Destiny needs less voice more communication (Destiny)

by electricpirate , Tuesday, July 29, 2014, 07:47 (3562 days ago) @ uberfoop

(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.

Not having chat in Destniny is overall I think a good thing. I've had many more experiences ruined by voice chat with strangers than I've had experiences elevated by it.

Destiny needs more non vocal communcation options. In destinies boss fight's, timing and positioning are pretty crucial. To be effective against hte devil walker you really need two people on opposite sides of the arena, and you need to communicate "Hey a leg is about to blow, ready up those supers/heavies/nades/fusion rifles to hit the core. The current system of non verbal communication is mostly there as a toy, why not give it more usefulless. For example, pointing , why can't I point at a limb I'm targeting, or point at a position I need my fireteam to take? More than that, I think people would actually use it more than voice com. I mostly play games (okay, I don't really play many games anymore lol) after my 11 month old has gone to sleep, and I live in a tiny apartment where Voice chat is basically a no go. If I could call out targets, send warnings, and communicate voicelessly it would be huge.

Portal 2's co-op had a deep system for this, where you even had timers, and a bunch of communication options about where to look and what to do. Battlefield on the other end has a marking system to call out targets. I think Destiny needs something like this, especially since so many of it's systems are reliant on co-operation for success.