Technically untrue... (Destiny)

by Leviathan , Hotel Zanzibar, Thursday, March 26, 2015, 23:54 (3318 days ago) @ Kahzgul

Have you ever taken an engram to the Cryptarch and been given a piece of armor for a different character class? Next time that happens, try to inspect the armor. You can't do it. The stats load, but the polygonal image won't appear.

Remember how Bungie couldn't add new armor as DLC to the Halo games because all the armor was actually saved as part of each map file? So adding armor would mean modifying every single map file. I think there's something like that going on in Destiny, except the armor files are tied to character class files instead of map files. So if you're playing as a Hunter, the game only loads the hi-res previews of Hunter armor into RAM.

You can still inspect other players to see those items. The polygonal image won't preview on your guardian because that item is modeled and fitted for a different class, each of which have slightly unique animations. I would be very surprised if the game was not loading those models on-the-fly, given how many there are...

Yeah, I've always thought it was dumb that you can't see a warlock bond that's in your inventory when you're a hunter, but you can inspect another player's warlock who has the same bond equipped and view it right there. Obviously the game is capable of showing that item.

But that circumstance only happens if that other player has that item equipped. If that other player changes that item, on the 360 at least, it takes sometimes almost a whole minute to reflect the change, because the game prioritizes your class gear and other characters' current gear, but nothing else. When that player changes things, you can watch the hard-load happening on the older systems.

They can limit what you can see in your inventory to help maintain memory, but they can't really limit other players changing their gear when they need to. So those overlaps can happen sometimes when a player is using an item you tried to see.

On the 360, I think you can more easily understand these limitations because you really feel the load times for everything.