Destiny 2, unlike its predecessor, is making a big splash as players prepare to unleash it upon their gaming rigs across the globe. The PC beta is starting this Tuesday, August 29, and one day sooner on August 28 for those who have pre-ordered the game. If you happen to be in the latter group you can start your preloading now.
Just as a reminder, Destiny 2 will be launching through the Battle.net launcher, operated by Blizzard, and not Steam. Activision believes that the launcher will increase player exposure to the game from those who play other Blizzard titles. The code redemption process is a tad bit confusing, so if you find yourself in need of assistance be sure to check both your Battle.net code redemption history, as well as your Bungie redemption history. If that doesn’t work you can always open a support ticket through Blizzard, as I have done many times for World of Warcraft, and they’ll get you sorted.
In addition, Bungie outlined some pertinent information regarding the PC beta in their “This week at Bungie” post. To begin, they uploaded an image containing relevant controls for players who have not played Destiny on PC, namely everyone save for those who have previewed the game at events.
Fear not, however, for these PC key-mappings are entirely customizable, allowing you to match them to your playstyle. And if you were worried about not having an in-game text chat, as all MMO PC games should, you will be able to message players in your Fireteam, as well as whisper. There will be a team channel and the ability to whisper clan members, but it will not be implemented until the full game’s launch.
Bungie also goes on to tell us that Player Support has a doctor’s report regarding possible issues that players may face when trying to take back their light:
- Players may encounter issues when playing the Destiny 2 Beta with drivers that are out of date. Updating drivers to the latest version grants the best experience when playing Destiny 2 on PC.
- The Destiny 2 Beta may not run when installed to a folder with some localized character types in its name (e.g. Greek, Cyrillic, Kanji, etc.). Players should ensure that they install the Beta to a path that does not include these character types, or use the default install location.
- Players may encounter issues when joining the Fireteam of another player on their same local area network. Players who encounter this issue should ensure that they have UPnP enabled in their network settings.
- MSAA is still under development. As such, players may encounter various issues including visual artifacts and performance degradation when using MSAA.
- Multi-GPU support is still in development. Players may encounter issues including visual artifacts and performance impacts when using NVIDIA SLI. AMD Crossfire support is not available in the Destiny 2 PC Beta.
- The Destiny 2 Beta must be launched from Blizzard’s Battle.net app. If players launch the Beta client directly from the executable, they may receive an error message or the Destiny 2 Beta client may become unresponsive. Players who encounter this issue should close the Beta client through the user interface or by pressing Alt+F4, and proceed to launch the Destiny 2 Beta using the “Play” button in the Destiny 2 tab of the Blizzard app.
You can check out some of DualShockers’ exclusive capture footage for the game in our Destiny 2 preview articles including ones on exploring Lost Sectors, conquering the EDZ’s Heroic Public Events, as well as an inside look at one of the game’s adventure’s “Unsafe At Any Speed” here, and some gameplay of the Cabal Excavation Heroic Public Event. Destiny 2 launches on PC on October 24, while the console counterparts will launch earlier on September 6 for Xbox One and PC.