Resources. (Destiny)

by Kahzgul, Thursday, December 28, 2017, 12:01 (2363 days ago) @ CruelLEGACEY

Honestly? The former.

But at a certain point, I’d rather Destiny be a completely different game than it actually is, so that’s really just on me. I love the always connected game that Destiny is, I really do, but I still think they had to sacrifice too much to make it that way. I’d rather have a game in the Festiny universe that’s actually just Halo: Reach in terms of experience. I’d still much rather play literally any Bungie Halo level than any Destiny story mission.

Again, that’s on me, and something I probably just need to let go of at this point, but it’s honestly sort of difficult to do, but I still think the very nature of the type of game Destiny is prevents us from getting features that were standard in Halo, and I’m not convinced it’s worth the trade off.

This is the track my brain has been running on for a while now. I don't think there is a single Destiny story mission that comes close to matching pretty much any Halo campaign mission in terms of encounter design, replayability, or storytelling. For whatever reason, Destiny's strengths just seem to fall elsewhere. And that's totally great, except that such a large portion of every Destiny release is built around these mediocre campaign missions. They just aren't very good when compared to Bungie's past work, or other modern AAA shooters. Nor do they hold a candle to the best stuff in Destiny, none of which happens during the campaigns.

I'd argue that the final mission in the City is fantastic and plays fully to Destiny's strengths. I also really like the "in the sun" portions of the Almighty missions, but the room where you "clear the blockage" was kind of ho-hum in that same mission.

Part of the problem I have with most of Destiny's gameplay is that the enemies don't really have anything close to reactive AI. It makes very little different where you are, what you do, how you fight... The enemies always do the same things all the time, which makes every fight seem very same-y. Enemies never move to flank you, don't hide while you have a super active, don't duck behind cover when taking fire, etc etc. We've all come to expect more from modern FPS games. There also aren't very many truly hectic fights - the best strategy is almost always to just stay as far away as possible and plink at the bad guys. Enemy grenades don't have blast radii big enough to really force you out of cover and enemy aim is good enough that even a max mobility character can't just sprint across the battlefield and dodge fire (lol sprint speed is the same for all players regardless of mobility, what a joke) and supers and heavies don't actually do all that much damage so they're relegated more to crowd control of weak enemies than to actually clutch you out of a losing situation and turn the tide in battle.

Just comparing to Halo (yes, Halo 1), killing an elite often caused the grunts to panic and flee. Sticking an enemy with a grenade either made them panic if they were a grunt or give the defiant roar if they were an elite. The only similar interaction I can recall in Destiny is the husks backing away from you in certain circumstances, or fruitlessly covering their heads when grenades land near them. Most other enemies just ignore them, and either die due to stupidity or shrug them off as if they were nothing. Neither result is satisfying. Heck, the enemies in Halo would also drop their own grenades, which allowed for magnificent cascades of grenade explosions and dynamic, sometimes unexpected, sometimes carefully orchestrated, dare I say emergent, combat situations. Also jeep launching.

Destiny is a game that you play near your friends, but - with the exception of raids and a very small number of boss fights - not really *with* your friends. There aren't team attacks, it's impossible to suppress enemies or draw their fire in order to help your teammates to maneuver. the "team buffs" each class provides kinda universally suck (I like the warlock circle, but it doesn't feel powerful so much as neat; the hunter "buff" is so bad as to not even be worth bothering since you're locked out of so many other perks by choosing the 'team buff' spec). Coordination is neither required nor encouraged outside of raids, and often just doing your own thing is the optimal playstyle. Somewhat ironically, the problem I have with PvE is a lack of coordination whereas the problem I have with PvP is that too much coordination is required. Destiny has been designed by overreactions to community pressure when it comes to balance, and the result is that everything feels constantly out of whack rather than at all like it's approaching something reliable, stable, and fun.

I've ranged far afield here, but I think that last city mission was FANTASTIC and it's a shame (tragedy, really) that nothing in CoO is at all like that, with other guardians popping up mid-mission, or encountering other strike teams at the end boss or even en route through the infinite forest.