What do you think kept objective game types?

The more I think, the more it seems that there must have been some kind of fundamental balance or game design reason that Destiny has no objective game types.

Every single game mode is slayer. Every one. Even salvage. You get points for killing in salvage, and hardly any for capturing relics. You can easily get more points defending the relic than you do actually capturing it, and I've won a few games before with my team capturing zero relics. I would have expected Salvage to be such that you can only gain points by capturing (or sabotaging) the relics, since in Halo's objective games you net no points for kills.

The opportunity was THERE, but they made it a slayer type.

I wonder why, but I'm betting the answer is Golden Gun and Ward of Dawn.

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I wonder why, but I'm betting the answer is Golden Gun and Ward of Dawn.

Exactly. Remember in Halo when the pwning team would stop capturing flags and just grief the shit out of the losing team? That was with a strictly balanced game. Imagine that with supers and "everyone has a power weapon".

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I wonder why, but I'm betting the answer is Golden Gun and Ward of Dawn.

Exactly. Remember in Halo when the pwning team would stop capturing flags and just grief the shit out of the losing team? That was with a strictly balanced game. Imagine that with supers and "everyone has a power weapon".

I'm just thinking that team oddball would be pretty dumb, since if you had a team of hunters save their supers to kill anyone from the other team who picks up the mini traveler, then they could wreck.

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Their statistics from Halo and looking at other games probably indicated that objective playlists would either be pretty dead or ignored completely.

As an objective player, I'm sad about this in Destiny, but I also realize at this point this is probably the closest we can get to objective gametypes and actually be able to play anything that isn't straight across deathmatch.

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The objective game type I wish Bungie had explored was the old Unreal Tournament '99 Assault game type.

For those who haven't played it, it goes something like this:

1. Team A spawns on an easily defendable position, their job is to protect an objective, similar to a Relic or a Control point in Destiny.

2. Team B spawns on the other side of the map. Very little (if any) cover. Their job is to capture this relic, control point.

Once Team B captures the objective, the first half of the game ends, and their score is time remaining plus scores from kills.

3. Game restarts, with Team B defending, and Team A assaulting. Same deal, score is calculated with time remaining plus scores from kills.

The nice thing about this game type is that it requires no map balance, hence some PVE maps could be recycled for it.

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I wonder why, but I'm betting the answer is Golden Gun and Ward of Dawn.

Probably. That and everyone has a sniper rifle. And everyone (on a big enough map) has a Sparrow. And so on. Maybe what it really comes down to though is "Epic CTF" (if I have that term correct) hour long stalemates are fun when you've got your TVs in a circle and are playing with 15 friends... but it's very very hard to achieve the same level of both gameplay equality and friendship equality within a matchmade environment. Perhaps this is a call for custom games as much as anything else, but it's hard to fault Bungie for not including gametypes that, historically over a decade, have not been as popular and have not worked nearly as well online as they did in person.

I do agree that something like Salvage should probably be scored based on... yeah, the salvage... instead of the killing. :)

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I seemed to recall however that Halo 4 had a variant of "Kill the man with the ball" and that the super powers made it pretty easy for a team, once grouped up to pretty much dominate. If you didn't get the power weapons spawn, then you had minimal chances of taking the ball.

In Destiny, all it would take is some wards of dawn and golden gun and you would have a tough time taking the ball.

I also think the lack of a Warthog equivalent and larger maps held it back too. Bungie has lots of experience trying to integrate vehicle and pedestrian spaces in maps, and I think they did a better job then Titanfall, but none of the maps with the exception of the Skyfall, Citiadel, and Luna map seem to be designed with vehicles in mind.

I think they could pull off a new game type, where two swords spawn on the map, one for each team. The sword holder would get bonus shields and the usual one hit melee. Each team would get points for sword kills, and would have to guard and escort their sword bearer without killing too many of the other team before the sword bearer gets them. If a sword is left unattended for a time it would respawn somewhere on the map, so you could not camp the opposing teams sword.

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I seemed to recall however that Halo 4 had a variant of "Kill the man with the ball" and that the super powers made it pretty easy for a team, once grouped up to pretty much dominate. If you didn't get the power weapons spawn, then you had minimal chances of taking the ball.

In Destiny, all it would take is some wards of dawn and golden gun and you would have a tough time taking the ball.

This is where outside the box ideas don't seem to be thought of. Supers and power weapons might be a way to make these game types interesting. What if teams with the ball have their supers suppressed as soon as they pick it up? Or if your team's vision starts to go dark when you pick it up, like being marked by the void? There are all sorts of buffs/debuffs that occur in the raids that could be utilized to balance Man with the Ball, or CTF.

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This really needs answered.

There are all kinds of objective-oriented gametypes that could be pursued, but the key is having them play well on the maps that exist. An oddball variant might have to have two or even three players in proximity to the objective to get it to move. I mean, between the sword and the aegis relic, it seems like there are already preassembled mechanics just waiting to be fitted to a gametype.

There's too much potential for them not to be considering things of that nature.

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I do agree that something like Salvage should probably be scored based on... yeah, the salvage... instead of the killing. :)

I wonder if any of this has to do with the the fact that in Halo, at least in matchmaking, many players tended to play slayer all the time regardless of what was going on? We've all been there - some asshat just sits in a corner with a sniper rifle, but not in a corner that's actually helping their team control anythign useful. Perhaps Bungie saw that happening, realized how frustrating it was for those peoples' teammates, and just decided to remove the frustration. It sort of worked - with Destiny's current setup, those players are still contributing whether they're paying attention to the other objectives or not.

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I do agree that something like Salvage should probably be scored based on... yeah, the salvage... instead of the killing. :)

I wonder if any of this has to do with the the fact that in Halo, at least in matchmaking, many players tended to play slayer all the time regardless of what was going on? We've all been there - some asshat just sits in a corner with a sniper rifle, but not in a corner that's actually helping their team control anythign useful. Perhaps Bungie saw that happening, realized how frustrating it was for those peoples' teammates, and just decided to remove the frustration. It sort of worked - with Destiny's current setup, those players are still contributing whether they're paying attention to the other objectives or not.

Could be. But maybe the balance is emphasizing kills too much? What if instead of ~100 points for a standard kill you got 10 in a Salvage game? I suppose the risk is the people who aren't getting any points because all they can do is kill will just go off back to the other game types...

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Instead they got a game where people mostly ignore pvp in favor of the team based gameplay.

If that's what happened, I don't think I could call it a success.

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I could, but only because I hate PvP. ;)

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Instead they got a game where people mostly ignore pvp in favor of the team based gameplay.

If that's what happened, I don't think I could call it a success.

I'm not sure I caught your meaning. What are people ignoring?

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They didn't have enough time or money.

Seriously though, probably the same reason they barely touched vehicles despite a long rich history with them throughout the Halo games.

What is that reason? Hell if I know.

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They didn't have enough time or money.

Seriously though, probably the same reason they barely touched vehicles despite a long rich history with them throughout the Halo games.

What is that reason? Hell if I know.

Yeah, it would be interesting to know why vehicles aren't more heavily featured in Destiny. Maybe:

- They are hard to get right in campaign. Think back to Halo 2's flood controlled Scorpion that would nuke players in one shot. Or the Halo 3's Ghosts that, on Legendary at least, were almost impossible to combat using a vehicle of your own because they killed so quickly. More on the player side you had the Gausshog that was an unstoppable killing machine but also had the Reach Rockethog that almost more often than not would fail to damage what you shot at since the AI would just evade over and over.

- They are hard to get right in multiplayer. Not just from a is the vehicle too powerful standpoint anymore either. Now, in the Crucible, vehicles are subject to sniper rifles basically at all times. And supers at any give time. Vehicles were already becoming something of a death trap in Halo as they were sometimes subject to cross map Spartan Lasers or Missile Pods or tracking rocket launchers. Getting that balance right between game changing but not game breaking power vs keeping has got to be tough and perhaps even harder given Destiny's "Halo+" sandbox of powers and weapons.

In some ways I think it's good that Destiny focuses on the on-foot combat. In others, I'm always sad that there isn't a Destiny equivalent of the Banshee...

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One wonders if there originally were more planned but they were cut. Also one wonders why the Pike made it in, seems almost token.

Shame vehicles didn't make it in, could have really livened up the sandbox.

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I'm biased!

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Objective gametypes are my favorites in every FPS. I miss them. Especially Assault / Demolition types.

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...for online matchmade multiplayer.

That's what Destinys gametypes are designed for. Not LANs. Not tournaments.

Not every player can be expected to be invested in the outcome of the match or in being sporting. Pure objective gametypes in shooters allow too many player behaviours to be unnecessarily disruptive. Such as holding the objective or playing for kills.

The appallingly low population of objective playlists in Halo has already been pointed out. Why would Bungie try something that has already failed, multiple times?

Often too, the most efficient way to 'win' a pure objective gametype was the least interesting, and kill-light: run the flag back 3 times in a minute and a half, hold the oddball in a corner for a few minutes, run into the Hill and stand there.

In a mixed slayer/objective gametype, if players decide to ignore the objective and go for kills, they impose a self-handicap that gives a chance to the other team in a score sense. If they stop at 2 of the 3 control zones, in most cases they'll have to give the other team a safe spawning zone so they aren't spawning in behind them and taking their objectives. If they go for all three, the actual score is made up by something fun (killing people) and is reached much more quickly.

Bungie aren't given enough credit for this, actually.

EDIT: putting aside concerns about point balance between objective-focused and kill-focused action: yes, there is a fundamental design reason, and it's a damn good one IMO.

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What do you think kept objective game types? (Destiny)