Destiny thoughts (Destiny)

by petetheduck, Monday, July 21, 2014, 17:39 (3781 days ago)

Destiny is awesome. This is the game that I want to play.

Some thoughts from Destiny Beta Part One:

- Regarding player movement, everything felt fantastic except two things:
Automatically crouching at the end of a slide is bad. I slide during combat, when it is least optimal to be crouching. That auto-crouch often has me fumbling around with my controller to get back up and effectively engaged in combat when I should be pulling off effortless and smooth slide-under-fire-then-face-punches to my enemies.

I do not like the resistence to turning left or right while sprinting. It just does not feel right. I would rather have hard turns break me out of sprint than have my ability to turn reduced.

- I would like to see the ammo penalty for weapon swaps removed from Explore mode, or a shooting range added to the game. Just something accomodating to the desire to easily test the various weapons you find.

- Old Russia felt, at least initially, very empty. I don't know why I anticipated being rewarded for exploring every nook and cranny with interesting scenery and easter eggs. Monster closets were identical and it seemed there was nothing at all to find except sparse loot crates.

That all changed when I heard about the Golden Chests. I had fun looking for them and started to find things I had missed, like deactivated ghosts. I also realized there were many more loot crates than I initially thought. I would love to see more things to find in Explore.

- The huge Fallen/Hive battle that takes place at dusk in the Skywatch area is awesome. If Explore mode is lacking in interesting scenery and easter eggs, moments like those will definitely compensate. It makes me want to bring a friend there and say, "Hey, let's hang around, you need to see this."

- Public events were great, but I was disappointed that there seemed to be one dedicated public event for each space. Defeat the Extraction Crews in the Mothyards and Forgotten Shore, Defend the Warsat in the Skywatch. I hope that in the final game, each area will have a wide variety of public events. I know you also got an Eliminate the Target public event in the Mothyards, but I only had that happen once.

- Pulse Rifles didn't have the same audio punch that the Scout Rifles had. Combined with their high recoil, I wasn't impressed. I was looking for a good BR-like weapon and ended up just sticking with Scout Rifles.

- I love the special abilities some weapons have. I focused on Discipline with my Warlock and found a Scout Rifle that reduced my grenade cooldown with each kill. I had a Rocket Launcher that was pretty cool, but then I upgraded it to have a secondary cluster of explosions after impact--super effective at killing things. I also found a Sniper Rifle that collects any ammo that I shoot, which is just amazing. Who ever thought of that, I love you.

- I like Bounties a lot. I guess the Grimoire system has replaced Halo's Commendations, so Bounties are, what, Halo's Challenges? I like choosing them because it makes it deliberate--you select what you want to do and don't feel obligated to complete them all.

- I would like to be able to access the Director from any location without needing to return to orbit. It seems like a bit of intentional inefficiency--maybe to make you more obligated to each activity so you aren't tempted to jump around on a whim, or maybe to make a smoother transition for loading screens. Either way, it is inefficient.

- The Tower. You go there to access the vendors, which would be easier to do from a menu in orbit. If I'm waiting for my friends to get on, I'm going to go into Explore mode, not sit in the Tower. So, why is the Tower even there? I feel like it's more of a story vision Bungie had than something that really makes sense from a game design point of view. With that in mind, it is slowly growing on me.

- I would really appreciate weapon damage type indicators (arc/solar/void) shown on the icons for the weapons in your inventory without having to "mouse over" them to find out.

- I like the story mission select interface (how it is integrated into the Director) and that you can adjust difficulty. It also seemed that at one point, there were two missions available at the same time and you could choose which one to tackle first. I do like having mission locations integrated into Explore. All around, I am happy with the way the story mission are handled. The only thing I could nitpick is there not being any completion indicators for completing the missions or Strike, especially for doing so on higher difficulties. We need our Legendary icons!

- The moment that stood out to me out of the entire Beta so far was the first time I experience the Hive assault at the end of The Last Array. The Strike didn't blow me away--at some point, shooting the Devil Walker's legs gets old. Fortunately, Sepkis Prime doesn't seem to take nearly as long to defeat. I don't think these bosses are poorly designed, I think they might just have too much health. Also, I would love to see the Devil Walker be able to, you know, walk around. It just kind've shuffles it's feet while standing in the same spot. How come these bosses were shown up for me by 3 waves of standard enemies?

- One thing that I felt was missing was the "something new every day" that Bungie has touted. I hope they're not referring to Bounties. I'm really hoping they're referring to story missions and Strikes--I want to see new icons on that Director.