kinda good' nowadays.
I like making builds that are just odd, ridiculous, and/or funny, like seeing how much 'overcrit' I can do (around 240%, I think), having resistances to every status effect I can, and having a sword that doesn't require sharpening, even though its damage isn't too good. They're not meta by any means, but I like them, and that's what counts.
I still love Monster Hunter: World, even after the everything that it's put me through. That sense of being transported there is still with me, even after I've accepted that I'll never be the best Hunter out there. While looking at the cool and amazing stuff that other people do hurts... I try to bear it. And to those people, don't stop being brilliant Hunters, even though it hurts. You're all inspirations to new members of the 5th Fleet.
I thank MHW:I for the positives it's given me while playing it, even though there's been a lot of negative. I thank it for Bazelgeuse, and his tendency to buddy up with me on hunts. You're always welcome, B52. As a kaiju fan, I thank it for the awesomeness of the Zorah Siege, even though a lot of other people don't like it. I thank it for displaying 'Part Broken' after I stabbed Fatalis in the balls (I wish I'd screenshotted it). And despite the negatives... I thank it for making me a more better person.
To end this rather long post about my personal experience, I just want to end off with this. Over the Christmas holiday, Veteran posed me with a challenge to help with my fear of Nergigante. He said that after learning and improving since High Rank, get High Rank gear and go try the fight again.
I did. Except, to prove to myself that I was good at the game, I tried each weapon type against him (all High Rank), even though I'd never even touched Insect Glaive, Bow, Gunlance, and Sword and Shield, and had very little experience with Greatsword, Switch Axe, and Hammer.
Every time, I managed to kill him, only carting when I got greedy. With Longsword, the weapon that I now main, I killed him in under 5 minutes. That may not seem too great to some of you, but it was what truly showed me how far I've come.
To Capcom, Monster Hunter: World (and Iceborne)... Thank you. For everything. And to everyone who's kept reading until now, thanks for just letting me get this off my chest and understanding. I've needed this for a long time now, and now I've finally done it... I feel much better.

Is there anyway I can crash the display drivers of intel hd 2500 ?I am using a dell optiplex 3010 from 2013 for gaming because my parents refuse to buy me a GPU or a simple processor upgrade because they know I will be playing video games on it. I don`t play video games on my pc for more than 2 hours per day because I don`t get much time after getting done with my studies still my dad thinks that I am not supposed to play games because I am studying in a university now and I am not acting according to my age. The worst part is that I cannot use one of those golden excuses like "hqhqhq dad video editing keliye RTX 2080 important hai" I am a first year law student. I am running out of games to play on my potato pc and this is the only hobby I have, I used to play Black Ops 2 on 150 ping during glory days of cod when the game had a decent player base but then it became unplayable because of hackers, then I switched to battlefield 4 (the game ran on 20-25 fps) had a blast playing it but soon SEA servers went offline and now in 2020 the game is unplayable because only servers with decent ping have operation locker 24/7 and the servers with DLC maps have decent player count after 1 AM. Currently I am playing games on a cloud gaming platform called The gaming project but I can only play warzone and watchdogs 2 on it because they don`t have good library support because they are still in beta.
Again I am asking if you guys know any method I can use to crash my intel hd driver or trigger any error which won`t kill my entire pc (because if my pc dies dad will buy me a 35k laptop which will be hundred times worse than my current setup) but will be enough to convince my dad to buy me a GT 1030 at least. This may sound stupid I know I am not so well read about computers but seriously this is getting frustrating day by day I am tired of playing skyrim for the 25th time, I have beaten halo 2 and halo reach on legendary, finished dark souls 1 and 2. I just want to convince my dad to buy me a gpu decent enough so that I can play at least dark souls 3 and halo 4 on 30 fps.
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Edit : money is not the problem here, getting a greenlight from my dad to buy a gpu is the problem. Every time I say gaming is my only hobby I get slapped with a "gaming karni h kyu hai , you are 18 now try painting or singing for a hobby"

(Obligatory wall of text ahead since I'll be talking about a bit of SEA's history in the League scene.)
It's been a little bittersweet for me watching Worlds this year as a Filipino/Southeast Asian fan, who has been somewhat semi-casually supporting SEA/PH teams since Season 1's Pacific Esports (Philippines) from the first World Championship Series.
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I always just lurk around leagueoflegends and almost never post at all, but since there's almost no Southeast Asian representation on the Worlds stage this year, I felt like I should let the world on Reddit in on a glimpse of our humble region's past as a fan, and how it feels to be a SEA fan now during Season 10 Worlds. No one really remembers the bottom-barrel teams in tournaments, but having our region centered around being a wildcard since our existence makes for an interesting timeline.
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As we've been around since the first season of League, getting our region handed to us first even before China and Korea, SEA has, needless to say, been through a lot since the start but we've always had somewhat of a sad storyline. I've personally been almost through it all as a SEA fan--
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•With how the first World Championship crown for Garena Pro League regions was bestowed upon Taipei Assassins as the best GPL representative in Season 2, which our SEA teams got absolutely dominated by, and therefore separating a line between SEA and the LMS as regions because they're just that good compared to all of us then.
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(In the first place, they were only pitted against us because Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macao, and the whole of Southeast Asia all had the pleasure of our games being hosted by Garena through their League of Legends client in our respective countries, and not Riot themselves.)
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•With how the Philippines somehow managed to get by the favorites in Singapore Sentinels (who were runners-up to ahq in the GPL) through a separate 2013 Worlds Regional Qualifier for SEA teams, despite sending Mineski (PH's second seed who consisted of mainly DOTA 1 players at the time), to represent a lone SEA region onto Season 3 Worlds because our first place PH seed had issues getting to the offline qualifier held in Vietnam. It was probably to the surprise of no one that they went 0-8 in their group.
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•With how SEA teams were outclassed heavily in the last year for GPL with TW/HK/Macao teams in 2014, inevitably getting crushed by the likes of AHQ and TPA one last time, undoubtedly having them represent LMS/SEA as the undisputed best teams we have. Although to their credit, Vietnam's teams were a close second even then to the (3) Taiwanese teams present in the GPL. But we still sent two out of three LMS teams because they were just that stronger as shown in the regular split and the regional qualifiers.
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•With how we got separated from the LMS in 2015 because the LMS deservedly was given their own separate region from us, sending the Bangkok Titans (Thailand) directly to Worlds 2015, who were actually one of the best teams SEA had at the time, to only get stomped on at Worlds as wildcards that never won any games in that tournament. Safe to say cementing SEA as the "losingest" region present at Worlds then yet again, since the other wildcard team in Brazil's Pain Gaming at least managed to get two significant wins for their region.
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•With how in 2016, our best SEA wildcard team in Saigon Jokers (Vietnam) who have always established themselves as a powerhouse within SEA, lost every game they played in the International Wildcard Qualifier to make it to Worlds 2016, marking the first time since the first season that SEA had no presence whatsoever at Worlds. At least the LMS, alone, had been doing great then.
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•With how there was a resurgence in 2017 within Vietnamese teams since 2017 GPL Spring, ultimately giving us the best SEA representation since our humble beginnings at both 2017 MSI and Worlds, putting SEA back on the map, and establishing us as the absolute best wildcard region of that year. So much so that we unthinkably had (2) teams (albeit all-Vietnamese) represent us as a region at Worlds. It was absolutely mind-blowing to me as a fan at the time. Even I, as a Filipino, was so happy for Vietnam's League scene and naturally for SEA LoL as a whole.
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Vietnam had shown up so huge for the whole of Southeast Asia in 2017 that for the first time as a SEA fan, it felt like we were so close to the LMS and other major regions, who've we've only known up until then to be some untouchable gods we could never be above of.
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•With how the next year in 2018, the VCS was established as a stand-alone region for Vietnam, and suddenly GPL was left without Taiwan and Vietnam. Leaving only Thailand, the Philippines, Malaysia, Singapore, and barely Indonesia within it. I was honestly happy for Vietnam that League had grown so strong within their own country, but unfortunately for what's left our scene, we were left without a competitive representative. SEA was reduced to being a bottom-barrel play-in region yet again.
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In that year, Thailand's Ascension was undoubtedly the best SEA team we had, but SEA fans were left to wake up to the reality that we were just not good enough internationally on our own yet. But even after play-ins, at least for me, I could still smile at incredible showings played by the VCS and LMS, who were doing so well without us.
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•With how in 2019, I honestly ended up not watching as much of the games for the new League of Legends SEA Tour (LST), and the view count in official streams for the games showed, at least for me, that other SEA fans are just not as passionate as they used to be. It was also around this time that the Mobile Legends revolution really kicked in within Southeast Asia, notably Indonesia and the Philippines. It was still fun to at least see Thailand being really competitive in our scene though, ultimately representing us in MSI and Worlds. They've put up a great fight and at least we had some small wins in as a region.
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It also was still a delight to see the VCS become this new beast of a region that they're able to go toe-to-toe with the best teams in the world as legit contenders. At the same time, I was personally shocked at how the LMS had such a big fall from grace. It was truly a time to be alive as somebody who's been there since GPL was a thing, but it was also just as melancholic to me as it felt like we were reduced to just mere thousands as fans at best, compared to what we were before collectively. Maybe it's because Vietnam had become what the LMS was to all of us all those years ago, with both being long separated from what's left of SEA. This, on top of the decline of our players as opposed to former years and some language barriers.
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•And now, with 2020. It was announced the previous year that what's left of SEA would be combined with the LMS again like how it was with GPL back then except without Vietnam this time. Personally it was like getting announced that what's left of SEA would be overshadowed by the LMS again. It was still fine though, because maybe this way our teams would become better through consistently playing with Taiwanese teams who are just undeniably better than them.
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Though it's the saddest year for the Southeast Asian League of Legends scene to date when there's no MSI to be had, on top of our Vietnamese brothers not having any representatives at Worlds with the way their situation panned out for them. The LMS may still be here for Worlds as the PCS, but the spirit of SEA really isn't.
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PCS being the LMS and LST-SEA as it may, there's still a visible disconnection from SEA fans and the LMS. Hell, so much so that I don't even know which stream I should say "Good luck, Taiwan! Win it for all of us in SEA!" that genuine Taiwanese fans could read it. It's lonely. But I guess we were never really "like that" to begin with. Even with Vietnam at times over the years. EU looks so peaceful with how their region is doing compared to us and it's a little sad that we couldn't be as structured as them as a region. The line of what's considered to be "Southeast Asian League of Legends" is getting more blurry as the years go by.
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It's fun to imagine if this happened to other regions. What if Denmark became their own stand-alone region in EU? Or maybe if Canada represented their own region in NA? Imagine what would happen then, now try adding a language barrier to that situation. It's really been sucky and empty for some of us in SEA right now, but only time will tell if things could change for us.
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But even so, I'll still be here watching however which way we are represented so that Southeast Asian League of Legends would still be alive no matter what. I just posted this so the world could see a glimpse of our region's storyline over the years as a "region". This post was written with only a little bit of researching to jog my memory with what happened to SEA over the years, so please feel free to correct me or share some memorable moments I may have missed. But I still remember most of our history vividly. I'm just one guy in SEA, I couldn't possibly know everything that went down in all of our regional qualifiers that are casted in different languages at times. Though I really hope to be a part of more whatever it is we are in the future.
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Shoutout to Vietnam, I really hope your region would be up there on the world stage next time. It goes without saying that the rest of SEA know you'll do great in the future.
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Also shoutout to our PCS teams in PSG Talon and Machi Esports. We hope you win it for all of us in SEA, and thank you for making our teams stronger throughout the years! Fantastic first day for PSG demolishing LGD, by the way!
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Lastly, shoutout to the next generation of players and fans in Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia (yes, even you despite losing your server), Singapore, and the Philippines. Let's all also do our best for our region. I hope we can all grow closer as a region. Mabuhay, you old magnificent bastards.
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TL;DR: Vietnam isn't at Worlds, and only SofM really is. The LMS overshadows what's left of SEA because they're that much better than our teams, but that's okay because they've been with us since the beginning as GPL (and now as PCS), and should PSG Talon or Machi win Worlds, technically SEA would be part of a two-time World Champion status but Vietnam won't be counted then haha.

The same old story, with another frustrating experience after so much promise.
After being throughly impressed with AMD's Ryzen performance, with the 3000 series launch, I'd had been curious about trying the Radeon division experience. With an opportunity opening up in my production PC for a used GPU; I reached out and secured a Radeon VII at a fair price. Now even the seller noted severe issues with his ability to use the GPU due to driver support issues, but I figured that with some work I'd get my desired workstation GPU.
Cut to Monday, build assembled, and it looks great. The specs are as follows.
3900X Radeon VII 32 GB GSkill (3200 MHz) Gigabyte X570 Master Seasonic 850W Titanium PSU 3TB of Storage (1TB M.2, 2TB SATA SSD)
Initial impressions were good. Found the latest drivers, installation went flawlessly and the desktop had no issues. The Radeon software looks amazing, and the desktop has no issues. All I needed to do was play a few games to make sure everything works, and its all good to go.
Trial doesn't even last 10 seconds. I open my test game of choice (World of Tanks) and I can even get to my garage to test. The game crashes upon launch and won't display anything past the login. Additional games yield the same results. Age of Empires DE, TF2, Rage 2, nothing. The most up to date drivers from AMD (Dec20) can't even run, a single game.
Alright, disappointing but I've got some fix actions in mind. So, since the PC had NVIDIA GPUs on it at one point, ill run an offline safe mode DDU and reinstall the drivers. No dice. I spent the following days trying
-Using the Base Windows Drivers that are installed when no others are available -Using older drivers throughout 2020 -Running offline with no drivers installed
The only "functional" test is with no drivers at all. Which at test tells me that the hardware is functional. Just to make sure, I check in on idle temps, clocks, fan usage, and utilization. All are within normal operating parameters. Finally, with options running low, I try a hail mary and get some results. I manually find drivers from July 2019 and for the first time, I can get a few games to run seminormally.
Now when I say results, I mean half the games will run somewhat well and the other still just instantly crash. Productivity is still a mess as the card refuses to begin boosting, or even go beyond idling. With everything said and done, I still barely have a PC thanks to abysmal driver support. I can understand non-optimal, but how does AMD justify having 0 ability to use a 700 dollar product thats just under 2 years old? NVIDIA has been supporting their 900 series GPUs (From 2014) and at the very least they will run games.
If anyone has any recommendations, I'm all ears at this point; becuase I'm basically stuck with a metal/plastic brick, waiting to be used if only AMD cared enough to get things running again. The company has worked wonders with Ryzen but it looks like Radeon is still stuck back in the mid 2010's when it comes to basic functionality.
Edit: Even after going through the gauntlet of troubleshooting and taking the card apart, there is still no signs of anything being out of place minus the driver supportability.
https://i.imgur.com/DZI0dqs.jpg
Everything is there; pads, mounting pressure, transitors, everything checks out on the hardware. If only AMD would bother with the software.

now I dont bring up such outrageous speculation, but GungHo recently said a quote that teases 2021 announcement. First here are facts: 1. GungHo created Hokuto no Ken Online for PC back then. very underrated and underappreciated by the eastern masses, but practically the perfect mmorpg for FOTNS fans. 2. GungHo confirms their next project is a new console title 3. Their official quote teasing that new console game is "Do your best and let destiny handles the rest." https://www.gematsu.com/2020/12/famitsu-interviews-japanese-creators-on-2021-ambitions now what series is skull deep into destiny theme? Fist of the North Star!!!!!!
perhaps they could have developed a sequel/reboot to the HNK Online mmorpg and produce an updated game with better graphics? though I would purchase/subscribe to it even if its the original graphics/gameplay. like really HNKOnline's gameplay hasn't been topped. its the best way to make FOTNS themed mmorpg work right.
there's practically no other IP that GungHo can get ahold of that could generate as much interest like a remastered or successor to FOTNS. and hey, maybe they reworked it into a single player game while retaining the character creation and openness of the original. or maybe its offline and online modes. though its likely an mmorpg. PS4 has several mmorpgs, so its the greatest market for all kinds of games in the industry overall.
of course its speculation but I think with the recent FOTNS Lost Paradise game, GungHo may find it to be good timing to bank on the PS4 and PS5 masses. PC doesn't appreciate HNKO so it does deserve a chance on PS4+PS5 consoles.
Mobile Suit Gundam Operation 2 is doing highly well for a free to play game with pay 2 win microtransactions, I think HNKO on PS4 could become the best place for FOTNS fans to hand out and kick ass.
if you check their games history list, the only game that has ties with the word destiny is Hokuto no Ken.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/GungHo_Online_Entertainment https://hokuto.fandom.com/wiki/Hokuto_no_Ken_Online
if FF XIV could be rebuilt and do well, think a new FOTNS mmorpg could do well in PS4 market.
the only other game/series/IP that they might be referring to is Shin Megami Tensei IMAGINE (which did VERY well and lasted about 7 years), which I think they also published, but with Dx2 not sure if Sega would approve of a new/remastered SMT mmorpg.
it might also be an original game, but if GungHo aims to become more noticed globally, think its either gotta be a FOTNS mmorpg or SMT mmorpg. there's no other game that would draw as much interest compared to those two (unless they plan a Persona mmorpg? nah, that would be madness.)

I really enjoyed reading the year in review-posts from everyone last year, so throughout 2020 I wrote down mini reviews of each game I finished to do the same! Although I only played 11 games, it was more than I had played in the last few years. So here are the reviews with date of completion (mandatory spoiler warning)!
1. Super Metroid (Switch, 1/3)
A tough but very rewarding game to finish. More than the bosses, finding the correct routes was hard and I had to consult some walkthroughs to help me out (much to my shame). One real flaw to the game is Samus's 'heavy' physics, making me miss a lot of jumps and die a lot. But as I played this on the Switch I had the rewind option, saving me a lot of time redoing whole sections. Overall an enjoyable game with tons of replay value, but mainly because the first playthrough is so tough you wanna do it redo it properly.
2. Ori and the Blind Forest (Switch, 1/27)
Impulse bought this game after playing the demo and being bedbound all of a sudden. Visually stunning, and the movement was rather innovative to me. However - and maybe this is just the Switch - but Ori did not feel responsive all the time; I died a lot to non-perfectly timed jumps. Also an issue is the abundance of enemies, which was more a personal eyesore because I wanted to get all the jumps right without having to worry about dying. Worth it even just for the aesthetic.
3. Pokémon X (3DS, 1/31)
This is the only main Pokémon game that I could not play immediately after release. Just based on expectations I didn't think very highly of the game - I still dislike the switch to 3D - but I had to take a lot of that back. The region is pretty and quite big, it was overall nice to travel through the cities and routes. While the overworld music was surprisingly good, the battle themes you're most exposed to were pretty lackluster. There were also some other things that weren't exactly flaws, but I stylistically found them 'meh'. In hindsight, I don't really remember this game.
4. Titanfall 2 (PC, 3/2)
As an avid Apex player this was sort of a must, but it was always on my list ever since I saw the trailer back in 2016. The movement is *chef's kiss*. I could just double jump and wall run for days, it feels so smooth! The campaign was fast and smooth and has plenty of replay value just for the movement, although I wish the story was longer. I am not really into multiplayer modes so I didn't play much of it, especially since matchmaking was quite bad. The multiplayer matches I played were fun, but I would still mostly recommend this game for the single-player fun you can have.
5. Pokémon Sword + DLC (Switch, 4/26)
Not really patient gamer but I want to mention it anyhow because of all the noise surrounding it. Personally, I think there's a more glaring issue than the graphics and that's a design flaw. In Swsh they chose to put all important facilities (item trading, breeding, TMs, etc) in one big zone. Although this is good for convenience (mainly of competitive players), it breaks the whole idea of having a full world as there is no reason for players to ever visit the other cities except during the first playthrough. I want to be able to do things in the cities - they're so well-designed! It's almost a waste that Motostoke and Hammerlocke look so good.
I'm still trying to figure out why I don't pick up this game all the time. With no reason to venture anywhere but the Wild Areas, the game became much less interesting? I'm not interested in doing any of the regular postgame things (dex completion, competitive breeding) and I feel 'done' very quickly whenever I do play a bit. I think GameFreak tried and succeded at being innovative in some areas, but the game is too unpolished for me to enjoy.
6. Mirror's Edge (PC, 5/1)
This game deserves major credits for having me want to play this almost 10 years after seeing the boxart. I've only grown to love futuristic cityscapes over time and this game absolutely delivered on that: Stunning colours, almost sterile in a way that fits the story, and for once this is a futuristic story that takes place in daylight. Movement was wonderful, but sometimes I didn't buy that Faith could make certain jumps, or believed she could when instead she fell to death. You kinda have to 'learn' what jumps and manouvres are possible at what exact moment, which limits the idea of 'true' parkour. Combat sucks ass and I wish there was a way to 100% remove any enemies and just run around. Story didn't deliver really, but I heard a lot of it got scrapped halfway through, leaving us with more of a prequel than an actual story. Highly recommend for the gameplay.
7. Tekken 7 (PC, 5/15)
Last Tekken I played was 5, and I really enjoyed the story mode it had on there. So I was extremely disappointed to learn Tekken 7's story is a short main campaign, and loose battles for each character not part of that campaign. They did a cool job at making the campaign all cinematic, but I wished it was much longer. There is very little offline content though: Why is Arcade mode only 5 rounds instead of 9? Why is Treasure mode the only thing they offer to offline players? I don't enjoy PvP Tekken at all, but the game is pretty much designed to get you online ASAP. Another odd issue I had was that my button input was being read incorrectly by the game, which made it very hard for me to land the right combos so I gave up on that. Along with predatory DLC, this game is a serious letdown.
8. This War of Mine: Complete Edition (Switch, 6/28)
Impulsively bought during a daily sale after reading the premise. When I fininshed it only DLC 1 was available, but the other two are available now. This game delivers exactly on its promise, and it made me wonder why such a game hasn't been made before (to my knowledge!). The game is very successful in creating that terrifying and thick atmosphere of being able to die at any moment, either due to illness, starvation, or murder. There's a lot of diversity in how to handle your campaign, with different levels of risk-reward. For once I actually felt very bad about stealing from people: Just like you they are stuck in a horrid situation, but you are forced to guarantee your own survival first.
The game is quite long, lasting 30-40 days before the war is over. After understanding the mechanics it becomes easier to survive, but the first few times were absolute hell. In one of my playthroughs I had a child who suffered extreme trauma, and being reminded of that every day without being able to help... That was extremely painful and discomforting. The end of DLC 1's story hit just as hard.
There were some control issues (e.g. not knowing when you really hit someone, accidentally confirming certain actions), but they didn't take away from the whole experience. I not only recommend this game, I think it should be mandatory material for people to understand what war really feels like.
9. Pokémon Colosseum (GC, 7/19)
If this were not Pokémon I would have dropped it in a few days, because man this was horrible to finish. I wrote a rant post about it in this sub when I completed it, and my complaints are mostly the same: Monotonous, stressful catching mechanism, steep level curves without indication that the curve is incoming, and fixed saving locations at horrid places. The biggest issue is just that I started this game totally blind and didn't construct a team that would really help me. Perhaps I should've restarted, becuase instead I bit through this game for 1.5 months, most of my time spent on goddamn grinding just enough that my team wouldn't die at every single level increase. Maybe if there's a Switch rerelease that speeds up the game I may replay it, but for now hell no.
10. Secret Little Haven (PC, 8/22)
Got this game from the itch.io BLM bundle. You play as someone finding out they're actually a trans girl, and the interactions she has in these few days that make her realise this. I could really appreciate the pre-2000s 'old internet' aesthetic, it reminded me of my own forum days (although those were in 2010). There's a lot of interactive prompts that tell you more about the MC's personality and what her life looks like, and her whole demeanour when chatting feels very accurate for someone that age. The game alternates between taking to friends and talking to the MC's dad, and the terrifying tone shift is so representative of the oppressive feeling children experience when they cannot be honest with their parents. When they know they are abusive and will spin everything to their liking. Because of this, the ending felt very empowering.
Overall it was a short but sweet experience that reminded me of my own teenage years online. It was a reminder on the importance of online friendships, how much of a sanctuary online forums and certain media can offer, and the fear of people judging you for the things you like. The puzzle in the latter bit of the game was quite hard, and the UI kind of acted weird for me at some point, but I recommend this to anyone who wants to feel a bit nostalgic or wants a story about trans experiences.
11. Neo Cab (Switch, 10/30)
Initially played the demo in January but I held off buying it until it was discounted. I knew from the start I'd enjoy this game: It's futuristic, cyberpunk (like actually), and deals with a very pressing and relevant societal issue. Neo Cab provides incredibly accurate and relevant criticism of how we handle modern-day technology, and I'm thoroughly surprised that it managed to convey many of today's problems through a futuristic setup I didn't think twice about.
The ending actually deals with an issue that is separate from the main story, and it's quite cathartic to get the ending right. The actual cabbing job can be a bit punishing, but there's plenty of different conversations you could be having. The conversations are about more than just technology but and it's absolutely worth it to read these for yourself. I haven't played such a thought-provoking game in a long time.
Dropped:

1. Dragonball Xenoverse 2 (final verdict: I hate 3D DBZ-games)
2. Pokémon XD: Gale of Darkness (I'm not going through hell again)
3. Metroid Prime Trilogy (tragically, every version of these games is nausea-inducing)

Currently playing:

1. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (almost don't want it to end)
2. Shadowrun: Hong Kong (really enjoying it as a 'two hour per session'-game)

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Final verdict:
Although I didn't have much time to play after January, I feel like I finally got into the gaming flow again after many years of only playing one game a year. Half of the games I tried out this year were some of the most relevant games of my backlog, so it feels like I made relevant progress finally. Highlights of the year were This War of Mine and Neo Cab, 'lowlights' this year were Tekken 7 and Metroid Prime. Pokémon Sword hurts me a bit; I wanted it to be good, but they made some odd choices throughout it all.
This year I will first finish my ongoing things, and after that I don't know what I'll play! Whatever I feel like at that moment I think.