What's Your Biggest Worry?

I know the game hasn't come out yet, and I know a lot of people have high hopes for Destiny, and I know I'm new to DBO, but I'm wondering, what are your biggest worries about what Bungie might do wrong?

Personally, I must praise the Halo-style combat filled with maneuvering and thinking (at least that's what the reveal gameplay seems to imply), but I immediately start cringing when I notice the immense amount of Star Wars influence. Once again, I know a lot of people like Star Wars, but for me, it's like nails on chalkboard - especially the original trilogy. So when I see how a lot of the characters are wearing what look like hybrids between Assassin's Creed and Star Wars, I start to wonder whether Bungie's actually doing the right thing.

Also, the Fantasy influences irk me a little bit, possibly for the same reason Star Wars does - cheesy, cliché, unenjoyable, and nonsensical. And the idea of 'I'm a Hero' in a Massively-Multiplayer-oriented game seems a little weird, though I'm sure that's been pointed out.

So, that out of the way, what are some of your worries?

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So, that out of the way, what are some of your worries?

My biggest worry is that Bungie is going to succumb to the shitty modern design philosophy of making rewards an important part of the game, through gear, experience, and player investment systems.

Imagine for a second that Bungie designed Destiny without a save feature. It would rule and here's why.

First of all, you'd probably wonder HOW such a thing could even work. How could you possibly design a game with dozens of hours of content without a way to save? All the ingredients are there. You have a game world spanning multiple planets and a way to transport between them.

So you start every session in your home, or a hub on Earth under the traveler or something. If you've played before, you have nothing from your previous play sessions. But you haven't, so you head on out. You figure out you need to do whatever it is you need to do, and wherever it is you need to go.

So you complete this mission / quest whatever you want to call it. In any normal game, this would set a flag or give you an item or something that would allow you to progress. But what if that didn't happen? What if the reward was merely information?

You finish the quest, and the dude at the end tells you about another quest. He reveals the location of a hidden entrance to an area, and gives you instructions on how to access it.

Let's say at this point you stop playing.

Tomorrow, you turn on Destiny, and you find yourself at the start, with a bare slate since you can;t save anything. But you still have that information. So you go, and instead of doing the first quest again, you go access the hidden entrance. Maybe after completing this quest you get some story information, and hints on things to do next.

See where I'm going with this? There's no need to save anything! You could have a wide variety of quests strewn about, and due to the social nature of the game, players will exchange acquired information with each other as they discover it. Some could be easy to discover, some hard. Enter any area, and the story would naturally progress to an appropriate point, or perhaps change depending on server parameters which can be changed as time goes on.

Weapons could appear around areas just like they do in most FPS levels. You just can't keep them.

What would this force Bungie to do? Well, first of all, it would force Bungie to perfectly pace missions / levels etc, and make sure that they are constantly engaging and novel, something that arcade designers generally mastered because you couldn't save. Second, it would force Bungie to create fun situations, by virtue of the fact that it would be impossible to tempt players with rewards, since you can't save exp, weapon progression, loot, or anything like that. The game itself has to be fun enough to play without bullshit player investment systems. Third, it would force impeccable planning and design in the scenario and story construction.

This limitation would force Bungie to discard all the bullshit that modern game design has heaped upon us, and distill the game to its most streamlined, pure, and elegant form. Is this mission fun without the ability to save? No? Then it's shit, we'd better make it fun!

You don't even have to give up on an overarching narrative!

I worry, because loot, player investment systems, and all that Jazz are the exact opposite of this. It doesn't force good game design. It encourages lazy game design. We are always told that players should be able to save whenever they want. Not only does that ruin many types of games (use savestates to beat a NES game, and you'll see what I mean), and ruin tension, but the save feature itself may be responsible for some of the more stupid and disgusting trends in game design today.

If ever there's an indie game that needs to be made (because publishers would never go for it), it would be the 40 hour RPG without a save system. It would work as long as your skill as a developer was high.

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I am okay with the modern shooter stuffs. Just balance it. I just hope levels are just experience and time spent but does not give stat boost. That just give you access to awesome weapons that look cool not with higher stats. I like the idea of having a gun I like I can hold on forever cause I like it not because it's got better stats. Just like swords.

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My biggest worry is that Bungie is going to succumb to the shitty modern design philosophy of making rewards an important part of the game, through gear, experience, and player investment systems.

I think at this point these are pretty much a given. Maybe you should just call it off now, rather than continue to bellyache about it for the next 8 yea— oh who am I kidding, you enjoy the bellyaching. I'm starting to think that's the game for you.

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I keep trying to summarise a non-dismissive response to what you've outlined, but in taking it apart piece by piece I keep coming back to the same basic problem I have with what you appear to want (and what you find so unappealing in some games): that linear progression is an important part of an immersive game world, and that accomplishment and reward are vital ingredients to support that.

Fundamentally, any game set in an immersive universe like Destiny with no save system would fall down because it would be impossible to maintain a linear progression through the game world, and without that the game's immersion would crumble and be exposed for what it truly is: a simple, house of cards. This is a problem World of Warcraft suffered from pre-Wrath of the Lich King expansion (although there was still a linear narrative throughout; we'll come back to that) — your actions as a player had no visible lasting effects. Sure, you slayed the dragon or freed the prisoners or killed 100 kobolds or whatever, but a few minutes later the dragon would respawn, the prisoners would be back in their cage and, whaddya know, there are still kobolds roaming free. The effect was one that broke the sense of immersion in an otherwise captivating, world, and revealed the simplified gameplay for what it was.

In spite of this, they were still able to keep a linear narrative going because throughout this whole process your character was levelling up and exploring new parts of the world which your level afforded you access to. Without such a level system it would be impossible to prevent players ‘skipping ahead’ in terms of the linear narrative; you explicitly suggest that players might exchange information with each other, which would lead to exactly this kind of behaviour, completely derailing the linear narrative in the process (as an aside, any game design system which relies upon players sharing information outside of the game is inherently broken).

I'm not saying that a game with an epic universe that you are free to explore would be unenjoyable without a linear narrative, but it certainly reduces the scope for enjoyable activities. In every game, the player has a motive, a purpose to their actions. In a strategy game that objective might be to defeat the enemy; in a (non-multiplayer) FPS game it might be to play the role of hero and save humanity (or suchlike), but when you break it down the game will always be comprised of other smaller games, and these games all need to be fun (up until you get to the lowest level, anyway).

A game of chess is fun because whilst you're trying to beat the other guy, you're also thinking about strategic gambits comprised of a number of moves, as well as individual moves within that gambit based on your opponent's moves, until you get down to the meat of it and you have the base mechanics of how pieces can behave and the rules of the game they inhabit. The same is true in a game like Halo: you are experiencing the wider story arc of the Master Chief and his fight for Humanity's survival, but then below that there is both the war against the Covenant and the story of the Forerunner-Flood war, both of which have narratives which unfold through the story, impacting on gameplay in terms of the kind of environment you visit, the enemies you face and the weapons you get to use. On a lower level, the gameplay of an individual encounter might be comprised of deciding how you're going to defeat a pack of Brutes, or how you're going to destroy a couple of Wraith tanks on the horizon, and then even lower than that you have the basic mechanics of gunplay, the rules of the game as it were.

What I question is just whether the game you describe provides enough layers of these games to make for an interesting and enjoyable experience. With a Bungie game I think we can take it as a given that they're going to get the gunplay right, and presumably the encounters that you experience too. What happens in the game layers above this is something that hasn't really been explained in detail yet, but you can be sure it exists. But what would these layers be in the saveless game world? There can't be a linear narrative (as we discussed), so just what is there to motivate the player and give them purpose?

Ultimately what I think you described isn't something that would be an enjoyable experience for a lot of players. It's easy to be dismissive of big publishers because they play it safe with the games they choose to finance, but being risk-averse doesn't just mean playing it safe, it also means steering clear of projects which are likely to be commercial flops. This gives room for indie developers to experiment, sure, but they're never going to do it on the grand scale that Bungie are attempting, and they may find once they've build the game they imagined it's just not that fun, but without scope to fix the fundamental problems.

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In spite of this, they were still able to keep a linear narrative going because throughout this whole process your character was levelling up and exploring new parts of the world which your level afforded you access to. Without such a level system it would be impossible to prevent players ‘skipping ahead’ in terms of the linear narrative; you explicitly suggest that players might exchange information with each other, which would lead to exactly this kind of behaviour, completely derailing the linear narrative in the process

And? If they want to skip ahead… they can skip ahead. I think most people who care about the story WOULDN'T skip ahead, because they want to experience it all. There would also be many missions that only add depth and flavor to the story rather than moving it forward. Which lets you experience them in any order with no ill effects. You could get Vincent's ultimate weapon at any time and learn about Lucretia and Sephiroth in FFVII for example, since it was supplemental to the main narrative. Destiny would ideally have lots of that stuff, because the main narrative would move slowly like all MMOs (or else you'd beat it and see the end in a day).

Server events could happen to move the narrative forward which are only accessible after they are activated, thus Bungie could control the flow of the main narrative and keep people from going ahead.

Think outside the box man.

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I think most people who care about the story WOULDN'T skip ahead, because they want to experience it all.

You really don't understand us humans, do you? Have you ever heard of spoilers?

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I think most people who care about the story WOULDN'T skip ahead, because they want to experience it all.

You really don't understand us humans, do you? Have you ever heard of spoilers?

Doesn't the fact that a lot of people AVOID spoilers kind of prove my point?

If you are really worried about it, you control the pace of the narrative through server events rolled out on Bungie's timetable, making it impossible to skip too far ahead. The game would then be about having fun and absorbing as much information about the world as possible until the new events unfold (possibly even being rolled out in response to player action).

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I think most people who care about the story WOULDN'T skip ahead, because they want to experience it all.

You really don't understand us humans, do you? Have you ever heard of spoilers?

Doesn't the fact that a lot of people AVOID spoilers kind of prove my point?

So, if the game is save less and you accidentally discover stumble upon something that spoils a major plot arc prematurely..? You don't necessarily know a spoiler is a spoiler until later, by which point the whole narrative flow is disrupted.

Perfect example from WoW: one of the most epic vanilla quest chains involved the investigation into the disappearance of the king of Stormwind. It spanned something like levels 12-50 and ultimately resulted in exposing one of the king's advisors as the dragon Onyxia in disguise, right in the Stormwind Keep throne room. Epic... except any level 3 newbie who came into Stormwind (which you inevitably would) could accidentally witness the whole thing. Out of context it didn't make sense, instead it just spoiled the main reveal of the whole plot arc.

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So, if the game is save less and you accidentally discover stumble upon something that spoils a major plot arc prematurely..?

This would be a problem if spoilers actually reduced our enjoyment of media, as opposed to just encouraging us to complain about our supposed reduction of enjoyment.

It's often the latter.

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I think most people who care about the story WOULDN'T skip ahead, because they want to experience it all.

You really don't understand us humans, do you? Have you ever heard of spoilers?

Doesn't the fact that a lot of people AVOID spoilers kind of prove my point?

So, if the game is save less and you accidentally discover stumble upon something that spoils a major plot arc prematurely..? You don't necessarily know a spoiler is a spoiler until later, by which point the whole narrative flow is disrupted.

Firs of all, this is why I said design would have to be impeccable. The things should be designed so that the chance of discovering or activating them without knowledge beforehand is slim.

Second, this is a THOUGHT EXPERIMENT. The idea is to design a game that is fun without saves, since no saves would force amazing design. THEN add in saves and things that require it. The point is that Bungie is doing the exact opposite of this, and I can almost guarantee that the core of the game will be rotten, which is in contrast to a game designed with no way to save would turn out.

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Second, this is a THOUGHT EXPERIMENT.

What is it about you that means you can't acknowledge a fundamental flaw in the idea you're putting forward? Is it that crushing to your ego to admit your ideas aren't actually bulletproof?

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Second, this is a THOUGHT EXPERIMENT.

What is it about you that means you can't acknowledge a fundamental flaw in the idea you're putting forward? Is it that crushing to your ego to admit your ideas aren't actually bulletproof?

Well to be fair, I think a game designed like that would actually work, and none of the problems you bring up couldn't be overcome.

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Second, this is a THOUGHT EXPERIMENT.

What is it about you that means you can't acknowledge a fundamental flaw in the idea you're putting forward? Is it that crushing to your ego to admit your ideas aren't actually bulletproof?

Well to be fair, I think a game designed like that would actually work, and none of the problems you bring up couldn't be overcome.

‘To be fair’ to whom?

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In spite of this, they were still able to keep a linear narrative going because throughout this whole process your character was levelling up and exploring new parts of the world which your level afforded you access to. Without such a level system it would be impossible to prevent players ‘skipping ahead’ in terms of the linear narrative; you explicitly suggest that players might exchange information with each other, which would lead to exactly this kind of behaviour, completely derailing the linear narrative in the process

And? If they want to skip ahead… they can skip ahead. I think most people who care about the story WOULDN'T skip ahead, because they want to experience it all. There would also be many missions that only add depth and flavor to the story rather than moving it forward. Which lets you experience them in any order with no ill effects. You could get Vincent's ultimate weapon at any time and learn about Lucretia and Sephiroth in FFVII for example, since it was supplemental to the main narrative. Destiny would ideally have lots of that stuff, because the main narrative would move slowly like all MMOs (or else you'd beat it and see the end in a day).

Server events could happen to move the narrative forward which are only accessible after they are activated, thus Bungie could control the flow of the main narrative and keep people from going ahead.

Think outside the box man.

You talk about these things as if writing optional, non-linear narrative is just a simple problem to solve. I think the very fact it doesn't exist (a few experiments aside) in mainstream video games is a good demonstration that it's far from simple.

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Very good angle on it kapowaz! Stories are not problems to be solved. That's why you re-read them, re-watch them, re-play them. They are about the feelings that are evoked throughout the experience.

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Very good angle on it kapowaz! Stories are not problems to be solved. That's why you re-read them, re-watch them, re-play them. They are about the feelings that are evoked throughout the experience.

This is why video games are bad at stories.

The article "The trouble with Being Batman" explains this perfectly.

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Very good angle on it kapowaz! Stories are not problems to be solved. That's why you re-read them, re-watch them, re-play them. They are about the feelings that are evoked throughout the experience.

This is why video games are bad at stories.

No, this is why games can be bad at stories. There are lots of examples of exceptionally good storytelling in the game world, which could only have been told through that medium.

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I think Limbo is a good example of a story that couldn't be told by any other medium quite as well.

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I think Limbo is a good example of a story that couldn't be told by any other medium quite as well.

Yes. Or Braid. Or Half-Life 2. Or Final Fantasy 7. I'm sure you'll all have your favourites, too.

I used to subscribe to the belief that telling a story through a game was a bad idea, and that it simply meant a worse game and a worse story. I no longer hold that view.

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Yes. Or Braid. Or Half-Life 2. Or Final Fantasy 7. I'm sure you'll all have your favourites, too.

I used to subscribe to the belief that telling a story through a game was a bad idea, and that it simply meant a worse game and a worse story. I no longer hold that view.

I don't know if I agree that Final Fantasy 7 couldn't be told as well as a movie (I think it's too hard to know for sure), but the other two I agree are great examples. Braid would be a crappy B movie that would probably star Nicholas Cage. But man, as a game, that game was incredible.

Honestly I think the first time I really appreciated how well games could tell stories was all the way back in Chrono Trigger. To this day it is probably one of my favorite games, and avoids most of the problems movies encounter when trying to tell a time traveling story.

Crap... now I'm going to have to go play it.

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I don't know if I agree that Final Fantasy 7 couldn't be told as well as a movie (I think it's too hard to know for sure)

The reason I mention that one is because of how it takes advantage of the player's starting position of ignorance - you're told Cloud used to be a member of SOLDIER, and you have no reason to doubt that because you're unaware of his history. It turns out that not only was that not true, but not even Cloud realised it wasn't true, and so when his true identity and history become apparent you're actually very much able to relate to the shock of this discovery. This only works because for a large portion of the game the player effectively 'is' Cloud, so he's the character you most strongly relate to. As a book or a film you'd be a third-party and so it couldn't possibly have the same impact.

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Very good angle on it kapowaz! Stories are not problems to be solved. That's why you re-read them, re-watch them, re-play them. They are about the feelings that are evoked throughout the experience.

This is why video games are bad at stories.

No, this is why games can be bad at stories. There are lots of examples of exceptionally good storytelling in the game world, which could only have been told through that medium.

It's like I link people to a very good i(n fact one of the best) articles about video games and stories, that puts the fundamental problem in a very simple, concise way, and nobody seems to read it. I wonder why.

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Very good angle on it kapowaz! Stories are not problems to be solved. That's why you re-read them, re-watch them, re-play them. They are about the feelings that are evoked throughout the experience.

This is why video games are bad at stories.

No, this is why games can be bad at stories. There are lots of examples of exceptionally good storytelling in the game world, which could only have been told through that medium.

It's like I link people to a very good i(n fact one of the best) articles about video games and stories, that puts the fundamental problem in a very simple, concise way, and nobody seems to read it. I wonder why.

Because it proves diddly squat, if people enjoyed a story in a game that couldn't have been done as anything other than a game.

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Very good angle on it kapowaz! Stories are not problems to be solved. That's why you re-read them, re-watch them, re-play them. They are about the feelings that are evoked throughout the experience.

This is why video games are bad at stories.

No, this is why games can be bad at stories. There are lots of examples of exceptionally good storytelling in the game world, which could only have been told through that medium.

It's like I link people to a very good i(n fact one of the best) articles about video games and stories, that puts the fundamental problem in a very simple, concise way, and nobody seems to read it. I wonder why.

Because it proves diddly squat, if people enjoyed a story in a game that couldn't have been done as anything other than a game.

…aaaaand if you READ IT you'd see it covers that…

Bottom line: I think Bungie started with the wrong core philosophy, and that's what worries me.

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I mean, is he the product of some cosmic coincidence? Or is there really a God, watching everything. You know, with a plan for him and stuff. I don't know Jilly, but it keeps me up at night.

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It's like I link people to a very good i(n fact one of the best) articles about video games and stories, that puts the fundamental problem in a very simple, concise way, and nobody seems to read it. I wonder why.

I actually have read it, and I think it's a great read. It brings up a lot of good points about why game design needs to focus on gameplay more than anything else. However, I do think that it at best ignores the concept of great story telling through cutscenes and at worst implies that story telling through cutscenes is bad.

Cutscenes work (when done well) because they can create moments that you just can't experience in the type of game you're playing. This should be about the only time (in my opinion) you should have cutscenes. Now, a lot of games (especially AAA games) use cutscenes too much. Why am I watching the player-character fight a group of bad guys instead of doing it myself?

I think completely separating any medium from another medium usually leads to less creativity instead of more. All mediums do (and should) rip off and build off of all other mediums. Last of Us to me is a great example of this. It is an incredibly cinematic experience, it steals a lot from movies, but it is a solid, enjoyable, and moving game that would not be nearly as good if it was just a movie.

(This is meant to be a tangent, not related to the current discussion going on)

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It's like I link people to a very good i(n fact one of the best) articles about video games and stories, that puts the fundamental problem in a very simple, concise way, and nobody seems to read it. I wonder why.

It's a great article
But that's not really a point about linearity though... I mean you can do great game stories and storytelling that are still linear. Take a look at "The Walking Dead", "Spec ops:The Line", "Little Inferno" or "Hotline Miami". Those all kind of use their interactive elements to focus on emotions that videogames don't do well, and focusses their stories around them (Regret, boredom, loneliness, affection, etc).

Furthermore, we don't know yet quite what the core of Destiny's storytelling will be. I mean, we know that there's a kind of narrative, but we don't know how it will be told and how it will work. Some of the indications are worrying, that Staten was comparing it to Halo's Linear story, and talk of how it sounds like a standard campaign, that's why I put it as the thing i worry most about with Destiny.

However, nearly every interview about Destiny harps on this idea of players telling their own stories. In that way, it hits exactly at what Jaffe is talking about. Incidently, that "Player storytelling" is a huge part of why you need customizable equipment and player investment. These kinds of stories are assisted by a trophy, If you have that cape that can only be found by defeating the hardest of the hard, people will notice.

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I think the communist manifesto is a pretty good read.

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I had read that article before.

What I took away from it was: very specific storytelling techniques are more powerful in film. Not all of these transfer to an interactive medium.

That still leaves a lot of room for good stories in games.

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When you read that article, do you miss the part where he says your brain acts different when you're watching something to when you're interacting with something?

That seems to be the crux of the issue to me, the main claim, the Big Thing to think about. Incidently, it sounds like we can experiment and determine if it's true (if other's haven't already), so that's good.

I mean, geeze folks, you read something like that and then go on and on about why it's mistaken when in fact, if the brain does indeed do what it does it really doesn't matter what you think is actually going on. You don't just get around that claim by talking about whatever it is you think people feel or think when they experience art or whatever.

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It's like I link people to a very good i(n fact one of the best) articles about video games and stories, that puts the fundamental problem in a very simple, concise way, and nobody seems to read it. I wonder why.

We don't like a strong implication that the brain is a machine, and we're (as in our souls, selfs, whatever the hell) probably just mostly along for the ride? Anyway, that's kinda my takeaway right now.

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You talk about these things as if writing optional, non-linear narrative is just a simple problem to solve. I think the very fact it doesn't exist (a few experiments aside) in mainstream video games is a good demonstration that it's far from simple.

Yeah I have to say this is one of the main reasons why the story for Mass Effect 3 ended up annoying (or enraged) people so much. They had put 3 games worth of decisions into the series and it turned out that their decisions barely mattered for the story. Honestly I was not disappointed because I really wasn't expecting something vastly different depending on how I played the game because I know how ridiculously difficult it would be to write a story (especially one with as many cinematics as Mass Effect) that changed drastically based on your decisions. Not that I am saying people were wrong to be annoyed, but it honestly would be very surprising to me to see a modern game that has a lot of actually branching and changing story.

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You talk about these things as if writing optional, non-linear narrative is just a simple problem to solve. I think the very fact it doesn't exist (a few experiments aside) in mainstream video games is a good demonstration that it's far from simple.

Yeah I have to say this is one of the main reasons why the story for Mass Effect 3 ended up annoying (or enraged) people so much. They had put 3 games worth of decisions into the series and it turned out that their decisions barely mattered for the story. Honestly I was not disappointed because I really wasn't expecting something vastly different depending on how I played the game because I know how ridiculously difficult it would be to write a story (especially one with as many cinematics as Mass Effect) that changed drastically based on your decisions. Not that I am saying people were wrong to be annoyed, but it honestly would be very surprising to me to see a modern game that has a lot of actually branching and changing story.

I think Mass Effect's problem was more that it took a sharp left in the last 5 minutes. Well that and the way ME3's entire plot centered around the galaxy desperately banding together to build a giant device who's function they couldn't even guess at…

Heh, ME story idea: It would have been great if the device, that had been pass down from cycle to cycle, was in fact yet another Reaper plant, just like the Mass Relays. It would have brought it neatly back around to Sovereign tell us in 1 that we were so far beneath them that they were beyond comprehension and all that. Bonus points if the device we all worked so hard to build was in fact, a new Reaper in disguise… somehow. :)

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I think Mass Effect's problem was more that it took a sharp left in the last 5 minutes. Well that and the way ME3's entire plot centered around the galaxy desperately banding together to build a giant device who's function they couldn't even guess at…

Yeah there were the two camps I always saw complaining (they overlapped a lot too). Your point, and my point. Your point I had a lot more problem with than my point. The most common thing I heard from people that were complaining about my point was "The only thing that changed was the color of the light."

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You talk about these things as if writing optional, non-linear narrative is just a simple problem to solve. I think the very fact it doesn't exist (a few experiments aside) in mainstream video games is a good demonstration that it's far from simple.

The original Deus Ex. Hardly an experiment, and definitely mainstream.

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You talk about these things as if writing optional, non-linear narrative is just a simple problem to solve. I think the very fact it doesn't exist (a few experiments aside) in mainstream video games is a good demonstration that it's far from simple.

The original Deus Ex. Hardly an experiment, and definitely mainstream.

Deus Ex does present the player with much more choice in the narrative, but it's still pretty much just smoke and mirrors: there are a grand total of three possible endings, and so whilst the route you take there might be different the outcome is really just one of a set of narratives where you mix and match parts. The original Colony Wars did the same thing, but had five final outcomes at the end of an overlapping tree structure depending on mission outcome. These are actually the examples I was thinking of when I said experiments, because as much as they were interesting they haven't massively influenced mainstream games that followed, and linear narrative has remained the dominant form.

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You talk about these things as if writing optional, non-linear narrative is just a simple problem to solve. I think the very fact it doesn't exist (a few experiments aside) in mainstream video games is a good demonstration that it's far from simple.

The original Deus Ex. Hardly an experiment, and definitely mainstream.

Deus Ex does present the player with much more choice in the narrative, but it's still pretty much just smoke and mirrors: there are a grand total of three possible endings, and so whilst the route you take there might be different the outcome is really just one of a set of narratives where you mix and match parts. The original Colony Wars did the same thing, but had five final outcomes at the end of an overlapping tree structure depending on mission outcome. These are actually the examples I was thinking of when I said experiments, because as much as they were interesting they haven't massively influenced mainstream games that followed, and linear narrative has remained the dominant form.

You're not getting what I'm saying.

In Deus Ex, you can:

1. Get important story details way before you are supposed to if you are inquisitive and have the right skills / augs
2. Get sidestory and flavor story in much the same way.

The story is still mostly linear and largely the same regardless of how you play (there are little changes of course). However, the game was designed in such a way that jumping the gun and finding alternate info actually enhanced the experience and was rewarding.

Did you ever hear anybody complain that they discovered the twist with Unatco way before the game is supposed to reveal it, because you hacked your way into secret computers in hard to reach places? No, most people though that was COOL.

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You're not getting what I'm saying.

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As far as I am concerned the leveling system to unlock new locations. This looks great but the leveling system will need to be fast. Also maybe allow most of the pop and coop experiences available close to low level areas. Another thing I wonder is if they will have a true skill level

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I mean, you just described a high budget, non randomized rogue-like. While most current ones are low budget and not randomized, there's not a huge functional difference between what you described and FTL, Binding of Issac, Dungeons of Dredmor, paranautical activity, Sword of the Stars, Teleglitch etc.

While most of those allow you to save, it's really more of a long form pause, as you can't have save states, and have to manually "save" which is deleted when you load the game next. Most keep the game time low enough to be played through in a single session, but it's very difficult to do so until you know the game inside and out.

It's one of my favorite genre's, but I'm cool with not every game being a rogue-like.

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I mean, in theory, it is all centered around figuring out the world for yourself, a classic adventure game idea, but if you find out all the information through other means, the game is circumvented.

Not saying your idea is all bad though, I like the idea of treasure hunting missions working similar to this.

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I mean, in theory, it is all centered around figuring out the world for yourself, a classic adventure game idea, but if you find out all the information through other means, the game is circumvented.

Not saying your idea is all bad though, I like the idea of treasure hunting missions working similar to this.

Ideally you'd fight that with significant randomization, or using each run to build up better skills and decision making abilities. Static information drops in preset world would be problematic.

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Ideally you'd fight that with significant randomization, or using each run to build up better skills and decision making abilities. Static information drops in preset world would be problematic.

Why? The world is always connected. Bungie can constantly change the world.

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Ideally you'd fight that with significant randomization, or using each run to build up better skills and decision making abilities. Static information drops in preset world would be problematic.

Why? The world is always connected. Bungie can constantly change the world.

Beyond being a horrific waste of resources to constantly keep changing the world it would also screw players who have already gained that prized information.

That's why most developers who have taken this model have made use of randomization, and that's also why it wouldn't work well in an shared world; everyone is sharing this world, that makes it far harder to change it.

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Ideally you'd fight that with significant randomization, or using each run to build up better skills and decision making abilities. Static information drops in preset world would be problematic.

Why? The world is always connected. Bungie can constantly change the world.

Then over time your prized information becomes worthless because it no longer applies.

I'm not seeing how that'll be fun.

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Ideally you'd fight that with significant randomization, or using each run to build up better skills and decision making abilities. Static information drops in preset world would be problematic.

Why? The world is always connected. Bungie can constantly change the world.

Then over time your prized information becomes worthless because it no longer applies.

I'm not seeing how that'll be fun.

Why would updating the world with new stuff necessarily have to erase what's already there? No reason.

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Why would updating the world with new stuff necessarily have to erase what's already there? No reason.

So wouldn't that require a canon explanation for how the new stuff came to be? I don't think "Oh, you just didn't notice that before" would be a sufficient explanation. For what it's worth, I think your idea is a good one. I just don't think it fits here. The game you're talking about has to be designed ground-up around this one particular feature (really, lack-of a feature). The player gets no feedback of progression, so I think for many the game could be frustrating. Also, I think a big hole is when the player is forced to stop playing in the middle of a long "quest line" or whatever the missions would be. The player would be forced to start over completely. It's the same feeling of frustration as when you lose your save file, or it corrupts, or the power goes out, or whatever else happens to make you lose your progress. There might be ways of "overcoming" that, but I think if the game still has a narrative focus, those ways will probably still be dissatisfying to many.

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Also, I think a big hole is when the player is forced to stop playing in the middle of a long "quest line" or whatever the missions would be. The player would be forced to start over completely.

This is why you design it so no section of the game takes more than 30-45 minutes to finish.

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Why would updating the world with new stuff necessarily have to erase what's already there? No reason.

The whole purpose here is to prevent the information being in the public domain. Adding new content only stops the new content from being in the public domain (albeit briefly, until that too is documented); it doesn't address the problem with the original content having been documented.

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I want to respond to your thoughts but it's a lot to go over.

First off, a lot of what you say you are worried about seems like things that are going to happen. As in, they've already talked a lot about player investment, we can be pretty sure there are save states of some sort (the game won't be a roguelike).

Some of your general ideas seem to really honor the old NES era games, where they were hard, you played through the game each time and had to start over everytime you turned the power off. Those games were often designed that way to get around limitations of the hardware--the cartridge couldn't hold a lot of content, so they made the game really hard to pad out the run time. Savestates break THOSE games because they were not designed for saves! Modern games can be challenging without utilizing the same [no] save mechanics of the past. I haven't played it, but I get the sense that the Dark Souls games are this way (hard but your progress is saved.)

Personally, I was never very good at those old games. They were appealing to me because that's all I had at the time, but I never beat SMB1, for instance. Not for lack of trying, but for lack of skill & contiguous blocks of time required to win.

You say this: "since you can't save exp, weapon progression, loot, or anything like that." But isn't that the complete opposite of the demo they showed at E3? Players had EXP and levels. Loot & Weapons were show to drop, and have individual item progression. Arcade games had one goal: Take quarters as fast as possible without scaring the user off. I would definitely disagree that arcade designers mastered arcade games being "constantly engaging and novel." If anything, my experience was the opposite--repetition and ramped-up difficulty seems more common to me.

It doesn't encourage lazy game design to have loot. If anything, they'll have to work even harder on balancing issues.

"Is this mission fun without the ability to save? No?" you could look at this another way: Will the payer even MAKE IT to this point in the game without a save? Not having some kind of save system severely limits access to huge portions of games. This isn't even marketing, this is just--people have limited amounts of time to play games, and they don't want start at the same place and being doing the same thing every time they boot up the game.

I guess I'm confused about what your "worry" is, since it seems that you're worried about very fundamental design choices that are not going to go away. We're not going to get a Halo:CE or a SMB1 game here. Bungie are moving into the future, not the past.

"It would work as long as your skill as a developer was high." This is true of anything in life. Ideas are easy. Execution is hard, time-consuming, and expensive.

Have you played FTL or any other roguelikes? The genre has a lot of the elements you describe.

Finally, have you ever thought about designing and building your own game? You're obviously passionate about it, and you think through these things.

To the OP: I loved the Star Wars influences. I like the (minor) fantasy influences there are as well. When I first read your post I thought you were trolling us: " it's like nails on chalkboard - especially the original trilogy." (I am still undecided on that point.)

Bungie has said you will become Legend. I took this to mean: the more you play,the cooler stuff you get, the more you can customize your appearance and people will see and fear you. "Whoa! She got that super rare sniper from Venus already! With a helmet from the Cabal! It must have taken her hours!" Stuff like that.

As for my worries? I've said it before and people gently mocked me, but I trust in Bungie. I trust they will make a game that I'm going to enjoy. Even if it was just what we saw at the E3 demo--I would troll those public spaces looking for noobs to help, upgrade & customize my sniper rifle, spend hours riding around on my sparrow, search for the corners of the playable world. I'm excited. I will become Legend.

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Well said. I also trust Bungie, I imagine I'm going to enjoy Destiny at least as much as past Bungie games if not more. And personally as far as their games have gone I have no reason to think otherwise.

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So, that out of the way, what are some of your worries?

My biggest worry is that Bungie is going to succumb to the shitty modern design philosophy of making rewards an important part of the game, through gear, experience, and player investment systems.

Imagine for a second that Bungie designed Destiny without a save feature. It would rule and here's why.

First of all, you'd probably wonder HOW such a thing could even work.

<snip>

Let's say at this point you stop playing.

Tomorrow, you turn on Destiny, and you find yourself at the start, with a bare slate since you can;t save anything. But you still have that information. So you go, and instead of doing the first quest again, you go access the hidden entrance. Maybe after completing this quest you get some story information, and hints on things to do next.

Congratulations, you've just re-invented the choose-your-own-adventure book.

What would this force Bungie to do? Well, first of all, it would force Bungie to perfectly pace missions / levels etc, and make sure that they are constantly engaging and novel, something that arcade designers generally mastered because you couldn't save. Second, it would force Bungie to create fun situations, by virtue of the fact that it would be impossible to tempt players with rewards, since you can't save exp, weapon progression, loot, or anything like that. The game itself has to be fun enough to play without bullshit player investment systems. Third, it would force impeccable planning and design in the scenario and story construction.

This limitation would force Bungie to discard all the bullshit that modern game design has heaped upon us, and distill the game to its most streamlined, pure, and elegant form. Is this mission fun without the ability to save? No? Then it's shit, we'd better make it fun!

How would that force them to do anything?

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Nothing much for me. I will have to disagree with you on the fantasy elements. For me I like that. I mainly just want to see the multiplayer and world creation and progression to be great. Really forget about complicated physics keep it like a fun arcade shooter. Another thing I want to see is an arena system for pop enthusiast especially something like gladiator with different modes. What I want most is to know how exploration etc works. I am happy with what I have not huge expectations just give me moor gameplay.

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I worry that the fanbase have forgotten how to have fun when playing online.

That's all.

-Hedge.

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That Bungie has bitten off more than they can chew. Everything they've shown so far looks fantastic in my opinion, but the sheer scale of what they're attempting is such that it leaves me just a little worried. They seem to be promising a simply monumental amount of content.

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seriously, my dad is RETIRED which means he can level whenever he wants

luckily, the 20s jumping in during the public event and some of the comments by Bungie have allayed my fears

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Depending on my mood, I'm somewhat of a lone wolf, even in ostensibly MMO games. There's definitely something to be said for the setting of massive game universes like World of Warcraft and EVE Online even if you don't want to join in with the multiplayer aspects. EVE in particular would feel like a very boring and dull world if it wasn't inhabited by other players, but the actual behaviour of most players and the primary multiplayer activities aren't things that interest me much (and in some cases, I'd rather avoid them). So I'm definitely wary of just how mandatory the multiplayer aspect of Destiny will be. Will I feel obliged to hook up a headset and chat when I'm actually in that frame of mind where I just want to unwind after a hard day's work? I'm hoping not.

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Depending on my mood, I'm somewhat of a lone wolf, even in ostensibly MMO games. There's definitely something to be said for the setting of massive game universes like World of Warcraft and EVE Online even if you don't want to join in with the multiplayer aspects. EVE in particular would feel like a very boring and dull world if it wasn't inhabited by other players, but the actual behaviour of most players and the primary multiplayer activities aren't things that interest me much (and in some cases, I'd rather avoid them). So I'm definitely wary of just how mandatory the multiplayer aspect of Destiny will be. Will I feel obliged to hook up a headset and chat when I'm actually in that frame of mind where I just want to unwind after a hard day's work? I'm hoping not.

I feel like they won't be forcing you. You'll probably be able to set different fireteam settings like "Friends Only" so randoms don't all of a sudden pop into your fireteam right as you're about to dive into the wall to fight Rixis.

At that point you'll go in there be able to enjoy lone-wolfing it through that area. When you pop out the other side of the wall and a public event starts up, you shouldn't feel obligated to interact with the players engaging in the event, you can just run on by continuing on your guardian's adventure.

It's a good worry though. I'm definitely not always in the mood to hang out with a bunch of randoms, that sometimes requires a lot of patience when all I'm trying to do is light up some enemies.

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Another thing I'm concerned about is Bungie's relative inexperience in the MMO field. When Blizzard released World of Warcraft they blew all the other competition out of the water, but if you compare WoW then to now, it's a completely different beast. Nearly nine years of constant iteration, improvement and an uncompromising willingness to throw away what didn't work in the name of making a better game has helped keep WoW the king of the PC MMO scene.

But Blizzard didn't get there overnight, and when WoW launched it was almost farcical. Bugs and server capacity issues were all over the place, and it took a while for things to stabilise. I'd say their main advantage over almost all the competition out there is their experienced staff of developers who've been able to draw on what they've learned from billions of play-hours. Bungie has similar levels of experience in FPS games, but just how much talent and experience they've been able to recruit to help with the bits outside of their comfort zone remains to be seen. I'd say I'm cautiously optimistic, but I would most certainly not be surprised if Destiny has a few bumps in the road immediately post-launch.

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I think your worry about Bungie's inexperience is an interesting one. We're lucky, in that only half of this genre is new to them, specifically the 'MMO' half. They already understand what makes an FPS great; they just need to translate this into something enjoyable in the context of an MMO. Even there, we're kind of lucky in that there have been dozens of MMOs in the past, with people discussing their strengths and weaknesses, what made one more enjoyable than another, why certain elements are good or bad, etc. In addition, Bungie already has a fanbase to appeal to - a fanbase that they understand and have dealt with, not just superficially, but in depth, day in day out. As such, they know what to experiment with and how, what people might and might not like, etc.

Basically, your worry is justified, but at least we know that Bungie's in a better position than most game developers to tackle the beast that is MMO gaming without any prior experience.

Vale,
Perseus

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While I think it's possible to do a cool story in a shared world, most of what has been said sounds like a fairly traditional AAA style game story. That's really disapointing to me, and I hope I'm just misinterpreting what's been said regarding Destiny's storyline, and how it will make sense for all players.

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My biggest worry is that Destiny will have boring edges. While I loved Halo over the years, I always felt it could do a bit more storytelling around the edges. The main stories were decent, but the universe also had this odd lack of life. It's hard to describe. Part of it is the typical completely deserted urban areas we frequently saw in Halo. Part of it was the way the stories didn't have much, if anything, happening not directly related to the main plot.

For Destiny I want a world that feels much more alive, and active, and ongoing than Halo did. Plus I want my solid main scifi story.

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I worry in the most literal sense, that the time will not be there.

Whether I won't have the time anymore, or the game's events and schedule will pass me by. Bungie has said this will be a game you can put a little bit at a time and be fine, but I still worry I won't have 5 hours to stare at forge objects and talk smack with NsU anymore.

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Honestly my biggest worry is that the fans won't like it because it's too different. I am sure even if Destiny ends up not being a fantastic game that I will enjoy it, it's whether everyone else will too that worries me.

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As someone who enjoys game design as a theoretical pursuit, this kind of discussion appeals to me. Answering the question "How will game mechanics X, Y , Z in the context of content alpha beta combine?" then being able to play the game and test my hypothesis is fun, and it's a big part of why I've been arguing and speculating about this shit in the Bungie community since I was a pimply faced teenager.

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As someone who enjoys game design as a theoretical pursuit, this kind of discussion appeals to me. Answering the question "How will game mechanics X, Y , Z in the context of content alpha beta combine?" then being able to play the game and test my hypothesis is fun, and it's a big part of why I've been arguing and speculating about this shit in the Bungie community since I was a pimply faced teenager.

Which is awesome. I just wish I saw as much fun speculation as I did cynicism these days (referring to gaming as a whole, not DBO ).

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Which is awesome. I just wish I saw as much fun speculation as I did cynicism these days (referring to gaming as a whole, not DBO ).

Cynicism and entitlement are what enrages me most on the Internet these days. If you don't already visit the Bungie.net forums, I would recommend not taking it up...

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[image]

You can just about make out the moon. No Traveler, I'm afraid. ;)

h/t to uberfoop for pic

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I love the way we're seeing That Ringed Planet's (currently) dark side and yet the atmosphere is causing that bright line around the edge. Very cool! How about instead of Halo 3 next week we just all take a trip to Jupiter. Surely we can find some wacky science teacher with a Space Magic School Bus to take us. :)

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And holy cow, you CAN see Luna.

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Also, DOH!

Double also, fixed… sorta…

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So to speak anyway. I'm worried that there will be no immersion because we're constantly seeing game mechanics. I don't want to be wandering around as the hero of my tale in another player's world.

I think there are ways around it, I'm sure Bungie are looking into it, but that's what I worry about.

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You just made me imagine a giant redstone computer under the game running all the mechanics. And now I kind of wish that by glitching I could actually see that in a game.

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This ties in perfectly with how the "Everyone's a Hero" thing makes no sense. You're trying to immerse yourself into a Master Chief-like mindset of "The fate of Humanity, blah blah blah, depends on me, and I have to live up to my duty," when there's a bazillion people like you running around and doing similar stuff.

What really irks me is that those final clips at the end of the reveal gameplay have the feel of cutscenes to a solo scenario. "The fate of humanity hangs on this mission," etc. This is basically a form of the 'redstone' problem you mentioned, where the game mechanics of an MMO make immersion impossible.

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What is this 'redstone' concept? I'm not familiar with it.

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source

I imagine the reference is to seeing the "innerworkings" of the game. Would love for someone to elaborate/confirm/correct.

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source

I imagine the reference is to seeing the "innerworkings" of the game. Would love for someone to elaborate/confirm/correct.

Yes that's basically it. Let me explain a little. Basically in Minecraft you can find a material called Redstone. Redstone is a powder you can lay on the ground in lines to form wires that can basically carry either an "on" or "off" signal. With Redstone you can build simple or very complicated machines that do pretty crazy things. Generally it is considered poor design if the redstone mechanics are out in the open, thus the metaphor would be if Bungie did a bad job covering up the mechanics of the game to basically break the fourth wall and make you feel like you're not a part of the game world.

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This is still something I'm not terribly worried about. Sure there may be a lot of Guardians, but just like any game with progression systems (MMO or not) you usually have a lot of people that reach the middle levels, but not a lot that reach the high levels. In Halo 3 (even today) seeing a General is pretty rare. To me there can be a lot of heroes, but the tagline "Become Legend" and the few cutscenes and lines we've heard imply you have to be more than just a Guardian to be a legend.

It's like the military. Most soldiers in the military are called heroes or at least are called patriots, but there are only a handful of heroes who ever really do something to earn certain medals or become well known to the public. That's your task in Destiny if you want it to be, don't just be a Guardian, be a legend.

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So to speak anyway. I'm worried that there will be no immersion because we're constantly seeing game mechanics. I don't want to be wandering around as the hero of my tale in another player's world.

I think there are ways around it, I'm sure Bungie are looking into it, but that's what I worry about.

From what I've seen, the world will be plenty immersive. Perhaps more so than Bioshock Infinite.

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I haven't played Bioshock Infinite so can't speak to that, but I did think the first Bioshock was incredibly immersive. I still remember the first time a Big Daddy smacked me back on my ass and I went flying. I swear in my recollection of it I was crawling on the floor to a gun, hands in the water. It was a brilliant, visceral experience.

However I haven't been getting that impression from the trailers I've seen of Destiny, unfortunately. There are plenty of non-immersive games that I've played and enjoyed, the Fable games stick out for me. I love them, but they don't grip me in any way. I worry Destiny may have that feel for me.

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I haven't played Bioshock Infinite so can't speak to that, but I did think the first Bioshock was incredibly immersive. I still remember the first time a Big Daddy smacked me back on my ass and I went flying. I swear in my recollection of it I was crawling on the floor to a gun, hands in the water. It was a brilliant, visceral experience.

Well, Bioshock Infinite is way more immersive than Bioshock so you'd probably like it. The high level of immersion is what made the game fun to play; the mechanics were broken and shitty.

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Funnily enough I just picked it up today so I shall let you know

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I'll be interested to know what you think. I really enjoyed it.

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Just rolling through Fink town till I stop for the night.

I'm enjoying it, but on the same level that I enjoyed Remember Me. Cute idea, cute characters, some nice voice acting. I think the game aspects of it are absolutely appalling and I can't understand how anyone was throwing around GotY in reference to it.

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Just rolling through Fink town till I stop for the night.

I'm enjoying it, but on the same level that I enjoyed Remember Me. Cute idea, cute characters, some nice voice acting. I think the game aspects of it are absolutely appalling and I can't understand how anyone was throwing around GotY in reference to it.

Just wait for the story to pick up.

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I'm having serious issues with the story at the moment and I don't think it will improve the gameplay!

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Cute idea, cute characters, some nice voice acting. I think the game aspects of it are absolutely appalling and I can't understand how anyone was throwing around GotY in reference to it.

You're saying all the right things.

To answer your confusion about GOTY, it's very simple. Any game that touches on a serious subject like racism (no matter how clumsily) automatically gets praised. ZOMG LOOK AT THIS! GAMES CAN SAY SOMETHING IMPORTANT!

Meanwhile, everybody else laughs at you.

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To answer your confusion about GOTY, it's very simple. Any game that touches on a serious subject like racism (no matter how clumsily) automatically gets praised. ZOMG LOOK AT THIS! GAMES CAN SAY SOMETHING IMPORTANT!

Meanwhile, everybody else laughs at you.

I don't think the racism part of the story is the reason it was praised. Obviously I'm not going to into spoilers here, but from pretty much any gaming site it was the last 30 minutes to an hour of the game that made everyone really love the story. I definitely don't agree that it deserves GOTY for a story that you don't even really appreciate until the end of the game, but I do love the story.

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So far I'm getting from the plot

racism = wrong
revolution = dangerous
sometimes black people can also be bad

None of which have been a great revelation, or dealt with nearly as well as some other games have.

<b>eta -</b> that's a great article you linked to by the way, says all I've been wanting to say

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So far I'm getting from the plot

racism = wrong
revolution = dangerous
sometimes black people can also be bad

None of which have been a great revelation, or dealt with nearly as well as some other games have.

Yeah, those end up being footnotes in the real plot :)

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Were you trolling me? Do you actually like this game?

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Were you trolling me? Do you actually like this game?

The game was fun to play once because of its setting and aesthetic (or immersion if you will), but on a thematic and mechanical level it was garbage. I thought I made that pretty clear in the post you replied to.

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I'm just astounded that you played this at all.

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I'm just astounded that you played this at all.

Considering how much I liked it, me too :)

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I hope to god that public events are not just one time events, i hope other players can enjoy it. But mainly i want a time set from between certain time bracket in which it is done, and based on the results of all the same public events the game should be changed to allow for world progression. And no one after the time has been finished can actually witness the event though there may be a similar one it will be different. These story events should affect the main story line though.

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I just don't see how that can all be possible. If I buy Destiny on day one it might work out great. If I buy it on day 730 that means I don't get to enjoy all the things that happened? Nobody wants to be told, "oh yeah, that <great event> happened last year and changed EVERYTHING. Too bad you missed it."

I'm not saying you're wrong to want the story and world to be affected, I'm just wondering how it can be done without leaving too many people behind.

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For example, the massive Titan-class ship that orbited some planet and went to war with another, so players massed up on either side of the war (and even rogue pirates in between) to either kill the Titan before it wrecked a planet or protect it. Whatever the outcome, the storyline, the economy and the overall development of player relations would change forever. The Titan was shot down, after hundreds of player ships perished and millions of lives were lost on the planet. Now there's a monument to the 'lost souls' and the Caldari (NPC faction, ships focus on missiles and shield) are almost entirely subjugated by the Gallente (NPC faction, ships focus on kinectic-damage turrets, drones and armor).

Thing is, people DO get left behind, but it all just adds up to the universe. It's like you're just a kid, taking up the guns on a great legacy that wasn't pre-assembled by the developers.

It feels oddly great.

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Not only that there is always some other big event to come. It allows for great story time and helps keepbthe community stay great. Overall you know it happened once and you know it will happen again. The stories draw in new users. Yeah you missed it but there will be a new one you can be part of.

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Not only that there is always some other big event to come. It allows for great story time and helps keepbthe community stay great. Overall you know it happened once and you know it will happen again. The stories draw in new users. Yeah you missed it but there will be a new one you can be part of.

EVE is a good example of how to run a continuing story, but it's not Destiny. As Urk said in this interview:

Destiny is a sweeping, cinematic story with a phenomenal beginning, middle, and end…

EVE has a beginning I suppose with its backstory of this area of space being cut off from the rest of Humanity, and I suppose you could call what everyone is playing EVE's middle, but it doesn't have an end. Or at least CCP doesn't want it to! I like EVE and all, but its actual, in game story telling is nowhere near the level of competency of something like Halo or Mass Effect. PVE mission text is badly written, the way the devs give info to the player (via dialog box or local system chat) is inconsistent at best, and besides the game being a pretty game with well rendered spaceships and cool space phenomena, it has little to no cinematic content as opposed to something more story driven like Halo. Yes, EVE tends to create neat player driven stories, and the devs can add in events to spur even bigger player driven stories, but one can also brush off a major, game changing event of any size, because in the grand scheme of things, it doesn't matter much, because as you say, there will always be another one.

I think EVE has its place. I think it's great that it will (hopefully) continue on forever having an unending number of big events. But with Destiny I've been promised a 10 year story arc with an actual end. And with that actual end (if it affects all players equally like the EVE events do) comes players not just missing an event that will happen again, but missing critical story and world details that won't. If The Traveler loses power and smushes The Last City and that smushing affects the guy who bought Destiny at the midnight launch and the person who buys it five years in and doesn't even get to experience being a Guardian of the Last City then that's a much different situation that EVE.

Does Destiny's eventual end mean that Bungie can't affect their world as much as CCP can theirs? Maybe, perhaps even probably. But they are two different styles of game, and while they are comparable on some levels, the way they are going to tell their stories really isn't.

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Thanks. You two really made me think. EVE is a great example! :)

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I will have to say this yes Bungie will not have the same kind of open world as CCP does with eve, but i will say this that they will have to change the world every so often. Example being if a certain scenario has been faces by enough users, and players there will come a time that it becomes repetitive, and it is best if they just remove it and leave signs of the event. Now in this public event at e3, there is only one ending so if enough players have faced it they will have to end it, and just leave a bunch of broken spaceships remnants on the ground.

Now if they have other events which have different outcomes it will come down to how many people choose certain outcomes and deciding the best choice in rewriting the game.

Still what i really want to see is how they plan on effecting the changing world, will there be conflicts with just one end, and thus after enough people finish it they remove it and place a new one down, somewhere else, and log the conclusions of the battle.

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I was just wondering what will keep dungeons interesting, and not just something you have seen already.

I was just wondering how they will allow it to happen.

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You have a point but eve online has that issue as well awesome stuff happen and people miss it they then join to be part of the next big stuff. Example in eve is when one of the biggest and powerful guild bob was broken apart by another guild. Or when a player made a huge hoist on one of the biggest player run banks by infiltration and emptying it out.

And recently on eve a war between the big cc vs test left a test ally in chaos when someone infiltrated that corp and forced all the group out of the alliance and leaving the whole group in chaos. This leaves them to go back and take care and recoup lost space thus taking away one of test allies.

You see these big events do happen but there will be more to come and can be used to entice new players to join cause they want to be part of the next big event.

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I'm worried that my friends list is going to get very split when Destiny comes out. I'm going to hate it when 5 of my friends are on the 360, 6 are on Xbone, and 10 are one PS4, and I want to play with all three groups. It's going to be a hassle to have multiple systems to keep up with everyone.

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and I will. And then ... well ... you know.

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I worry that there aren't going to be moments like the ones I've conceived of in the shared world sense, given that the technology and large chunks of the methodology already exist. I've got faith that the FPS combat and loot systems and mystery are all being worked and are in the best hands.

I'm going to go out on a limb and make a few small assumptions about PvP games, that we'll see much the same team sizes as we're used to seeing used: 4v4, 8v8, 2v2v2v2, etc.

But what I want to see on the PvE side are the type of large scale encounters we saw in Reach (but hopefully exceeding 16 players); fire teams mounting up in various configurations of vehicles, basically small raiding parties. And while I thought the Devil Walker public event was really cool, we saw the actual combat turn into a kind of pinata beatdown. I'm hoping for slightly more dynamic experiences than that, and I'm sure Bungie is packing some roomy sleeves in which to hide all sorts of tricks.

The potential for large set-piece encounters to become rolling firefights or extended guerilla cat-and-mouse engagements seems too cool of an idea to pass up. Why script dialogue between a merry band of characters mid-mission when you and other fire teams provide that experience and camraderie? And if emergent gameplay is at all something they're designing with a mind towards, then coordinating operations between fire teams across a large playspace is going to factor in heavily at some point. I hear all the assurances of different things to do and a little something-for-everyone, and I like the sound of that, but I wonder if there's a room at the Wonka factory that's just right for me.

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These are good points, but I bet they've got this covered. There was the job posting a while back that requested someone with experience in end-game MMO raiding, for instance.

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Just kidding everyone. Or should we be worried? Uh oh.

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Just kidding everyone. Or should we be worried? Uh oh.

In my mind, Bungie seems to like standing on whatever they did before.

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I still don't understand all the bloom hate. I really thought it added a layer of finesse to the combat. A lot of folks cite the removal of bloom in Reach matchmaking as the start of some kind of golden age of gameplay, but it actually felt a bit flat to me ever since then. Kind of like how Halo 2 and 3 became all-BR-all-the-time. But I think it's the same segment of the community that's largely responsible for both trends.

Eh.

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I still don't understand all the bloom hate. I really thought it added a layer of finesse to the combat. A lot of folks cite the removal of bloom in Reach matchmaking as the start of some kind of golden age of gameplay, but it actually felt a bit flat to me ever since then. Kind of like how Halo 2 and 3 became all-BR-all-the-time. But I think it's the same segment of the community that's largely responsible for both trends.

I'm with you. I prefer Bungie's bloom-filled Reach to the trash TA 343 threw out. Bloom was a fun experiment, but unfortunately, Bungie's bloom has a lot of problems. I feel like most of the complaints about it are valid and that bloom absolutely needs some things fixed about it. Having much more preference to playing Reach than H4, I still can't help but give H4 credit for having more solid gunplay mechanics than Reach (weapon tuning aside).

Bloom just sort of seems unnecessary, though. It was a fun little experiment, and even though I still don't mind it at all on a personal level, I don't think its inclusion in Destiny would be very beneficial, especially in any type of competitive multiplayer setting.

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My real worry is kind of strange. What if Destiny is mind-blowing? What if it is so awesome and includes such a wide range of exciting and fun things to do that not playing it feels like deprivation, as if you're avoiding your own birthday party or something. I know: it's a first-world problem. With things like public events I worry that I'll constantly fear I'm missing something. I'm a nearly 50-year-old man with a large variety of commitments and interests. Will I have time to be the space wizard that I want to be? Will I have time to be that AND be the real-life person that I want to be? It is kind of a strange worry, like I said. Bungie has explicitly commented that players with less time to play will find it enjoyable. That's good. Maybe the real worry is with me. Can I be satisfied being a casual player? (Those who know me know that I'm not using "casual player" to refer to skill level. In that regard I'll probably be a casual player no matter how much I play.)

Kermit

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I see where you're coming from, and find myself in the same boat.

Part of me worries that as a "casual" player, I'll have a lesser experience than those whose real life allows them more time to play. How much of the Destiny experience will depend on the player investment system and the "shared-worldness"? Is there room for the casual, mostly single-player experience? I truly think there is, and like someone else said, I trust Bungie.

That said, even though I'm likely to miss out, I'm curious to see how Bungie uses the player investment systems in non-cosmetic sorts of ways (lasting upgrades to shields, weapons, abilities). Have other FPS games experimented with this?

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My real worry is kind of strange. What if Destiny is mind-blowing? What if it is so awesome and includes such a wide range of exciting and fun things to do that not playing it feels like deprivation, as if you're avoiding your own birthday party or something. I know: it's a first-world problem. With things like public events I worry that I'll constantly fear I'm missing something. I'm a nearly 50-year-old man with a large variety of commitments and interests. Will I have time to be the space wizard that I want to be? Will I have time to be that AND be the real-life person that I want to be? It is kind of a strange worry, like I said. Bungie has explicitly commented that players with less time to play will find it enjoyable. That's good. Maybe the real worry is with me. Can I be satisfied being a casual player? (Those who know me know that I'm not using "casual player" to refer to skill level. In that regard I'll probably be a casual player no matter how much I play.)

Kermit

Heh, me too, though I couldn't quite express it like you just did.

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I know the game hasn't come out yet, and I know a lot of people have high hopes for Destiny, and I know I'm new to DBO, but I'm wondering, what are your biggest worries about what Bungie might do wrong?

Personally, I must praise the Halo-style combat filled with maneuvering and thinking (at least that's what the reveal gameplay seems to imply), but I immediately start cringing when I notice the immense amount of Star Wars influence. Once again, I know a lot of people like Star Wars, but for me, it's like nails on chalkboard - especially the original trilogy. So when I see how a lot of the characters are wearing what look like hybrids between Assassin's Creed and Star Wars, I start to wonder whether Bungie's actually doing the right thing.

Also, the Fantasy influences irk me a little bit, possibly for the same reason Star Wars does - cheesy, cliché, unenjoyable, and nonsensical. And the idea of 'I'm a Hero' in a Massively-Multiplayer-oriented game seems a little weird, though I'm sure that's been pointed out.

So, that out of the way, what are some of your worries?

my biggest worries are:
pretty much what you expressed about fantasy
that numbers you've racked up will have more influence, or just as much influence, on gunplay as your aim and choice of weapon, which has pretty much been confirmed (please don't make that part of the game Bungie)
stuff about competitive multiplayer
stuff about campaign/single-player/story mode

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that numbers you've racked up will have more influence, or just as much influence, on gunplay as your aim and choice of weapon, which has pretty much been confirmed (please don't make that part of the game Bungie)

No it hasn't. Bungie has barely said a word about the effects of leveling at all, as far as I know they haven't even so much as commented on what any of the numbers we've seen mean or do, while one of their most consistent messages so far has been that they know shooters and that Destiny is first and foremost a shooter. It's a legitimate fear (not one that I share, I don't mind a bit of accuracy leveling up) but it is a fear that is in no way, shape, or form, pretty much confirmed.

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No it hasn't. Bungie has barely said a word about the effects of leveling at all, as far as I know they haven't even so much as commented on what any of the numbers we've seen mean or do, while one of their most consistent messages so far has been that they know shooters and that Destiny is first and foremost a shooter. It's a legitimate fear (not one that I share, I don't mind a bit of accuracy leveling up) but it is a fear that is in no way, shape, or form, pretty much confirmed.

Not to mention they have stated a few times in the last couple of months that you can play with people much higher level than you and still feel like you contribute and still have fun.

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No it hasn't. Bungie has barely said a word about the effects of leveling at all, as far as I know they haven't even so much as commented on what any of the numbers we've seen mean or do, while one of their most consistent messages so far has been that they know shooters and that Destiny is first and foremost a shooter. It's a legitimate fear (not one that I share, I don't mind a bit of accuracy leveling up) but it is a fear that is in no way, shape, or form, pretty much confirmed.

Not to mention they have stated a few times in the last couple of months that you can play with people much higher level than you and still feel like you contribute and still have fun.

I direct you to your own thread, where it seems pretty clear. They've been talking about this stuff for a long while and we've stats more recently than those screenshots.
I do mind a bit of accuracy leveling up. Feeling like I contributed is all well and good, but what if I want more than that?

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I direct you to your own thread, where it seems pretty clear. They've been talking about this stuff for a long while and we've stats more recently than those screenshots.
I do mind a bit of accuracy leveling up. Feeling like I contributed is all well and good, but what if I want more than that?

Yeah that's fair. I think we're mostly saying that we don't know how much of an impact it'll have on gameplay. I am satisfied at least that in the gameplay they showed at E3 headshots seemed to take out every basic enemy, which is a worry I have from an RPG style game. It's fine when you build it into mechanics such as elites that take two shots to the head because they have shields, but it's frustrating when even basic enemies scale up and can take a sniper rifle round to the face without going down (which was one of my main frustrations in Borderlands) I'm guessing they even haven't figured out the balance on that yet though. I just hope they realize it is much more fun when skill is more important than stats.

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Sure, but we don't know what those numbers mean or how they affect things. We certainly can't go tossing around terms like pretty much confirmed when it isn't.

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