And it lifts the WORST ASPECTS of those systems.

Stand by for hell freezing over; I agree with Cody on this.

Well; somewhat.

The missions are pretty repetitive and get quite dull after a while. There's no real sense of any of them mattering or having any causality. In fact, I have to say the story is mostly lost on me right now. I know there's a ‘darkness’ coming, but does that refer to a specific race, or just all the enemies such as the Hive and Fallen? From the opening sequence it appears that my ghost brought me back to life, but that raises a TON of questions which aren't even remotely touched on. If you were brought back to life centuries later and dropped into a post-apocalyptic Earth defending it from aliens, wouldn't you have a few questions?

I get the impression the various factions are meant to have some sort of distinct personality (at least based on the voice acting) but we're given little else to go on. Why do they exist? What are their purposes? I'm mystified.

When it comes to borrowing mechanics from Diablo and WoW, this is where some of the problems start. I feel a bit as though Bungie have borrowed mechanics from old versions of these games, and haven't learned any of the lessons of them (it's as if they played WoW back in 2008 and based their designs on that). As Fuertisimo says, the returning home to identify items is a completely ass-backwards way of doing things; Blizzard realised this and hence you can identify items from your inventory in Diablo 3. Requiring a trip home just to unwrap your loot is completely absurd (particularly considering the daft ‘return to orbit’ intermediary step).

The grinding issue is one that I feel will be more or less of an issue depending on the individual. On the one hand, you don't want a system whereby it's possible to acquire all of the goodies too quickly (because if you do, you'll burn out and stop playing, which will damage the MMO experience), but on the other you don't want things taking so long you don't feel like you're progressing. The key is to ensure that whilst you're grinding, you're still enjoying the minute-by-minute gunplay. So far this feels like the most polished, triple-A part of the game (unsurprising given it's from Bungie); it's the lack of anything else gluing the experience together that undermines it.

Finally I want to talk about exploration. The world is beautiful, the scenery and environment stunning to behold. But all the same, it feels oddly constricted and artificial. I don't feel like I'm exploring a wide open area so much as travelling on (admittedly quite broad) conduits between hubs which have a very linear feel. I never really minded Bungie putting invisible walls and killzones into the Halo games, but here it feels particularly egregious. If you're selling us an open world, why can't I climb the mountains? And on that subject, why is the land so…flat? For all the bumpiness the world has, it's more or less all of a consistent elevation — it doesn't feel like you're ever travelling up into the hills so much as just cresting a rise, after which the land falls again. Maybe the other zones will amend this, but it feels a bit as though in an attempt to prevent players ‘skipping ahead’ they've put a straightjacket on what could have otherwise been a compelling, immersive world.

We're capped at level 8 right now, which means not only are we not able to experience a lot of the game systems (crafting items? upgrading them with materials?) but we're also limited in where we can go. It may be that travelling to other worlds, and other parts of this world will help sculpt the immersive experience, but I think Bungie could do a lot more to sell us with the smaller scale things; missions that engage and involve more than just Collect X things/Kill Y enemies/Travel to point Z.

Likewise the story missions are just barely connected to each other, and no weight is given to your actions. If I'm going to "Become Legend", then why isn't the story advancing because of my actions? Every mission after the first begins with something like "Reports say that…" or "Our Scouts say that…". Each mission should begin because of something we do in the last one! It doesn't feel like you are shaping the story, but are just a guardian for hire.

Besides being a thoroughly ridiculous thing to proclaim in itself, Destiny's Story mode is not entirely linear.

e.g. After completing Restoration, you can play either Dark Within or Warmind straight away.

The sum of the things you do, acquire and learn in Old Russia leads you to go to...

...dun, dun, dun...

The Moon!

For all the things Destiny is doing right (awesome visuals, interesting sci-fi world, awesome music, cool social features) it is pretty disappointing that they so patently lifted gameplay systems pretty much wholesale from Diablo and WoW.

And it lifts the WORST ASPECTS of those systems.

My biggest problem with Destiny is that it is overly loot focused to the detriment of the missions themselves. I feel like the beacons should be giving you missions like the story missions are now, and the story missions should be as substantial as a level in Halo for example. They are they way they are because they want you to grind for faction points, and to replay the story missions in the hopes of getting cool drops or end rewards.

I think the more valid comparison given what we're seeing is that a Destiny story mission is equivalent not to a Halo level, but perhaps to a Halo encounter or series of related encounters. The experience of playing one can approximate that of a short Halo level, but only when you add in the travel from the spawn point through the public area, which might include a public event or as much search-and-destroy as you have patience for at the time-- all optional, of course.

That said, I'd expect far more story missions in Destiny than levels in Halo. After all, if these were even supposed to be equivalent, we'd have already seen half the game, as Halo games usually have about 10 levels or so. I really don't think that is the case.

I'm not familiar enough with WoW or Diablo to know if their loot systems are any good, but I'm not going to fault Bungie for using good ideas.

If gear is of importance, random loot is not good for your game. It creates repetition, grinding, and frustration. It strings everything out and makes you waste more of your time.

Random loot systems are no good.