I hate posting this--Datto's new video on PvP and Supers (Destiny)

by CruelLEGACEY , Toronto, Tuesday, July 30, 2019, 12:07 (1725 days ago) @ Ragashingo

I’m curious, are you just flat out against the concept of an unskilled player being able to kill a skilled player with a Super?

I get that nearly killing someone only to get Fists of Panic-ed triggers a feeling of disappointment/unfairness, but even with a maxed out Super recharge build I think you only get two supers a game unless you are racking up the kills / Control point captures. Team orb generation can help with that but really only give you a third Super, I would imagine. Even if the unskilled player is doing spectacularly well with their Supers, they only get maybe a minute and a half of Super time vs eight and a half minutes where they have no advantage. And, really, it’s far less than that because the other team can use their Supers to shutdown enemy Supers.

In the end, it should all work out. The better shooter will have an advantage for the majority of the game. And skilled players get their own Supers which they should also be better at using. I guess I don’t see Supers as a rubber band mechanism because it should at least cancel out. What’s left should be player skill and team coordination. For every time the enemy chains Supers one after the other, your team should have the same chance to return the favor. Even your team getting shut down by Supers or heavy ammo is part of the other team being skilled at map control. Countering one Super with another may not require a lot of button presses, but it generally requires situational awareness and some amount of good timing.

I think there’s clearly something to be said for wanting a game with Destiny’s gunplay without having to deal with Supers. A more pure shooter, if you will. Counterstrike and Destiny both exist because there are players who enjoy one style over the other. What I don’t agree with is the concept that Supers give unskilled players an advantage. Yes, in that moment the Void Titan blocks your rocket then kills you with a shield throw he has a temporary advantage. But you get the same advantage and being better at the shooting aspects you will get a Super advantage more often.

So, if anything, I think maybe the opposite is true: Destiny favors skilled players and teams by providing them with more Super opportunities while unskilled players who aren’t winning as many gun battles are also subject to enemy Supers more often which costs them positional advantage and things like Control points.

Coming back around to my initial question, I feel like maybe your real beef with Destiny is that you think the unskilled player should never ever have an advantage. If that’s the case, I think the answer is more that some other game will make you happier and less a problem with Destiny itself.

Back during the D1 beta on First Light I realized I was getting sniped a lot but then realized I could swap to a sniper rifle myself. Since then, I’ve always thought of Destiny’s Crucible gameplay as enforcing balance through superior firepower. And aside from the occasionally misbalanced Super or ability, I do think that Destiny maintains a good level of balance, fairness, and respect for player skill.

For me, it’s less about the final score at the end of the match, and more about the many instances of moment to moment frustration that come from dying repeatedly without being outplayed. As Cody pointed out, a player who is getting more kills between supers will ultimately get their super back more frequently, thus they’ll dish out even more super kills than they’ll take (on average). My gripe is that I can do absolutely everything right in an individual encounter, from my positioning and movement to communication to gunplay, and die because the enemy has an instant-win button ready and I didn’t at that moment. And more often than not, there is absolutely nothing I could do do avoid that death.

I’m not against supers as a blanket idea. I thought they generally added an interesting wrinkle to Trials in D1 because you would generally only get 1 super per match, so there was a real strategic layer to using them in a way that was most impactful. Plus, most of a Trials game would progress without supers being part of the equation, so there was a sort of tension building towards the 1 or 2 rounds when all the supers would suddenly come out. But in D2 Quickplay or Iron Banner, it’s almost non-stop supers after the first couple minutes, and that is just gameplay that I don’t fin fun it rewarding, whether I’m on the receiving end or dishing it out.

And just to be totally clear, I’m not calling for this to change or be removed, if people like it. I just think the game would benefit from some kind of mode that supported a more controlled, less chaotic form of gameplay.