=VII.Assertion of the Adherent= (Fan Creations)

by INSANEdrive, ಥ_ಥ | f(ಠ‿↼)z | ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ| ¯\_(ツ)_/¯, Sunday, April 03, 2022, 15:34 (747 days ago) @ INSANEdrive

Audacia pro muro et scuto opus.

~ Boldness is our wall, action is our shield.

(||LAST COUNT||: Approx. 2482 Words | +/- 22 min. read | About: Blind Gameplay Play-by-Play.)
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This next essay is one-half a retelling and one-half a collection of thoughts. A recollection of my best raid "adventures", often performed blind on both sides of contest mode. While I begin with a step-by-step account of my experience in the "Vow of the Disciple" raid, please keep in mind that this retelling is also my, for the time being, ONLY experience. The moment my teams' established days of blind raiding ended, ALL OF THIS... what you're reading here and more, began.

And so then... LET US TRAVEL BACK! 5th of March, 2022. (Feel free to skip this first one.)

AND WE'RE OFF! The six of us jump into that howling Unknown; BlazeRunner1084, bluerunner, INSANEdrive (hey! that's me!), Kermit7, Pyro, and for last, BUT MOST CERTAINLY NOT LEAST, the FORUM LEGEND, from whom NEEDS NO INTRODUCTION, but whose sheer presence REQUIRES IT ALLLLLLL THE SAME! "Squiiii-dee" squidNH3!

*Fan Girl Screams* :P lol.

Our first run through the "payload" phase was successful. Which, as it just so happens, leads to a question; if the run was successful, why was it the first? In my case, a guitar error. We were all kicked to orbit. Unfortunately, not the only raid group to experience such networking difficulties.

We're currently investigating connection issues in the Vow of Disciple raid, including ANTEATER, GUITAR, and BAT error codes. Stay tuned for updates.

— Bungie Help (@BungieHelp) March 5, 2022

We are currently investigating a rise in error codes and server instability.

Players who do not own a Destiny 2 Season or Expansion will begin to see a sign-on queue.

— Bungie Help (@BungieHelp) March 5, 2022

Curiously, when we jumped back in, we found that there was no checkpoint. BUT THEN! We got hit with another error halfway through our second run! We tweaked our load-outs a touch in the hopes that fewer orbs and wells being spawned would help our connection issues, and jumped back into... a checkpoint?!

As you may have guessed, it wasn't the first time we were kicked.

(Scroll down a little more, under this video below.)

I'm still not too sure how that happened, but I'm happy about it! It took us a few moments to figure out where to go next, but once we found the hole in the ground with the SIZEABLE fall distance, we were on our way, breaths held in a marvel of the scope and halls of which we aimlessly wondered about. Wow! Is this place big! Is it fair to say that I haven't seen this sort of scale in a Bungie game since Halo? Forerunners, in particular. As we wondered around, looking to find where the next part of the raid took place, we finally found... something? Vaguely obvious, but on the same coin, not 100% sure, we found ourselves in (what I'm calling) the "Distraction Phase" of our blind run. All we knew was that something in this room was interactive, had a puzzle element in a hidden room, and... well, that was enough.

Like a moth to light, we poked at what it could be with our faces.

*dink* ... *dink* ...*dink* ... *dink* ...*dink* ... *dink* ...*dink* ...

There was a silver lining to our toddler like curiosity on the first interactive thing we found, as we were able to learn what the proper names of each symbol were, instead of pure ad-lib. That's not saying that we all got it 1-to-1 right away (and even I blanked out every now and again), which, of course, resulted in some very imaginative call outs. The best one of the night (courtesy of bluerunner, yes... that was the warning);

Ascendant Plane = Two Jellyfish Fucking.

(Thanks for that mental image, Blue.)

Meanwhile, it seems that basically EVERYONE immediately understands the grief one. SO... .

Anyway, the clip above doesn't show everything, as I realized we were going to be in that room for awhile before someone pushed us out (*whispers* thanks Squid). I'm guessing here, but we must have burned about 20 minutes in that room. Valuable time! We could have used the extra opportunities to fail in the actual encounter! Again and again on...

Edited for time.

This part. This part right here. This is where we would live for almost the entirety of the 48-hour Contest Mode. It must have been AT LEAST 7 hours. EASY! And I'm probably underselling the estimate. This part we did, again and again and again and again and again and again and again. By the way, you'll see me leave in this clip above, as to use the D.I.M Build function, you need to be in orbit or at the tower. Grumble grumble if only in game you could grumble.

As the day progressed to evening and evening pushed into the deepest of the night, our collective fatigue started to really show, myself included. I hope I didn't scare anyone with my sudden impulse to sing folk songs! :D

We were exhausted. Not just by seeing THE SAME THING, LOOPED OVER, Again... and... Again, but MOST OF ALL, I feel, in that WE JUST. COULDN'T. SEEM. To SOLVE the DARN Obelisk.

It seemed like we had done ALL THE EVERYTHINGS we could muster, and SOMEWHERE. Something, some aspect, this ONE thing eluded us. That's not saying we knew we were missing one "thing-to-do." Instead, it was more, where we understood everything ELSE, we did not understand what the missing trigger was.

Flummoxed and tired, we decided it would be best to reset and rest up. As a result, we would FINALLY get this part done on "Day Two" of three.

(Contest Mode is still on.)

While there were a few things that hooked us here and then, such as an early fascination with what mechanic was operating the doors, and the significance of the Taken "Disciple's Compass," there were two things that really snagged and prolonged what was otherwise solved: Glow Amount. And Timing.

We observed when shooting the Obelisk, sometimes one symbol would glow. Sometimes the WHOLE column, the WHOLE THING would glow. Which is which? Is more "Glow" good or bad? That took up time, even after I suggested we fail on purpose. Why? Well, because of the one thing that can screw up even THE BEST of well made plans. Timing, ever a magical thing. The rest is simply human.

Even when it seemed that everything had been done right, we just couldn't seem to make ONE BLASTED offering phase happen successfully. This meant that doubts would mix vigorously, as finding what was wrong took time. I don't recall the steps and happenstance observations we came about to lead us to the conclusion that would end up being the answer, but at one point we were able to finally get it right. Only one Obelisk is correct, and you need to shoot the correct symbols on each side AT THE SAME TIME.

This is what we missed the day before, by the way. Our attempts were too casual, messy, and slow, perhaps in part due to fatigue. Once we got "THE SAME TIME" in, we solved the puzzle, and this would be the only part that gives out loot that we would be able to complete during Contest mode.

We would get to "The Collector" next, but Contest mode would DPS check us.

Thus, we rested...

...DAY THREE...

... and would come back on with Contest mode now turned off. With myself and Blaze being, apparently, as quick as a flash with the Obelisk, we were able to quickly and properly DPS to beat "The Collector." We only did the third stage twice, I think? Three tops. Considering we're STILL blind, that was pretty cool. I was pretty happy about that, anyway. ^_^

At the next encounter, time would claim the evening. My blind raid group would not be able to finish the next encounter before we had to go our separate ways due to a hard deadline in the group. Something about "Sleep" and "Work" or whatever. But I think we've gotten quite far. We just couldn't seem to pull off the third room in time. But, I did capture this cool moment with bluerunner just before we had to go. :D

And... that was my blind team's experience in the raid!

So what did I think of what I saw? What I experienced? I look forward to future playthroughs! But then again, of course I do! As this raid's core mechanic involves visual recall, there may be some unavoidable bias on my part. It's kind of like how fish are addicted to water due to the whole "moving" and "breathing" thing. I naturally know what to do, and I do it well.

Here is a visual metaphor of how I felt, in so many words, when I realized the core portion of this raid relied on visual recall:

In other words, childs play. As a result of what "should be" an added effort being instead so effortless for me, even during contest mode, I found that I could get a lot more enjoyment than I usually do in blind runs, even with the fatigue! I was able to relax more and thus enjoy the experience more. As I haven't BEATEN the raid, I can't say for purely certain how highly ranked this will be for me. But as this raid gives me more options than "and I'll run DPS" (so I don't F* everything up ._.), there are good odds it'll be high on my list.

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Quick side tangent! I've found the designs in these raid symbols to be fantastic! There are few things more PURE in the "graphical designing arts" then visual iconography. Being able to imply, at a glance, a message that could potentially be understood in any language is -as seems to be the pattern- HARD, and quite so! Not only a message, but readable at any distance! And some topics are harder than others. More abstract. Which is why, in turn, it is no surprise to me that this ONE symbol I'm not particularly a fan of is;

(None of these are thumbnails. No need to click around.)

ENTER. So, I'm not sure what they were going for with this, but to me, it's "Dunce Cap". I'm not sure how this is supposed to imply "going into something". I do not see "enter" in the symbology. Is this supposed to be some kind of arrow? Classically, "enter" is often an arrow or some "half-open door + person" type deal in our public every day. Often it is played with some very basic, but literal idea. Can't really pull that off in a... what shall I say? A vessel for a god, or something?

So again, of all the ones that were to be missed, THIS was going to be the one. It's hard, traditionally. That said, I think, unknown to the goal, the designer got too literal with the idea. The fact that this is to be seen inside the ship gives a whole new dimension to be played with! So, for fun, I whipped up a real quick idea of what may have been better.

Note: these are quick raster (pixel) doodles, not vector (math) drawings.

So, instead of being so literal with "enter", since this is more of a "bad guy" ship or whatever this is in lore, I was thinking of making the visual look more along the lines of "come hither". It's STILL "enter" but with more "foolish mortal" slant. An eerie glow and a mist of darkness. I also have an idea of what this might look like as a vector style, which is what these appear to be plus some raster texturing. Buuuuut, that would have taken more time to figure out correctly than I'd like to give.

I mean, sheesh, do you SEE how big this darn thing ballooned? How much feature creep there is! My brain just can't seem to shut up! AHHH! BRAIN SHUT UP! See? Didn't work. :P

Oh, and one more last second thing. I KNOW I KNOW, the ideas just keep coming. and then I'll get off my tangent.

Look at this. I included these three here, as they're easily mixed up. Note "Witness". On its right, that shape? Zoomed in, would a hand under that shape look like enter? Like a sort of beckoning? Imagine just the door, with a hand (of the witness) under or around the doorway. It seems to me that this might also have worked.

Ok... tangent over. Back to raid stuff.

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As far as blind raids go, and despite all possible bias, this one was more of a test than fun. This is totally due to our just getting completely stalled, and that's a shame, as I did have fun overall, especially with the collector. Unfortunately, with us being so stalled for so long, it meant that not many memories could be made with this one as a result. It was fun playing with y'all folks, make NO DOUBT about that. All of us just absorbing the enormity of the place was pretty sweet It's just something to keep in mind for the next blind run, right?

Obviously, I can't talk about the overall experience in this one as I haven't beaten the raid and thus I have no idea what happens with the boss, start or finish. I do know its name though! Right unavoidable to miss at this point, but that's fine.

In comparison, to show what I mean by memories, "Garden of Salvation" proved to be the best blind raid so far, at least from a "memorable" perspective. If you were in that raid group, you know why.

"PTSD" Warning.

Death Run Try 1 got corrupted somehow. :/

Eventually we would get to the last (though we didn't know it was... for a time this just felt like it would keep on going) part of this stage of the raid. It only took us... 6 1/2 hours, according to video metadata. When we did get to this point, and we all turned and saw ALL THE "Cyclops" turrets, for whom were the Bain of our run, we all just screamed in exasperation - HOLY SHIT! That was Death Run Try 1.

This is Death Run Try 2. Unlike #1, we knew what was coming... and we ran. DEATH! We Screamed. DEATTTH! We Yell'd. DEAAAAAAAAATH!

Well. Third time is the charm right?

(It was.)

While I'm mentioning highlights, I hope the ending of Vow is as solid as the best ending of any raid ever, second only maybe to Kingsfall. If it's not, well, ok... but THIS is the type of stuff I expect from a raid end. THIS kind of thing is COOL!

Bungie that ending is DOPE AF.

"Oh my gosh, I can't believe I read all that."

Is this you? If it is, here is a warning. I don't know when you're reading this, but stuff is about to get real crazy and real weird. You might want to stop for a moment before you dive into INSANITY: Where is the logic?. For this next one, you're just going to have to jump in, and hope you can survive the plunge! Good Luck!