Something that Bungie (and all devs) could learn from DE... (Destiny)

by Cody Miller , Music of the Spheres - Never Forgot, Tuesday, May 03, 2016, 16:14 (2913 days ago) @ Korny

How it could be applied to Destiny:
An in-game Grimoire has always been the obvious answer, but more importantly, an opt-in feature for matchmaking. One of the biggest issues with Destiny has always been that if you're not in a pre-made fireteam, you're mostly SOL when it comes to finding people to play with. If you don't have existing friends or an LFG, Destiny can be a very lonely experience, and folks don't stick with the game for too long because of it.

The could be a kind of player connector sure. What about a kiosk in the tower where you can, if you choose, list yourself as looking for friends? You can leave your information such as skill level, desired play time, when you can play, etc. You could then search for other players fitting your criteria and send them a friend request and start playing together.

How it could be applied to Destiny:
This is where Bungie falters. They punish the players for outwitting the design or being too good, and though they've definitely learned a few lessons when it comes to bosses, Guardians have steadily gotten nerfed since the game launched. Bungie could instead focus on the enemies themselves rather than hurting players in order to add challenge. Imagine if your Bladedancer could actually kill a decent number of enemies with a single super. Imagine if instead of nerfing Gjallarhorn, they had made it so that enemies could counter it (Taken Vandals already do a good job of it with their expertly-timed drop shields).

First of all, game rules should be consistent, so having an enemy that has a counter to a specific gun would just feel cheap. If it can counter all rockets, than I guess that could work. But singling out particular weapons just does;t feel like a good solution.

In most games, the problem of badassery is solved by making alternate or secret areas or optional bosses and the like that require you to have completely mastered your insane set of skills, then force you to use them perfectly or in an unusual way. This works because the games have an end. But each expansion, Destiny continues. You have all your skills and your personal skill at the game. Every mission in each new expansion would just have to be insane to keep up. There is no solution to this problem the way Destiny is designed other than by limiting players and toning down overpowered skills.

How it could be applied to Destiny:
The environments in Destiny are painfully stale. Other than the enemies (and the rare, but mostly pointless turret), there is nothing interactive about the environments. Bungie somewhat addressed this by making Taken variants of existing strikes, but for the most part, a mission will always play out exactly the same. The only exceptions are the final knights in the Sunless Cell strike if you're doing the sword quest, and the Pikes that might show up on the moon if someone brought one into your instance. There aren't enough interactive elements to the levels, and the game would be better if there were.

Given that the game has such strong FPS elements, it makes sense that the environments are conducive to shooting elements. Destiny is not an RPG like Deus Ex. Such a game requires more sophisticated types of interactions with the environments. I'm not really sure Destiny needs much interaction beyond what would enhance the shooting since it's not that type of game.

How it could be applied to Destiny:
Bumping the Light Level every once in a while does nothing for players who want an actual challenge, and so we're left running Raids HUDless, or with specific weapons only, or other stuff, which is fun, but there is no content in the game that recognizes playing with such handicaps or anything.

I think once you have to resort to things like that to keep things interesting, you've pretty much mastered the game. At which point it's fine to just stop. There's nothing wrong with that. 100 days!

How it could be applied to Destiny:
Destiny needs more small stuff to do while we wait for the big stuff.

I thought I agreed at first. The big stuff is the stuff worth playing. So why spend the time to make stuff that's not as cool before we get cool stuff? Why play the not as cool stuff, instead of just waiting for the big stuff?

How it could be applied to Destiny:
It can be frustrating to hop into Crucible when you don't have a MIDA or 1000YS, and you're repeatedly cut down by the folks with all of the god-rolls that wreck your low-ROF Auto Rifle. Instead of constantly nerfing the guns and Guardians, Bungie could add a specialized playlist with preset loadouts and gear, providing unique/guaranteed rewards to promote people hopping onto the playlist. This could even be where they apply more traditional gametypes, such as CTF and Super-less, Special Weapon-less Slayer. Bungie's philosophy of the same guardian and gear across all game modes is admirable, but has led to a weakened PvE experience because of so much focus on balancing for PvP. As far as networking goes, there could be solutions to help reduce stuff like IB lag, and some of that could be limited dedicated servers.

Agree completely. I think Bungie could have ranked and unranked PvP, with unranked allowing you to bring in your PvE guns, and ranked having a set pool of guns from which to choose (like a special crucible armory). CTF would be great, but there has to be some fundamental problem with that game type in Destiny or else it would be in by now.

But yeah, tl;dr, Bungie could be more open about their creative process, and they could let us know that they acknowledge Destiny's problems, and how they plan to address them, even if it's down-the-road solutions.

I'm kind of hoping they just start fresh with Destiny 2 and fix / eliminate the problems all at once with significant changes.