Yeah coordinating my life around a raid in NZ time is even dumber than it sounds. Appreciate the offer, though. I appear to not have Lightfall. I have Shadowkeep. I can't recall if I even made it through it. Black Armory pissed me off - you couldn't use your content unless you could find five friends who all had two hours to kill at the same time. That's when I realized that it is first and foremost a tryhard game and Bungie likes it that way.
Lawd - It's telling that I talked about ping, and didn't even think of the horrid time difference. 2pm Thursday right now, must be evening Wednesday for you? Somehow we made it work, I'm the only Kiwi so I work around their reasonable Aussie schedule, but most of them have kids, partners and.. Lives. So last night was a veritable miracle and I doubt we'll see it again, despite our plans. I hop in and out of the game, I can not play it for a year or two then the group has the urge like we do now. As you say, it's very try-hard and we're old, slow dudes now.
Once upon a time I was in the Old Man Clan. They had a discord and everything. Got to know some of the guys. Then I was unceremoniously kicked. I was offended. Then I used Bungie's API and some of the tools to look up the guys who were running that thing. Guy who booted me? Fifteen thousand hours into Destiny 2. Who knows how many into Destiny. It made everything okay - yeah, you're right. If your baseline is "our players put fifteen thousand hours into a video game" I will never be a contributing member ever ever ever. I have like 250 hours into No Man's Sky across three saves and that's a lot. I had this discussion with the guy who ran the local GameStop. I expected his eyes to bug out. "Nah, man, Destiny is unreal," he said. "People who play Destiny are a breed apart. It's all they do. There are games with intensive fandoms? And then there's Destiny." You know what I just beat? Immortals: Fenyx Rising. You know why? Because it's Skyward Sword without having to spend every fifth evening cooking potions. Your weapons don't break when you use them too much. There are three or four equally-valid play styles, there's a steady but limited power progression, there's an easy-to-fill skills tree and there's four kinds of puzzles that are easy-to-clever which can be explained in a single breath. So apparently I'm not the only truly casual gamer on the planet? But I wonder sometimes. I played like 150 hours of Surviving Mars: "Congratulations it's Sim City with the Andy Weir skin!" Based on that I tried Cities Skylines thinking Sim City was fun, surely Cities Skylines would be similar. Nope. You're LARPing as the damn zoning board.
That does make me feel better about my ~1000 hours into Battlefield V. There was a moment where my teammates and myself were recognized in a lobby and I went from "Heh nice" to "Ah fuck" in about three seconds, as I realized it meant we were the basement dwelling sweatlords. I probably took all my shame out on this poor dude just trying to take the point - https://streamable.com/ijmh91 switch to sidearm for max flex, slide-by, one shot, sorry m8 I'm feeling antsy and you happened to be nearby. Destiny though - you've reminded me of something. Last year, at work, I was a part of making a video documenting the work that goes on in our area. It was a fun side project my boss cooked up. Anyway, the guy brought in to do the video work had a nice jacket on. A jacket with a symbol that looked familiar. The Destiny raid symbol. Turns out he was in a clan that completed a global first raid and got the jacket as a prize (I suspect still cost a pretty penny), and I was keen to talk briefly about Destiny cause I casually enjoyed it. I said "I've finished one raid, with the baths? and the race? That was cool" and you could see the sneer barely hidden from his face. Oh. Oh that's the real Destiny player. Not me popping in once or twice a year to shoot stuff. The guys that breathe it. The guys that have the right weapon for every stage of a raid. Not me, who uses Riskrunner cause I like it and the idea of taking damage to deal more damage tickles me pink.
Yeah Bungie's local around here. So you see a lot of Destiny shirts and swag - I would say every other time I go to the grocery store, I see someone else wearing Destiny shit. Never the same people, never the same shirt twice. So on the one hand - they might be getting paid for it. On the other hand - there be a lot of XBox tryhards up here. Friend of mine's dad actually codes Destiny. So I can bitch and say "why is it that you have made this game unplayable for people who aren't doing it like a side hustle" and she'll say "preachin' to the choir, dude, I don't even log in anymore." They know? But it's like a casino. 80% of your revenue is from 20% of your peepz and the folx showing up with two fingers of scotch on a Thursday evening that bought the expansion 'cuz it was 80% off on the Playstation store? They ain't a profit center. Riskrunner tho. There's a way to stack stormcaller armor where that thing basically ends up with unlimited ammo. Or there was. They probably nerfed it. But yeah it was great you'd do one of those timed events or whatever and you'd load up riskrunner and you'd basically just firehose the shit out of everyone without ever letting up the trigger. I miss Sleeper Simulant.