Perspective (Destiny)

by Kahzgul, Monday, January 26, 2015, 09:03 (3381 days ago) @ Claude Errera

I'm not saying that the act of making changes makes a game beta, as you seem to think I am. What I'm saying is that the admission that some things are just plain broken upon release is an admission of the game being beta. "The Aetheon teleports were not supposed to work that way and be predictable" "Iron Banner is where your level matters, but also level 2 characters can totally kill a level 26" - these are things that indicate a lack of playtesting and lack of bugfixing on the game that frustrates me. I was a professional game tester for over a decade. Seeing the type of bugs that Destiny shipped with - many of which are fundamental design flaws - is incredibly disappointing, especially given the level of quality that I've come to expect from Bungie. If any game company out there could have delivered on its promises, it was Bungie. And they didn't. They're not even close.

And, seriously, is the only barometer of whether a game is great or not "that it works?" That's absurd. Every game should work. That's how you get a 2/10 instead of a 1. Your game works. Master Chief Collection is clearly a debacle that should be refunding everyone's money. You're not selling a game at that point, you're selling nothing. Destiny gets a 6 from me. The potential is there, and core gameplay is there, the art and sound are great, and the raids are fun. But the world is boring, the "legends" I get to tell are about running the same strike 500 times and still not getting an exotic drop, and the entire plot and story is nonsensical garbage. They claim to give us "worlds" to explore, but what we really got was five city blocks, arranged in a circle. Then, in the very rare case that we do get somewhere neat to explore (like the Black Garden) you can't explore it in patrol mode; but are forced into the same mission over and over.

Unskippable cutscenes is a massive oversight. The limited vault space is an oversight. The way items drop is almost mean.