Has Bungie talked at all about the scale of public events? How many people can be involved with one? Assuming thousands of people intend to engage a single public event (seems reasonable, given playlist populations in MP shooters) how do thousands of people take on one task? I don't mean to raise this question as a rhetorical criticism, by the way. I'm pretty sure everyone with their thinking caps on saw the implied asterisk after "Shared World" as there is no conceivable way for tens of thousands of people to genuinely, actually share the in-game universe. Surely there will be parallel instances.

Sorry if this has been addressed; I looked for an answer, but I've only seen speculation (which makes me think we just don't know).

...that's one of many things they're still not really talking about yet. I suspect the beta may be the soonest we really get a decent look at the scope of Public Events.

In some of the interviews I read after E3, Bungie sounded quite proud of the fact that they had 7 players on-screen in the public event. This is obviously a lot more than the 4 co-op campaign or firefight players available in Reach, but I would guess they would want to push it to at least 9 to accommodate 3 fireteams at once (3x3).

As I said in another post, I'm hoping the City/shared social non-combat space can hold many more players concurrently--it would definitely add to the 'showing off your gear' aspect of the game.

I don't see Destiny as being about stacking 100, or 50, or even 25 people (visible to you) in a single area. I think they're more shooting for a feeling of adventure and danger you get from being alone with your fire team combined with the idea that other teams are out there and you'll occasionally cross paths.

For public events I'd think the number of people would be capped around 20 given that multiplayer in Halo could go up to 16. But then, we've seen one public event. What if it was a tiny one, and big ones involve vehicle battles, and tons of enemies. Maybe the player count can go a lot higher than I expect.

I don't see Destiny as being about stacking 100, or 50, or even 25 people (visible to you) in a single area. I think they're more shooting for a feeling of adventure and danger you get from being alone with your fire team combined with the idea that other teams are out there and you'll occasionally cross paths.

For public events I'd think the number of people would be capped around 20 given that multiplayer in Halo could go up to 16. But then, we've seen one public event. What if it was a tiny one, and big ones involve vehicle battles, and tons of enemies. Maybe the player count can go a lot higher than I expect.

It would also not be surprising at all if competitive allowed a considerable amount of extra players than cooperative.

Public could simply mean open to more than one fireteam. They've also said that public events would cycle, so I don't see these as being single, one-time events, although they could certainly be limited in other ways.

Very much looking forward to finding out more.

Kermit

I don't see Destiny as being about stacking 100, or 50, or even 25 people (visible to you) in a single area. I think they're more shooting for a feeling of adventure and danger you get from being alone with your fire team combined with the idea that other teams are out there and you'll occasionally cross paths.

^ This.

My interpretation is very much along these lines. Right now in Halo, there may be several thousand people in a particular Matchmaking hopper but only 8-16 people are ever playing the same game. I imagine Destiny will do similar matchmaking; as long as you're in the same physical location, you have a chance to be matched with some small subset of the population. Quality of connection and preferred style of play may be elements that are taken into account, and we'll always be matched with our fireteam.

I don't see Destiny as being about stacking 100, or 50, or even 25 people (visible to you) in a single area. I think they're more shooting for a feeling of adventure and danger you get from being alone with your fire team combined with the idea that other teams are out there and you'll occasionally cross paths.

^ This.

My interpretation is very much along these lines. Right now in Halo, there may be several thousand people in a particular Matchmaking hopper but only 8-16 people are ever playing the same game. I imagine Destiny will do similar matchmaking; as long as you're in the same physical location, you have a chance to be matched with some small subset of the population. Quality of connection and preferred style of play may be elements that are taken into account, and we'll always be matched with our fireteam.

It shouldn't be difficult to have large set-piece public events occasionally. I'm assuming the technology already exists within the engine to host at least a hundred players in the city spaces. We don't know the limitations of the engine, or what they have in mind, but I'd love to see action on a large scale. We don't have a good idea of what size Raids are compared to Strikes (or the nature of either), do we? Certainly banging on all the new technologies will be the focus of the beta, hopefully we'll get a little more information before then.

~m

It shouldn't be difficult to have large set-piece public events occasionally. I'm assuming the technology already exists within the engine to host at least a hundred players in the city spaces. We don't know the limitations of the engine, or what they have in mind, but I'd love to see action on a large scale. We don't have a good idea of what size Raids are compared to Strikes (or the nature of either), do we? Certainly banging on all the new technologies will be the focus of the beta, hopefully we'll get a little more information before then.

True, you're almost certainly right that The City will allow for a ton of players to be visible at once. Then again, that's also a non-combat area, so the network latency rules are probably a little bit more relaxed there. And who knows about Raids/Strikes. The Beta can't come soon enough!

After a certain point, you no longer feel the direct contribution of your efforts. I'm betting while they could handle a 50 man raid, they won't put it in. Such a huge event really takes away from the overall experience. Can you imagine the coordination, and the hectoring from the leader over chat?

The one public event looked like it had 3-4 teams of 3, so I think 16-21 (7!) is a good number. At that point you still can clearly see the contribution to the fight, but don't feel like warlock #8 doing the same DPS rotation as everyone else.

One way to do it in public areas is like EvE does. It just picks up which ship you're flying and renders it passing through a distant airlock to anyone docked in the same station as you are. Of course, simply rendering your Guardian doing random stuff wouldn't be half as fun as actually being there, but it's a clever way to quickly populate an area with customized characters.

Has anything been said about difficulty scaling for solo versus fireteam, or difficulty settings at all? I'm really curious how difficulty settings are going to work, and how that will work out in public events. Will the difficulty be somehow automatically scaled to our skill level, or will we have instances were the difficulty could be too easy for one person in my fireteam and too difficult for another? Can I set my own difficulty level and play alongside friends that are playing at another level? Can I replay missions on different difficulties?

Has anything been said about difficulty scaling for solo versus fireteam, or difficulty settings at all? I'm really curious how difficulty settings are going to work, and how that will work out in public events. Will the difficulty be somehow automatically scaled to our skill level, or will we have instances were the difficulty could be too easy for one person in my fireteam and too difficult for another? Can I set my own difficulty level and play alongside friends that are playing at another level? Can I replay missions on different difficulties?

I don't think I've heard anything about difficulty scaling. That's a really great question though. I've always played Halo on Heroic/Legendary, but my sister would hate to be stuck playing that with me. I wonder how they'll scale that in Destiny...

Has anything been said about difficulty scaling for solo versus fireteam, or difficulty settings at all? I'm really curious how difficulty settings are going to work, and how that will work out in public events. Will the difficulty be somehow automatically scaled to our skill level, or will we have instances were the difficulty could be too easy for one person in my fireteam and too difficult for another? Can I set my own difficulty level and play alongside friends that are playing at another level? Can I replay missions on different difficulties?

I don't think I've heard anything about difficulty scaling. That's a really great question though. I've always played Halo on Heroic/Legendary, but my sister would hate to be stuck playing that with me. I wonder how they'll scale that in Destiny...

I honestly don't know how different difficulty modes in the same game would work. I guess they could just alter the damage tables for each person, but whether true or not, I've always imagined that difficulty levels were more sophisticated than just having different damage tables.

I've always been interested in dynamic difficulty scaling. (I'm not a big Call of Duty fan, but I'm intrigued by the Squads mode they just announced.) I know the idea has been around for a while, but I don't think I've ever played a game that had it. I imagine it might be problematic or it would have caught on by now. If Destiny had something like that, I'd still want static levels. Sometimes I like to explore on easier settings; other times I like a real challenge.

Has anything been said about difficulty scaling for solo versus fireteam, or difficulty settings at all? I'm really curious how difficulty settings are going to work, and how that will work out in public events. Will the difficulty be somehow automatically scaled to our skill level, or will we have instances were the difficulty could be too easy for one person in my fireteam and too difficult for another? Can I set my own difficulty level and play alongside friends that are playing at another level? Can I replay missions on different difficulties?

We trimmed a whole bunch of questions from our Chris Butcher E3 interview - mostly because the answers were "we're not talking about that right now" - but we'd asked this question, and his answer was

So we're not really getting into the technical details around that, but generally speaking, the way it works is that no matter what your character's power is, and no matter what activity you're on, we make sure it's always a satisfying shooting experience. Now, obviously, there are experiences that are more difficult than others, but it's never unsatisfying. You never trivially just make the content ridiculously easy.

We trimmed a whole bunch of questions from our Chris Butcher E3 interview - mostly because the answers were "we're not talking about that right now" - but we'd asked this question, and his answer was

So we're not really getting into the technical details around that, but generally speaking, the way it works is that no matter what your character's power is, and no matter what activity you're on, we make sure it's always a satisfying shooting experience. Now, obviously, there are experiences that are more difficult than others, but it's never unsatisfying. You never trivially just make the content ridiculously easy.

That's a pretty good non-answer as far as non-answers go. Chris's comment suggests that a lot of thought went into this problem and I trust that they've figured this issue out (because that's what they do!). Still curious about how it works, though!

That's a pretty good non-answer as far as non-answers go. Chris's comment suggests that a lot of thought went into this problem and I trust that they've figured this issue out (because that's what they do!). Still curious about how it works, though!

Kind-of what I was thinking; it's not an answer, but it speaks to concerns they're seeking to address, so it's valuable in that regard. The easy way out, and what games like Borderlands do, is to scale the difficulty of the bullet-sponge you're up against to the highest level member of the team. What that means is that your level 72 friends aren't really interested in you joining them while you're still level 65 (you're doing so little damage due to damage scaling that you're practically useless). Leads to a "race to the cap" situation whenever it's raised, directly into "end-game farming, part 17" to snag all of the rare/powerful loot all over again.

Bungie has said your guns scale with you, and get more powerful as you use them, which hopefully addresses the re-farming problem of Borderlands. Can they solve difficulty for multi-level fire squads? Mehbeh...

Upon reflection, this unbalanced fireteam issue, although interesting, is nowhere near being any kind of showstopping issue for me. I don't recall anyone considering it a big problem if teammates were unbalanced for any of the co-op modes Bungie shipped for Halo. If Destiny ships with difficulty levels similar to what they've done in the past, and that factored into matchmaking with other fireteams, that would probably work well enough. Differing abilities can lead to interesting strategies, too. I know, because on many occasions I've been the bait who would draw out enemies who stronger players could then kill.

I think there definitely has be be a limit, having thousands of gamers in one public event is a bit absurd IMO. There definitely has to be some consideration with each public and how many enemies you're interacting with. If you have too many, you're just another part of the crowd not really doing any work and just plowing through it gathering loot without actually doing anything.

I would love for Public events to have something around 30 players in some instances, but everything in moderation.

I think there definitely has be be a limit, having thousands of gamers in one public event is a bit absurd IMO. There definitely has to be some consideration with each public and how many enemies you're interacting with. If you have too many, you're just another part of the crowd not really doing any work and just plowing through it gathering loot without actually doing anything.

I would love for Public events to have something around 30 players in some instances, but everything in moderation.

Which always brings me back to my hope that if friends are playing in the same area it'll prioritize putting them together if possible.

Maybe we're thinking about different kinds of difficulty leveling. My metaphor for this isn't so much Halo as it is Borderlands (specifically, BL2, but I'll come back to why that distinction is important).

In BL2, there are two main factors contributing to difficulty: Character Level (1-72) and Playthrough Mode (Normal, True Vault Hunter, and Ultimate Vault Hunter). Normal and TVHM are weird; levels for enemies are set by area and are permanent (so if you entered an area at level 10, those enemies are always leveled around 10). UVHM is a different (and I think better) model: enemy levels are ALWAYS based on your level (I'm ignoring the recent over-leveling mechanic where you can boost enemy and gear levels without improving base player stats; it's basically more levels). But here's the rub: damage and health scale rapidly based on level, so it's not very long before your 3-level-old gear is no help to you anymore, and your friends 3 levels under you can't really hang with you anymore.

So you see, there's difficulty mode AND player leveling to consider. I think the former is easier to cope with, but the latter is a tricky balancing act. And this is where my preference for BL2 comes in: levels are more meaningful because there's a bigger difference in base health and damage as compared to BL1. A 5 level difference in BL1 between you and your gear was nothing; in Bl2, it's a big deal. In short, no matter what mode you're on, you won't enjoy a 10-level difference between you and your teammate.

If Destiny lands more in the BL2 end of the spectrum and makes each level a bigger step, then levels are more meaningful, but you'll have to make sure you keep up with your fire team. If they tend more toward BL1, the levels will mean less, but it makes keeping pace a lot easier. They've addressed the gear issue by having it level up with you (at least, that's how I understand it) so it's really about base health and damage stats.

https://www.borderlands2loothunt.com

Have you seen Gearbox's community loot hunt that just started up today? This is a really cool idea. Hopefully Bungie is taking note, and not worrying about the money/prize aspect. Money/Prizes are awesome but not really needed (most won't even win them), especially if you can make community loot hunts a regular occurrence and worth more than cR. The joy of the hunt is satisfying enough for some, the loot/in game reward at the end just about everyone will enjoy. Imagine with me if you will though, a compelling in universe side story that can be told/conveyed through these optional pathways/challenges that you will be led on. Many many players will go on just for the in game loot pay off at the end of it, but maybe will take note of the other things going on along the way. The community driven aspect is really cool and the overall possibilities here are really awesome. The different personal iterations/stories that can be told afterwords of this shared event are the things that a mailsack/Weekly Update could really pay off.

Money is not a necessity. We know that the Daily and Weekly Challenges in Reach were partly research based, to help gather metrics and build missions and challenge ideas for Destiny. And to dole out cR. Bungie has always been good at gathering global view data of challenges completed, total games played, total hours spent, specific multi-play map Heat Maps, etc. Hopefully this kind of globalized view will have a utilization in Destiny rather than just stat tracking.
Hopefully the pay outs will be much more satisfying than cR or potentially what cR can buy (I am not a fan of pointless customization. Rather, guns or other unique immediately functional items - not something I have to save or spend - are extremely satisfying).
Hopefully their research includes the obvious individual challenge aspect, a group/fireteam challenge aspect, but also a large scale community challenge aspect too.

Editors note:
I think I used the word Hopefully too many times. We aren't that far away from Beta/launch. I'm just realizing it is probably too late for me to even think about this kind of stuff.

I'm hoping the loot hunt builds rapidly; today's is a trivial mini-boss for a barely useful unique pistol that wasn't exactly hard to stumble on before. But I love the idea (even if I have no hopes on winning a prize).

Now, killing Badass Marauders w/a Gwen's Head... THAT'S a challenge.

barely useful unique pistol

Oy! It's doing wonders for me. Even better than my Slagga, which I was extremely fond of. The trick is to always wear a Bee.

Well, Gwen's Head has a pretty stout crit bonus anyway, but yeah - the Bee makes everything better (I just spend a lot more time in FFYL with it).

For my Gunzerker build, I've usually got a Slagga or a slag Rubi paired with something situational in my left and right slots. Up and down is a pair of Double Penetrating Unkempt Harolds. Always.