Two seperate points in here... (Destiny)

by Kahzgul, Tuesday, January 05, 2016, 17:27 (3340 days ago) @ electricpirate

I think you are making two seperate and important arguments in here.

1. is an argument for greater class seperation.

For me, I like how subtle these differences are. I think that's how Destiny walks it's weird line between satisfying shooter and RPG. I'm not really sure you can seperate the two and maintaing the progression or interesting customization options. Maybe it's because I play Titan, and they have perhaps the highest differentiation of any the classes right now? Striker actually feels like an up close bruiser, but I can still use the guns. Defender feels very support like, or that I want to tank a lot of damage, etc. and sun breaker feels like he's just a super machine still, waiting to pop that super. So I dunno, I feel pretty good about the differentiated rolls of these classes. Admittidly, you see that a lot more in strikes/ the raid where orbs are raining down, and supers can come into play more.

There's a lot of games out there that do theses big differences between classes. But that subtlety actually makes destiny really unique IMO

2. The other is a problem with information presentation.

Destiny has a lot of trouble getting the right amount of visual information to you. Understanding what a dude can tank, and how much health they have are all really fuzzy. That's in part because of that subtlety, but also a bit by design, as it helps with some of the vagaries of connection weirdness and other problems.

Especially compared to Halo, where the state of your enemies was always crystal clear. Destinie's damage numbers and bars and health system are all muddy and confusing. Honestly, that kind of visual mud is my main issue with destiny. The TTK even made it worse in some ways, with the taken who were all the same color, and had similar profiles

I agree. I really like how destiny's classes are just slightly different feeling FPS dudes, rather than distinct and definitive role players.

The presentation, however, leaves a lot to be desired. I think the form was allowed to outstrip the function, and it's a confusing and overly complicated mess. Some things are bars, some are numbers, bars and numbers from one thing don't mean the same thing when they're on a different thing, how the numbers and bars relate to actual in-game values in a wholly different thing... ugh. I just want "you have this much health. Your gun does this much damage." We KNOW these values thanks to data miners and third party websites and such, but ffs put that information in the game already. It's like the Grimoire... if it isn't in the game, it isn't in the game. That's poor design.