Will Destiny 2 change Destiny's mission structure? (Destiny)

by cheapLEY , Thursday, March 31, 2016, 23:20 (2949 days ago)

Cruel's megathread down there sort of got the cylinders firing, and this is something I've been thinking about for a while (since The Division launched, anyway).

Forgot about Light level, character progression, and RNG loot drops for the moment. There's another thing that I would love to see change in Destiny: loading into missions and the way Destiny handles everything about that process.

Being kicked to orbit after every mission is the single most annoying thing about Destiny to me, and that does more to disengage me from the world than perhaps anything else about the game. I obviously know nothing about actually building games or the way Destiny utilizes servers and peer to peer connections or any of that. But I can't believe that there isn't a better way.

I feel like I should be able to start a patrol on a given planet, and at any point during that patrol, make my way to the start point for any activity that takes place on that planet and do that activity. If I'm in patrol in the Cosmodrome, why do I have to return to orbit, select a mission, load back into the Cosmodrome, then begin the mission? And furthermore, if I complete a mission, why do I immediately have to return to orbit (and then, if it's my first playthrough, typically return to the Tower)? It adds an absurd amount of time spent in loading screens during play.

I would love to see a version of Destiny in which each planet patrol space acts as a hub to launch the activities on that planet. I'd like to see other characters (not other players) out in those locations that you can talk to, do quests for, something. Is that incompatible with Destiny's always online, randomly meeting other players mechanics? Is it not possible to make a game like Borderlands that also has Destiny's online structure, or did Bungie just not want to make that? I hate to keep harping on the Borderlands example, but even as ridiculous as the premise is, Borderlands feels like a much more real, alive setting than Destiny ever has, and I think largely that's due to all of Destiny's actual characters being locked in one tiny location (and not actually being much in the way of characters).

Maybe I'm alone in that, and maybe I'm setting myself up for disappointment, but more than just about anything, I hope Destiny 2 makes big strides in that direction (or at least a better direction than Destiny currently has).