Hopes and Fears - Des2ny and You. (Destiny)

by Kahzgul, Friday, March 31, 2017, 16:04 (2580 days ago) @ Harmanimus

A great point was brought up in a different thread. I think it merits its own discussion however. So disregarding the tone of the trailer, worries about pre-orders and remaining customer dissatisfaction after the launch of Destiny, how are people feeling regarding Destiny 2?

What are things you are hoping to see changed? Things retained? New things?

First and foremost, I want to see a plot and storyline that is worthy of the incredible setting that Destiny has. I have very low expectations for this, given the trailer's setup of "a bad guy attacked us" and "get more loot." Hopefully they prove me wrong. Honestly, how hard would it be to hire the Grimoire writers to write the actual game plot? The grimoire is fantastic.

Speaking of, if there is a Grimoire in Des2ny, I want it to be *part of the game*. At the very least it should be a text menu. At best I'd love to see that rich lore dished out in huge heapings of (optional) cutscenes with full voice acting and illustrative art. It certainly deserves as much.

I hope that loot is less RNG reliant. Ideally, I'd like to see a system where your % chance for any given drop increases each time it doesn't drop for you. Something that guarantees those drops after a few completions of the raid (like if you beat the raid 10 times you just get all of the raid armor or something) and allows players to reasonably progress along with the average player. Having been an RNG outlier on the losing side for much of Destiny 1, that experience sucked balls, and I'd like to see concrete efforts to avoid it for all players beyond "increased drop rates" which are still RNG based.

I want to see better enemy AI that is more adaptive to what weapons or tactics you're using, and that works as a team against the player rather than being a horde of disorganized individuals. The enemies should be more varied as well. I think Horizon Zero Dawn has set the bar wonderfully for what engaging and varied combat looks like.

Space battles!

More exploration, vast expanses, and more raid-style navigational puzzles in the open world. Games like Skyrim, HZD, GTA, and Fallout have shown us that vast expansive spaces are possible, and Destiny is certainly a game that would benefit from that sort of environment.

I also sincerely hope Bungie has developed D2: Gary's Revenge to be nimble in terms of backend updates. A game with this many rotating events and robust pvp needs to be responsive on a weekly basis to balance issues, exploits, cheaters, and general design. In a perfect world, if they see something is wrong (say, for example, a chest on Mars that floats above nothing and is facing away from the player), it takes seconds to fix and is live-patched to all online players instantly. Smaller, incremental, and far more frequent updates make the game steadily improve. Infrequent, major updates tend to break the game anew every time.

Last but not least, I want Destiny to adopt MLG standards for PvP tickrate, get dedicated servers, and eliminate lag wherever possible. There should be far fewer trades and far more crisp, clean shots in PvP in 2Des2ny.

Or perhaps you are more concerned about things you think will be detrimental that bungie does not appear to have learned From? (I know some of these points have already been hammered into the ground.)

A#1, no holds barred, must change (and won't): PS4 timed exclusives suck. They make the game two different games in terms of balance, and they're insulting the Xbone players (full disclosure: I play on PS4). Anything that has mechanics not found anywhere else makes sandbox balancing needlessly complicated. You want to give PS4 players additional artwork with the same functionality as existing stuff, be my guest. Bonus sparrows? Sure. A cool shader? Fine by me. Exotic guns, additional strikes, and anything else with bonus functionality, however, breaks your design and means you're now balancing two games on one game's budget. And the way it's been handled as "at least" one year of timed exclusivity means Xbone users may never get to see those items, and that's truly awful. Treat your customers better, Bungie.

The microtransactions are gross. I don't really mind microtrans existing conceptually, but the implementation of them has made it seem like you're buying a spin on a slot machine rather than buying a specific thing. There should not be microtrans "grab bags" at all. See a thing you want and buy that thing directly. Grab bags should be reserved for non-microtrans incidental rewards (similar to the radiant packages are now, ow whatever adjective AoT is using). That being said, Microtransaction money needs to more obviously benefit the game. It's hard to discern what was planned all along and what was a reward for players because Bungie was so flush with sweet microtrans money that they spent some of it on development. Saying, as they did with D1, that microtrans supported the live team is tantamount to saying that if we hadn't spent microtrans money, the game would not have been supported. Feels like a lie.

I also don't like the constant upsell. I get that they're in the business of selling games, but holy god, does every single thing you release to start and end with "click here to buy?" It's like that guy who won't stop hitting on you no matter how many times you tell him no.

I can't really speak to the game itself, since I've seen none of it so far. The ad looked pretty, I guess. Go art team! I'm glad Fillion is back.

More importantly from my perspective, how are you balancing your hopes for Destiny 2 against your fears for the same?

I'm gonna wait to see what the reviews and you fine people say about it before I buy. Fool me once, shame on me. Fool me twice, can't be fooled again!