Smart and Oblivious

While playing Destiny 2 earlier, I found myself in a mission that I had never seen before. Apparently there was a ziggurat that needed to be protected from the Vex and their corrupting energy. It took me far too long to work out what I had to do, and I basically failed the mission a bunch of times because I didn’t get it. I had to get some help on the matter. Alongside that help came a small nugget of embarrassment. How could someone as smart as me not understand that the Vex weren’t allowed near the main structures?

Now, on the one hand, I can be utterly oblivious when it comes to games. Despite the fact that I’m a graphic designer and someone who has a Bachelor of Science, I still manage to get completely and utterly lost inside a video game. And not in a good way. Basic platforming is where I do most of my fucking up, because I always, always overthink things. Also I have a bad habit of misjudging distances, which often means I’ll fuck up the first time I’m presented with any sort of jumping puzzle.

If anything, my own stupidity is part of the reason why I don’t stream. Seeing some British-sounding idiot fail the same jumps over and over doesn’t really bode well for streaming quality. Well, it might, but I’m personally unwilling to try it myself. I also tend to fall silent quite a lot, but that’s unrelated to my gaming skills or lack thereof.

On the other hand though, I don’t think this was entirely my thought. There was no real direction telling me what to do, and very little in terms of UI and all that. What threw me off further though is that, well, I’ve played similar game modes, where you have to stop the enemy from capturing a certain area. Those missions generally tended to have more obvious graphics. Pits that we need to stand on, glowing edges showing ownership and an all-round general look that quickly explains what we need to do. In the case of this “simulated ziggurat” mission, there was very, very little. Sure, there were crystals floating around, but none of them felt responsive, they seemed more like part of the scenery.

Eventually, I worked it out. It was basically a control point mission with a boss at the end. Even then, it still felt unresponsive and poorly explained.

Semi-related, since I normally play Warlock in Destiny 2, I do find the weird hover jump thing a bit tedious to use. And I’ve been told by plenty of people that “Warlock jumps suck ass”. They are kinda right there, but there’s only so many times I can blame a dodgy jump on the fact that I’m a Warlock.

But at the end of the day, they’re all absolutely right. I really am both very smart and very fucking stupid. If only I didn’t just overthink everything. Or underthink everything. I don’t know any more…

I just need to git gud.