Will I be able to assemble a crew?

The reveal was extremely light on details, but I can't say I'm surprised. This is Bungie, after all. I think that if none of the leaks had ever happened this might have been a lot heavier, but as it stands, glowing quotes from devs about creating cool stuff and bomb-ass concept art aren't enough to really get me going. Not even a peep about factions thus far. I'd like someone to tell me what makes Destiny different than PlanetSide and Borderlands.

Also, will there be a sleeveless version of the Free Weights Crew t-shirt available, or will I have to cut the sleeves off myself?

The lobby shows off a party system, I assume you'll be able to assemble a team of sorts. Perhaps the factions play a bigger role in the PVP modes.

The lobby shows off a party system, I assume you'll be able to assemble a team of sorts.

I get that. But I mean, you know, assembling a crew. Maybe a clan, or a Team. Something persistent, something identifiable.

:p

Dun dun dun

The difference between Destiny and Planetside 2 at its most basic level is that PS2 is competitive faction vs faction open-world multiplayer only, all the time.

Seems like Destiny is geared towards connectivity between players in order to really take advantage of the game, but it's certainly possible to venture alone (although you will still encounter others).

Looks like we'll be seeing various modes of play:

Single player missions/freeroam (we don't know how instanced/constricting our environments will be), formal and informal co-op missions and mini-"raids", larger scale "raids", and some sort of competitive multiplayer.

I want to see how far the faction stuff goes. I wonder if it affects multiplayer in an interesting way.

The big question on my mind is whether we'll be suffering under their traditional co-op networking model with input lag. They've released three games with that problem, and I worry they've somehow become insensitive to it.

In the same screen that shows the people in a party, you can see "Pants Guild" undo two of the peoples' names and you can see "grizzled pants" under the other's. I think it's safe to say there will be guilds of some sort.

The big question on my mind is whether we'll be suffering under their traditional co-op networking model with input lag. They've released three games with that problem, and I worry they've somehow become insensitive to it.

Extremely unlikely. And I guarantee you they're not insensitive to it; they see the complaints. You don't built a game with online cooperative play as the central focus and then use low-bandwidth lockstep networking.

No, the whole "persistance" thing leads me to suspect we'll probably have some servers involved in game hosting and management. If that's what winds up happening, they'll be able to design the game around the upstream bandwidth of their servers rather than any random guy. And then we can start talking about asynchronous networking and moving more things client-side.

Thank you.

Ah, I had not realized the old model was well suited to low-bandwidth hosts. I always just assumed they had either failed to invest in their model sufficiently or had some bizarre ideas about which latency artifacts were the lesser evils.

I think you're right, dedicated servers should change the equation enough that lock-step will go out the window.

Have to freeze frame and be in HD to see it though.

Since you must always be connected, you've got to play by Bungie's rules. Want to play in a way they don't like? Tough. This is a 'play the game Bungie's way' situation.

Since you must always be connected, you've got to play by Bungie's rules. Want to play in a way they don't like? Tough. This is a 'play the game Bungie's way' situation.

I don't see how "always connected" HAS to mean you have fewer options in the way you play the game, as compared to any other game Bungie has ever made.

Halo CE doesn't allow me to strap on booster rockets and fly into the skybox forever. Every game has limitations and requirements - this one just has a different set. Whether it will foster a variety of playstyles or not remains to be seen.

I don't really agree with this viewpoint, it's an open world, just because you have to be connected to the Internet does not mean that you have to play it in a specific way.

I don't really agree with this viewpoint, it's an open world, just because you have to be connected to the Internet does not mean that you have to play it in a specific way.

Yes it does. Bungie's world is the only world you can play in. If you do something or want to play in a way that disrupts that world, then you will be banned or reprimanded. You have no other way to play 'off the grid' and do what you want.

Want to play using bxr? Go for it over a LAN. But if matchmaking were the only way to play Halo 2, you'd be out of luck.

Players were banned in wow for leading monsters into other areas of the map to make them easier to kill. Things like this will happen, and you will have no recourse.

Yes it does. Bungie's world is the only world you can play in. If you do something or want to play in a way that disrupts that world, then you will be banned or reprimanded. You have no other way to play 'off the grid' and do what you want.

Want to play using bxr? Go for it over a LAN. But if matchmaking were the only way to play Halo 2, you'd be out of luck.

Players were banned in wow for leading monsters into other areas of the map to make them easier to kill. Things like this will happen, and you will have no recourse.

I like how your arguments tend to come with an unspoken ability to know the future, hah...

Okay, so you can't cheat or exploit bugs on their servers. Maybe then you can fake your own server. If people want to break something, they'll find a way. They just have to work a little harder now.

But that doesn't mean there's an actual decrease in the ways you can play Destiny. We still know very little about how the game plays. Bungie could have created an amazing sandbox that allows for the most freedom you've ever seen in a game. Halo plus its tricks could be a tiny fraction compared to what Destiny offers, to the point where you don't even care that there's a few rules.

I don't understand the point of criticizing the tip of an iceberg when you can't look under the water yet...

I don't understand the point of criticizing the tip of an iceberg when you can't look under the water yet...

What I'm saying should be absolutely positively uncontroversial. If you can only play on official servers, and if those official servers have rules (which they will), then it necessarily follows that you are more limited in how you can play versus a game that also lets you play in a place where you can make your own rules. Disprove this. You can't, because it's airtight.

Who cares how much or how little Bungie's rules clash with how you personally want to play? The point is, that it's necessarily and by its very nature limiting players into only playing in ways that Bungie officially endorses.

Which, hypothetically, could be not limiting at all, for what we all know.
There is a possibility that griefing is impossible due to the way the game is implemented and, as such, there would be no need for rules other than the game engine itself.

I assume you find that possible too, don't you?

I don't understand the point of criticizing the tip of an iceberg when you can't look under the water yet...

What I'm saying should be absolutely positively uncontroversial. If you can only play on official servers, and if those official servers have rules (which they will), then it necessarily follows that you are more limited in how you can play versus a game that also lets you play in a place where you can make your own rules. Disprove this. You can't, because it's airtight.

Who cares how much or how little Bungie's rules clash with how you personally want to play? The point is, that it's necessarily and by its very nature limiting players into only playing in ways that Bungie officially endorses.

I care. Yes, more rules by mathematical definition equals less freedom. But if I'm 100% free to play how I choose then I will be happy. If I'm not then I'll be unhappy and might even come to this community and share my unhappiness in a respectful and constructive way. Right now you have no idea what rules there will be yet you criticize anyway… And it's getting annoying.

In my eyes you're being quite the nuisance around here. Not 24 hours have passed and you're already coming around with your absolutely positively this, and your I will tell you if it will suck or not that. I enjoy good debates as much or more than the next person, but you're not trying to debate, or offer up constructive criticism. You're trying to be antagonistic. And worse you're doing it with, as previously mentioned, next to no data about this new game to back you up.

I, as many of us have said, am thrilled to get in on the ground floor of a new Bungie game and community. It's my first one I get to see from the very beginning. I look forward to enjoying the game with the rest of this community. I am not, however, happy that you've made the jump over from HBO. Not if you're going to continue posting like this. Criticism is fine, even welcome. But not in the first 24 hours. Not when you have next to no information about what the game will be like.

I guess I'll end with a question to you. Would you please tone down this… whatever it is you call what you do… around here at least until you have solid facts about what Destiny is and isn't? Let us get this community started on a positive note, without your constant trolling and holier than thou criticisms? I have no authority to ask it, no incentive that I can offer you, except that it would make me, and others I think, happier.

… and that's all I have to say about that.

I assume you find that possible too, don't you?

100% impossible. You really think they will allow anything and everything?

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I assume you find that possible too, don't you?

100% impossible. You really think they will allow anything and everything?

It wouldn't shock me. Depending on how the game is structured it might not make any sense to lock things down. With possible exception to griefing.

Not when you have next to no information about what the game will be like.

The information available right now is enough to make the points I am making. Nothing I've said so far cannot be logically deduced from what is currently known.

We don't yet know if the business model will include things beyond the purchase price. This is why I specifically DID NOT take a stance with regard to Destiny's business model. It's not known, so I can only offer possibilities.

Now you're just purposely muddling "improbable" with "impossible", which I assume you have been doing for a while in this thread...

I seriously think it is possible to create a game in which the only limitations that need to be imposed are already covered by the game's engine (stuff like being invincible, unlimited ammo, noclip, kill other players, steal loot from other players, etc). As such, there wouldn't be any need for rules or bans.

Of course, there will always be the limitations already imposed by XBL and PSN, such as playing with hacked consoles or insulting everyone and their mothers (most times overlooked, by the way) or selling gamertags (dunno the name on the PSN).

I can't stress that last point enough.

I would seriously like for you to come up with something that you judge necessary to rule out of Destiny, given what we know already.

What I'm saying should be absolutely positively uncontroversial. If you can only play on official servers, and if those official servers have rules (which they will), then it necessarily follows that you are more limited in how you can play versus a game that also lets you play in a place where you can make your own rules. Disprove this. You can't, because it's airtight.

The only game that truly lets me make my own rules is called "Levi's Brain". It's good, you should check it out sometime. :)

From my view, my original response already covered showed how your theory isn't airtight. Hack the game, create your own server, play how you want.

Think of the flipside:

You could say Halo CE was limited to how I could play, since it didn't have an online mode. I wanted one. I used XBox Connect to trick my XBox into thinking it was playing a LAN.

To me, this is equivalent to glitching an offline mode to do something Bungie didn't intend, because Bungie didn't intend for me to play online in Halo CE either. It would also be equivalent to forging your own server for a hacked Destiny game. If you want to glitch, trick, or cheat in any game, you just have to make it happen different ways. Sometimes it's easy, sometimes it's hard.

Who cares how much or how little Bungie's rules clash with how you personally want to play? The point is, that it's necessarily and by its very nature limiting players into only playing in ways that Bungie officially endorses.

Without modding or glitching, I've never been able to play a game any way I wanted (besides resorting to purely my imagination). I'm always limited by something, even in the freest games I've played. I can't get past the map border in Age of Empires, I can't fly in Sonic without Chaos Emeralds, I can't play off the board in chess, I can't play offline in Destiny. That doesn't mean, like chess, that what Destiny does offer isn't a ridiculous multitude of freedoms. If executed brilliantly, perhaps more freedoms than all the ways you could have glitched in an offline mode.

Destiny is an online game. It isn't a sequel that did away with a campaign - it isn't going back on its word yet. Is it what it is, and we know only a small percentage of what means. Hell, there could be a server-world where rules are enforced and one where anything goes! Why not try optimism for a change?

You're currently complaining to a butcher about the lack of vegetarian offers, and you're not even through the front door yet!

You're currently complaining to a butcher about the lack of vegetarian offers, and you're not even through the front door yet!

From my view, my original response already covered showed how your theory isn't airtight. Hack the game, create your own server, play how you want.

This deserves a response. If you've ever seen or played on pirate MMO servers, the quality is not nearly up to par with official servers, since they have to reverse engineer content that lives on the developer / publisher's servers. This is why piracy for MMO games is of little concern - the pirate servers are always worse than the real thing. It's no solution.

The only game that truly lets me make my own rules is called "Levi's Brain". It's good, you should check it out sometime. :)

Damn, did your Brain avoid the 'Shortcut Patch'? That one was a bitch for me. Suddenly Jilly's Brain was all about ignoring gorillas and probability fallacies.

And I wish I'd never downloaded that Puberty DLC.

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I don't really agree with this viewpoint, it's an open world, just because you have to be connected to the Internet does not mean that you have to play it in a specific way.

Yes it does. Bungie's world is the only world you can play in. If you do something or want to play in a way that disrupts that world, then you will be banned or reprimanded. You have no other way to play 'off the grid' and do what you want.

Want to play using bxr? Go for it over a LAN. But if matchmaking were the only way to play Halo 2, you'd be out of luck.

Players were banned in wow for leading monsters into other areas of the map to make them easier to kill. Things like this will happen, and you will have no recourse.

It's sort of amazing that you start with a high road concept like "play the game the way you want to" but when it comes down to examples of how Bungie is really just trying to crush the life out of all independent thinking gamers everywhere, what you come up with is an exploit. A cheat.

I hardly think that was what was under discussion.

I think what was meant was comparing something like Halo, which is linear both in its story and its gameplay, to something like GTA, RDR or Mass Effect, where there is a main story and a sandbox, and at certain times, you're set loose on the environment to set your own priorities and play the way you want to-- as well as to determine what kind of gameplay techniques you'll use to handle gameplay challenges (brute force, stealth, magic-- up close and personal, or from a safe distance.

The vision of "be free to play using BXR on a LAN if you want to" is about the most hollow and empty goal I can think of.

Have Gearbox make it. They can call it Animation Interrupt: The Game.

Have to freeze frame and be in HD to see it though.

Yup.

From that I'm sure we can logically infer the existence of the No Pants Guild.

The "Go Get a REAL Job" DLC was the worst for me, especially when Bungie rejected my offer. I mean what kind of game makes it that hard to get your dream job?

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I hear they're sponsored by AT&T.

The "Go Get a REAL Job" DLC was the worst for me, especially when Bungie rejected my offer. I mean what kind of game makes it that hard to get your dream job?

I'm pretty sure the later stages were designed by an old JRPG-maker, hence all the ridiculous amount of braindead level-grinding required before you can move on to something actually fun to play.

This deserves a response. If you've ever seen or played on pirate MMO servers, the quality is not nearly up to par with official servers, since they have to reverse engineer content that lives on the developer / publisher's servers. This is why piracy for MMO games is of little concern - the pirate servers are always worse than the real thing. It's no solution.

To be fair, it is a solution. It's just not a great one.

I'm not sure if the context of this discussion is clear to everyone, so I'll posit something, and please correct me if I'm wrong in this paragraph - I think the core of what you're concerned about here is for things we've all come to love doing in Halo games (skipping parts of levels, getting out of maps, bringing vehicles into places they weren't intended to be, and so on). These things are typically not of much concern to a developer in a single player game because, whatevs right? It's not affecting anyone. Whereas in an always-connected multiplayer-ish game, it may be a concern because it could put players who know how to do it ahead of players who don't. I hadn't really thought about this potential aspect of Destiny before, but now that I have I do share your concern.

There is some cause for hope, though. Take Spartan Ops in Halo 4 for example. I have yet to see 343i take any action to prevent any exploits in maps there. We managed to get some tanks where they weren't supposed to go fairly easily during co-op night last week and I don't think anyone's getting banned. I also doubt they'll bother fixing the map to prevent it, because it's not really affecting anyone outside of our group - we didn't grief other players, and I PROMISE you it didn't get us through the level faster (lol) to farm XP or anything. These sorts of things probably will depend on the context of the exploit, and whether they have potential to ruin someone else's experience. Borderlands 2 is another example - as far as I am aware, no one's been banned for duplicating items. Because although it is an exploit, the nature of BL2 means you having a particular item isn't really causing problems for other players (I just want to note, I don't participate in duping).

I think you're right that there are likely to be rules. The nature of an always-connected online game makes it very likely that Bungie will have to enforce certain things to prevent some players from ruining the game for other players. I also think ZackDark is right in that, in theory, it could be possible to design a game where even if exploits are found they don't cause problems for players who aren't doing the exploits, and thus no intervention is necessary. Whether that will happen remains to be seen - Bungie's good, but there's always another exploit waiting to be found, and we can't predict what might happen there.

However, until it is known specifically what the rules are, it's not possible to know whether Destiny offers more or less freedom than any other game. So let's see what happens.

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rofl

I read your subject line, and said to myself, "no, that's AT&T" as I clicked the link.

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Ah, I had not realized the old model was well suited to low-bandwidth hosts. I always just assumed they had either failed to invest in their model sufficiently or had some bizarre ideas about which latency artifacts were the lesser evils.

Umm... it isn't. As a low-bandwidth host, I can absolutely tell you that modern Bungie coop code cannot cope with it. I've got a ping of 250ms and upstream bandwidth of about 1Mbps... and Halo 3 coop is an unplayable slideshow on XBL.

I suppose it all depends on what one considers "low bandwidth". It was designed for a "server" to be, from a CPU power and bandwidth perspective, no different from any other client. Not an actual peer to peer network architecturally, but not the way PC gaming servers are built, either.

MS didn't used to let outside developers host their own game servers. Don't know if they've changed that. If not, then Destiny will run the way Halo does-- one of the client consoles will act as a server.

Umm... it isn't. As a low-bandwidth host, I can absolutely tell you that modern Bungie coop code cannot cope with it. I've got a ping of 250ms and upstream bandwidth of about 1Mbps... and Halo 3 coop is an unplayable slideshow on XBL.

Heh, I know that feeling. However, even though that is not a very good ping, with that upstream, you probably weren't host.