My initial rating would have been higher but... (Destiny)

by Kahzgul, Monday, May 04, 2015, 06:29 (3282 days ago) @ Kermit

Keep in mind that I'm not rating Destiny, as a whole, 3/10. I'm only rating the gameplay of destiny 3/10. The sound and art are fantastic in the game, and the community building and ease of fireteam entry are also pretty good (raid entry is another story). I think, overall, the ratings of 6/10 and 7/10 that Destiny got on launch were spot on. But grading gameplay all by itself, in a vacuum, I stand by my 3/10 score.

At this point, for me, there is literally nothing fun about Destiny. I tried to do Iron Banner this time around (I've gone to rank 5 in all previous iron banners) and I couldn't even bear to hit rank 3. The game handles beautifully but I'm beyond bored of it. And I feel like it's designed to bore me to death. If you want the loot, you kind of have to play the same level a bajillion times. And you're not playing it for fun or for the challenge (even though you could); you're playing it for the loot. The loot system really is the worst, and it's ruined the game for me.

/rantmode ON

On top of that, the AI is crap. I expected a lot more from a Bungie FPS.

On top of that, the level design is crap. Now, Bungie has shown me that they're perfectly happy making me play through the same level backwards before - they did it in Halo 1. But never before in back-to-back missions, certainly not missions 1 and 2 of the game!

On top of that, the plot is crap. There's incredible lore on a website I can read while I'm not playing the game, but there's zilch in the game, and there's even less of a plot. Speaker: I could tell you the stories of the play, but I won't. Stranger: I don't have time to explain why I don't have time to have a plot. Rasputin: I've got music, but no plot. Come ON.

On top of that (because holy god it just keeps getting more repetitive and boring), the PvP is all Kill-modes, and there's only a very small number of different modes available, and some of those modes aren't even available every week. This game "has more players than any Bungie game in history" and also has fewer game modes. And crappier MP maps. Hang 'Em High was the most fun MP map I've ever played in any game, ever, and Destiny has not a single map that I'm even remotely excited about. Halo also had custom game modes and the ability to make private games. How far we have fallen.

Then there's the vehicles that are all one-seaters and pretty universally deathtraps if you get into them. Anyone else miss the warthog? Or the scorpion? Or stuffing a grenade down the backside of that sweet alien mortar-tank? I miss every halo vehicle except the little dirt-buggy quad thing. Sorry, quad, you're not my cup of tea.

And the netcode that makes the most frustrating deaths commonplace.

I seriously can keep going for a very long time here. Having to go to orbit between every mission. Having to change characters to swap items around OR use an app that's more functional than the game itself(!) to do it. Having the vault be at the tower instead of on your ship. The limited inventory that's locked into each type of item. Having shaders take up inventory space at all. Making factions basically all function in identical ways. All spaceships are modularly designed from the same parts and you can't actually control or steer them in any way. The goddamn giant graphic hole in The Birth of History that's been there since Iron Banner #1 that Bungie has still not fixed. Bungie spending it's time making the purple ball glow instead of fixing Crota teleport-uppercutting your invisible sword guy. Defend the door simulator 9000 as the only event that ever happens in missions. Go somewhere or Kill things as the only patrol mission types. Needing a third party website to tell me when world events will happen (toss up - it may be worse that game has made world events so important that the website exists at all). Needing a third party website to form raids if my buddies aren't all online. Heroic boss fights being made harder just by having bigger numbers instead of smarter AI or additional/different behavior. The balance changes for PvP that keep making it less and less fun. The complete lack of impact that the player's actions have on the world. The incredibly small size of the worlds we can visit. I'm sure there's more, but I'm really tired.

/rantmode OFF

Granted, the first time that I ran VoG was really cool. The first time I ran CE was awesome!

/rantmode ON

But then, just to be high enough level to run the hardmodes to get the guns (that I still never got), I had to run those raids over and over and over again. I didn't get level 32 until the end of February despite running CE every week since it came out. The items just wouldn't drop. I didn't get Gjallerhorn until the end of March (and then I got 2... typical Destiny RNG). To date, from all my VoG runs ever, I have gotten 1 Praedith's Revenge, 2 of the rocket launchers, and that's IT for weapons. I never even got a full suit of VoG armor for my hunter. CE has been nicer to me, but I'm still missing the Heavy Machinegun, Rocket Launcher, Pulse Rifle, and Hand Cannon from the raid. And both exotic raid weapons.

/rantmode OFF

So I give the game 3/10 for gameplay because the only thing about playing the game that I like at this point is the character control and movement. Everything else about how the game plays is either frustrating, boring, overplayed, or non existent. I figure that how you move through the game world is a fair 1/3 of a game's design and Bungie knocked that element of gameplay out of the park. The world you move through is another 1/3, and the way the systems interact is the last 1/3, and I absolutely hate both of those components of the gameplay.

Destiny plays like it's the game Bungie made before they made Halo. So many things they got right years ago are wrong now. It hurts me as a fan and as a consumer. I want it to be better. I hope it will be better. But until then, I've found a game that feels better to me, and that's where I'll be spending my time.