Post-Beta thoughts: how Destiny can reach its full potential (Destiny)

by uberfoop , Seattle-ish, Monday, July 28, 2014, 23:32 (3559 days ago)

(Outside of large changes and paradigm shifts that would likely be completely unfeasible at this point.)

1. Improve Chat Accessibility

Prior to trying experiencing Destiny in the alpha and beta, if you had told me that players would have to form a party after being matched in order to chat in Bungie's big shared-world shooter, I would have responded that the chances of that were zero.

It is strange that, in this highly social and coop-focused shooter, there are more barriers than ever to voice communication. If some people demand an option to auto-mute others, I suppose that's alright, but the current situation has a crushing impact on Destiny's cooperate gameplay. Strikes and Crucible should support automatic team chat, and explore mode should support some kind of automatic proximity chat. To reduce confusion in explore mode, perhaps the game could show an icon on non-chat player's names to indicate the lack of communication.

Implementing automatic chatting options would elevate cooperation in Destiny to another level, it would help the world feel more alive, and it might give the Tower a greater sense of purpose.

2. Improve Directional Feedback

Hectic close-quarters fighting in Destiny can often feel muddy, as though it can be unexpectedly hard to keep track of things. This is probably partly because of the deliberately imprecise radar. However, I agree with the widespread opinion that the new radar system has numerous benefits. So, what can be done?

A. Damage Arrow

Destiny's main indicator for where you're taking damage from is a funky pointer in the middle of the screen. It's not very readable. Although it gives a precise indication of damage direction, its shape makes it look similar for a lot of different impact directions, so that you have to study it for a brief moment to figure out what it's trying to tell you. By contrast, despite not being very precise, Halo 1's red edge-of-screen arrows feel much better because they shoot an immediate and clear signal to your reflexes. Perhaps a similar mechanism could be emphasized in Destiny, or the damage indicator restructured to be more rapidly interpretable.

B. Sound Directionality

I'm not an expert on sound processing in games, so maybe my articulation of this issue sucks; I can't articulate this point in a very structured detail-analyzing way at all. But, sound in Destiny doesn't seem to telegraph its directionality very well. I typically play using just the TV stereo speakers, so that's obviously part of the problem, but under the same circumstances most games seem to do better. This affects large-scale events as well; when Fallen ships arrive, it always takes me longer than I'd expect to locate them.

I'm not expecting anything A3D-tier, but it feels like it could be improved.

C. Field of View

Destiny's FoV is about 72 degrees horizontally. That's hardly higher than Halo 3, which many people have criticized for being a bit lacking in peripheral vision. For how low it is, simply looking around and moving feels better than I would have expected, but the view restrictions can be felt when things get messy.

An increase to 80-90 degrees would be welcome (as demonstrated by the near-unanimous praise in the shift in FoV from Halo 3 to ODST).