My Beta Thoughts and Feedback (Lots of Text) (Destiny)

by Avateur , Sunday, August 03, 2014, 02:20 (3574 days ago)

Welp, we're just over a month out from Destiny's launch! Exciting, I know. I hope some of this feedback has a chance to be looked at and considered for launch. I may be forgetting some things, but I think this should cover most all of my thoughts.

Lots of General Thoughts Covering All The Things

I don't think I can say enough about just how much I love the Pike. Seriously, Bungie. That Pike is one of the best things that you've ever created for a video game. I didn't think I could care as much about a vehicle as I do for the Warthog, and yet here I am completely amazed with the Pike. I even started a clan based primarily on the use and love of the vehicle. If there's one thing I'd like to request, it would be to keep the Pikes completely untouched. They play perfectly. Please leave them be, and thank you so much for creating them!

I get that this was a Beta, but what clan support are we going to be seeing? At the moment on Bungie.net, there are errors for people trying to create clans, and it seems that joining Alliances doesn't work. No errors at all. There's just no reaction to trying to invite to an Alliance or to send a request to join one.

Destiny itself should also copy Halo 2 and allow a Clan screen to show in-game so that you can see who from your clan is online and also to give you the option to invite people to join your clan right from within the game itself. It's probably just a wish at this point, but it would be cool if the Crucible had a Clans Only playlist that matched clans up against each other somehow.

So, there was plenty of talk about the Interceptor being overpowered and whatnot, right? And I've already said how much I love the Pike! Well, another solution to some problems with vehicles would be the option to hijack. It's really gross that you can't, especially with how well it works in Halo. If this could somehow be implemented, I think it would make things a lot better.

The UI in this game is a big love-hate relationship with me (mostly love). I absolutely love the whole "hover" selection with the thumbstick to select what screens or icons I want to go to. I like how seamless everything feels. At the same time, this whole "hold Y" to get back to orbit gets really obnoxious very quickly. I get it, Bungie doesn't want people touching the wrong button and instantly flying back to Orbit or leaving the Crucible. Regardless, don't make us hold down the button for an hour to back out. Five seconds, tops, please.

It also seems like the Beta didn't remember that the last time I was on, I had my party set to Invite Only. Halo does a good job of remembering what I last had my party security set at, and I'm hoping that the final product of Destiny won't constantly revert to Friends Only.

I can't for the life of me figure out why Bungie removed the death-count from the post-game report. God forbid people feel like they did poorly or see that they did. Just show me how many times I died, throw the K/D ratio beside it, and there you go.

I'm extremely impressed with the way stats display at Bungie.net. Granted, it's not that easy to locate peoples' stats (and I hope that improves or is made more obvious so players can check themselves out and compare with other friends, sort of like with H3 or Reach). I think my favorite part is the medals and how they're displayed in-game and on Bungie.net. They were really easy to hover over and read, the medals themselves are pretty clever and fun, and I think they're absolutely worth trying to obtain.

That "Never Speak of This Again" medal was by far my favorite. I got two splatters with a Sparrow in the Beta, and both times I was joking about how I just cost Bungie some customers because those people probably will be too mad to buy Destiny. Sorry Bungie! But yeah, it's named perfectly. I also absolutely want that Seventh Column medal, and it seems like it's going to pose a real challenge to get. During the Beta I only managed to get four people killed quickly because it seemed like no more than that were ever around. I guess I have a goal for the actual game.

On Bungie.net, I really like the bit on the right side of your stats where you can click "Gear Vault" or "Recent" to view games and things, but it took me days to even notice these options. I think they need to be made more obvious and apparent so that they're easier to find online once the game launches.

I really wish I could hover over my friend's ships when we're all just sitting in Orbit so that it can highlight and tell me who they are. It's fun being able to connect the gamertag of your buddy with their ship.

Speaking of Orbit, it can really be a huge time waster. Say I'm in the Crucible with my full team and we're done playing that. I should have the option to send us back to the Tower if that's where we want to go. Or to a Raid once we're at that level. I shouldn't have to bump us into Orbit, and then bump us elsewhere. I feel like a lot of what I experienced in the Beta made it clear that our time is not necessarily being considered valuable (see above for how long I have to hold a button just to leave the Tower or take my party back to Orbit after Crucible).

Or take the Tower itself as an example. I have to go back there for every single little thing? I can't access bounties anywhere, I can't deal with Engrams anywhere, I can't do anything anywhere at all ever except at the Tower. I shouldn't have to leave the planet, go to Orbit, go to the Tower, run all over the place for what might amount to five minutes tops, go back to Orbit, and then go back to the place I want to play. It's extremely frustrating, especially when you have a party with only one or two people who have a need to go to the Tower. Everyone is getting dragged along for what one or two people need to do when they should be able to just take care of it using their Ghost right there in Old Russia or in Orbit. Everyone's time just got wasted.

Although I personally feel like the Tower as a whole is a waste of time, it's a really nice place to go when there's idle time or when the group is coordinating together. It definitely beats just sitting in Orbit with no one doing anything. There were plenty of fun shenanigans afoot with soccer balls, balloons, trees, and climbing things. Part of me wonders how much of that will go away as certain bugs get polished, as the novelty wears off, or as more maddening invisible barriers and kill barriers go up.

Speaking of which, Old Russia has so many invisible walls and kill zones that it's not even funny. I thoroughly can't wait for people to keep finding ways to break out of some of these places so that people can continue exploring. I definitely loved lots of those Beta break-out videos. Some of the most fun I ever had in Halo 2 and Halo 3 came from breaking out of maps and exploring in campaign. The egg in New Alexandria in Reach where you can get the Pelican and have full access to fly out to wherever you want on that map is similar. I love fully realized exploration and ability to go places.

I get that the game has multiple servers that allow something like twenty people into a place at any given time. At the same time, this whole squad party of three thing is extremely and unbelievably limiting for a "shared world" game. I'm talking clans or just a place like DBO having a game night. I had a group of twelve friends on, and we all split up into our teams of three. We tried going down to the Explore mode at the exact same time so that we could try to tackle things together. Nope. We landed in largely empty servers with only a few randoms scattered about. Yay. So we're going at it with just the three of us in a largely empty server with plenty of space for the rest of our buddies who can never get to us. Not fun, Bungie.

We also can't communicate with anyone in Explore. Let's say we do run into some randoms who want to help out in a public event. It's so frustrating not being able to tell the randoms to stay inside the circle so that we have as many Guardians inside linked up! It's really fun having randoms join in, or for us to be those randoms joining in with someone else, but when it's a giant mess of non-coordination and failure, it really puts a damper on things. This also applies to Crucible, especially for people who are going in without a full team of six. We could also use proximity voice to know if our enemies are nearby.

Speaking of going into Crucible with teams of six, I'm not sure if this is just a Beta thing, but the party system split my party multiple times. It's extremely weird going into games with six people, either for the first time or after playing for hours, and occasionally it just throws one or two of us onto the other team with randoms. Now, this only happened a few times, but I figure it's worth pointing out.

I would really love it if the Crucible would allow for larger parties to go in. That example of twelve people I named up above could have really used the option to head into Crucible together and let the system assign teams so that we could just battle each other. It's nice having options when you have a bunch of friends on.

I also would like it if the final game has the option to vote for maps instead of just randomly selecting one. Also, please include a "None of the Above" voting option as well.

Questions on Raids that I hope get answered some time before Destiny launches: Do you have to have six in your party to actually start the thing? And what if someone has to go or gets disconnected while you're in the middle of playing? Does everyone lose their progress? Does the Raid just stop? Does everyone restart where they last were or at a checkpoint? Are they screwed if the dropped individual can't come back until tomorrow, or for more than 24 hours? If you replace the person with someone new, do you still restart at the last checkpoint, or is it time to start all over again? Answers to these somewhere before launch would be really, really great.

Why am I so concerned about disconnecting or losing someone? I know Bungie was testing the servers in the Beta, but the problem with Always Online is that if the servers go down or my personal internet goes down, the fun goes bye bye. The game itself becomes a total brick. I can't even log in or mess around with my character or do anything. Until I can get back on, Destiny becomes worthless. That really sucks.

I find it amusing that people who want the Ghost Edition of Destiny or some of the limited editions are screwed because of how "limited" they are. The Beta just happened, and many people were waiting to see if it was worth spending that kind of money. Too bad it was announced and they were all gone prior to the Beta, right? I'm not pre-ordering the game, so this doesn't affect me, but damn. It's disappointing to see this happen to a bunch of friends and strangers who really want this thing now.

Story/Explore/Strike

I know a lot of people are upset that Destiny's Beta lacked story. I know a lot of people think the story sucks. I disagree with these two thoughts because I feel like we weren't shown really any story at all by design, and thus there's no way to know. What I do know is that the gameplay was really nice, and I had fun. Explore is boring as hell, and the missions that you can accept are also boring. Exploring for loot gets old really quickly. Public Events are really awesome. Bullet sponges absolutely freaking suck.

I really enjoy collecting the dead sleeping Ghosts, as I like to call them. I don't know why. My play style has never been about collecting things, grinding stuff out for better wares, or being a 100% completionist. Things like the feathers in Assassin's Creed or any number of items that the creators want me to go out and find have never amused me or captured my attention. Bungie definitely did something right with these dead sleeping Ghosts, because I really want to find them. I'm fascinated by them and their locations. Still, no clue why.

It's not fun wandering the world, killing a group of enemies, walking ten feet away, and having them respawn. They all just hang around in the same place. At least in ODST's largely empty and increasingly boring hub world, the enemies wander around, patrol, and come after you if they see you. The world is so huge, yet it's so empty. This place is taken over by all sorts of enemies, and the Public Events have huge ships warping in left and right. We need more enemies outside instead of mostly confined spaces in buildings where they keep spawning endlessly while the Ghost does everything it can to complete its task for three goes.

I really enjoyed using the Sparrow. It's fun zipping around and being able to call it up whenever I want for the most part (even on the Moon in Crucible).

I really enjoyed the Story missions. I played through them plenty of times. Granted, I was getting sick of Old Russia pretty quickly. The Strike is plenty of fun until you get to the bullet sponges that don't do anything. Oh no, it's a Devil Walker! Good thing all it can do is turn around in circles. How terrifying. How long have we been shooting it now? Waste of time, no real challenge. Oh no, a giant version of the smaller purple floaty orbs. It just stares at me and takes my shots right in its "eye" and shoots laughable doom blasts at me while occasionally warping in and out of places. How terrifying. How long have we been shooting it now? Waste of time, no real challenge.

So this is where I'm supposed to say that Bungie can do better, right? Well, they beat me to it! They DID do better! The Moon was by far my most favorite part of everything (well, second favorite after the Pike). I went there, I completed the mission, I had a "wait, that's it?" moment, and then I found out that I could explore this insanely vast area that takes me deep within the catacombs of the Hive Kingdom of Doom. It was absolutely awesome, the AI seemed smarter, was more difficult, and acted like it really wanted to come after me and kill me (and some seemed to be patrolling). The Ogre thing was way more fun to fight and more of a challenge than the Old Russia bosses, and there were some enemies who just didn't care what you did to them because they were just going to destroy you regardless.

That Ogre really impressed me, by the way. My two buddies were off on their own (aka I ditched them to explore a different area and ran into an Ogre on my own), and I thought for a second that he was just going to laserface at me until I killed him down in his pit. Nope. That guy walked his ass up the ramp and came right after me. I got killed, and they're much more difficult when they're coming at you (especially if you got cocky and let your guard down). I was very impressed with the Moon, and I can't wait to go back and get digging into those tunnels. I also can't wait to see what Bungie has in store on other planets.

I feel like Bungie should add a compass to the game somewhere. It'd be nice to have a sense of direction, or if you're separated from your group in big tunnels on the Moon, you can let them know what direction you went in.

Now for a technical issue. My Xbox 360 froze multiple times when I would hit certain loading points or even sometimes switching out weapons while on the Moon or in Old Russia. Full on console freezing to the point that everyone in my party says I've left the game, but they can still chat with me in our Party Chat. All the while, no button presses work, and I have to hold the power button on the 360 to make it turn off. Really weird and frustrating. I'm wondering if Xbox One, PS3, or PS4 had any similar issues.

Crucible

I absolutely love Shores of Time. That map, especially when the sun is somewhat down, is gorgeous. It also plays extremely well. For real, that map would work out really well in Halo. It works out just fine in Destiny, and there are some pretty clever and creative ways to play on that map. I love the little jetpack booster thing that my Titan has.

But holy cow is Crucible unbalanced. Using Pikes takes skill, getting headshots takes skill, and creeping about takes skill (sort of). Everything else feels to be primarily dumb luck. You have no way to tell if someone has their Super ready to use until they use it on you. The game provides near-constant ammo for sniper rifles and shotguns. If someone shoots at you first, you're just about guaranteed to be dead. Truly, it's baffling.

I mean don't get me wrong. Not to brag, but I feel I'm pretty damn good at Destiny. I played as a Titan exclusively, and I found myself forgetting that I even had a Super the majority of the time because I felt like I never had to use it. I primarily used an Auto Rifle, and I chose to use one of the weaker ones with less rapid-fire because it had a higher impact and a slow enough rate of fire that it allowed me to really take off someone's head. That's the real key to using a gun like that in Destiny. So I guess that sort of takes skill, right?

But is that really skill? Whatever guns you happened to find, purchase, or unlock with their arbitrary stats are what can truly decide the battle? Or the fact that someone else's gun takes a few seconds to charge before one-hit-killing you? You're fighting numbers, luck, and random chance at this point. Go into Iron Banner, and it's even more so since you don't know what their armor is, what their defenses are, or what their own weapons are going to bring in relation to your own armor. It feels like your actual destiny in Crucible is really out of your own hands beyond seeing them first, shooting first, and managing to hit your target. Aiming for the head is about the only real skill you can get, along with managing to get the jump on people.

I got the hang of Iron Banner once I realized what I should be doing with it. Again, an Auto Rifle with higher impact beats an Auto Rifle with higher overall attack points and rate of fire. I don't see how the more "casual" gamer can enjoy this experience, let alone the Crucible in general. I'm really good at it, and even I found myself raging plenty.

Going in with a full team is also key. We lost on very rare occasions when going into Crucible fully loaded. How is anyone supposed to survive when you have good friends who communicate and know each other and play together all the time? I feel bad for people who came up against TTL groups and probably got completely dominated. It definitely doesn't help that there's no voice chat with randoms if you don't have a full group.

Sniper rifles appear to have an extreme aim assist, and a potential severe host advantage. It even has a Halo 2-esque swipe scope ability. I could be zooming, strafing, sprinting, shooting back, anything. I could be clear across the map in constant motion. Snipers be raining headshots. What in the world is the matter with those rifles? They just feel way overpowered and cheap. They definitely take an amount of skill, but their ease of use and potential balance problems are troubling to me. I asked our very own Snipe 316 why he hates the sniper rifle and playing so much when he's so good at it and basically goes on endless kill streaks. His reply was that it's too easy. He shouldn't be able to just go on destroying people with that sniper rifle with basically unlimited ammo. I agree with his assessment.

I enjoy the radar, I really do. I still contend that it becomes impossible when someone is above you, below you, or directly beside you. It's been pointed out that apparently it changes to a different shade of red. It's barely noticeable, and it's not helpful. All of a sudden I'm spinning in circles trying to see where the person is to get a melee in, or to see if they're actually in the room with me at all. It works great when it comes to general direction and knowing someone's coming, but not when they may be camping corners and you just ran into them or they're above/below you. Yet another thing that adds luck into the mix and detracts from skill.

Control is a joke of a game type. Holding those points makes zero difference in the game beyond map control. Hold B and C, let them have A. Don't touch A. They'll keep spawning in its general area. Even if you don't spawn camp them, they're stuck. They're surrounded. Yes, even on the Moon. Crushing your enemy becomes way too easy. Control seriously should act as a more traditional Domination or Territories gametype that constantly impacts score, because otherwise all it does is act as another Team Slayer game with generally no chance for escape for the unfortunate team that got stuck with A.

The Moon seems to be disliked by a lot of people. I absolutely love how it handles with the Pike, and I'm thankful that I can use the Sparrow on it, but on foot it's just too open with too little players. This is another issue with the cap being set at six players per team. The map (and maybe Crucible) needs more players.

I only played a few close games in Crucible. Yes, I lost my share of games, but only a few of those were close. It seems like either you're getting utterly destroyed, or you're doing the utter destroying. The arguments people were making about how Supers are balanced just don't add up. The potential for the person with the Super to die while using it or before they get the chance does not make it balanced. That argument can be said about any gun or anything in any shooter. The Golden Gun is absolutely the most unbalanced of the three, and I don't think that needs explanation.

Heavy ammo is awesome. It shows up from time to time, it's worth trying to get, and it absolutely feels great to use. It makes me wonder why the sniper rifle, in all its overpowered glory, has constant ammo available and is so simple to use. The same goes for the shotgun. Bungie treated each as power weapons in Halo, but for some reason they're fine and dandy for general unending use in Crucible. Go figure.

Conclusion

All in all, I am absolutely excited for this game. Sure, I have a bunch of complaints, and the Beta is definitely not perfect, but I can't wait to get my hands on the full version of Destiny. I still can't wait to get into Crucible more, if only because I know that my clan, my friends, and I are going to continue having a fun time. I'll also get to ride Pikes again in glorious battle! The Beta really was a lot of fun, even if it could get ridiculously angering at times (I saw/heard people/friends who rarely if ever raged at Halo or other games start raging out and wanting to quit playing the Beta). It's a work in progress though, right? I have some really, really high hopes.

The Destiny Beta is the first thing to truly get me excited for next generation gaming. I really can't wait to experience this further. Yet again, I would like to thank Bungie for the Beta, for opening up the Moon, for playing with us, and for stopping by DBO and reading/responding to our posts. Assuming Bungie (and any of you) have read this all the way through, I'd like to thank you all for that as well. Thanks for all of your time, and I can't wait to get this game fired up and going in September with all of you!