kotaku: Destiny 2 for PC, won't carry over year 1 characters

http://kotaku.com/sources-destiny-2-coming-to-pc-aims-to-feel-like-a-to-1787153460

Discuss.

locked

1906 views

http://kotaku.com/sources-destiny-2-coming-to-pc-aims-to-feel-like-a-to-1787153460

Discuss.

locked

1813 views

- No text -

locked

1707 views

You will have to keep playing D1 when they finally release all of the PS exclusives on Xbox ;)

locked

1779 views

I didn't want to crap up the first post with my opinions, so I'm posting them here in this reply.

This is a good move for business, a good opportunity to improve the quality of the gaming experience, and equally good opportunity to fuck up the quality of the gaming experience, and a shit move for legacy players. If true about year 1 characters not moving on, an outright betrayal of the "ten year promise" that Bungie made when we all signed up for this. Personally, I hope that year 1 characters will be able to transfer to the new game, even if we have to leave our weapons behind. If not, Destiny 1 + all of its xpacs will have failed to tell any sort of story about our guardians. Who they are, where they came from, why they're in this fight, how they were chosen, and how they end... None of that is really in the game we have now, and for them to simply... cease... will be an utter disappointment.

Bungie is apparently comparing Destiny 2 with Diablo 2, per the article, and that's a massively high bar that not even Diablo 3 could live up to. Bungie needs to stop patting themselves on the back and start serving up the goddamn meat for this game. I know they have the vision and talent to do it. They certainly have the manpower. But where are the actual results? "Our game will be like one of the best games of all time," says company who promised the same thing two years ago and delivered a 6.5/10.

As for the business side, yes, you're opening up a massive new market. You will sell lots and lots of games and make lots and lots of monies and reap all that sweet, sweet microtrans profit. Yes you will.

But you will expose the already cheatable game to exponentially more hacking attempts. Many will be successful because it is nearly impossible to make a video game that is hack-proof. We already know how prevalent cheating on PS4 was. Now imagine actual PCs. It's much more likely to be The Division than it is to be Diablo 2 in terms of the results, and keep in mind that Diablo 2 was chock full of bots, hacks, and scammers. The aiming systems for PC and Console will also have to be completely different because mouse-aiming is SO MUCH BETTER than thumbstick aiming. Worlds fucking better. This is why CS:GO is so good on PC and why Halo kinda sucked on it. You need different aiming systems. And if they don't get this right the game will not have the feel that it has right now, which is pretty much 90% of what makes the game fun to play.

There is, however, an opportunity here. I'm assuming that Bungie did the right thing and threw out their entire backend and development system from Destiny 1 and built a brand new one that is dynamic and responsive in the way that you need to be when you have live online support for a shared world environment. Something that can make on the fly geometry changes to the live game, daily or weekly tweaks to weapons traits for balance purposes, and can easily adjust spawns, drops, etc.. I'm also praying that they eliminated the bullshit lag-fest nonsense of their pseudo token-ring architecture for PvP and established some dedicated servers. Because any modern online FPS needs dedicated servers. I really hope they learned these lessons from Destiny 1. Assuming Bungie did the behind-the-scenes stuff correctly, there is also an opportunity to design the game by approving the story FIRST and then building the game to match the script. Please, guys, give me a game worthy of your logo.

And please, Bungie, start that game with my guardian arriving at a pivotal moment in time, fresh from Destiny 1, and tell me a tale that makes me excited for the future instead of afraid of how you're going to fuck it up even more.

locked

1786 views

Taking your characters along to the sequel would mean what exactly? If you kept all your skills and gear, well then they couldn't change up the game now could they? The whole point of the sequel seems to be to make it a new game, not an expansion for Destiny. So that means abandoning old things. Maybe they could just have a tool to import the appearance of your character and call it a day.

This news makes me very hopeful.

locked

1769 views

Taking your characters along to the sequel would mean what exactly? If you kept all your skills and gear, well then they couldn't change up the game now could they? The whole point of the sequel seems to be to make it a new game, not an expansion for Destiny. So that means abandoning old things. Maybe they could just have a tool to import the appearance of your character and call it a day.

This news makes me very hopeful.

Yeah, the idea of leaving behind our characters doesn't make me sad in the least. Our characters are completely meaningless. I don't even remember what my Guardians' voices sound like. They have no personality, no development, no arch. Really, our characters are nothing more than collections of gear, and I certainly hope gear won't be carried forward into D2.

If Destiny were closer to Mass Effect in terms of the style of game it is, then perhaps losing my characters would upset me. But as it is, I'm happy about the idea of a clean break. Let's start again from scratch, hopefully with better results in the storytelling realm this time :)

locked

1744 views

I literally think the last time we heard our guardian speak was during the conversation with the queens brother in Vanilla.

locked

1762 views

As I said a few days ago, switching to PS4 and leaving behind my Xbox One Guardians was a real damper for my excitement for Destiny. My PS4 characters didn't feel like my real Guardians. I'll be ecstatic if none of that carries forward.

locked

1715 views

You're right that there's no real reason to be attached to the avatar, and I think that's why I'm so upset about this. I don't want my experience with D1 to have been meaningless to the story of this game (logically, I know it is, but emotionally I want it to have mattered). I want this dude to have a reason for being that makes sense in the game world and that tells a tale. I want Bungie's promise of "your character will be your character for the next 10 years" to be kept, and not just another lie on a pile of advertising bullshit.

I don't want the several hundred hours I've spend in Destiny to be over with a whimper, and not a bang, and then have nothing to show for in Destiny 2. I'm really worried that Bungie is going to boil all of my progress and achievements down to "Destiny 1 players get a special emblem! Hooray!"

I'm conflating this a lot in my mind with my experience of WoW, where my character came with me through every new expansion. I'll grant that those were all, 100%, expansions and not "brand new games" but we were told there was a 10 year plan for Destiny that carried us through a giant overarching story and resetting our dude is, I feel, tantamount to admitting that's all hogwash.

And yes, I can tell from what we've seen so far that it IS hogwash.

But I want to believe.

locked

1771 views

- No text -

locked

1642 views

You're right that there's no real reason to be attached to the avatar, and I think that's why I'm so upset about this. I don't want my experience with D1 to have been meaningless to the story of this game (logically, I know it is, but emotionally I want it to have mattered). I want this dude to have a reason for being that makes sense in the game world and that tells a tale. I want Bungie's promise of "your character will be your character for the next 10 years" to be kept, and not just another lie on a pile of advertising bullshit.

I don't want the several hundred hours I've spend in Destiny to be over with a whimper, and not a bang, and then have nothing to show for in Destiny 2. I'm really worried that Bungie is going to boil all of my progress and achievements down to "Destiny 1 players get a special emblem! Hooray!"

I totally agree with you here. I often think about wanting to rework my guardians' face, but then I'd feel like I was throwing away all of that experience. Logically it makes no sense, especially since I could stash most of my gear in the vault, but still emotionally I'm connected to my guardian's tired old face. I based my titan on Prince Adam because that's what randomly generated for me in the beta, and shoot, that was cool playing as one of my childhood heroes, but... I tire of his face, but he is MY TITAN, and I don't want to lose him.

locked

1623 views

The aiming systems for PC and Console will also have to be completely different because mouse-aiming is SO MUCH BETTER than thumbstick aiming. Worlds fucking better. This is why CS:GO is so good on PC and why Halo kinda sucked on it. You need different aiming systems. And if they don't get this right the game will not have the feel that it has right now, which is pretty much 90% of what makes the game fun to play.

Them be fighting words bro. 1v1 bro! You-Me-Snipers-Boarding Action. High Noon. Blood Gulch.

We will also require a Time Machine so I can go back in time and grab my Halo PC playing self for maximum getting your ass kicked action. Also to make fun of Turals hat some more. Don't ask. ;P

And please, Bungie, start that game with my guardian arriving at a pivotal moment in time, fresh from Destiny 1, and tell me a tale that makes me excited for the future instead of afraid of how you're going to fuck it up even more.

PREACH! Especially that last sentence. Also some actuall story stakes would be nice too.

locked

1706 views

There is, however, an opportunity here. I'm assuming that Bungie did the right thing and threw out their entire backend and development system from Destiny 1 and built a brand new one that is dynamic and responsive in the way that you need to be when you have live online support for a shared world environment. Something that can make on the fly geometry changes to the live game, daily or weekly tweaks to weapons traits for balance purposes, and can easily adjust spawns, drops, etc.. I'm also praying that they eliminated the bullshit lag-fest nonsense of their pseudo token-ring architecture for PvP and established some dedicated servers. Because any modern online FPS needs dedicated servers. I really hope they learned these lessons from Destiny 1. Assuming Bungie did the behind-the-scenes stuff correctly, there is also an opportunity to design the game by approving the story FIRST and then building the game to match the script. Please, guys, give me a game worthy of your logo.

to·ken ring
noun COMPUTING
a local area network in which a node can transmit only when in possession of a sequence of bits (called the token) that is passed to each node in turn.

In my research I've never seen any mention of Destiny's networking being a token-ring type architecture. I have never found any evidence or statement by a Bungie employee that would backup such a claim. It just doesn't make sense to pass a token around to allow transmission. In fact, just today I skimmed Shared World Shooter - Destiny's Networked Mission Architecture and listened to I Shot you First! Gameplay Networking in Halo: Reach, no mention of passing tokens in either presentation. If you have some statement by an employee claiming their networking model is based on token passing then I'd like to see it, please. I love to learn more about their networking model.

From everything I've read & watched Destiny uses an improved and expanded version of Reach's PvP networking model. Perhaps a better phrase could be used to describe what you're getting at, but token-ring is not a good term. I'm guessing you mean having a physics host on the user's box & physics host migration? I really doubt Bungie will ditch using that system for D2 in favor of dedicated physics servers, they've been using it ever since Halo 2.

locked

1611 views

There is, however, an opportunity here. I'm assuming that Bungie did the right thing and threw out their entire backend and development system from Destiny 1 and built a brand new one that is dynamic and responsive in the way that you need to be when you have live online support for a shared world environment. Something that can make on the fly geometry changes to the live game, daily or weekly tweaks to weapons traits for balance purposes, and can easily adjust spawns, drops, etc.. I'm also praying that they eliminated the bullshit lag-fest nonsense of their pseudo token-ring architecture for PvP and established some dedicated servers. Because any modern online FPS needs dedicated servers. I really hope they learned these lessons from Destiny 1. Assuming Bungie did the behind-the-scenes stuff correctly, there is also an opportunity to design the game by approving the story FIRST and then building the game to match the script. Please, guys, give me a game worthy of your logo.

to·ken ring
noun COMPUTING
a local area network in which a node can transmit only when in possession of a sequence of bits (called the token) that is passed to each node in turn.

In my research I've never seen any mention of Destiny's networking being a token-ring type architecture. I have never found any evidence or statement by a Bungie employee that would backup such a claim. It just doesn't make sense to pass a token around to allow transmission. In fact, just today I skimmed Shared World Shooter - Destiny's Networked Mission Architecture and listened to I Shot you First! Gameplay Networking in Halo: Reach, no mention of passing tokens in either presentation. If you have some statement by an employee claiming their networking model is based on token passing then I'd like to see it, please. I love to learn more about their networking model.

From everything I've read & watched Destiny uses an improved and expanded version of Reach's PvP networking model. Perhaps a better phrase could be used to describe what you're getting at, but token-ring is not a good term. I'm guessing you mean having a physics host on the user's box & physics host migration? I really doubt Bungie will ditch using that system for D2 in favor of dedicated physics servers, they've been using it ever since Halo 2.

You're right that it's not a true token ring, but I'm not aware of a more descriptive term for it, at least in terms of the end-users' results. "Player to player network mesh" is the term that's more technically accurate (and I believe the one coined by Bungie employees in their GDC talk), but - as I stated - the result (for PvP purposes) is essentially the same for the end user as when you use a token ring: Each system tells all of the others whether or not it took damage, or moved, or actually was where the other systems thought it was, and each system spends a lot of time guessing at where lagging players are, which results in showing avatars on screen that are out of sync with the true location of the other players. This can also be intentionally exploited via lag-switching in ways that a standard host-client pvp model cannot be.

For clarity: Similar to a token ring in the sense that there is no true host, and that all systems pass information to the others that is automatically trusted by the others. Not at all like a token ring in the sense that there's no ring and systems can pass tokens as often as their network speeds permit.

This has the advantage of not requiring a single host to have an amazing network connection capable of sending and receiving all of the data to and from every client all of the time, but the disadvantages, to my mind, far outstrip the advantages since it results in unreliable visuals on screen and opens the door for easy cheating via lag.

I should note that I have no idea how the "damage referee" works. My understanding of the code is that there is no one single host who can dictate whether or not a shot landed, so I would lean towards the damage referee being more of a poll of all systems as to whether or not they saw the shot land? Even so, that seems horribly inefficient as far as network usage, so I'd be surprised if that was what they used as well. Some sort of dedicated server monitor would make sense, but then why not have dedicated servers, period?

Also, in the interest of transparency, I have noticed a distinct reduction in lag since the update to PoE, so they may have figured out a better way to handle their network mesh. Even so, I believe it is not up to E-Sports standards for accuracy and reliability, and thus not worthy of the nuance and precision that the Destiny PvP game is capable of. I hold firm that a more traditional dedicated server host to client architecture would greatly improve the Destiny PvP experience.

locked

1630 views

Each system tells all of the others whether or not it took damage, or moved, or actually was where the other systems thought it was, and each system spends a lot of time guessing at where lagging players are, which results in showing avatars on screen that are out of sync with the true location of the other players. This can also be intentionally exploited via lag-switching in ways that a standard host-client pvp model cannot be.

Host-client networking models also involve clients telling the host what they're doing and where they are, and the clients also predictively guess where the other clients are and such. And host-client systems can also resolve requests from clients with various approaches and different degrees of trust. The things you're observing in-game do not imply that there's no host.

The lack of super-obvious host migration sort of hints at a lack of host, but we've been told that PvE uses a host-client model and that they're just handling the (very frequent) migrations really seamlessly in those modes.

I'd guess that the networking systems in PvE and PvP are very similar, but people perceive them differently because of the differences in how encounters flow, and because of technically different constraints on predicting human players versus AI (humans need their own screens to be responsive and thus necessarily will be highly desynchronized from other players, whereas AI can be forced to be somewhat well-synchronized without any humans controlling them complaining about latency).
Much in the same way that people praise Halo 1's enemy AI for being brilliant while complaining that the friendly AI is idiotic, even though they're basically the same.

locked

1667 views

If you left a game of Halo and were the host, the game would pause and wait for another player to become host. I have never had this happen in Destiny. Why is that?

locked

1610 views

If you left a game of Halo and were the host, the game would pause and wait for another player to become host. I have never had this happen in Destiny. Why is that?

According to their networking presentation, in PvE they basically just let things play out without authoritative confirmation from the host until a new host is selected. After which point the new host just kind of sorts everything out in real time as things converge back to normal.

This is sometimes what's going on when you can shoot enemies but not kill them. You're a non-host and there's no host. Because there's lots of client trust, the game is okay with it if you keep running around and doing stuff (and it'll later try and reconcile things like your new player location once there's a host), but some host-required actions like enemy kill confirmation aren't being returned.

For Halo, the presentation suggests that the black screen happens because the game would take time to try and reconcile any potentially game-breaking synchronization issues, in particular with high-level mission/gametype scripting. Things like making sure that the new host remembers to spawn a third-stage Invasion objective if the old host disconnected at the end of stage 2.
This was a pain because it meant stalling the game momentarily to sort things out. It was also a development pain because every possible issue had to be identified and a solution written into the game; Bungie was worried that this would become a bigger problem in Destiny, since they'd have to identify and solve problem cases per-mission, whereas in Halo they just had to do it per-gametype.
Destiny's solution is to not network these functions peer-to-peer in the first place. Since high-level mission scripts don't require a high level of responsiveness, running them on stable dedicated servers doesn't require very high server resources. And by never migrating these functions between inconsistent clients, you solve the synchronization problem. (Obvious caveat: if the server breaks, the game breaks.)

locked

1603 views

If you left a game of Halo and were the host, the game would pause and wait for another player to become host. I have never had this happen in Destiny. Why is that?

According to their networking presentation, in PvE they basically just let things play out without authoritative confirmation from the host until a new host is selected. After which point the new host just kind of sorts everything out in real time as things converge back to normal.

This is sometimes what's going on when you can shoot enemies but not kill them. You're a non-host and there's no host. Because there's lots of client trust, the game is okay with it if you keep running around and doing stuff (and it'll later try and reconcile things like your new player location once there's a host), but some host-required actions like enemy kill confirmation aren't being returned.

And this behavior is exactly why it's problematic in pvp. There's too much implicit trust in the clients and there's no host system to act as arbitrator.

You mentioned in your response to me that the same data transfers happen in a traditional host-client pvp scenario. It's different, and I'll try to explain.

For the traditional pvp setup with a host, picture that host as the hub of a many-spoked wheel, where each spoke is the connection to a client. Clients send data to the host that says (I want to move here) or (I'm shooting now) and the host makes it happen and then sends to everyone else (this client moved there and he's shooting now). There are more predictive ways to do this where you send bits of information to the other clients as well, but the key element is that the host dictates to every other system what happens in the game. If you lag while sending "I'm moving" to the host, the host won't get that data so it will assume that you're not moving, and tell the other clients as much, so everyone else sees you standing still and not shooting even though you think you're running and gunning. If they shoot you, you die on their systems and in the game, and as soon as you catch up you will teleport back to where you started lagging and be dead. This system sucks if you have a shit connection, but it is not exploitable via network interference (lag-switching). Also, lagging is generally immediately obvious to the lagger because they stop getting info from the host, which means they see everyone else stop moving at once. The major advantage to this architecture is that if you shoot someone, they will die, even if they are lagging. The only thing that determines your effectiveness in combat is your own connection to the host. Typically, a client-host system also has a hidden "host reliability" tracking setup so hosts who have poor connections or who frequently drop out of games or quit them are weeded out and eventually only reliable players are allowed to be hosts.

The Destiny model is more like a 12 pointed star where every point is connected to every other point. When you move, you send an "I'm moving" packet to every other player, all at once. It's up to each of those systems to interpret that data properly. Also, instead of one system handling everything, it's sort of a weird halfsies split. System A sends "I'm shooting in this vector" and System B sends back "I took damage." From my observations (I'm a 13 year pro tester, these are not lay observations), it appears that System A would actually send "I have created bullets between points A and B" where A is the player's gun and B is where system A thinks those bullets hit something. However, if System B doesn't agree that player B is standing where System A thinks he was standing, it simply won't return any damage as registered. This is one of the most frustrating parts of destiny PvP. When one player lags, his avatar continues to move in a straight line thanks to the predictive algorithm, and it stops any and all bullets that hit the avatar, registering zero damage to the actual player, even when that player's system has him standing directly behind the avatar. So it appears that the PvP netcode of Destiny sends "I'm moving here," "I'm shooting between these two points," and "I've taken damage" messages to the other players, and that's basically it. When you fire your gun, you are trusting that (a) your system is correctly showing you where the other players in the game are, (b) the other systems are correctly receiving your bullet locations, and (c) the other systems will accurately report that they have received damage. That's three different places that a small amount of lag can cause no damage to register, and it's very frustrating. These points of fail are very similar to those of token ring architecture, which is why I reference it that way, even though it's not at all the same actual netcode. Now, there is one player who is the "physics host" of the game, and that player's system handles the clock countdown timer, ammo spawns, and - presumably - non player object motions such as ammo drops (though it is entirely possible that ammo drops are 100% contained within their own players' systems).

Is this network mesh model innovative and new? Yes. But it is also bad for competitive pvp because it is grossly unreliable, has multiple points of potential failure, and is easily exploitable via lag-switching. It also rewards players for lagging rather than punishes them, and - thanks to the predictive algorithms in destiny - does not do a very good job of distinguishing lagging players from non-lagging players during gameplay. If you shoot someone in Destiny, you have no idea if you will actually hurt them, even if your bullet passes right through their virtual brainpan. Major caveat: Since the latest PoE update, I have noticed far less lag than prior to that. I am not sure what changed, but it seems to have been very much for the better.

locked

1592 views

For the traditional pvp setup with a host, picture that host as the hub of a many-spoked wheel, where each spoke is the connection to a client. Clients send data to the host that says (I want to move here) or (I'm shooting now) and the host makes it happen and then sends to everyone else (this client moved there and he's shooting now). There are more predictive ways to do this where you send bits of information to the other clients as well, but the key element is that the host dictates to every other system what happens in the game. If you lag while sending "I'm moving" to the host, the host won't get that data so it will assume that you're not moving, and tell the other clients as much, so everyone else sees you standing still and not shooting even though you think you're running and gunning. If they shoot you, you die on their systems and in the game, and as soon as you catch up you will teleport back to where you started lagging and be dead. This system sucks if you have a shit connection, but it is not exploitable via network interference (lag-switching). Also, lagging is generally immediately obvious to the lagger because they stop getting info from the host, which means they see everyone else stop moving at once. The major advantage to this architecture is that if you shoot someone, they will die, even if they are lagging. The only thing that determines your effectiveness in combat is your own connection to the host. Typically, a client-host system also has a hidden "host reliability" tracking setup so hosts who have poor connections or who frequently drop out of games or quit them are weeded out and eventually only reliable players are allowed to be hosts.

You're still mixing assumptions about networking model in with trust. There is no reason that a host-based gunplay model couldn't stall kill judgement based on confirmation from the client being killed, for instance (although I'd be surprised if a hard version of that is the issue here).

From my observations (I'm a 13 year pro tester, these are not lay observations), it appears that System A would actually send "I have created bullets between points A and B" where A is the player's gun and B is where system A thinks those bullets hit something. However, if System B doesn't agree that player B is standing where System A thinks he was standing, it simply won't return any damage as registered.

AFAIK with precision weapons, it usually isn't based purely on shot vectors, for precisely the reasons you mention. Player's views are so divergent that you'd basically never be able to hit anything. Bungie made a good post about this back in the Halo 3 days: with Halo 2's hitscan weapons the client would send requests of the form "I shot this player in this part of their body", and with Halo 3's projectiles it was in the form of "I shot at this player and I was aiming this far ahead of them."

Since bandwidth is such a critical issue, I'd actually expect that most games only ever reconstruct shot vectors on the host. So the host might say "no, there seems to be a wall between you and the enemy's elbow based on where I think you are and where I think they are."

There are plenty of things that could potentially still throw this off with lag, however. For instance, one thing you mention is that Destiny allows prediction to go very far. One possibility would be that, when a player stops sending packets about where they are, the host doesn't repeat these to other clients, and potentially falls behind in communicating updates on that player's location at all. In that case, small differences in that person's position and orientation at the start of the lag could very quickly diverge into huge differences across different player's consoles. That could effectively make the player invulnerable since the host would find other player's shots somewhat nonsensical.
(Obviously this is totally hypothetical and might not be much of a problem, although all this stuff would be easier to check if we had replays.)

Now, there is one player who is the "physics host" of the game, and that player's system handles the clock countdown timer, ammo spawns, and - presumably - non player object motions such as ammo drops (though it is entirely possible that ammo drops are 100% contained within their own players' systems).

Those are mostly things that don't require high responsiveness but require stability, things that according to the networking presentation would be handled by the dedicated server (or, as you mention, some of it could be handled locally).

locked

1625 views

For the traditional pvp setup with a host, picture that host as the hub of a many-spoked wheel, where each spoke is the connection to a client. Clients send data to the host that says (I want to move here) or (I'm shooting now) and the host makes it happen and then sends to everyone else (this client moved there and he's shooting now). There are more predictive ways to do this where you send bits of information to the other clients as well, but the key element is that the host dictates to every other system what happens in the game. If you lag while sending "I'm moving" to the host, the host won't get that data so it will assume that you're not moving, and tell the other clients as much, so everyone else sees you standing still and not shooting even though you think you're running and gunning. If they shoot you, you die on their systems and in the game, and as soon as you catch up you will teleport back to where you started lagging and be dead. This system sucks if you have a shit connection, but it is not exploitable via network interference (lag-switching). Also, lagging is generally immediately obvious to the lagger because they stop getting info from the host, which means they see everyone else stop moving at once. The major advantage to this architecture is that if you shoot someone, they will die, even if they are lagging. The only thing that determines your effectiveness in combat is your own connection to the host. Typically, a client-host system also has a hidden "host reliability" tracking setup so hosts who have poor connections or who frequently drop out of games or quit them are weeded out and eventually only reliable players are allowed to be hosts.

You're still mixing assumptions about networking model in with trust. There is no reason that a host-based gunplay model couldn't stall kill judgement based on confirmation from the client being killed, for instance (although I'd be surprised if a hard version of that is the issue here).

You're right, but the design of traditional console FPS host-client setups (as accepted for esports) is that the host's judgement is absolute and everyone else gets updates from the host. I know this first hand as I worked on many of the call of duty games, specifically online multiplayer. Dedicated servers with absolute server judgement is better because you know you can trust the server, whereas you only have a good idea whether or not you can trust a host, based purely on match history and connection quality and speed.

From my observations (I'm a 13 year pro tester, these are not lay observations), it appears that System A would actually send "I have created bullets between points A and B" where A is the player's gun and B is where system A thinks those bullets hit something. However, if System B doesn't agree that player B is standing where System A thinks he was standing, it simply won't return any damage as registered.

AFAIK with precision weapons, it usually isn't based purely on shot vectors, for precisely the reasons you mention. Player's views are so divergent that you'd basically never be able to hit anything. Bungie made a good post about this back in the Halo 3 days: with Halo 2's hitscan weapons the client would send requests of the form "I shot this player in this part of their body", and with Halo 3's projectiles it was in the form of "I shot at this player and I was aiming this far ahead of them."

Since bandwidth is such a critical issue, I'd actually expect that most games only ever reconstruct shot vectors on the host. So the host might say "no, there seems to be a wall between you and the enemy's elbow based on where I think you are and where I think they are."

The trick is that we know, in Destiny, that if a system believes there to be a person in a particular space, shots fired on that system will stop moving at the space where they believe that person is. Imagine a scenario where there are three characters, A, B, and C. System B is lagging badly. On Systems A and C, it appears that all three characters are standing in a straight line with character B in the middle. On System B, Character B is actually back at his spawn, waiting for his connection to improve, and is no where near characters A and B. If character A fires a golden gun shot at where he sees character B, that shot will deal no damage to character B (because character B isn't there on System B) but also will not continue on and hit character C instead (because character B is there to block it on Systems A and C).

This fact is a major source of frustration when playing Destiny: The shot acts as if both the position of character B are true and false at the same time, and in both conditions the outcome is the least desirable outcome from the standpoint of the person who pulled the trigger. It is further compounded by the fact that supers and heavy ammos are so rare and valuable that wasting even one shot can be the deciding factor in a game.

I believe that a true host-client structure where only reliable hosts were chosen would virtually eliminate the odds of scenarios such as this from occurring.

Adding on: Destiny's architecture is such that in situations when one player lags, the game resolves this situation such that only the lagger knows where he really is and all other players have false information. In more traditional models, the reverse is true. The lagger is not sure where he really is, but everyone else sees the correct location as dictated by the host. It's a utilitarian philosophical point, but one I feel is worthy of mention.

There are plenty of things that could potentially still throw this off with lag, however. For instance, one thing you mention is that Destiny allows prediction to go very far. One possibility would be that, when a player stops sending packets about where they are, the host doesn't repeat these to other clients, and potentially falls behind in communicating updates on that player's location at all. In that case, small differences in that person's position and orientation at the start of the lag could very quickly diverge into huge differences across different player's consoles. That could effectively make the player invulnerable since the host would find other player's shots somewhat nonsensical.
(Obviously this is totally hypothetical and might not be much of a problem, although all this stuff would be easier to check if we had replays.)

Now, there is one player who is the "physics host" of the game, and that player's system handles the clock countdown timer, ammo spawns, and - presumably - non player object motions such as ammo drops (though it is entirely possible that ammo drops are 100% contained within their own players' systems).

Those are mostly things that don't require high responsiveness but require stability, things that according to the networking presentation would be handled by the dedicated server (or, as you mention, some of it could be handled locally).

I agree on all of these points. As you mention in your hypothetical scenario, while the lag issues used to be a major problem from the game's inception until some months ago, they appear to have been largely resolved. I'm not sure what changes were made in the netcode to solve these issues, but I imagine it was purely due to more connection-based matchmaking priority.

locked

1587 views

For clarity: Similar to a token ring in the sense that there is no true host, and that all systems pass information to the others that is automatically trusted by the others. Not at all like a token ring in the sense that there's no ring and systems can pass tokens as often as their network speeds permit.

My understanding is that they pretty much used Reach's PvP networking and expanded it to work for PvE. AFAIK there is always a console acting as physics host and host migration happens (often in PvE, less often in PvP), just like in Reach.

From Justin Truman's "Shared World Shooter" presentation:

“Kickass Action Game” means we needed Halo Parity. FPS genre parity. We needed to make a highly responsive, low latency action game, that’s instantly familiar and competitive with all the other great FPSes out there.
The internal bar we used to great effect was “it needs to feel like a single player shooter”.
This was important to us because the online experience is not opt-in. We force you to matchmake with other players, even if all you want to do is play a solo campaign. Therefore we need to make sure that our matchmaking and networking goals never hurt that solo campaign experience.
So this means we started with the Halo codebase and networking model.
David Aldridge did a GDC talk 4 years ago about the Halo Reach Networking Model, which describes it in detail, I’m going to skip over most of that. You should really watch his talk, though, if you’re interested in the details of our action game networking.
But I will quickly touch on some Halo Networking terminology, which I’ll be relying on later in this talk.
The most important thing to know about Halo: Reach was that it had 2 networking models – one for PvP and one for PvE.
PvP used standard Peer-to-peer Host/Client networking. One Xbox was the Host of a game (let’s call that the “Physics Host” for reasons that are useful later), the other Xbox’s were all clients communicating with that host, but the Host arbitrated all state changes.
For PvE we used Lockstep Networking – [snip] but ultimately you have to pay full RTT networking time between when you pull the trigger and when your gun fires.
So that meant that while we had a networking model in Halo: Reach for campaign/PvE games (you could play through the whole Halo: Reach campaign with 4 players), it was a noticably more latent experience than our PvP game.
So, going back to the original design goals – this lockstep networking latency was unacceptable for the “Feels like a single-player shooter” goal I mentioned earlier.
So that meant that we chose to instead start with our Halo-era ...
PvP Networking model, but had to extend it to support the full story campaign.

This is why I believe they still use an authoritative physics host. The "peer-to-peer" makes me wonder if each console broadcasts "top priority" information to all others (as a peer) with confirmation of the game state to be communicated by the authoritative physics host. I suspect lower priority information to only be sent by the physics host (which in theory has the lowest latency & most upstream bandwidth in order to handle transmitting more data.

I should note that I have no idea how the "damage referee" works. My understanding of the code is that there is no one single host who can dictate whether or not a shot landed, so I would lean towards the damage referee being more of a poll of all systems as to whether or not they saw the shot land? Even so, that seems horribly inefficient as far as network usage, so I'd be surprised if that was what they used as well. Some sort of dedicated server monitor would make sense, but then why not have dedicated servers, period?

I would LOVE to hear more about how damage referee works. Bungie Please! I suspect you're correct in that it uses a consensus based on the physics simulations on each console, but that that the authoritative physics host can be overridden/vetoed by a (super?) majority of clients.

Also, in the interest of transparency, I have noticed a distinct reduction in lag since the update to PoE, so they may have figured out a better way to handle their network mesh. Even so, I believe it is not up to E-Sports standards for accuracy and reliability, and thus not worthy of the nuance and precision that the Destiny PvP game is capable of. I hold firm that a more traditional dedicated server host to client architecture would greatly improve the Destiny PvP experience.

Hopefully it's getting better.

locked

1608 views

It's definitely better ever since the PoE update.

locked

1570 views

So I can finally do the Echo Chamber strike.

locked

1739 views

I say fuck yes.

I am pretty burned out in general by the Destiny formula at this point. A switch would be hugely welcome. Let's hope that includes a genre change too.

I am not sure if I would play it on PC though, unless PvE had cross platform play, or if the PS4 crew went over too. I'll tell you on thing though, if I do play it on PC, modding to get past grind would absolutely be on the table for me, assuming they keep that stupid aspect of the game.

locked

1770 views

I thought your secret source(s) would have been all over this.

locked

1743 views

Wouldn't modding be minimal since everything is checked server side? The problem with the Division was that everything was handled client side.

locked

1707 views

I am not sure if I would play it on PC though, unless PvE had cross platform play, or if the PS4 crew went over too.

My bro-in-law will only play it on PC if it comes out there, however I can't abandon my PS4 crew for that. :) I'll be sticking w/ ps4 unless most everyone moves to PC. I just don't see it.

locked

1626 views

Geez.

locked

1720 views

Geez.

Yeah, this really concerns me. :-/

locked

1621 views

Sounds like great news to me! I'm disappointed that my character and things might not transfer over, but that is what it is I suppose. Maybe they could treat it like Mass Effect, but instead of story thread things transferring over, maybe they'll let some of my in-game accomplishments and stats carry over. And character appearance. That'd be nice, even if I have to start from scratch on armor and weapons and such things. Maybe we'd have a little wall of trophies that showcase the items we got previously. Food for thought.

Either way, so long as this thing has an awesome story and the same absolutely ridiculously solid gameplay, I'm down. And by gameplay, I mean those core mechanics that make Destiny so great to play. Changing up the encounters and worlds and making it an entirely different game? Awesome. Expand the Crucible. More permanent playlists and things to do. Combat's already top notch.

locked

1712 views

Hypothetically speaking...

Actually that might just be enough to let me put this game down forever. I feel like im in a bad relationship with Destiny. I love the game. I love the raids. We had such an awesome time on sunday figuring out how everything works, and all getting pushed to do our best and focus to win the day... And today i booted up, played the plaguelands a bit and thought... "Aaagh why bother?"

The constant grind/goal leaves me worn out after seemingly fighting for every last trinket (gotta catch all the sparrows). And i know the answer is to just put the game down and come back, but when its good, man its sooooo goooood.

I realize its basically an addiction. But she keeps pulling me back in again. I really wanted a 10 year ride, with my own personal trophies to show for all the work i did. Then they killed off the icebreaker. Made me leave my fatebringer, said the Scholar had to stay behind. "There will be more stuff in the future"...

But i want to keep my stuff. Cuz its mine. And its special.

(Rip A.1F19X-RYL)

-OFT

locked

1729 views

I'll keep my expectations low until the game is actually out (or even actually announced), but the article has me interested.

This in particular:

One of the terms we’ll be hearing often with Destiny 2, according to sources, is “play-in destinations”—a new activity model that will revamp how Destiny’s world functions. The plan, from what I’ve heard, is for Destiny 2's planet areas to feel more populated with towns, outposts, and quests that are more interesting than the patrol missions you can get in Destiny.

Sounds very much like exactly what I want from the game (or at least the vague idea I have in my head).

I was honestly beginning to question if I'd even buy Destiny 2 it was just more Destiny as we currently know it. Increasingly, the answer was leaning more and more towards no. And while maybe that's not actually true, I'm extremely glad to hear that they're looking to change it up significantly. It's not surprised to hear--Bungie hasn't typically been a company to keep doing the same things over and over without significant improvements between iterations, but Destiny's DLC and expansions had me doubting that somewhat.

locked

1702 views

- No text -

locked

1648 views

- No text -

locked

1641 views

- No text -

locked

1649 views

- No text -

locked

1628 views

- No text -

locked

1646 views

- No text -

locked

1640 views

Well.
...
Hmm.
...
Interesting.

How do I start this post, I guess I'll go in the same order as the Kotuku article.

Destiny 2 On PC

Destiny on PC is not surprising in the least. With the scope Bungie seems to be aiming for it was only a matter of time. I wonder if there will be mod support? Oh I can only dream. Oh the things I would mod.

Also not surprising... the number of people behind all this. Collectively, thousands of people are working on Destiny. Outsourcing. It's a thing.

Late 2017.

Yea.

"Destiny 2 to feel like a proper sequel"

- Yea. I'm going to miss some of those supers and exoti-...

"All signs point to the developers starting from scratch"

O_O Oh. That much? That bad?

"D2 is a completely different game" "The Taken King was a reboot for Destiny 1 to fix small things. This is the overhaul to fix big things"

This is the scariest line.

BUNGIE! YA'LL BEST BE CAREFULL... YO' TROTT'N ON A DANGEROUS LINE. For more information look at how much was invested into Mass Effect and the fallout from the last 20 minutes. Admittedly not has bad as in the time scope of things, yet... still.

Through with that said sounds like they are doing a Mass Effect 1 & Mass Effect 2. TL;DR for those who hate awesome storytelling (AKA Never played Mass Effect): Refining Gameplay.

Also I wonder if they are also reworking the back-end. If the rumors are true for how long it takes to boot up the map file... answer is a definite yes.

"Play-in destinations"

Again the Mass Effect 1&2 analog works here too. Less open space. More living spaces.

"Assuming Destiny 2 won't let players carry over their old characters..."

WOAH! WOAH! WOAH! WOAH! WOAH! WOAH! WOAH!

Let's not get carried away here. That is a big deal. That frankly, as I recall, goes against one of the core ideas of Destiny. How am I supposed to "build my legend" if it's with another character? You know what... this is all speculation... Bungie won't...

(Last I heard, Bungie has not yet finalized these decisions.)

O_o
What do you mean by that? You're assuming...so...um... ok. >_>
Hmm. Am I reading to much into this? For now my answer is a hesitant yes.

I just. I don't want to be compelled to make another mega post. ._.

locked

1693 views

I don't mind us having to start fresh, as players. I'm not terribly attached to my characters as characters. Heck, I'm not even sold a hundred percent on how they look. This is why every MMO/RPG should have a character editor after the fact.

My main concern is the whole starting over as a developer. The upshot is they can fix fundamental problems in the game architecture as opposed to slapping fixes on top of it. Downside is they have to develop that system from scratch, which is a lot of fucking work. Especially if they throw out a lot of pre-existing assets, which were good in of themselves.

"play-in" sounds more like what I expected of the game/patrol before launch. Vicarious and High Moon helping can't hurt.

Problems that need addressing to make D2 a success:

+Content Repetition. I don't mind doing the same/similar missions day in and out. I do wish they have a way so that I can't just play the game or the levels by muscle memory. D1 was very obviously developed by people with extensive knowledge of how to make a single player experience. Despite the setup for many players, its all structured similar to a Halo level.

+Separate PVP and PVE. They kept tripping over each other balance-wise, so penning them both off from each other really couldn't hurt.

+Depth of content. I could burn through all the content of Destiny in maybe a week of dedicated play, not counting Raids. Kinda ties into the first point.

+Gating players and progression. Things like how much legendary marks you can get in a day, other ways of stifling player success to milk overall playtime.

+Shaders. Just let us pick our own damn colors.

+Have the ships be useful.

+Actually have a story. As much as people praised the narrative of Taken King, it had all the substance of a teenagers Star Wars fanfiction. We know you can do better, Bungie, so show us.

locked

1693 views

'Leave old planets behind?'

Earth
The Moon
Venus
Mars(I'm not counting Phobos)
Saturn
To a lesser extent, even Mercury!

That's six out of nine--oh wait, no--eight planets right there!

So, unless you're gonna go off galaxy and make some new ones, Bungie...

What I want is what was supposed to be in the first one:real-time drop-ins.

I'd love to see that!

locked

1707 views

So it looks like they are making patrol areas larger, adding NPCs into patrol areas, as well as outposts and such. This is a major improvement that is almost required to give players a reason to care about their characters.

The pre-mission voice overs and patrol beacons have always been a stop gap, a poor way to put characters into the game when the spaces are too small to reasonably fit some NPCs. If you look at Skyrim, Warcraft etc the random discovery of NPCs in the wild are some of the best interactions and springboards for quests.

Expanding the patrol areas and having outposts and NPCs hidden around them is a major improvement, and should not be overlooked. Expanding patrol to 6 -12 people, adding more complicated and involved patrol quests and public events, more vehicles, etc, will make D2 the go to game.

Changing the subclasses, and adding meaningful race customization would necessitate a "reset" of player characters. How they accomplish this is key. You can go the ME route, and offer the player a chance to change their character to a new class, or move them to the closest approximation of their old one, as part of the story. If they go that route they probably will be the most successful.

I think gear is the smallest concern. With the exception of some of the more iconic weapons like the Mythoclast, Necrochasm, GH and the like, there are few weapons that have been preserved since vanilla. If they keep the handful of these more iconic weapons, then a massive change to gear would be ok, especially if those iconic weapons remain for D1 players as a reward for their long hours raiding.

I think the main mistake Bungie made was making exotics drop randomly as rewards. While people like random loot, the sense of working towards a exotic quest goal added lots of value to a particular weapon, or at least affection for it.

locked

1631 views

Would love for it to an 'Xbox anywhere' title, but that might not work/be fair for PvP. But would love to be able to use the same character like you could with 360/XBone.

It would make my business travel easier if I could take my laptop to play on. I typically take my Xbone on road trips for work, but leave it as home when flying.

locked

1630 views

Play anywhere doesn't necessarily include cross play, AFAIK.

locked

1624 views

Play anywhere doesn't necessarily include cross play, AFAIK.

My understanding is that Play Anywhere includes cross-SAVES, meaning (theoretically) your Xbox One characters would also be your PC characters. Cross-PLAY would mean Xbox players in the same crucible matches as PC players, and I agree that probably won't happen.

locked

1624 views

Play anywhere doesn't necessarily include cross play, AFAIK.

correct, but it can, as seen by Forza Horizon 3.

I would love cross-platform play, bc i could raid on work trips with my laptop, but it probably won't happen b/c it would make PvP unfair.

I would definitely settle for cross-saves though.

locked

1608 views

One of the terms we’ll be hearing often with Destiny 2, according to sources, is “play-in destinations”—a new activity model that will revamp how Destiny’s world functions. The plan, from what I’ve heard, is for Destiny 2's planet areas to feel more populated with towns, outposts, and quests that are more interesting than the patrol missions you can get in Destiny.

Oh dear, I can just smell the unrealistic expectations brewing.

locked

1637 views

One of the terms we’ll be hearing often with Destiny 2, according to sources, is “play-in destinations”—a new activity model that will revamp how Destiny’s world functions. The plan, from what I’ve heard, is for Destiny 2's planet areas to feel more populated with towns, outposts, and quests that are more interesting than the patrol missions you can get in Destiny.

Oh dear, I can just smell the unrealistic expectations brewing.

No Man's Destiny confirmed ;)

locked

1640 views

One of the terms we’ll be hearing often with Destiny 2, according to sources, is “play-in destinations”—a new activity model that will revamp how Destiny’s world functions. The plan, from what I’ve heard, is for Destiny 2's planet areas to feel more populated with towns, outposts, and quests that are more interesting than the patrol missions you can get in Destiny.

Oh dear, I can just smell the unrealistic expectations brewing.

No Man's Destiny confirmed ;)

procedurally-generated raids!!

locked

1627 views

One of the terms we’ll be hearing often with Destiny 2, according to sources, is “play-in destinations”—a new activity model that will revamp how Destiny’s world functions. The plan, from what I’ve heard, is for Destiny 2's planet areas to feel more populated with towns, outposts, and quests that are more interesting than the patrol missions you can get in Destiny.

Oh dear, I can just smell the unrealistic expectations brewing.

You're not wrong. But Destiny's current Patrol spaces and activities don't exactly set the bar all that high, so almost anything will be an improvement.

locked

1573 views

Woo, I'm not planning on buying a PS4 or Xbox one, so this is great news.

As for characters, I hope theres a meaningful way that celebrates our achievements in Year 1, but moving on is fine I think. All your character is in your guns as is.

locked

1625 views

What if it is the same guardian, but you and your ghost permanently died? But you are somehow rez'd by another ghost, becoming the first ever dual-ghosted guardian which adds to your legend (maybe you absorbed enough light of other guardians from Crota's chalice, and {ROI SPOIL}slaying the Iron Lords).

Or maybe you were only mostly dead.

[image]

But b/c your 1st ghost had permanently died, you forgot (and have to relearn) all your skills.

Also, the speaker still doesn't tell you whats going on. :/

locked

1655 views

I would be lying if I said I don't have substantially mixed feelings about the implications made in the article. FoR one, a complete rehaul of all systems doesn't require dropping all assets or even content. Given that Bungie has shown a willingness to update old content "when it makes sense" and all that. A complete rework of the game structure over existing assets, regions (such as adding a human outpost tucked in an expanded Cosmodrome or in The Ishtar Sink) and equipment (perk nodes can be removed, added, changed or maybe the gear system will be rebuilt, but you could still have gear that carries over [Reworked Exotics] or is made fresh [Legendary armor models used with new game mechanics]) without completely destroying the investment of D1 but allowing for a complete overhaul. With 750 people and outsourced teams, the chances them dropping all of the old content doesn't seem like the best avenue.

I would be very disappointed if they dropped all the D1 content completely. Especially when it comes to gear. Everyone has pointed out that is your primary avenue of character, but it's also a substantial element of the universe, too. There are stories within the gear. And with the changes to gear they have done over the last few years, there is still a lot that can be done to grow and personalize characters.

Either way, I doubt D2 will be at either extreme of everything carrying over as is or 100% reset start from scratch. One way or another, there will be a lot of upset in the player base.

locked

1635 views

Adding to existing areas would only make the game feel smaller than it already does. The problem for me is that the nature of the patrol zones and how they are linked to the mission spaces mean every event is happening in the same space. When all this stuff is happening in the same small places when there is an entire solar system, it just makes things feel smaller. For instance, it would feel bigger if the plague lands were not connected to the cosmodrome, but perhaps you could see the cosmodrome way off in the distance and it were a separate area entirely.

locked

1614 views

Adding to existing areas can also lead to feelings of growth or progress. There are benefits and drawbacks to anything. And while the region may feel small, or that events are localized, the overall world can be made to feel bigger in other regards. It also depends on how they are handling changes to missions structure and regional travel. I don't want to speculate on what they are doing, but I guess I feel there are reasons to do some retreading of the first three years of Destiny for the purposes of benefit going forward?

locked

1569 views

I expect Bungie to build all new maps for most of the story missions & patrol in D2. I hope they also import the old maps from D1, expand some areas (similar to what they did w/ the plague lands, but not have it be a separate patrol area) & add quests and side story that involve revisiting old areas which have new content in them. A drawback I see with the importing of old maps... If they do import the old maps then the community may rage that they are selling us old content again. Bungie will need to make sure the new maps & content are clearly worthy of a game in and of themselves & present the ability to visit old areas in the right light... Seriously, you KNOW people will rage about it even if it's just "as a bonus".

edit: formatting believe it or not.

locked

1553 views

I expect Bungie to build all new maps for most of the story missions & patrol in D2. I hope they also import the old maps from D1, expand some areas (similar to what they did w/ the plague lands, but not have it be a separate patrol area) & add quests and side story that involve revisiting old areas which have new content in them. A drawback I see with the importing of old maps... If they do import the old maps then the community may rage that they are selling us old content again. Bungie will need to make sure the new maps & content are clearly worthy of a game in and of themselves & present the ability to visit old areas in the right light... Seriously, you KNOW people will rage about it even if it's just "as a bonus".

edit: formatting believe it or not.

Make old content a PS4 exclusive. Then Xbox and PC players will rage about not having it

locked

1572 views

- No text -

locked

1566 views

Adding to existing areas would only make the game feel smaller than it already does.

...what?

How the heck is it not going to feel smaller when Destiny 2 launches and all it has is just what Destiny 1 has-- probably four or so destinations, with one zone per destination? Or do we think the retool going on is so magical it's going to more than double Bungie's per-man output of content?

Am I the only one horrified by this rumor-- not by the loss of progress, because that just happens, but of the idea that all the current content will be mothballed, and we'll go back to playing a game with a fraction of what we have now, all in pursuit of novelty? Wasn't the whole point of making Destiny the way it is was to be able to continue to add onto it, like with WoW, so that at the end you'd have the equivalent of all the content of Halo 1-3 except under a single umbrella, playable start to finish, with significant content dropping once or twice every year over a decade instead of three times with gaps of three years?

The problem for me is that the nature of the patrol zones and how they are linked to the mission spaces mean every event is happening in the same space. When all this stuff is happening in the same small places when there is an entire solar system, it just makes things feel smaller. For instance, it would feel bigger if the plague lands were not connected to the cosmodrome, but perhaps you could see the cosmodrome way off in the distance and it were a separate area entirely.

You mean like how you can go to the splicer battery and see the guns aimed at the wall in the distance?

Yeah, that would be cool. Too bad that place doesn't exist, didn't feature in a story mission, and isn't accessible in patrol mode with a splicer key.

Most of the cosmodrome is separate. Only Rocketyard and The Divide are shared. Heck, I'd have actually preferred for all the cosmodrome to get the snow/SIVA makeover instead of just doubling two areas between the two zones, but hey, you can't have everything.

locked

1605 views

Wasn't the whole point of making Destiny the way it is was to be able to continue to add onto it, like with WoW, so that at the end you'd have the equivalent of all the content of Halo 1-3 except under a single umbrella, playable start to finish, with significant content dropping once or twice every year over a decade instead of three times with gaps of three years?

Was it? Because I certainly don't recall ever hearing that--just a whole lot of assumptions being thrown around and taken as gospel by the community at large. They talked about a ten year journey with your Guardian being carried forward throughout the journey. I don't recall them ever saying all the content from day one would carry forward forever.

locked

1601 views

Wasn't the whole point of making Destiny the way it is was to be able to continue to add onto it, like with WoW, so that at the end you'd have the equivalent of all the content of Halo 1-3 except under a single umbrella, playable start to finish, with significant content dropping once or twice every year over a decade instead of three times with gaps of three years?

Was it? Because I certainly don't recall ever hearing that--just a whole lot of assumptions being thrown around and taken as gospel by the community at large. They talked about a ten year journey with your Guardian being carried forward throughout the journey. I don't recall them ever saying all the content from day one would carry forward forever.

Nor should it. If I'm year ten I am playing year one stuff that is just lazy. New new new please.

locked

1585 views

Wasn't the whole point of making Destiny the way it is was to be able to continue to add onto it, like with WoW, so that at the end you'd have the equivalent of all the content of Halo 1-3 except under a single umbrella, playable start to finish, with significant content dropping once or twice every year over a decade instead of three times with gaps of three years?

Was it? Because I certainly don't recall ever hearing that--just a whole lot of assumptions being thrown around and taken as gospel by the community at large. They talked about a ten year journey with your Guardian being carried forward throughout the journey. I don't recall them ever saying all the content from day one would carry forward forever.

I'm honestly not sure how "a ten year journey with your Guardian carried forward" is consistent with "throw out your old gear and your old characters and by the way all the planets are new too."

In that case, why bother with incremental updates at all? Why not do monolithic releases like before?

Nor should it. If I'm year ten I am playing year one stuff that is just lazy. New new new please.

How the hell is it lazy? I'm not saying they shouldn't add content. They should. They should spend just as much time and effort as they have to date, if not more, adding content to a stable platform without taking it away. By year 10 the game should be 10x bigger than it was in Year 1, and that shouldn't require giving up one square meter of what has been built.

I would kill to have a seamless way to play all the Halo games, in a single engine, with coop that works half as well as Destiny's does. And if in year ten I say hey, wouldn't it be cool to run a Plaguelands patrol for good time's sake, do I want to hear that everybody has to go hunt for a disc, or that they've deleted Destiny 1 off their hard drives to make room? Or that server support for that area is gone?

As is true most of the time, I hope like hell nobody at Bungie thinks about this game the way you do. The way you complain about it, so far I've been lucky, but who knows...

locked

1584 views

By year 10 the game should be 10x bigger than it was in Year 1, and that shouldn't require giving up one square meter of what has been built.

IF it means building on a bad foundation, we should absolutely give it up. Destiny is fun as it's built, but it can be so much more than what it currently is. If we have to give up all Destiny 1 content carrying forward to make it happen, it's a price I'm more than willing to accept.

locked

1572 views

By year 10 the game should be 10x bigger than it was in Year 1, and that shouldn't require giving up one square meter of what has been built.

IF it means building on a bad foundation, we should absolutely give it up. Destiny is fun as it's built, but it can be so much more than what it currently is. If we have to give up all Destiny 1 content carrying forward to make it happen, it's a price I'm more than willing to accept.

Yeah. I'm kinda in the same boat. I totally believe in what Narcogen is saying. But this is one of the times that Bungie has kinda slipped up in their production of a game. If they can say, well Destiny 1 was a trial that didn't go so well and from here on out create an awesome game. I'm okay with that. It would still be nice if they kept the same content but put it on a better platform/foundation.

locked

1570 views

Nor should it. If I'm year ten I am playing year one stuff that is just lazy. New new new please.

How the hell is it lazy? I'm not saying they shouldn't add content. They should. They should spend just as much time and effort as they have to date, if not more, adding content to a stable platform without taking it away. By year 10 the game should be 10x bigger than it was in Year 1, and that shouldn't require giving up one square meter of what has been built.

I'm with you. I think Cody's reaction is a perfect example of what I'm worried about Bungie having to manage if they include old content. People seeing it as a negative instead of a positive. "Bungie's too lazy to make new stuff," even if they did make as much new stuff in D2 as they had in D1.

locked

1573 views

I'm with you. I think Cody's reaction is a perfect example of what I'm worried about Bungie having to manage if they include old content. People seeing it as a negative instead of a positive. "Bungie's too lazy to make new stuff," even if they did make as much new stuff in D2 as they had in D1.

My reaction is simply, "Why would they include it?"

Presumably, Destiny 1 won't go away. If I want to play Destiny 1 stuff, I'll play Destiny 1. I don't want new things to be held back or limited in any way by old stuff. If what this article hints at is true, it seems like that's exactly what they're avoiding. I'd be more than a little disappointed if Destiny in 10 years is basically exactly the same as Destiny now, just with more stuff.

locked

1583 views

Nor should it. If I'm year ten I am playing year one stuff that is just lazy. New new new please.

How the hell is it lazy? I'm not saying they shouldn't add content. They should. They should spend just as much time and effort as they have to date, if not more, adding content to a stable platform without taking it away. By year 10 the game should be 10x bigger than it was in Year 1, and that shouldn't require giving up one square meter of what has been built.

I'm with you. I think Cody's reaction is a perfect example of what I'm worried about Bungie having to manage if they include old content. People seeing it as a negative instead of a positive. "Bungie's too lazy to make new stuff," even if they did make as much new stuff in D2 as they had in D1.

There is a cost to keeping old stuff, namely having the systems in place to support it. If you keep old stuff, you have to keep a lot of other things that are best left behind.

Their ability to manage old content is questionable. Cruel tells me that if you play the game from the beginning now, with Questification, that it is not only a flow killing series of back and forth to the tower, but the game also has you starting Taken King missions before you even do the Crota raid. Which makes no sense because you haven't killed Crota yet!

locked

1582 views

Their ability to manage old content is questionable. Cruel tells me that if you play the game from the beginning now, with Questification, that it is not only a flow killing series of back and forth to the tower, but the game also has you starting Taken King missions before you even do the Crota raid. Which makes no sense because you haven't killed Crota yet!

I made a similar post in a reply to a thread on reddit somewhere a few days ago.

The Quest system sucks. It's worse than it ever was, if you're playing from the beginning. It makes LESS sense. It basically just opens up everything from every expansion at once and floods your quest log with new things, with absolutely no indication of how they fit together.

locked

1564 views

There is a cost to keeping old stuff, namely having the systems in place to support it. If you keep old stuff, you have to keep a lot of other things that are best left behind.

Surely importing the level geometry (and enemy spawns) won't tie them down. They don't need to keep all the public events and missions and all of that. Just allow us to go back, maybe give us a reason as part of an exotic quest. Shoot, they could even put some of that microtransaction money toward 'live' events happening in these locations without having to mess with the core D2 levels.

locked

1551 views

Shoot, they could even put some of that microtransaction money toward 'live' events happening in these locations without having to mess with the core D2 levels.

[image]

locked

1569 views

Shoot, they could even put some of that microtransaction money toward 'live' events happening in these locations without having to mess with the core D2 levels.

Yeah, I thought that was pretty funny myself. ;)

locked

1579 views

How the hell is it lazy? I'm not saying they shouldn't add content. They should. They should spend just as much time and effort as they have to date, if not more, adding content to a stable platform without taking it away. By year 10 the game should be 10x bigger than it was in Year 1, and that shouldn't require giving up one square meter of what has been built.

It is only 10x bigger if you are just starting out. When I have conquered and have little interest in going back to year one stuff because it's been mastered and I'm sick of it, it doesn't matter if it's kept. Even worse if it is slightly tweaked and rolled into the activities you are expected to do.

I've already done it. I want to do something new.

locked

1578 views

What if the Vex are simulating the paths of different guardians? D1 was a hypothetical of what would happen if that guardian was "The One." D2 is a separate simulation following another such hypothetical.

locked

1561 views

- No text -

locked

1560 views

- No text -

locked

1553 views

locked

1550 views

Back to the forum index

RSS Feed of thread

DBO Forums

kotaku: Destiny 2 for PC, won't carry over year 1 characters (Destiny)

Line in the sand: I will not maintain nine characters.

LOL

Line in the sand: I will not maintain fifteen characters.