TL;DR at bottom. Although, I don't often do mega-posts, so you should really just read it, ya baby.

Story time.

I was lucky enough to get early access to the 360 beta on the 15th. Once it was done downloading, I hopped into the campaign not knowing what exactly to expect. I already knew PvP was going to suck, but I'll have more on that below.

The opening cutscene was really cool, and got my hopes up for the rest of the game.
Astronauts on Mars?
Cool!
Why do they have guns?
Rain? What?
Whats that big ball?

Next thing I know, Tyrion is waking me up to tell me that I've been dead for centuries, and we need to GTFO now or these big alien dudes are gonna push our shit in. A bit of running, and the littlest Lannister finds me a gun. Now, I like the M4 as much as anybody, but it's been hundreds of years and we're still using them? Come on.

Immediately I notice how familiar the game feels. I've been playing Halo for over 11 years now, and Destiny's roots are obvious, but it's also different. The addition of an Aim-down-the-sights mechanic is one that feels foreign and out of place, but at least it's not always necessary. It's quickly apparent that all of the big scary aliens are easily killed with a simple headshot or two, and it turns out, there's really no reason to be scared at all.

Tyrion guides me to this busted old ship and tells me we're gonna fly it to "The City." "Okay, bro. Let's-a-go!" We get there and grab some supplies because we need to go back to Russia to get a warp drive. Without it, we can't zoom to the Moon or whatever. Which is absolutely fine by me, but he's very insistent.

Back into the thick of it, and I'm starting to notice a pattern. Shoot them in the head (or other weak spot). Over, and over, and over, and... ughh. I'm not having much fun at this point, and then BAM! This Fallen Captain on steroids crawls out of the wall and attempts to eat me. I figure I'm in for a long and difficult battle, but in reality, it's only long. I can just sit back and shoot him in the head.

When the big guy's head explodes, I'm not relieved, or proud, or anything. Just bored, and disappointed. Tyrion says some stuff, but I'm not really listening. I'm done with that for the night, so I go play Halo: Reach with you guys, and have a blast.

The next day, I decide to give it another shot. Figure I might as well finish the beta. At some point, Tyrion and I are sent to find out what the Fallen have locked behind this door. Ends up being another alien race, The Hive. "Good," I think to myself. Maybe these other aliens will switch up the combat in new and interesting ways! Nope. Just shoot 'em in the head.

Now Ty and I are out to see what's up with this big radio tower or something. I stopped paying attention a while ago. We get there, and I'm clearing out rooms when I run out of sniper ammo. "Oh, I'll just run back in the last room. There's bound to be some laying around." I go back and, WTF? All the guys I just killed are back. I re-clear that room, and with my sniper refilled I head back the way I was going. Son of a- this room respawned, too! Finish the mission, and I need a break.

When I reach level 6, I go to try out the Strike. There's not much different here. Then I get to the first boss. It looks promising, but it ends up just being a giant bullet sponge. All I do to beat it is hide behind a pillar and whittle away at its health by shooting the legs until it has a little downtime (a lot like the Halo 3 Scarab). Occasionally a small group of enemies will attack me, but they're really just there to give me ammo. Fifteen minutes later (at level 6), the thing explodes, and my fireteam is ready to move on. After a few more rooms, we get to another boss. This fight is even worse than the last. The boss is just a bigger version of the floating ball enemy, with a ton of health. This one never changes, never switches its tactics. You just shoot its weak spot for ten minutes until it explodes.

Is this Bungie's idea of fun?

The problems of Campaign.

• First, the lack of variety in the combat. Every enemy is defeated in the same way. To kill a Dreg, Vandal, Captain, Acolyte, Thrall, Knight, Ogre, or Wizard, you shoot them in the head. The Servitor too, but its weakpoint is the eyeball. The Shank and Shrieker are the only two that I haven't found a weakspot on. Shanks usually go down in one shot anyway, so they don't really need one. Captains and Wizards do have shields, but with the ability to always have a sniper rifle with basically unlimited ammo, that never really matters.
  
  Compare this to Halo (because it's pretty much unavoidable). Yes, the goal is to shoot everything in the head or other weak spot, but you have to do something else first to make that possible. Every enemy has something special that makes it unique. Jackals need to be shot in the hand or foot so they'll flinch and expose their head for a short time. Elites have shields (this is different than the Captains and Wizards because you don't always have a power weapon with you in Halo). You have to get their shields down before you can headshot them. Brutes have a helmet you have to remove first, and they berserk if you kill their friends (with varying effectiveness depending on what game you're playing). Drones and Skirmishers are fast and hard to hit, and occasionally have shields of their own. Hunters you have to get behind (or land some lucky shots from the front), which usually involves getting in close, and they always come in pairs. Engineers you'll want to pop first, or every other enemy will get an overshield. Grunts are the exception, but they're just cannon fodder. A distraction while the bigger aliens try to kill you. Dangerous in groups, and they flee when their leader is killed.
  
  Do you see the difference? All of Halo's enemies have something that makes them unique, and mixes up the combat. There's nothing special about Destiny's enemies. You just shoot them in the head. It's boring and repetitive.
  
  
• I wasn't challenged once. There is no difficulty to speak of. Even in single player, death just means you have to wait four seconds to get right back to where you were, with no penalties. There are occasionally rooms or small areas that don't allow you to respawn, but if you just sit back and shoot heads, you'll not have any trouble. Furthermore, if you're in a fireteam, dying in these areas isn't even permanent. The respawn time is just extended to 25 seconds. It's a lot harder to fail than to complete your objective, even with bosses.
  
  
• Speaking of bosses, Destiny's are terrible. They take the term bullet sponge to the extreme. With a ridiculous amount of health, and two instant kill attacks, your only option for the Devil Walker is to stand behind one of the various pillars in the area while whittling away at its health, and deal with the occasional Fallen squad (which are just there to give you ammo), until it explodes fifteen minutes later. The second boss is much the same way, requiring the player to shoot its eye for ten minutes while swatting at the Fallen flies for ammo.
  
  What makes a good boss? Challenge and transformation. Imagine if you had to shoot the big ball in the eye until the eye broke, then he unfolded and spurted legs, while he shot fire and chased you around the map. That'd be cool, right? Then what if you could shoot his legs off and he turned into a snake or something, and slithered in and out of holes in the wall, while shooting at you? All while hurling threats and insults your way, in English. Respawning could be truly disabled, with checkpoints when he transformed. You'd have to learn his tactics, and work with your fireteam to take him down together.
  
  Just a thought. A thought that I came up with in two minutes. Why can't professional game designers? Nope, just floaty teleporting ball with eye.
  
  
• Enemies infinitely respawn. Now, this is honestly to be expected in Explore mode. I mean, the world would feel empty pretty quickly if the enemies were permanently dead. However, they turned up the dial quite a bit too much. When I'm making my way through the plane graveyard, and the Fallen I just killed on the other side of the plane where I just was, start shooting at me ten seconds after I killed them, that's ridiculous. Should limit the respawning to explore mode. Having them respawn while I'm on a mission makes it feel like I'm not making any progress.
  
  
• The missions themselves are really boring to replay. It's because all of the same enemies spawn in the same place every time, and they always do the same things. There's never any variance to the way they play out. It certainly doesn't help that there's very little variety to the combat.
  
  Maybe if there were more vehicles you could drive, or if you could play the game stealthily. Anything to switch it up a little would be nice. The best I can come up with is if you go through a mission with a sniper the first time, and a shotgun the next. Not great, but, better than nothing.
  
  
• The aliens have no personality. They feel like soulless robot monsters. I never get the sense that they're scared, or happy, or curious. They either don't know I'm there, or they do. When they notice me, they're not shocked to see me, nor do they beat their chest with pride at the prospect of a challenge. It's just "TARGET ACQUIRED: FIRING MAIN CANNON."
  
  Compare this, once more, to Halo. Or Gears of War. You can understand the Covenant and the Locust Horde's motivations, and get a sense of what they're feeling. They'll taunt you, get angry when their brothers die, or run from you if they're scared. At least, the Grunts and Jackals will. You get the feeling that these are sentient beings, with thoughts and emotions. Something I'm not getting from Destiny.
  
  
• It's very frustrating to be doing some exploring, and run into invincible enemies. I finally find something that could be a challenge in this game, and they completely stop players from even being able to try. If someone wants to test their might, I think they should be able to. Instead, they're met with instant death.
  
  In most cases, it doesn't seem like they're blocking off areas not meant to be seen with these enemies. If you sneak past them, the most you'll find is a common loot chest, or a dead ghost. Any areas they're actually blocking (such as the Jovian Complex), are sealed with visible walls. If they're afraid of players acquiring loot that's out of their league, I'm sure they could just make it not drop that loot if the monster is killed by a player below a certain level.
  
  
• Bungie still has a problem with invisible walls. This started with Halo 3, and continued though ODST, Reach, and now Destiny. A great portion of the fun I had in Halo 2 was escaping and exploring the campaign's normal bounds. Remember that giant mountain in the background of Delta Halo? I've been to its peak, and looked down to see the entirety of the mission below. I've circumnavigated the lake that houses Regret's temple, and discovered another lake beyond the mountains.
  
  Invisible walls completely prevent things like this. It really kills a lot of exploration. They talk up how important exploration is, even have a mode specifically for it, yet they heavily restrict it. How am I supposed to explore the map if everywhere I go, I'm hitting an arbitrary soft wall? Combine this with the soft-kill zones (return to battlefield zones, for you non-forgers), and you're left with a game that routinely cuts off your exploring, instead of encouraging it.
  
  
• Randomly running into other players while out and about is pretty cool. Why can't I talk to them? I think proximity chat should be enabled within shouting distance, communicating outside of hand gestures seems important to me. Maybe they want to show me something, or they heard a story from another guy earlier and they want to share. As long as there's a quick and easy way to mute them in case they're annoying, and an option to turn it off altogether, why not let us talk? Seems pretty unsociable in a game that's supposedly designed for the opposite.
  

PvP, and being the best in the world (briefly).

More story!

Before we knew anything about the PvP portion of Destiny, I had high hopes for it. Bungie has traditionally valued balance in their competitive multiplayer offerings. An equal start for all players, with the better man, or woman, coming out on top. When the Alpha was made public, and the streamers started streaming, I took to Twitch and found MLG pro Ninja's channel. What I saw was a game that looked like Call of Duty. Everyone starts with whatever gun they want, the time to kill was less than a second, and everyone occasionally gets the ability to press (button) to instantly kill someone even if you don't deserve it.

I wasn't happy. I wanted another Bungie arena shooter masterpiece. I wanted a game that took skill to succeed at. A game that rewarded you for being better than your opponent. I got on DBO to complain, but Schooly had it covered. So, going into the beta, I thought the campaign would be awesome, and expected the multiplayer to suck. I was wrong, but not about multiplayer.

During the early access timeframe, there weren't a whole lot of people on. I kept seeing the same thirty or so names over and over. I played with several Bungie employees, a bunch of Microsoft employees, the guy who makes RoosterTeeth's music, and, oddly enough, a Treyarch higher-up. With so few people in the Beta, and only a small portion of them searching in the Crucible, I didn't get any matches in for a few days. On the 18th, the planets aligned and I participated in what I can only assume were the first two matches of the Beta on Xbox 360. The vast majority of the regulars on this forum have played Halo with me more than a few times. You know my style. Well, Bungie let me spawn with a sniper rifle, and my kill to death ratio for my first Destiny match was 4.25. I don't think I should spawn with the tools I need to dominate, I should have to earn them.

With a K/D of 2:0 and a W/L of 13:1, as far as I can tell, I was the best Destiny player on 360 in the world :p. At least for the private Beta. Followed closest by our very own Bluerunner. I'm pretty sure his is due to the monstrosity known as the Interceptor. That thing is exactly what I imagine it would be like if the Reach Banshee and Gauss Hog joined forces to make the ultimate overpowered vehicle. It is unstoppable if the driver has even the slightest bit of skill. Bungie apparently learned nothing from Reach. With the Sparrow or Pike, It's pretty easy to take the driver's head off. The Interceptor however, I can't even see the pilot's head unless I have a pretty good height advantage, and the low health of players only exacerbates the effectiveness of this beast.

Bungie's philosophy with Destiny is clear; they want bad players to succeed where they shouldn't. It's all very frustrating when, like Halo 4, there's a good multiplayer game hiding in there. It's just covered in shit.

• First, let's go over the Aim-Down-Sights mechanic. This doesn't necessarily have to be bad, but in most shooters, to make aiming down the sights worthwhile, they make hip firing very inaccurate. Destiny isn't extreme about it, but hip fire is tempered a bit. The other half of the equation is that aiming down the sights normally reduces player speed. Run or Gun (thanks, Uberfoop). This one Destiny is guilty of. When combined, they serve to make aiming easier for bad players, in a game that already has more than sufficient bullet-magnetism and aim-assist. It decreases the skill gap.
  
  It might be okay if hip fire was always accurate and reliable, and aiming down the sights didn't slow you down at all. Just zoomed in a bit.
  
  
• Next, the low time to kill. This is one of the biggest problems. Although it isn't Call of Duty length, it's still far too short for personal skill to really matter. A low time to kill places greater emphasis on positioning (which you have little control over in a game with respawning), than a player's aiming skill. In Halo, Gears, or TF2, I can start taking damage from behind, and still have time to turn around and beat my attacker because I have better aim and strafing than they do. That's not the case in Destiny. If I'm getting shot from behind, I'm going to die.
  
  
• The ability to start the game with any gun eliminates the need to have weapons on the map. Without weapons on the map, there is no risk/reward to acquiring power weapons. You can automatically have a sniper rifle; you don't need to earn it. You don't need to hold down sniper spawn, you are sniper spawn. This discourages movement, and empowers camping. If I can sit on the rock above point B and rain down unlimited sniper ammo* on my unfortunate victims, why would I ever move?
  
  It encourages camping, even in an objective gametype, because killing gives your team points, too. The best strategy on any map was to hold B and C, and just slaughter the idiots who dared to approach them. There's no reason to take A, even though we easily could. If they have A, then we know where they'll spawn. We get more objective points than them because we hold two bases to their one, and we're out-slaying them because we're camping.
  
  *Every place I perch from is within twenty feet of an ammo box. I never run out.
  
  
• I imagine you're all familiar with the Interceptor by now. In the Beta, it was an unstoppable machine of death. I don't think I have to do much explaining here, it speaks for itself. Then it kills you. Over and over. If it sees you first, you're dead. If you see it first, run. If the driver is an idiot, you might be able to take it down with a super. If you get everyone on your team to focus fire on it, it'll go down eventually, but not without taking a few of you with it. What I like to do is get someone to distract it, them take the drivers head off from the side. However you do it, you had better do it fast. Otherwise, it could easily cost you the game.
  
  It's very fast and kills a Guardian or Sparrow in one hit. Pike in two. To fix it, I'd decrease its health by about two thirds, and slow its rate of fire. Even better, It could require a driver and a gunner. Would promote teamwork.
  
  Since the Beta, Bungie has announced that they'll nerf the Interceptor. I definitely agree with lowering its rate of fire and reducing the blast radius of the rockets. Not sure I understand what they mean by "arming shape", so no opinion on that. I do not agree with having only one on the map. With there being two, they always end up fighting each other. This usually results in one being destroyed, and the other being severely damaged*. That gives the team who lost their Interceptor a much better chance to take out the opponent's death machine.
  
  *In my time with the Beta, I couldn't tell if a vehicle being visually damaged mattered or not. Halo has had three different vehicle damage models. In Halo: CE, any damage done to your vehicle was permanent, and when your health ran out, you exploded. In Halo 2/3, your vehicle would take visible damage, but as long as the occupant(s) still had health, the vehicle was fine. In Reach/4, vehicles had health tiers. They could take damage to a point, and heal if that line wasn't crossed. If the damage went beyond that tier, the health was lost, but it still healed to the nearest tier. I wasn't able to determine how Destiny's vehicles worked.
  
  
• One of the most annoying parts of the multiplayer is the Supers. Titans can slam the ground and instantly kill everything around them. Warlocks can fly up in the air and Kamehameha wherever they're pointing, killing everyone in the area of effect. Hunters can go Super Saiyan and activate their golden guns, killing anything they almost hit. That's right, they don't actually have to hit their target to kill them, and they get three shots. They're acquired periodically (about every three minutes) throughout a match, and people don't actually have to do anything to get them. Getting points will speed up the process, but the super bar fills up automatically.
  
  This is bad because players don't deserve those kills. They didn't best their opponent, they're not more skilled. They just pressed LB+RB to get free kills. It really discourages going for the objective when you know somebody can just press a button and you're done. Combined with having any weapon on spawn, and the Interceptor, instant death is a very common occurrence in the Crucible. The worst part is, your enemy doesn't have to be better than you. The game basically kills you on its own just by being as broken as it is.
  
  
• The most important part of teamwork is communication. In Destiny, you can't talk to your teammates unless they're in your fireteam. I shouldn't have to invite people to my party just to talk to my teammates. Hand gestures aren't going to cut it. This one is pretty important, and not against their vision for the game. It may be my only point that has a chance of being fixed.
  
  Also, I'd like to have proximity chat. Demoralizing and angering the other team is always a good strategy, and sometimes teabagging isn't enough.

These are general problems and disappointments.

• There is a disturbing lack of customization in this game. I can't select the color of my armor, emblem, ship, or sparrow. There aren't many armors, emblems, ships, or sparrows to choose from in the first place. I think it'd be cool to customize your guns, too. I'd probably like my guns a lot more if I could choose their colors. Also, it looks like there are no custom games in Destiny at all. Which brings me to...
  
  
• The weak feature-set. With Halo, Bungie were pioneers in bringing PC game features to consoles, and inventing new systems of play. First it was the FPS alone, then they created matchmaking. Halo 3 added theater mode, Forge, rendered films, and screenshots. Nobody else was bringing all of these things to a console in one game. They were ahead of the pack. With Destiny, that is no longer the case. The way you run into players in the world randomly is seamless, and very cool. It's just disappointing that they felt things like theater weren't important enough to keep.
  
  Remember all of Pete's awesome mini-games? There will be none in Destiny. You won't see any Destiny machinimas*. Remember Hedge and BlueNinja's awesome panoramas? You aren't going to see any from Destiny*. Screenshots will always have a visible HUD and gun*. You won't be able to inspect your clips from every angle.
  
  *Unless they get creative and someone figures out how to disable the HUD and lower their gun.
  
  
• Destiny is being billed as a social game, but you can't talk to anybody unless you know them already. In Crucible, it's ridiculous that you can't hear your teammates if they aren't in your party. I've been over it, but communication is extremely important in multiplayer. In Campaign, proximity chat should be enabled for nearby Guardians. It would be cool as hell to run into another fireteam in the wild, swap war stories, and go about your respective business. Or tell them about a loot chest you just came from, or convince them to help you take out a high level enemy so you can get whatever it's guarding. Or whatever.
  
  
• They talk about how there are more guns in Destiny than in all the Halo games combined. There are actually only nine guns in Destiny, with many small variations. The guns within each of the nine gun classes operate the same, but have small statistical differences. Every scout rifle is functionally the same. Having a smaller magazine and a slightly lower rate of fire does not make it much different. There are also no alien guns you can get for yourself. That was pretty disappointing. Bungie has been pretty inventive with alien weaponry in the past, and I was looking forward to what they had come up with this time. Most of the enemies use the same Needler-like gun, and the player can't pick it up.

Just a few opinions.

• I'm not liking the art style. At least most of it. I like the designs for the aliens I saw, and the environments are great, but I hated most of the armor and weapons. Military weaponry is normally a shade of black or gray. Maybe some white. Some green or beige for camouflage. Having all of those weird colors really puts me off. Many of the weapons were also shaped weird, a lot of angles that just look off to me. It seems like Bungie was inspired by Mass Effect. Tried to make things look futurey, and I don't personally enjoy it.
  
  
• Not digging the UI, either. I understand they want to be different and eye-pleasing, but it seems like form over function. I just think it'd be faster and easier to scroll through options than to move the cursor around. That type of menu is popular for a reason: it works.

In conclusion.

With all the problems this game has, I won't be buying it. Not a chance. I still hope they address some of the points I brought up for Destiny 2. At least for Campaign. It's clear that they want to cater to people who are bad at games for the multiplayer. Campaign though, I could really enjoy it if they fix some of the massive problems for the sequel.

See you guys on November 11th.

-Mr. Snipe.

TL;DR

Campaign has these problems:

• There is very little variety to combat.
  
• There is no difficulty to speak of.
  
• Terrible boss design.
  
• Enemies infinitely respawn, and they do it fast.
  
• Missions are repetitive, not very replay-able.
  
• Enemies have no personality. They're just soulless monsters.
  
• Invincible enemies. Just make them really difficult to beat, making it impossible is very frustrating.
  
• There are invisible walls everywhere. Bungie talks up how important exploration is, yet they heavily restrict it.

Multiplayer has these problems:

• Aim Down Sights (Run or Gun).
  
• Low kill times (empowers campers / places more importance on positioning than personal skill).
  
• Spawn with any gun, no on-map weapons (REALLY empowers campers / makes instant death a very common occurrence / severely decreases importance of map control, or movement in general).
  
• The Interceptor is extremely overpowered.
  
• Superpowers (helps to make instant death a very common occurrence).
  
• Can't communicate with your teammates unless they're in your fireteam.

Some general problems:

• Lack of customization (can't choose my armor color / no custom games as far as I can tell).
  
• Weak feature-set (no theater mode / no map editor / no in-game screenshot tool).
  
• Not very social for a social game.
  
• "A bunch of guns" actually means nine guns, with a bunch of small variations. No alien guns.

My subjective problems:

• I hate the art style, mostly (the alien designs are pretty cool, though).
  
• I don't like the UI. It's slower to move the cursor around than to just scroll through options, and I hate sitting through the spaceship animations over and over.

... but I agree with the whole of your message, particularly the part involving enemy personality in gameplay.

Good to see someone didn't like it. Seriously.

I'm here to talk about it. I can see myself replying in this thread for a while. I'd like to hear you out.

Interestingly, I found snipers in The Crucible to be far far less problematic than in any Halo. Both on the giving and receiving side!

In Halo, especially on the bigger maps, a good sniper could easily ruin your day because there was no good defense. In Destiny, any sniper was highlighted by a red targeting light before he fired, which helped me evade, and if he got me I wasn't stuck with a short or medium range weapon and no vehicle at spawn. I could ALWAYS switch to my high zoom Scout Rifle or Sniper Rifle if I needed to. A large part of my frustration with Halo snipers was they had an almost absolute advantage unless I caught the one weapon respawn on the one side of the map I was safe on. Destiny's bring your own weapon, spawn your own vehicle setup really empowered me to fight back against snipers. I very much enjoyed it.

During the entire beta I was only really pinned down by a camping sniper once... A guy stayed up on the spawn point between B and C on the Venus map which allowed him to fire into part of the B control point. He took me down a couple of times before I realized what he was doing, but I had the tools I needed to fight him. I probably died another couple of time but it never felt unfair in that "oh there's a sniper up on the ridge on Blood Gulch who I simply cannot touch" way that Halo sometimes did.

And on the offensive side, having a few rounds of sniper ammo per respawn got me to use a sniper rifle more. In Halo I'd always leave it for someone else because chances were SOMEBODY was a better sniper than me and there was only one rifle to go around. In Destiny I did my fair share of sniping because the game empowered me to do so. I still prefer a midrange primary / close range secondary setup, but sniping was an option for me in Destiny where it usually wasn't in Halo.

As for the rest, I largely disagree. :)

I'm here to talk about it. I can see myself replying in this thread for a while. I'd like to hear you out.

I would like to... and I still might. Yet. I'm still working on MY review. Most of what I would like say is what I'm putting in it anyway. I'm glad someone found the bullet sponge aspect wanting.

I think the hardest thing for all of us is - that it's not Halo. It's not Halo, but we define Bungie off of Halo. That's where the core of the nitpicking would come from. As I said, I agree with you, but I also found my self going - "yea but".

Even I in my review will be referencing Halo. Its not Halo... but... *warble garble*. >_<

I think the hardest thing for all of us is - that it's not Halo. It's not Halo, but we define Bungie off of Halo. That's where the core of the nitpicking would come from. As I said, I agree with you, but I also found my self going - "yea but".

Even I in my review will be referencing Halo. Its not Halo... but... *warble garble*. >_<

That's why I compared it to other games, too. Didn't want to seem like I just want more Halo.

Like I said, the Halo comparison is gonna be pretty much unavoidable.

It's not Halo.

There are a lot of beefs stated in the OP that I can't completely disagree with, though. I see the logic, but we've seen so little of Destiny, I think it's premature.

• Enemy personality needs dialed up a bit. I think there's time. Hopefully we'll see more of that variation thrown into relief once we fight the Vex and Cabal. Not to mention get to sink our teeth into the story.
  
  
• Weapon selection does seem slim, though varied enough I could live with it for a while. I suspect alien weapon types are going to come into play eventually. As long as the base weapon type balances well in standard PvP, the version used in PvE and Iron Banner can be tweaked.
  
  
• The vehicle selection gives me pause. Everything is some flavor of hoverbike, and there's no cooperation in operating more formidable death machines. At least that we've seen. There could be more held close to the vest.

Those things aside, I'm extremely pleased by everything else we've seen. There's a bunch we know about that we haven't gotten to play with yet, particularly exotic weapons and subclasses, along with the aforementioned races. And Raids.

It's still way too early to call, I think. Hang in there. Even if you're not digging the new gameplay formula yet, see how the whole package stacks up.

~m

Interestingly, I found snipers in The Crucible to be far far less problematic than in any Halo. Both on the giving and receiving side!

I don't see how.

In Halo, especially on the bigger maps, a good sniper could easily ruin your day

The same could be said for Destiny. Except that in Destiny there could potentially be 6 good snipers ruining your day.
That couldn't happen in Halo or Gears because you have to earn your sniper rifle, and there's only ever two in play at one time. Plus you have pretty limited ammo. 12 shots in Halo, around 10 in Gears. In Destiny, you have effectively unlimited ammo, being that special ammo is so common.

because there was no good defense.

That's just wrong. You could get in close by staying out of the sniper's sightlines. Or suppress their sniper so that yours can take him out. Load up a warthog with a hit squad and take him down. There's plenty of ways to end their reign of terror in Halo or Destiny. The difference is that you have to earn the gun in Halo, meaning you'll have to deal with enemy snipers or shotgunners far less often. The sniper you work so hard to eliminate in Destiny will just respawn five seconds later and get back to work.

In Destiny, any sniper was highlighted by a red targeting light before he fired, which helped me evade,

So you have to see them first? Good luck. That sure didn't help my victims. All you're ever going to see is the top of my head, and if I see you, you're done.

and if he got me I wasn't stuck with a short or medium range weapon and no vehicle at spawn.

So there was no penalty for death? All men should be created, and respawned, equal. Keeps things fair.

I could ALWAYS switch to my high zoom Scout Rifle or Sniper Rifle if I needed to.

Without having to earn it. And so could everyone else. This floods the map with power weapons, instant death at every turn! If Halo was Chess, Destiny is whack-a-mole.

A large part of my frustration with Halo snipers was they had an almost absolute advantage unless I caught the one weapon respawn on the one side of the map I was safe on. Destiny's bring your own weapon, spawn your own vehicle setup really empowered me to fight back against snipers. I very much enjoyed it.

Exactly, the game allows you to beat your opponent even if you aren't as good as them. That's extremely frustrating when you should be beating someone, but the game lets them win anyway. The better player will win any even fight, but there rarely is one.

During the entire beta I was only really pinned down by a camping sniper once...

If true, you either didn't play much, or were luckier than Master Chief.

A guy stayed up on the spawn point between B and C on the Venus map which allowed him to fire into part of the B control point.

A spot I'm very familiar with.

He took me down a couple of times before I realized what he was doing, but I had the tools I needed to fight him. I probably died another couple of time but it never felt unfair in that "oh there's a sniper up on the ridge on Blood Gulch who I simply cannot touch" way that Halo sometimes did.

You could touch him though. If you're smart, and work with your team.

And on the offensive side, having a few rounds of sniper ammo per respawn got me to use a sniper rifle more.

That's just strategy though. Whoever is best on your team with any weapon or vehicle should take control of it. That'll help the team more.

In Halo I'd always leave it for someone else because chances were SOMEBODY was a better sniper than me and there was only one rifle to go around.

Strategy.

In Destiny I did my fair share of sniping because the game empowered me to do so. I still prefer a midrange primary / close range secondary setup, but sniping was an option for me in Destiny where it usually wasn't in Halo.

Stick with what you know. Practice other disciplines in campaign. Master them. Bring them to multiplayer. As a great man once said, "Bip, Bap, Bam!"

As for the rest, I largely disagree. :)

Care to elaborate?

All this from a beta, huh?

Cool.

Okay.

All this from a beta, huh?

Cool.

Anything in there that would apply to just the beta?

Not that I can tell.

Okay.

Exactly the well thought-out reply I've come to expect from you.

Nice post, man!

Well that was a lot. Do you feel better now that you got it all out? ;)

Interesting points and thoughts in your post. Some I agree with, some I don't, some that didn't apply to me.

Let's get the easy one out of the way: Multi-player. I hated it. I had zero fun in it. I played 3 games and could not bring myself to play more. I'm not pro. You know this. That's why I typically don't play slayer only as I'm a better objective player.

The objective in the beta was a sham. Maybe there will be more in the future, IDK. For now, I agree with 90% of what you and Skooy said. The fact that I could pull out my shotgun whenever I wanted felt like I was cheating. Cheating!

I also found out what the new BR was- Do you have an auto rifle? Yeah? Use that. You don't need anything else.

I won't be stepping into the crucible. My G/F played too, (without my tainted opinion mind you) and other than a few casual Halo games this was her first MP experience and she did the same thing- played 3 games and hated it. She even told me how much fun she was having in campaign and then how frustrating MP was. Her skill level is sub-Kermit (no offense, kerm). She didn't get free super kills, even though Bungie pretty much gave em to her. So, there is still some challenge, I guess :P

(If she reads this, she'll hit me later)

Enemies

You bring up an interesting point about the enemies and personalities. Perhaps I was one of the lucky ones? I can recall SEVERAL times where I was a level 8, and I'd run up on two lone level 2 Dregs in explore mode and they'd run away from me.

I also recall a couple of times where I had a Thrall (Flood zombie)cower from me, like it would shake it's head and cower. It's possible that is NOT what it was doing, and I couldn't duplicate it, but I swear it happened once I greased a bunch of his friends or something.

As for the rest of the enemies... you've got a point. I can't recall any of the other enemies at any other time really doing anything other than staying in their little areas. Sometimes a Knight would pull up a shield when I was donging on him from afar, but he'd just stay there. If I did that shit to a Hunter in Halo, he starts walking towards you to make you regret it.

The Tank was boring, and just like a scarab but smaller. Shoot leg, fall down, shoot glowy part for extra damage.

Now for the Sphere boss (Sepiks Prime) I had a way different experience, but I was running all over the map too, so maybe that made a difference? Basically, he'd follow me everywhere and turn on his vacuum beam and kill me if he got me in a corner. Lol, there was one time he was with the two randoms, and I was donking on him from afar and he just tele-ported away. I looked for him and could not find him, then I looked up, and then I died. I thought that was pretty fun haha. But other than that, he was no different from the little guys and ultimately just took longer to kill.

Maybe I was too busy to notice, but looking back, I see it now. They were pretty bland. I hope that was just beta being beta.

Weapons

Everything seems the same to me. A rifle is a rifle is a rifle blah blah blah. I had the same feeling of overload that I did the first time I played MW2 where it was like "Oh shit, how do I know what guns are the good guns? There are so many guns...they all look the same and yet are slightly different! What do I use?".

I didn't bother looking at names- I won't remember that shit. I found one I liked later on that was basically the DMR from Reach. That was my favorite. Then I found that same gun, but it was named differently for some raisin, but the only thing that was noticeably different was a larger mag. Hooray!

I said the same thing about alien weapons. Hopefully you can use them later, and they were just hiding that for the beta. I noticed that when I got killed by enemies that it would tell me the name of what they used to kill me. That bodes well I think.

Melee pisses me the fuck off and I played as Titan, so I should have loved it right?

Well I play sneaky. Multiple times I would sneak up on a group of Fallen, and I'd melee them in the back and it wouldn't insta kill them. This needs to be a thing. Maybe not for Captains and larger boss type enemies, but I should be able to ninja pretty much any lower type of enemy, regardless of level. Also, why no assassinations? The hunter knife in particular begs for it! It's not like Microsoft and Halo own the term or action- what gives??

I like the type-damage mechanic- very Metroid Prime-ish. I like that certain races are move vulnerable to certain types, but that should apply to more than shields. That mechanic does encourage variety in weapon use, which is a good thing. However, in the beta, with fusion rifles for example it just meant that I used the exact same gun (3 slots) but with a different buff on each one. That's not exactly variety. That's like a peanut butter sandwich with white, wheat, or other. It's still a sandwich.

Art Style and world stuff: I must be missing something, but this game does not feel or look like Halo to me. It SOUNDS like Halo, but that is it, to me. Old Russia didn't wow me, but was nice to look at. The Moon however was fan-freakin-tastic and I want to go back. Did you get to do the moon? The hive stuff actually had atmosphere and was very crypt-like. Also, are they called Hive "Tube" or Hive "Tomb" ships? Anywho, that area was cool and exploring it with Paddy and Bones was the highlight of the Beta for me. I've got a good feeling for the rest.

I think the characters look stupid as hell. I don't get the obsession with capes and pieces of cloth with clashing colors and emblems on my character. I don't get the tribal face paints yet future everything else. I don't get the Decepticon looking Space ships. Why should I spend money one one? So I can look at it? It doesn't do anything. Why should I care about it?

I have to disagree with most of your story complaints because there is much more to see, and hopefully the dead ghost\grimore cards fill in gaps and make you want "more". As long as I don't have to leave the game to go read them.

There are no characters I feel close to, or care about. When you are in a fire team with other players and you advance in the story, the cutscene only shows YOU. YOU are the center. YOU are the nexus. YOU are the only thing that matters, and thats fucking stupid. When Paddy + Bones + I play, I didn't see their characters. THEY were the ones who completed the end mission objective, yet I'm the one getting thanked?

C'mon. Halo 3 and Reach did this much better. Everybody was included, even if it was minor.

My Musings.

Destiny IS an MMO. I don't care who says otherwise. It has all the grindy bits that make it one. Your sole motivator outside of the story is a quest for stuff. It's still fun, but I don't know why. I don't like that we can't get more than 3-6 in a group. I was REALLY looking forward to getting 16 of us together and just steam-rolling the countryside, but it is not to be.

I'm not a huge social person, and I was worried I wouldn't be able to play Destiny alone. Yet, for the majority of it, I WAS alone. Very alone. For the reasons you and everyone else have pointed out.

Yet for such a social game, it's the least social thing I've played in a lot of respects.

I'm getting it, but I'm not worried about day 1, pre-orders or any of that stuff. I want to play more campaign with you guys, and that's pretty much it.

I agree wholeheartedly with you that Destiny doesn't want you to fail. Destiny wants everyone to do well, everyone to be a winner. That's why they don't show you deaths, you get supers for just standing and a sure kill if you can just point in someones general direction. It wants you to get multi-kills and to feel like a tank (in MP and solo). There is no penalty for death. The only times that there was any, was the no-respawn campaign zones, and hoping that my random teammates didn't die. Sometimes that was tense. Beyond that, I did get the feeling that something was off. It felt too easy. Even with difficulty bumped up as high as it would let me, all that really did was make things more bullet spongy. The enemies didn't really get smarter.

Again, I hope most of that was beta being beta. We'll see!

I agree with almost everything you pointed out.

TL;DR

Campaign has these problems:

• There is very little variety to combat.

Very much this, probably the biggest reason why the story missions are so boring. The only enemies that really require you to think are husks because they run staight at you, the others just hang back and shoot.

[*]There is no difficulty to speak of.

The difficulty seems to be solely due to the enemies being more or less resistant to your shots depending upon your level, a pretty lazy design choice.

[*]Terrible boss design.

I am really hoping they improve the bosses in the final build, or maybe low level bosses are meant to be overly simplistic in order to coddle beginners. There is a lot left to be desired from the bosses present in the beta.

[*]Enemies infinitely respawn, and they do it fast.
[*]Missions are repetitive, not very replay-able.
[*]Enemies have no personality. They're just soulless monsters.

This is a huge one, some halfway decent voice acting for enemies would have gone a long way here. I miss the grunts and elites of the good old days.

[*]Invincible enemies. Just make them really difficult to beat, making it impossible is very frustrating.
[*]There are invisible walls everywhere. Bungie talks up how important exploration is, yet they heavily restrict it.
[/list]

Multiplayer has these problems:

• Aim Down Sights (Run or Gun).
  
• Low kill times (empowers campers / places more importance on positioning than personal skill).
  
• Spawn with any gun, no on-map weapons (REALLY empowers campers / makes instant death a very common occurrence / severely decreases importance of map control, or movement in general).
  
• The Interceptor is extremely overpowered.
  
• Superpowers (helps to make instant death a very common occurrence).
  
• Can't communicate with your teammates unless they're in your fireteam.

I wonder if Bungie felt the same way about Halo multiplayer when designing Destiny as 343i did when designing Halo 4. It was too complex for most people to grasp. Maps and spawn locations are too hard to learn, so lets make it easier because players are too stupid to remember. :) Because players have such short attention spans, kill times need to be shorter, we don't want players dozing off during enemy encounters. :) Oh, and the voice chat really chaps my hide, I am really hoping that Bungie changes their mind about this. There is no reason why a six player team should be split communication-wise. If it weren't for party chat, this detail alone would kill any fun of PvP. It's not novel in any way whatsoever, it's just a huge pain in the ass.

Some general problems:

• Lack of customization (can't choose my armor color / no custom games as far as I can tell).

I think this will change with the addition of shaders, which weren't present in the beta.

[*]Weak feature-set (no theater mode / no map editor / no in-game screenshot tool).

Indeed, really felt like they cut serious corners in this aspect.

[*]Not very social for a social game.

Oh, hey, I see other players, let's wave at them and dance. It's so social!! :)

[*]"A bunch of guns" actually means nine guns, with a bunch of small variations. No alien guns.
[/list]

I was a little disappointed with the guns as well. Borderlands did a far better job creating guns with real personality. These guns seem fairly similar, but with minor differences in handling characteristics.

My subjective problems:

• I hate the art style, mostly (the alien designs are pretty cool, though).
  
• I don't like the UI. It's slower to move the cursor around than to just scroll through options, and I hate sitting through the spaceship animations over and over.

I know how you feel, Snipe, it's like I was shortchanged, it's like Bungie was forced to cut corners. Lots of small details were simply overlooked it seems. Features and details you thought were commonplace were simply left out.

Even though I am fairly harsh in my criticism, I am still looking forward to Destiny, not because it looks like a good game, but because it's something different instead of the same games I have already been playing for 3-4 years. That's how desperate I am. Even a halfway decent game beats playing Reach, Halo 4, and MW2 for another year.

But, I am really hoping that the final release is far improved over the beta, because I feel Destiny has potential to be a great game. I know Bungie can do better.

No amount of subtitles will ever convince me otherwise.

On topic:

I agree with pretty much every complaint you made, SNIPE. Yet, somehow, I still enjoyed the Beta thoroughly. I think it is because, despite its flaws, it's still a better shooter game than any other I can play right now, other than the ones I already own.

Interestingly, I found snipers in The Crucible to be far far less problematic than in any Halo. Both on the giving and receiving side!

I don't see how.

In Halo, especially on the bigger maps, a good sniper could easily ruin your day

The same could be said for Destiny. Except that in Destiny there could potentially be 6 good snipers ruining your day.

Oddly, nobody ever did that. Maybe I would have a different opinion if an entire team stood in a good sniping spot like that...

because there was no good defense.

That's just wrong. You could get in close by staying out of the sniper's sightlines. Or suppress their sniper so that yours can take him out. Load up a warthog with a hit squad and take him down. There's plenty of ways to end their reign of terror in Halo or Destiny. The difference is that you have to earn the gun in Halo, meaning you'll have to deal with enemy snipers or shotgunners far less often. The sniper you work so hard to eliminate in Destiny will just respawn five seconds later and get back to work.

I still think there was something... different. One of my least favorite game types in Halo was Team Snipers. Spawn, maybe get a kill, mostly get killed, respawn. That's how it went for me. Destiny never went like that for me. I think it helped a lot that most of the control points made you consider close range and some pretty much eliminated long range from the equation. That meant people often chose a good mid range gun and something for close up work. I thought the map design plus the losing special ammo when switching weapon types did a decent job of preventing Destiny from turning into team snipers. If Destiny had turned into Team Snipers I'd be in here hating on it too!

In Destiny, any sniper was highlighted by a red targeting light before he fired, which helped me evade,

So you have to see them first? Good luck. That sure didn't help my victims. All you're ever going to see is the top of my head, and if I see you, you're done.

Let's assume that's true the first time. It's not true the second because now I know where you are and I won't put myself in the same position. Besides, in the actual game I did not experience that kind of thing too often. Some? Sure. But not enough to discourage me. Now maybe you're a sniper god and all the players I played against were crap, but you're not buying the game so what do I have to worry about. :) (That's my one dig, by the way!)

and if he got me I wasn't stuck with a short or medium range weapon and no vehicle at spawn.

So there was no penalty for death? All men should be created, and respawned, equal. Keeps things fair.

I'm not quite sure what you mean here. The penalty was my team got a bit closer to losing. If you're talking about what weapons you spawn with... well... before Reach I would have agreed with you. After Reach, with its various loadouts and Halo 4 with even more variability I guess I've come around a good deal to the point that I was comfortable with people having sniper rifles in Destiny.

Maybe another part of it was in Halo you could get complacent, or hope nobody has a sniper rifle. In Destiny you had to factor a sniper in to everything... but for me that made it ok. I felt as long as I wasn't stupid (and I was stupid a few times) I had enough cover and options that a sniper wasn't too big a problem... or at the very least was far less of an aggravation than a sniper was in Halo.

I could ALWAYS switch to my high zoom Scout Rifle or Sniper Rifle if I needed to.

Without having to earn it. And so could everyone else. This floods the map with power weapons, instant death at every turn! If Halo was Chess, Destiny is whack-a-mole.

I don't entirely disagree, but I disagree. :p

Again, in Halo I partly resigned myself to the "fact" that I might get taken out by a sniper instantly from a place I could not defend againt. Technically it wasn't true but I played as if it was. In Destiny it was true, but my play style already compensated for it.

A large part of my frustration with Halo snipers was they had an almost absolute advantage unless I caught the one weapon respawn on the one side of the map I was safe on. Destiny's bring your own weapon, spawn your own vehicle setup really empowered me to fight back against snipers. I very much enjoyed it.

Exactly, the game allows you to beat your opponent even if you aren't as good as them. That's extremely frustrating when you should be beating someone, but the game lets them win anyway. The better player will win any even fight, but there rarely is one.

So here's where we really, very sharply disagree. You seem to see absolute player skill, without any modifiers of any type, as the correct and only factor that should decide a battle. I think that's wrong. I typed up and deleted a few (decent and fair) examples, but ultimately I think examples aren't necessary. I think this is a fundamental disagreement.

Not to be rude (really, I mean that here) but I think anybody who takes the point of view that it's the game that beat them and not the player playing the game who is beating them, especially when talking about camping with a long range one shot kill rifle vs someone fairly using other systems the game provides, should go find a nice game of team snipers or SWAT and stay there. You can have your reduced rule set and skill only action. Leave me to my full featured game.

Are there times where a game beats you? Are there badly designed games where the game beats you or a game allows cheaters to beat you? Sure! Remember the times people figured out how to get out of the map in Reach? That was the game beating you, not the player. But, I think in general having a "the game beat me" attitude is wrong and hugely discredits players who are good at the game.

A guy stayed up on the spawn point between B and C on the Venus map which allowed him to fire into part of the B control point.

A spot I'm very familiar with.

He took me down a couple of times before I realized what he was doing, but I had the tools I needed to fight him. I probably died another couple of time but it never felt unfair in that "oh there's a sniper up on the ridge on Blood Gulch who I simply cannot touch" way that Halo sometimes did.

You could touch him though. If you're smart, and work with your team.

But see, that doesn't make ME feel better about dying from all the way across the map with no options. Princess Leia once said, "I am NOT a committee." In similar fashion, I am NOT a team. Add in the fact that the sniper was not a team either... why do I need a team and he doesn't? (Yes, weapon control, etc... but my question still stands... even if shakily)

That said, there is a flip side, I think. Destiny probably does discourage team work a bit. In Destiny, coordinating fire isn't as important as in Halo, for instance, because of the faster kill times. I think this is offset somewhat by team play now meaning standing off and guarding a flank, but it seems almost certain that as Destiny gives more power to individual players it does remove some power from team play.

And on the offensive side, having a few rounds of sniper ammo per respawn got me to use a sniper rifle more.

That's just strategy though. Whoever is best on your team with any weapon or vehicle should take control of it. That'll help the team more.

In Halo I'd always leave it for someone else because chances were SOMEBODY was a better sniper than me and there was only one rifle to go around.

Stategy.

Yes, but again I am not a team. I, personally, like success. I, personally, do not like needing a team to take down one enemy. I enjoy having more power, and more control over engagements.

In Destiny I did my fair share of sniping because the game empowered me to do so. I still prefer a midrange primary / close range secondary setup, but sniping was an option for me in Destiny where it usually wasn't in Halo.

Stick with what you know. Practice other disciplines in campaign. Master them. Bring them to multiplayer. As a great man once said, "Bip, Bap, Bam!"

Sure. I more or less agree. But, in Destiny I got more enjoyment. All in all I did better as a sniper and against snipers than I did in Halo. I liked that and that may not trump everything, but it trumps a lot...

As for the rest, I largely disagree. :)

Care to elaborate?

Yes, tomorrow. Just this post on the fairly limited idea of sniping took quite a while! :)

Most of what you said is very easily rebuffed simply by saying it was just a beta. I actually think you are going through Destiny withdrawal and trying to combat it by bashing the game and trolling these forums. However, I'm also bored.

Campaign has these problems:

There is very little variety to combat. There will be a lot more variety as the game progresses beyond Earth and level 8.
There is no difficulty to speak of. There are Nightfall Missions and Raids, you know the game doesn't really start until level 20 right?
Terrible boss design. Beta Bosses were too easy. If those same bosses are much more aggressive in the Nightfall version, problem solved.
Enemies infinitely respawn, and they do it fast. I like to shoot things.
Missions are repetitive, not very replay-able. The first mission on the moon felt plenty replayable, but again Nightfall is where it's at.
Enemies have no personality. They're just soulless monsters. I remember one Fallen screaming a bunch of crazy stuff at me, but in general I get how you feel. Also, soulless monsters can be quite scary :p
Invincible enemies. Just make them really difficult to beat, making it impossible is very frustrating. I think that was just because we had our levels limited in Beta.
There are invisible walls everywhere. Bungie talks up how important exploration is, yet they heavily restrict it. I had a lot of fun exploring, but a few invis walls did push me to my death.
Multiplayer has these problems:

Aim Down Sights (Run or Gun). Yep.
Low kill times (empowers campers / places more importance on positioning than personal skill). Camping can work, but in general leads to less kills. Although I think the way radar works definitely can encourage camping.
Spawn with any gun, no on-map weapons (REALLY empowers campers / makes instant death a very common occurrence / severely decreases importance of map control, or movement in general). I'm sure they can tweak ammo pretty easily. Less ammo makes those ammo spawns more important.
The Interceptor is extremely overpowered. Already nerfed.
Superpowers (helps to make instant death a very common occurrence).Super them right back. Bottom line, supers are fun.
Can't communicate with your teammates unless they're in your fireteam. Must be changed.
Some general problems:

Lack of customization (can't choose my armor color / no custom games as far as I can tell).Armor can be shaded later on. It does seem strange there wasn't a way to play against friends.
Weak feature-set (no theater mode / no map editor / no in-game screenshot tool). You can record on xBone and broadcast on twitch. I think they will do more in this area in the future. Some features are tougher when you throw four consoles into the mix.
Not very social for a social game. Needs area, game, and/or proximity chat.
"A bunch of guns" actually means nine guns, with a bunch of small variations. No alien guns. There's a lot of exotics and they do some crazy shit.
My subjective problems:

I hate the art style, mostly (the alien designs are pretty cool, though). We haven't seen that much yet, but I love the way it looks.
I don't like the UI. It's slower to move the cursor around than to just scroll through options, and I hate sitting through the spaceship animations over and over. Agreed.

You know... sorta... as in which continent you're on...

Perhaps a better threat is my Paladin's smite ability is recharged? :)

you know the game doesn't really start until level 20 right?

And just like that, it's a Final Fantasy XIII thread!

;p

("The game opens up in chapter 11!")

...but yeah, it's got something like 20 hours of tutorial before it lets you do what you want. Worse, despite all that, it never told me I could sell those credit chips for money! Just think how much better all my characters would have been if they'd spent their Gil instead of stupidly welding credit cards to their weapons! :(

Actually, outside of Halo, even though it's got lots of rough edges, I thought it was one of the better games of the seventh gen.

...But I think the Chapter 11 defense is stupid. That it supposedly gets good after a long while is just not a very stellar recommendation in a game's favour.

That I like FFXIII is mostly because I don't really agree that the "opening up" makes a huge difference on fun. Sure, the game is (usually) not very challenging just to get through it, but if you aren't just autobattling the whole time, it gives you things to do to try and optimize, even if the impact is minor.
Had the opening 20 hours been as awful as many people say, my opinion of the game would have been a whole lot lower (and I probably wouldn't have bothered finishing the game).

(Screw the gameplay in the first two chapters, though. Especially chapter 2. Chapter 3 was where the combat system started coming into its own for me, and chapter 4 is where it really started to get juicy.)

[*]Superpowers (helps to make instant death a very common occurrence).

Add an indicator on the enemy's life bar indicating when their super is charged. Problem solved. If you see and still choose to engage, then you deserve to lose.

That I like FFXIII is mostly because I don't really agree that the "opening up" makes a huge difference on fun. Sure, the game is (usually) not very challenging just to get through it, but if you aren't just autobattling the whole time, it gives you things to do to try and optimize, even if the impact is minor.

And that's really ultimately the problem. The battle system is certainly more complex than previous Final Fantasy games, but even it ultimately is not that complex a system. You can pretty much get through the game with the same paradigm decks, maybe switching one or two special ones in there for certain bosses.

Many paradigm combos are just so good, they completely outshine others. Mystic Tower, Relentless Assault, Smart Bomb, Combat Clinic, Aggression, and Hero's Charge as your deck will get you through the vast majority of the game. Once you start unlocking additional roles you can roll in stuff like Rapid Growth. Any optimizations really give you minor gains. Maybe this isn't as true in the after game optional stuff, but I didn't play that because I did not want to grind for level, gear, and weapon parts.

The idea though of a game opening up and becoming fun after you put hours into it is bogus. A game should be fun immediately. This is my worry for Destiny since it has no difficulty selector. I'm sure I will have fun doing all the story missions, but once I am level 20, getting gear with light will be a must to do higher level missions, which you'll have to undertake if you actually want challenge. But unlike a difficulty selector, you can't just roll into a level 30 raid at level 20. You'd do 1 damage. So you have to play the game of working the random drop system to get either the loot you want, or the exotic currency to buy the loot you want. THEN you can have the fun on the difficult stuff.

Next thing I know, Tyrion is waking me up to tell me that I've been dead for centuries, and we need to GTFO now or these big alien dudes are gonna push our shit in. A bit of running, and the littlest Lannister finds me a gun. Now, I like the M4 as much as anybody, but it's been hundreds of years and we're still using them? Come on.

Immediately I notice how familiar the game feels. I've been playing Halo for over 11 years now, and Destiny's roots are obvious, but it's also different. The addition of an Aim-down-the-sights mechanic is one that feels foreign and out of place, but at least it's not always necessary. It's quickly apparent that all of the big scary aliens are easily killed with a simple headshot or two, and it turns out, there's really no reason to be scared at all.

Having first played each Halo on Heroic I wasn't really scared until I went back with skulls on in Legendary. And then the fear came.

Tyrion guides me to this busted old ship and tells me we're gonna fly it to "The City." "Okay, bro. Let's-a-go!" We get there and grab some supplies because we need to go back to Russia to get a warp drive. Without it, we can't zoom to the Moon or whatever. Which is absolutely fine by me, but he's very insistent.

Back into the thick of it, and I'm starting to notice a pattern. Shoot them in the head (or other weak spot). Over, and over, and over, and... ughh. I'm not having much fun at this point, and then BAM! This Fallen Captain on steroids crawls out of the wall and attempts to eat me. I figure I'm in for a long and difficult battle, but in reality, it's only long. I can just sit back and shoot him in the head.

When the big guy's head explodes, I'm not relieved, or proud, or anything. Just bored, and disappointed. Tyrion says some stuff, but I'm not really listening. I'm done with that for the night, so I go play Halo: Reach with you guys, and have a blast.

By the time I was done with the Beta and had gone through the Strike a few times with friends we had developed a few different approaches based off of whatever we were facing and while I'm hoping that the Vex/Cabal mix things up really more I was really happy with the variety of gameplay I was getting out of the enemies.

When I reach level 6, I go to try out the Strike. There's not much different here. Then I get to the first boss. It looks promising, but it ends up just being a giant bullet sponge. All I do to beat it is hide behind a pillar and whittle away at its health by shooting the legs until it has a little downtime (a lot like the Halo 3 Scarab). Occasionally a small group of enemies will attack me, but they're really just there to give me ammo. Fifteen minutes later (at level 6), the thing explodes, and my fireteam is ready to move on. After a few more rooms, we get to another boss. This fight is even worse than the last. The boss is just a bigger version of the floating ball enemy, with a ton of health. This one never changes, never switches its tactics. You just shoot its weak spot for ten minutes until it explodes.

Is this Bungie's idea of fun?

I loved almost everything about the Strike EXCEPT for the bosses. The sponginess of them was way too much. The Spider Tank was a lot more fun in the public event where you could approach it from any angle and had more than 3 guardians slowly poking away at it. I really really really hope there's going to be more to the bosses than a super large amount of HP.

The problems of Campaign.

• First, the lack of variety in the combat. Every enemy is defeated in the same way. To kill a Dreg, Vandal, Captain, Acolyte, Thrall, Knight, Ogre, or Wizard, you shoot them in the head. The Servitor too, but its weakpoint is the eyeball. The Shank and Shrieker are the only two that I haven't found a weakspot on. Shanks usually go down in one shot anyway, so they don't really need one. Captains and Wizards do have shields, but with the ability to always have a sniper rifle with basically unlimited ammo, that never really matters.
  
  Compare this to Halo (because it's pretty much unavoidable). Yes, the goal is to shoot everything in the head or other weak spot, but you have to do something else first to make that possible. Every enemy has something special that makes it unique. Jackals need to be shot in the hand or foot so they'll flinch and expose their head for a short time. Elites have shields (this is different than the Captains and Wizards because you don't always have a power weapon with you in Halo). You have to get their shields down before you can headshot them. Brutes have a helmet you have to remove first, and they berserk if you kill their friends (with varying effectiveness depending on what game you're playing). Drones and Skirmishers are fast and hard to hit, and occasionally have shields of their own. Hunters you have to get behind (or land some lucky shots from the front), which usually involves getting in close, and they always come in pairs. Engineers you'll want to pop first, or every other enemy will get an overshield. Grunts are the exception, but they're just cannon fodder. A distraction while the bigger aliens try to kill you. Dangerous in groups, and they flee when their leader is killed.
  
  Do you see the difference? All of Halo's enemies have something that makes them unique, and mixes up the combat. There's nothing special about Destiny's enemies. You just shoot them in the head. It's boring and repetitive.

I mentioned it earlier, but I found there to be variety in the enemies and how I approached them. I hope there are more like the Hive Knight who had a shield that I began to anticipate and would use my movement mode to get an angle on them to finish them off at an angle.

[*]I wasn't challenged once. There is no difficulty to speak of. Even in single player, death just means you have to wait four seconds to get right back to where you were, with no penalties. There are occasionally rooms or small areas that don't allow you to respawn, but if you just sit back and shoot heads, you'll not have any trouble. Furthermore, if you're in a fireteam, dying in these areas isn't even permanent. The respawn time is just extended to 25 seconds. It's a lot harder to fail than to complete your objective, even with bosses.

I saw the challenge in some of the bounties. Trying to get through Strikes and some of the other higher level content without dying was pretty thrilling.

[*]Speaking of bosses, Destiny's are terrible. They take the term bullet sponge to the extreme. With a ridiculous amount of health, and two instant kill attacks, your only option for the Devil Walker is to stand behind one of the various pillars in the area while whittling away at its health, and deal with the occasional Fallen squad (which are just there to give you ammo), until it explodes fifteen minutes later. The second boss is much the same way, requiring the player to shoot its eye for ten minutes while swatting at the Fallen flies for ammo.

What makes a good boss? Challenge and transformation. Imagine if you had to shoot the big ball in the eye until the eye broke, then he unfolded and spurted legs, while he shot fire and chased you around the map. That'd be cool, right? Then what if you could shoot his legs off and he turned into a snake or something, and slithered in and out of holes in the wall, while shooting at you? All while hurling threats and insults your way, in English. Respawning could be truly disabled, with checkpoints when he transformed. You'd have to learn his tactics, and work with your fireteam to take him down together.

Just a thought. A thought that I came up with in two minutes. Why can't professional game designers? Nope, just floaty teleporting ball with eye.

[*]Enemies infinitely respawn. Now, this is honestly to be expected in Explore mode. I mean, the world would feel empty pretty quickly if the enemies were permanently dead. However, they turned up the dial quite a bit too much. When I'm making my way through the plane graveyard, and the Fallen I just killed on the other side of the plane where I just was, start shooting at me ten seconds after I killed them, that's ridiculous. Should limit the respawning to explore mode. Having them respawn while I'm on a mission makes it feel like I'm not making any progress.

I appreciated the enemies repopulating areas. When I'm playing campaign and it ends up being this massively empty battlefield, it lacks a certain sense of urgency. Having the Hive and Fallen crawling all over wherever I go felt like we were indeed being encroached upon and it was my job to help push them back.

[*]The missions themselves are really boring to replay. It's because all of the same enemies spawn in the same place every time, and they always do the same things. There's never any variance to the way they play out. It certainly doesn't help that there's very little variety to the combat.

Yeah, I hope these get more interesting. In the Alpha replaying That Wizard Came From The Moon on the harder difficulty felt a lot different.

[*]Bungie still has a problem with invisible walls. This started with Halo 3, and continued though ODST, Reach, and now Destiny. A great portion of the fun I had in Halo 2 was escaping and exploring the campaign's normal bounds. Remember that giant mountain in the background of Delta Halo? I've been to its peak, and looked down to see the entirety of the mission below. I've circumnavigated the lake that houses Regret's temple, and discovered another lake beyond the mountains.

Invisible walls completely prevent things like this. It really kills a lot of exploration. They talk up how important exploration is, even have a mode specifically for it, yet they heavily restrict it. How am I supposed to explore the map if everywhere I go, I'm hitting an arbitrary soft wall? Combine this with the soft-kill zones (return to battlefield zones, for you non-forgers), and you're left with a game that routinely cuts off your exploring, instead of encouraging it.

I just simply do not care about this. I was really impressed by the spaces that Bungie put together for us and had fun exploring them with my friends. We checked out random caves, ran into crashed Hive pods, knocked each other off cliffs. And ran all around. I'd sometimes climb a building and fall because of the barrier and would shrug and move on. I hear people complain about these but don't hear any reasonable solutions. It takes only a few randoms who aren't trying to see untextured nonsense but still randomly get launched beyond the barriers for people to start crying about the game being broken and them losing progress. It's a lot of work to make a polished experience the way Bungie has and a lot more work to then maintain that experience without a few barriers, these complaints rarely acknowledge that.

[*]Randomly running into other players while out and about is pretty cool. Why can't I talk to them? I think proximity chat should be enabled within shouting distance, communicating outside of hand gestures seems important to me. Maybe they want to show me something, or they heard a story from another guy earlier and they want to share. As long as there's a quick and easy way to mute them in case they're annoying, and an option to turn it off altogether, why not let us talk? Seems pretty unsociable in a game that's supposedly designed for the opposite.

It was so amazing and awesome to interact with so many people without ever once hearing a random ignorant bigot spewing nonsense.

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PvP, and being the best in the world (briefly).

More story!

Before we knew anything about the PvP portion of Destiny, I had high hopes for it. Bungie has traditionally valued balance in their competitive multiplayer offerings. An equal start for all players, with the better man, or woman, coming out on top. When the Alpha was made public, and the streamers started streaming, I took to Twitch and found MLG pro Ninja's channel. What I saw was a game that looked like Call of Duty. Everyone starts with whatever gun they want, the time to kill was less than a second, and everyone occasionally gets the ability to press (button) to instantly kill someone even if you don't deserve it.

I wasn't happy. I wanted another Bungie arena shooter masterpiece. I wanted a game that took skill to succeed at. A game that rewarded you for being better than your opponent. I got on DBO to complain, but Schooly had it covered. So, going into the beta, I thought the campaign would be awesome, and expected the multiplayer to suck. I was wrong, but not about multiplayer.

During the early access timeframe, there weren't a whole lot of people on. I kept seeing the same thirty or so names over and over. I played with several Bungie employees, a bunch of Microsoft employees, the guy who makes RoosterTeeth's music, and, oddly enough, a Treyarch higher-up. With so few people in the Beta, and only a small portion of them searching in the Crucible, I didn't get any matches in for a few days. On the 18th, the planets aligned and I participated in what I can only assume were the first two matches of the Beta on Xbox 360. The vast majority of the regulars on this forum have played Halo with me more than a few times. You know my style. Well, Bungie let me spawn with a sniper rifle, and my kill to death ratio for my first Destiny match was 4.25. I don't think I should spawn with the tools I need to dominate, I should have to earn them.

With a K/D of 2:0 and a W/L of 13:1, as far as I can tell, I was the best Destiny player on 360 in the world :p. At least for the private Beta. Followed closest by our very own Bluerunner. I'm pretty sure his is due to the monstrosity known as the Interceptor. That thing is exactly what I imagine it would be like if the Reach Banshee and Gauss Hog joined forces to make the ultimate overpowered vehicle. It is unstoppable if the driver has even the slightest bit of skill. Bungie apparently learned nothing from Reach. With the Sparrow or Pike, It's pretty easy to take the driver's head off. The Interceptor however, I can't even see the pilot's head unless I have a pretty good height advantage, and the low health of players only exacerbates the effectiveness of this beast.

Bungie's philosophy with Destiny is clear; they want bad players to succeed where they shouldn't. It's all very frustrating when, like Halo 4, there's a good multiplayer game hiding in there. It's just covered in shit.

So you have both had some of the best performances of your life AND the skill gap is smaller? So you're saying it's easier for bad players to get kills and also easier for you to dominate? That doesn't make any sense. The more I played I was able to really fine tune my play style to keep myself alive and my enemies dead. Supers became something I was able to start avoiding (When someone is coming and you're standing IN a zone you hold, just GET OUT, they're likely to super the zone blindly).

• First, let's go over the Aim-Down-Sights mechanic. This doesn't necessarily have to be bad, but in most shooters, to make aiming down the sights worthwhile, they make hip firing very inaccurate. Destiny isn't extreme about it, but hip fire is tempered a bit. The other half of the equation is that aiming down the sights normally reduces player speed. Run or Gun (thanks, Uberfoop). This one Destiny is guilty of. When combined, they serve to make aiming easier for bad players, in a game that already has more than sufficient bullet-magnetism and aim-assist. It decreases the skill gap.
  
  It might be okay if hip fire was always accurate and reliable, and aiming down the sights didn't slow you down at all. Just zoomed in a bit.
  
  
• Next, the low time to kill. This is one of the biggest problems. Although it isn't Call of Duty length, it's still far too short for personal skill to really matter. A low time to kill places greater emphasis on positioning (which you have little control over in a game with respawning), than a player's aiming skill. In Halo, Gears, or TF2, I can start taking damage from behind, and still have time to turn around and beat my attacker because I have better aim and strafing than they do. That's not the case in Destiny. If I'm getting shot from behind, I'm going to die.

I've always appreciated Halo's slower TTK, allowed for more protracted battles. It makes me think about one of the comments made about Halo's AI, that by beefing up the elite's shield and health, they would live longer and appear more intelligent by virtue you able to see them react to you for longer. I'm inclined to think the same applies to PvP.

[*]The ability to start the game with any gun eliminates the need to have weapons on the map. Without weapons on the map, there is no risk/reward to acquiring power weapons. You can automatically have a sniper rifle; you don't need to earn it. You don't need to hold down sniper spawn, you are sniper spawn. This discourages movement, and empowers camping. If I can sit on the rock above point B and rain down unlimited sniper ammo* on my unfortunate victims, why would I ever move?

It encourages camping, even in an objective gametype, because killing gives your team points, too. The best strategy on any map was to hold B and C, and just slaughter the idiots who dared to approach them. There's no reason to take A, even though we easily could. If they have A, then we know where they'll spawn. We get more objective points than them because we hold two bases to their one, and we're out-slaying them because we're camping.

*Every place I perch from is within twenty feet of an ammo box. I never run out.

I never bothered with the sniper and did reasonably well, hovered above 2.0K/D for most of the beta and fell to 1.9 at the end of it. Whenever some sniper was trying to hold down a spot, I'd just sneak on over and run them down with my auto rifle. They never were as awful as they would be in Halo when they would effectively gain and never secede map control and subsequently control over sniper spawn and dominate the rest of the map. There would still be a few steamrollings at the hands of organized teams against randoms, but that SHOULD happen occasionally.

I also never ran into an enemy team that could hold down 2 points against my team for the whole match. We were able to pull it off but it's really hard without the data to determine if the camping theory you have is actually a problem.

[*]I imagine you're all familiar with the Interceptor by now. In the Beta, it was an unstoppable machine of death. I don't think I have to do much explaining here, it speaks for itself. Then it kills you. Over and over. If it sees you first, you're dead. If you see it first, run. If the driver is an idiot, you might be able to take it down with a super. If you get everyone on your team to focus fire on it, it'll go down eventually, but not without taking a few of you with it. What I like to do is get someone to distract it, them take the drivers head off from the side. However you do it, you had better do it fast. Otherwise, it could easily cost you the game.

It's very fast and kills a Guardian or Sparrow in one hit. Pike in two. To fix it, I'd decrease its health by about two thirds, and slow its rate of fire. Even better, It could require a driver and a gunner. Would promote teamwork.

Since the Beta, Bungie has announced that they'll nerf the Interceptor. I definitely agree with lowering its rate of fire and reducing the blast radius of the rockets. Not sure I understand what they mean by "arming shape", so no opinion on that. I do not agree with having only one on the map. With there being two, they always end up fighting each other. This usually results in one being destroyed, and the other being severely damaged*. That gives the team who lost their Interceptor a much better chance to take out the opponent's death machine.

Yeah curious to see how the nerfing goes and agree with your assessment of only having one on the map, the dueling interceptors was fine by me.

[*]One of the most annoying parts of the multiplayer is the Supers. Titans can slam the ground and instantly kill everything around them. Warlocks can fly up in the air and Kamehameha wherever they're pointing, killing everyone in the area of effect. Hunters can go Super Saiyan and activate their golden guns, killing anything they almost hit. That's right, they don't actually have to hit their target to kill them, and they get three shots. They're acquired periodically (about every three minutes) throughout a match, and people don't actually have to do anything to get them. Getting points will speed up the process, but the super bar fills up automatically.

This is bad because players don't deserve those kills. They didn't best their opponent, they're not more skilled. They just pressed LB+RB to get free kills. It really discourages going for the objective when you know somebody can just press a button and you're done. Combined with having any weapon on spawn, and the Interceptor, instant death is a very common occurrence in the Crucible. The worst part is, your enemy doesn't have to be better than you. The game basically kills you on its own just by being as broken as it is.

They deserve those kills as much as someone with a rocket launcher in halo deserved those kills. I found it got really important to maximize your super not only to generate more orbs of light but also that a single kill was a waste. It's another thing for me to get much better at more from an awareness and from an executing it. Also forces more communication with my Fireteam as we try to super chain.

[*]The most important part of teamwork is communication. In Destiny, you can't talk to your teammates unless they're in your fireteam. I shouldn't have to invite people to my party just to talk to my teammates. Hand gestures aren't going to cut it. This one is pretty important, and not against their vision for the game. It may be my only point that has a chance of being fixed.

Also, I'd like to have proximity chat. Demoralizing and angering the other team is always a good strategy, and sometimes teabagging isn't enough.

Ugh, people like you are why we don't get proximity chat. Being an asshole is not cool, especially if you're winning. Seriously. Glad teabagging doesn't appear to be coming over to Destiny in the way it was in Halo.

[/list]

These are general problems and disappointments.

• There is a disturbing lack of customization in this game. I can't select the color of my armor, emblem, ship, or sparrow. There aren't many armors, emblems, ships, or sparrows to choose from in the first place. I think it'd be cool to customize your guns, too. I'd probably like my guns a lot more if I could choose their colors. Also, it looks like there are no custom games in Destiny at all. Which brings me to...
  
  
• The weak feature-set. With Halo, Bungie were pioneers in bringing PC game features to consoles, and inventing new systems of play. First it was the FPS alone, then they created matchmaking. Halo 3 added theater mode, Forge, rendered films, and screenshots. Nobody else was bringing all of these things to a console in one game. They were ahead of the pack. With Destiny, that is no longer the case. The way you run into players in the world randomly is seamless, and very cool. It's just disappointing that they felt things like theater weren't important enough to keep.
  
  Remember all of Pete's awesome mini-games? There will be none in Destiny. You won't see any Destiny machinimas*. Remember Hedge and BlueNinja's awesome panoramas? You aren't going to see any from Destiny*. Screenshots will always have a visible HUD and gun*. You won't be able to inspect your clips from every angle.
  
  *Unless they get creative and someone figures out how to disable the HUD and lower their gun.

Yeah, hope there's some HUD and gun lowering, the screenshot/video community suffers for it

[*]Destiny is being billed as a social game, but you can't talk to anybody unless you know them already. In Crucible, it's ridiculous that you can't hear your teammates if they aren't in your party. I've been over it, but communication is extremely important in multiplayer. In Campaign, proximity chat should be enabled for nearby Guardians. It would be cool as hell to run into another fireteam in the wild, swap war stories, and go about your respective business. Or tell them about a loot chest you just came from, or convince them to help you take out a high level enemy so you can get whatever it's guarding. Or whatever.

Nah, we apparently have folks who think harassing each other on the internet is cool. I'd like to not hear them, ever, thanks. And no, I don't think assholes should get their way when it comes to things like this... or anything really.

[*]They talk about how there are more guns in Destiny than in all the Halo games combined. There are actually only nine guns in Destiny, with many small variations. The guns within each of the nine gun classes operate the same, but have small statistical differences. Every scout rifle is functionally the same. Having a smaller magazine and a slightly lower rate of fire does not make it much different. There are also no alien guns you can get for yourself. That was pretty disappointing. Bungie has been pretty inventive with alien weaponry in the past, and I was looking forward to what they had come up with this time. Most of the enemies use the same Needler-like gun, and the player can't pick it up.
[/list]

I'm going to miss the crazy variations of guns that they had with Halo. This is one of the biggest differences for me.

Just a few opinions.

• I'm not liking the art style. At least most of it. I like the designs for the aliens I saw, and the environments are great, but I hated most of the armor and weapons. Military weaponry is normally a shade of black or gray. Maybe some white. Some green or beige for camouflage. Having all of those weird colors really puts me off. Many of the weapons were also shaped weird, a lot of angles that just look off to me. It seems like Bungie was inspired by Mass Effect. Tried to make things look futurey, and I don't personally enjoy it.
  
  
• Not digging the UI, either. I understand they want to be different and eye-pleasing, but it seems like form over function. I just think it'd be faster and easier to scroll through options than to move the cursor around. That type of menu is popular for a reason: it works.

Eh, I'm a huge fan of the art style so far. It's grand. But you're right, very much an opinion.

Also I largely agree with the UI analysis in this video.

In conclusion.

With all the problems this game has, I won't be buying it. Not a chance. I still hope they address some of the points I brought up for Destiny 2. At least for Campaign. It's clear that they want to cater to people who are bad at games for the multiplayer. Campaign though, I could really enjoy it if they fix some of the massive problems for the sequel.

This game became a must buy after the Alpha, and a BUY BUY BUY after the beta for me. Also I played it on 360, PS4, and XB1 and was blown away by how much better the next-gen versions looked. They played the same, but definitely looked a lot better. That may have factored into your experience.

[*]Superpowers (helps to make instant death a very common occurrence).

Add an indicator on the enemy's life bar indicating when their super is charged. Problem solved. If you see and still choose to engage, then you deserve to lose.

that's how it works now.

[*]Superpowers (helps to make instant death a very common occurrence).

Add an indicator on the enemy's life bar indicating when their super is charged. Problem solved. If you see and still choose to engage, then you deserve to lose.

that's how it works now.

To elaborate, when a player's level indicator is pulsating, it means their super is charged. This isn't explained anywhere in the game (common theme, it seems) and I only figured it out after a bunch of friends and I were playing and wondering what it meant. It took us a while of asking, "Am I blinking now? ... How about now?" before figuring it out.

I really hope the final game has a very detailed manual (physical of virtual). And no, the very-annoying-to-navigate Grimoire doesn't count.

[*]Superpowers (helps to make instant death a very common occurrence).

Add an indicator on the enemy's life bar indicating when their super is charged. Problem solved. If you see and still choose to engage, then you deserve to lose.

There already is one. The level indicator above their head gets a yellow flashing border. It's kind of hard to see in this gif, but it is from the first video I could find with an example: Super Indicator

I certainly wouldn't be upset if it was made a little more obvious (maybe make the yellow brighter, or add another pixel or two to the border, or both).. but as it stands, we at least have *something*

Okay.

Exactly the well thought-out reply I've come to expect from you.

Nice post, man!

You're welcome.

I don't take issue with most of what you said... not because I agree with most of it --but because I think you made many valid points about your experience with the beta. I greatly enjoyed the experience overall, including the multiplayer, but I definitely understand why you hated it so I have no issue with that.

However, I would like to rebut much of this section:

These are general problems and disappointments.

• There is a disturbing lack of customization in this game. I can't select the color of my armor, emblem, ship, or sparrow. There aren't many armors, emblems, ships, or sparrows to choose from in the first place. I think it'd be cool to customize your guns, too. I'd probably like my guns a lot more if I could choose their colors. Also, it looks like there are no custom games in Destiny at all. Which brings me to...
  
  
• The weak feature-set. With Halo, Bungie were pioneers in bringing PC game features to consoles, and inventing new systems of play. First it was the FPS alone, then they created matchmaking. Halo 3 added theater mode, Forge, rendered films, and screenshots. Nobody else was bringing all of these things to a console in one game. They were ahead of the pack. With Destiny, that is no longer the case. The way you run into players in the world randomly is seamless, and very cool. It's just disappointing that they felt things like theater weren't important enough to keep.
  
  Remember all of Pete's awesome mini-games? There will be none in Destiny. You won't see any Destiny machinimas*. Remember Hedge and BlueNinja's awesome panoramas? You aren't going to see any from Destiny*. Screenshots will always have a visible HUD and gun*. You won't be able to inspect your clips from every angle.
  
  *Unless they get creative and someone figures out how to disable the HUD and lower their gun.
  
  
• Destiny is being billed as a social game, but you can't talk to anybody unless you know them already. In Crucible, it's ridiculous that you can't hear your teammates if they aren't in your party. I've been over it, but communication is extremely important in multiplayer. In Campaign, proximity chat should be enabled for nearby Guardians. It would be cool as hell to run into another fireteam in the wild, swap war stories, and go about your respective business. Or tell them about a loot chest you just came from, or convince them to help you take out a high level enemy so you can get whatever it's guarding. Or whatever.
  
  
• They talk about how there are more guns in Destiny than in all the Halo games combined. There are actually only nine guns in Destiny, with many small variations. The guns within each of the nine gun classes operate the same, but have small statistical differences. Every scout rifle is functionally the same. Having a smaller magazine and a slightly lower rate of fire does not make it much different. There are also no alien guns you can get for yourself. That was pretty disappointing. Bungie has been pretty inventive with alien weaponry in the past, and I was looking forward to what they had come up with this time. Most of the enemies use the same Needler-like gun, and the player can't pick it up.

As others have pointed out (not that you weren't aware already), this beta was very much a limited look at the game in many ways, especially the things I quoted above.

The lack of customization options was not indicative of the experience we will have in September and in the following months/years. Bungie has hinted that there will be more customization options when picking your character's appearance. In the beta, you could get different colored (and powered) sparrows; I acquired varying colors of the same armor, and it was clear that we will be able to apply shaders and emblems to both our armor and weapons.

Some of the features you lament being absent could very well be part of the final game. Theater mode and saved films might or might not be gone, but even if they are, they are arguably unnecessary with today's one-button sharing options. Who says machinima tools like dropping your HUD and weapon won't be there? Who says custom games won't be an option? Some of these things are less likely to be in the final game than others (I, personally, think custom games are likely whereas theater mode is almost surely gone), but in any case we obviously don't know yet so I think it is very presumptuous to dismiss the game based on such a limited beta sampling.

I absolutely understand why Bungie has made the decisions regarding audio chat. They are clearly trying to get away from the stereotypical atmosphere of online multiplayer filled with racist, foul-mouthed teenagers and teebagging. I wholly support that goal, and I think the steps they have taken are very effective in making Destiny a welcoming place to all. Sure, I think it's odd that you can't talk to the rest of your team in multiplayer by default, but I will gladly accept that inconvenience if it means I won't have to worry about what I and my kids hear.

Finally, I think the issues you have with the "lack" of guns are presumptuous like some of the other complaints you have. I expect the exotic and legendary weapons (that we didn't get to experience in the limited beta) to look and feel like different weapons. But even still -- even among just a single weapon type like the ARs that you say are all the same gun -- I think the Sahara felt wildly different from the Cydonia, for example. Bungie has also strongly hinted that alien weapons will be available -- I think it was in the video tour of the tower on IGN that they made a comment about a particular corner lounge that would have some "freaky" stuff for sale, and on that particular wall there were alien-looking weapons and stuff hanging.

In sum, I won't take issue with your dislike of the multiplayer because you have valid points and it is obvious that the multiplayer design philosophy is (a) not Halo and (b) not going to change. However, we clearly have not experienced much of what Destiny will have to offer. I have faith that some of the features you lamented being missing will actually be in the final game, and that the story and strikes will have a lot more variability and interesting qualities than what we have seen so far.

That was a good read. Some general thoughts:

Regarding everyone (potentially) having snipers and (relatively) unlimited ammo: I wonder what effect this will have on big, open maps. Will such a map even be viable? Consider Valhalla from Halo, but if everyone could choose Snipers. Would anyone ever have anything else? No mid or long range skirmishing, just sniping.

Regarding MP quick deaths: I wonder how much emergent complexity (i.e. counters, buffs, etc) might be found over time. I hate dying cheaply, and I did a lot of that in the beta crucible. But I wonder if it would be a different story if I had a bulked-up warlock with damage reduction buffs or something.

Regarding it being too easy for you: agreed. My impression was that great players (i.e. you, not me) will vastly outpace even good players, leading to lopsided matches wherever they go. Combine 2 or 3 great players in a party, and abandon all hope ye randoms who enter the Crucible.

Regarding customization: I believe Bungie only showed a tiny taste. Shaders, exploration, new gizmos, whatever. Not saying that invalidates your concerns, only that I need a bit more exposure.

Regarding vehicles: I was ambivalent in general, but hated them with a passion in MP. The pike was fine for getting from point A to B, but the vehicles in general lack personality.

Regarding the enemies: Overall, I enjoyed fighting the AI, though I do recognize the repetitive nature. Killing them generally felt good to me, but remember, I'm not the player you are. Sometimes I wonder if your skill and experience work against you in this regard. Additionally, I hope that like customization and exploration, Bungie was greatly limiting exposure to the baddies.

Regarding the general nature of story: Underwhelming, for a start. Much has been made of lack of narrative, and I cannot disagree. Again, hoping that the real game will have more, and that the story will be emergent over time. After all, Halo had one story running on top, but a far more interesting one running below - one that only came into focus (for me) after I stumbled into HBO.

You had a number of good change suggestions, especially in regards to transforming bosses and co-op nature of vehicles. Overall, I found your article to be enjoyable, insightful, and reasonable.

I will be getting Destiny, primarily for the co-op story mode with my friends. But I believe MCC and H5 (hopefully!) will be serving my MP needs going forward.

I agree with the general response that many of your complaints aren't valid against Destiny as a whole, only the Beta. Example, Jackal shields. Cabal will have shields as well. There are color shaders in the game (you could see them in the store!), they just weren't accessible in the Beta. Interceptor. Invisible walls are a quality issue, arguing against them is silly--but I think this is more of a wording thing. I would support more playable space, but accessing nonplayable space isn't the way to accomplish that.

I really enjoyed the Destiny Beta and can't wait for the final game. Destiny has a lot of unique characteristics that set it apart from Halo, and I can understand if you don't like them. You're certainly not the only one, and certainly Destiny isn't perfect. I just actually like a lot of the things you suggest are problems. I could argue point by point, but it's not like I'm going to convince you to like the game or something.

I think I have been playing Halo wrong for a while. I enjoyed the Campaign, and the Multiplayer just fine. Some of the best games I have played.

After playing Destiny, Halo feels slow and clunky. I love the pace of Destiny. A lot of your disappointments can be boiled down to pace. In Destiny the pace is at least 2x faster than Halo. Enemies go down faster, and you can mow down a lot of them quickly (until you get to stronger classes). Personally, I love it and I feel waaaay more powerful than I did in Halo, although I am still vulnerable.

Shanks will flank you, Invis Vandals will try to sneak up and melee you, Knights play D, Thralls run up and try to overrun you, or they hide around inside corners and wait. Captains sit back (and remind me a lot of low level Covenant Elites), Orge's were a whole other class altogether. We have seen less than half of the enemy types, and I am already having a blast.

What I read in your complaints was this: "I wish this were Halo and because it isn't Halo, it isn't any good, or fun." I had a blast, I think PVP is very balanced. I learned a lot in the 4 days I played the Beta at less than a third of the total level cap (I'm guessing 30 is the top). The people I played got better. The moon was amazing. I loved Old Russia. I have several friends in town that I played with and we all had a blast. We didn't win every game, we had some GREAT nail biters (more frequent towards the end). I felt like I could win even when I was seen first (switch to shotgun, maybe the fusion rifle? Drop my grenade and duck around a corner, double jump, sprint away, throw my super? I HAD TONS of options. In Halo, my only real choice was to re engage the person with the same weapons (unless I happened to have a diff weapon picked up - and there were good chances if it were one on one - the loser would just run away before dying).

I enjoyed Halo, but I LOVE Destiny's playstyle. They are very different. What cracks me up is all the journalists and reviewers complaining how Destiny is just "Halo with space magic." Are you kidding? These are very different games.

I am bummed you didn't enjoy Destiny. I hope you enjoy The Master Chief Collection and Halo 5.

- No text -

And I agree with many of your points. I really enjoyed that UI vid--that's a professional area of interest for me, and I hope that Evil Otto saw that, too.

Snipe, that was a well-written post, and in some of the particulars, I agree with you. What's missing is context and perspective. Your willingness to complain here about issues related to the small player pool says to me that maybe you're weren't a good candidate for early access. In general, I think you fail to acknowledge how small a slice you have experienced of the full game, and I sense an excess of skepticism and bias. I, too, was wary of the game and still have a little wariness. I had the unique privilege of having a friendly partner and guide (Beorn) from my first moments of the Alpha. That said, (other than the graphics and art design, which I found stunning out of the gate) many elements did not win me over at first but grew on me with time. Subtleties revealed themselves. In contrast, your first impressions seem to have solidified into final judgments or worse, confirmed prejudices you had going in.

One specific point is that you seem to have outed yourself as the kind of player who tainted Halo matchmaking for me, and if those players are turned off by Destiny, fine. Don't let the door hit your ass on the way out.

I know you're a man of rather absolute opinions [cough, Halo 2, cough], and you're not afraid to say you hate something. You're entitled to those opinions and, again, you've done a great job of expressing them. I know that when you're enthusiastic about something, you're not afraid to say that either, and you've contributed a lot to the bungie.org community. I'm sad if you truly have decided to jump ship on Destiny.

- No text -

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Regarding the general nature of story: Underwhelming, for a start. Much has been made of lack of narrative, and I cannot disagree. Again, hoping that the real game will have more, and that the story will be emergent over time. After all, Halo had one story running on top, but a far more interesting one running below - one that only came into focus (for me) after I stumbled into HBO.

That's interesting, because the story that we THOUGHT was running below - Cortana having been corrupted by the flood, or Truth being conniving and playing everyone knowing full well what the Halos do - turned out not to be the case.

I wouldn't worry YET about lack of story. Bungie's games have always been event, rather than character driven. Perhaps less so ODST, which makes it interesting on that level. The characters in Bungie games are pretty much there just to move the plot, and are not that interesting in and of themselves. I'm sure that when the events unfold in the game, it will be more interesting.

I do worry about the approach to the story, with tons of little missions that aren't substantial and peripherally connect, but that may not end up being the case in final.

I've registered destiny.isnotcanon.net preemptively though, just in case :-p

My biggest concern is the inevitable requirement for gear grinding, given gear is random, or the currency to acquire it is random (strange coins and the like to get the exotics from Xur, etc), or the currency is grindy (vanguard points, crucible marks, etc). Because light is only on gear, and level factors heavily into your ability to do damage, playing the higher level stuff means engaging with this dumb system. Which is a problem, because there is no difficulty selector!

To elaborate, when a player's level indicator is pulsating, it means their super is charged. This isn't explained anywhere in the game (common theme, it seems) and I only figured it out after a bunch of friends and I were playing and wondering what it meant. It took us a while of asking, "Am I blinking now? ... How about now?" before figuring it out.

Wait, what? These are real questions heading your way. What is a player's level indicator? Is this a thing you can see on someone on the other team? And what do you mean it was pulsating? I apparently didn't know about any of this, or didn't see any of it. I was solely under the impression that if someone had a Super charged, you didn't know it until they just used it on you.

Which iswas a problem in the Beta, because there iswas no difficulty selector!

FTFY

The little number on their name tag. The square containing the number would get a yellow outline / glow that pulsed a bit. I saw it in single player, I did not know or realize you could see them on enemies in multiplayer...

Oh wow. Thanks for pointing that out. So I just watched JDQuackers's gif below, still had no idea what he was referring to, and you just cleared it up. Yeah, that's practically impossible to see with that mess of gameplay going on and all the text flying across your screen as a billion people descend upon you at once. I literally never once noticed that in Crucible, nor did I notice that they even had their rank or level or whatever showing.

I'm seriously baffled at how many games I played without ever seeing peoples' numbers or that it could turn gold or anything. Really poor design, needs fixing or something way more obvious to show a Super is charged.

Oh wow. Thanks for pointing that out. So I just watched JDQuackers's gif below, still had no idea what he was referring to, and you just cleared it up. Yeah, that's practically impossible to see with that mess of gameplay going on and all the text flying across your screen as a billion people descend upon you at once. I literally never once noticed that in Crucible, nor did I notice that they even had their rank or level or whatever showing.

I'm seriously baffled at how many games I played without ever seeing peoples' numbers or that it could turn gold or anything. Really poor design, needs fixing or something way more obvious to show a Super is charged.

Another working against it is enemy names / level indicators only show up once you are aimed at or near them... I think.

I'm seriously baffled at how many games I played without ever seeing peoples' numbers or that it could turn gold or anything. Really poor design, needs fixing or something way more obvious to show a Super is charged.

I agree, even if it was just a change of background colour in the level display box as opposed to the edge being the indicator it would be easier to recognise that someone has a charged super.

So you have both had some of the best performances of your life AND the skill gap is smaller? So you're saying it's easier for bad players to get kills and also easier for you to dominate? That doesn't make any sense. The more I played I was able to really fine tune my play style to keep myself alive and my enemies dead. Supers became something I was able to start avoiding (When someone is coming and you're standing IN a zone you hold, just GET OUT, they're likely to super the zone blindly).

It makes full sense, actually. The Crucible takes so little skill, has so little balance, and is designed to make it so much easier for all the people to get kills, that the best of the best can just go on romping and pounding all over things. The point I think he's making here is that it's just absolutely not challenging, and that reduces a lot of the fun. I could be wrong on his thoughts, and I'm sure he'll say so if I am.

It's just far too easy all around. So yes, your general players might get more kills because Bungie is highly catering to them, but that doesn't mean that the really good players won't also benefit big time by the ability to kill easier.

Boy, the more I read your replies, the more whiny and self-contradictory you become... [gratuitous Xbox insult deleted, because Korny's already been asked to stop this -ce]

There are some things that I agree with, but for the most park, Kermit really nails it in this thread regarding your point of view. Still, I'll get around to explaining why your opinions are dumb, shortly... In the meantime, I'll just say that you sure did view a vertical slice that was explicitly stated to be unlike the actual game as a definitive example of the final product...

That seems to be what your main problems boil down to. The ones I don't agree with, anyway :P

Destiny does feel very similar to other games at the start - and I think it's supposed to. The leveling and early story missions almost seem like one giant tutorial - slowly introducing you to all the powers and options and giving you time to use each one.

But dude, if you play it exactly the way you've played Halo for 11 years (rifle+sniper), then of course it isn't going to feel much different!
It's more interesting the more you exploit the uniqueness of it and - perhaps crucially - be willing to try different things and not be amazing at them instantly.

I surprised myself when I started to use a shotgun towards the end of the Beta: after an adjustment period I did really well with it and had more fun than standing on perches waiting for fools to enter my scopes.

Compare in Halo: it was totally possible to beat Halo 3 Legendary by mostly standing back and dinging the enemies with BR and Carbine fire - but that wasn't the most FUN way. Getting closer, PP, grenades, swords, occasional rockets, assassinations - so much better.

So, your expecatations are letting you down here: take advantage of what Destiny IS and what it DOES allow rather than what anyone has told you it is or your own delusions about what you want it to be or think it should be.

Bungie's communication about it was kinda crap. In the end, just playing it seems to have won a lot of people over. Not you, obviously - other people.

Elitism goes to the tired, old arguments I heard a trillion times in Halo on 'skill-gap', 'everyone should start equal', "balance", "these noobs shouldn't get this many kills on me!" and "the only kind of skill is the the kind I value". Bored of all that.

Truth is: imbalance and asymmetry is actually fun, having a chance at some measure of success is fun, getting to actually use cool weapons like Snipers and shotguns is fun and in the end, you can't even have competition if no-one actually plays (e.g. all those competitive playlists in Halo that ALWAYS DIED).

Campaign has these problems:

• There is very little variety to combat.

I'm hoping level design changes things up later in the game. But, just play it differently! You have all the tools on you now.

[*]There is no difficulty to speak of.

Oh, try doing the story missions on the higher difficulty when you're under-leveled: it's hard, just not in a fun way!

[*]Terrible boss design.

They're certainly not inspiring.

[*]Enemies infinitely respawn, and they do it fast.

Yeah, hoping this get's toned down.

[*]Missions are repetitive, not very replay-able.

Disagree in general. But, mission openings certainly get samey after you get your sparrow since the quickest thing is to just get on it and ride to the objective.

[*]Enemies have no personality. They're just soulless monsters.

Agree with this one. I think perhaps they should be louder and clearer. Make their presence known more. As it is, they kinda just mumble in the background.

- Invincible enemies. Just make them really difficult to beat, making it impossible is very frustrating.

Nah, they made them 'very hard' in the Alpha (1 damage per shot) and it was just silly. This won't last long as you level up.

Multiplayer problems
Also, I'd like to have proximity chat. Demoralizing and angering the other team is always a good strategy, and sometimes teabagging isn't enough.

Yeah, that's kinda what they were talking about when they said Halo 2 'created a monster.'

[*] ... I hate sitting through the spaceship animations over and over.

Spaceship is the loading screen. But you already knew that, right?

With all the problems this game has, I won't be buying it. Not a chance.

Ah, well.

Which iswas a problem in the Beta, because there iswas no difficulty selector!

FTFY

It'd be great if a true difficulty selector was implemented, but wouldn't that be a huge undertaking? Wouldn't that contradict that no major changes would be made from the beta? It seems unlikely that we'll get to choose to run the level 8 strike on normal, heroic, or legendary. It'd be great though, and would significantly improve the game in my opinion.

Except for that one game where those guys destroyed us with fusion rifles, we had fun. Therefore your argument is invalid.

The little number on their name tag. The square containing the number would get a yellow outline / glow that pulsed a bit. I saw it in single player, I did not know or realize you could see them on enemies in multiplayer...

Now that I see it I can't unsee it. This is really good to know!

Truth is: imbalance and asymmetry is actually fun, having a chance at some measure of success is fun, getting to actually use cool weapons like Snipers and shotguns is fun and in the end, you can't even have competition if no-one actually plays (e.g. all those competitive playlists in Halo that ALWAYS DIED).

I think this is true in the sense that you can have little imbalances that rise through play, such as players being able to put themselves in situations that offer an advantage. You're right, it'd be boring if two players of equal skill always had a 50% change of winning an engagement, and it's much better to allow them to try to get the upper hand. That could be through weapon selection, positioning, etc. To make sure it isn't a positive feedback, you offer ways to break the advantage if you are good. Think reversal attacks in Street Fighter 2.

The question people are asking is whether you can ever really gain an advantage, given that supers are supposedly a low skill way to kill people. I would argue that yes, you can absolutely still get an advantage, and even with supers, the best team is still going to win.

Everyone should check their ego at the door. So what if you die to a Nova Bomb every now and then? This really isn't Halo. I like it more (as of the Beta anyway).

The big caveat is bringing in gear though. Again, in the Alpha and Beta the level cap and spread of gear was pretty low. But since rate of fire and impact make a difference in multiplayer, and level advantage does in iron banner, there's going to be a lot of extra steps you have to do outside of the crucible to even go in ready (especially with light being such an important and gear only stat). I've heard of level 5 folks trying iron banner and just getting hopelessly wrecked because of their level. Whether that ends up being a problem or not will be revealed in a month.

It's just far too easy all around. So yes, your general players might get more kills because Bungie is highly catering to them, but that doesn't mean that the really good players won't also benefit big time by the ability to kill easier.

That's because everybody was level 8? You were playing with pretty much everybody. I'd hope that in the final the matching algorithm would put you with players near your skill.

Which iswas a problem in the Beta, because there iswas no difficulty selector!

FTFY

It'd be great if a true difficulty selector was implemented, but wouldn't that be a huge undertaking? Wouldn't that contradict that no major changes would be made from the beta? It seems unlikely that we'll get to choose to run the level 8 strike on normal, heroic, or legendary. It'd be great though, and would significantly improve the game in my opinion.

The Devils Layer strike had two difficulty levels in the beta. Normal was level 6 (I think) and Hard was level 8. Changing the level bumped up both enemy toughness as well as enemy mixture and numbers.

Which iswas a problem in the Beta, because there iswas no difficulty selector!

FTFY

It'd be great if a true difficulty selector was implemented, but wouldn't that be a huge undertaking? Wouldn't that contradict that no major changes would be made from the beta? It seems unlikely that we'll get to choose to run the level 8 strike on normal, heroic, or legendary. It'd be great though, and would significantly improve the game in my opinion.

The Devils Layer strike had two difficulty levels in the beta. Normal was level 6 (I think) and Hard was level 8. Changing the level bumped up both enemy toughness as well as enemy mixture and numbers.

I kind've wish the difficulty was relevant to the Fireteam leader. A level 10 player on normal would face level 10 enemies (same level), but a level 10 player would face, say, level 13 enemies on hard (3 levels higher). So you could always experience a challenge regardless of how you've leveled up.

We also need mission and difficulty completion icons.

Which iswas a problem in the Beta, because there iswas no difficulty selector!

FTFY

It'd be great if a true difficulty selector was implemented, but wouldn't that be a huge undertaking? Wouldn't that contradict that no major changes would be made from the beta? It seems unlikely that we'll get to choose to run the level 8 strike on normal, heroic, or legendary. It'd be great though, and would significantly improve the game in my opinion.

The Devils Layer strike had two difficulty levels in the beta. Normal was level 6 (I think) and Hard was level 8. Changing the level bumped up both enemy toughness as well as enemy mixture and numbers.

That's not what I'm asking for. Selecting that raises the level. I'm asking for a proper difficulty setting, so that the enemy intelligence, type, and number change, but not their level. So I'd like to see you be able to select the strike at level 6 or at level 8, THEN choose whether you want to play it on heroic or legendary. So you could play the level 6 strike on heroic, legendary, etc, or you can play the level 8 version of that on heroic or Legendary.

My issue is that instead of the difficulty settings of past, it's been apparently replaced with raising enemy levels, which isn;t the same thing. As RC said, you can play higher level stuff when you are low level for a bigger challenge, but that's not 'fun'.

That's not what I'm asking for. Selecting that raises the level. I'm asking for a proper difficulty setting, so that the enemy intelligence, type, and number change, but not their level. So I'd like to see you be able to select the strike at level 6 or at level 8, THEN choose whether you want to play it on heroic or legendary. So you could play the level 6 strike on heroic, legendary, etc, or you can play the level 8 version of that on heroic or Legendary.

My issue is that instead of the difficulty settings of past, it's been apparently replaced with raising enemy levels, which isn;t the same thing.

A boost to raw enemy power, plus some mixing up in their spawns, is pretty much exactly how Halo has always worked.

Even the "change to intelligence" is mostly just a result of the enemies being assigned higher aggressiveness due to their increased power (and, per Bungie's ancient Halo 1 AI talk, they seem smarter 'cuz they got more health).

Which iswas a problem in the Beta, because there iswas no difficulty selector!

FTFY

It'd be great if a true difficulty selector was implemented, but wouldn't that be a huge undertaking? Wouldn't that contradict that no major changes would be made from the beta? It seems unlikely that we'll get to choose to run the level 8 strike on normal, heroic, or legendary. It'd be great though, and would significantly improve the game in my opinion.

The Devils Layer strike had two difficulty levels in the beta. Normal was level 6 (I think) and Hard was level 8. Changing the level bumped up both enemy toughness as well as enemy mixture and numbers.

That's not what I'm asking for. Selecting that raises the level. I'm asking for a proper difficulty setting, so that the enemy intelligence, type, and number change, but not their level. So I'd like to see you be able to select the strike at level 6 or at level 8, THEN choose whether you want to play it on heroic or legendary. So you could play the level 6 strike on heroic, legendary, etc, or you can play the level 8 version of that on heroic or Legendary.

My issue is that instead of the difficulty settings of past, it's been apparently replaced with raising enemy levels, which isn;t the same thing. As RC said, you can play higher level stuff when you are low level for a bigger challenge, but that's not 'fun'.

I fail to see the difference.

Upping the difficulty in Halo increased the number of enemies, swapped lower ranked enemies for higher ranked ones, and made all enemies tougher and more powerful. Upping the difficulty on the Destiny Strike did the same in all those categories, I believe. What am I missing? It seems like you want a two step difficulty selector (Level, then Difficulty) vs Halo's Difficulty only selector??

I would like a way to make the open world areas, like Old Russia, harder, however.

A boost to raw enemy power, plus some mixing up in their spawns, is pretty much exactly how Halo has always worked.

Even the "change to intelligence" is mostly just a result of the enemies being assigned higher aggressiveness due to their increased power (and, per Bungie's ancient Halo 1 AI talk, they seem smarter 'cuz they got more health).

Yeah but, even on Legendary, specials/critical were still really powerful:

• PP overcharge - bring down shields instantly, pop Brute armour, stun vehicles
  
• Unarmoured headshot with precision weapon - instant kill
  
• Assassination - instant kill

In the Destiny Beta, on the other hand, if the enemy is a couple of levels above yours, instead of making 2-3 headshots for the kill, you have to make 6-10 headshots*!

That gets tiring really quickly.

*numbers are illustrative and not accurate

Which iswas a problem in the Beta, because there iswas no difficulty selector!

FTFY

It'd be great if a true difficulty selector was implemented, but wouldn't that be a huge undertaking? Wouldn't that contradict that no major changes would be made from the beta? It seems unlikely that we'll get to choose to run the level 8 strike on normal, heroic, or legendary. It'd be great though, and would significantly improve the game in my opinion.

The Alpha had a "Brave" and "Legend" setting for Strike difficulty, and the bump was significant, unlike the Beta's "eh" and "slightly-less eh" difficulties. I'm sure there'll be more options in the final game.

The Devils Layer strike had two difficulty levels in the beta. Normal was level 6 (I think) and Hard was level 8. Changing the level bumped up both enemy toughness as well as enemy mixture and numbers.

I kind've wish the difficulty was relevant to the Fireteam leader. A level 10 player on normal would face level 10 enemies (same level), but a level 10 player would face, say, level 13 enemies on hard (3 levels higher). So you could always experience a challenge regardless of how you've leveled up.

Borderlands 2 has Ultimate Vault Hunter mode, where enemy difficulty is tied to the highest-leveled player on the team, so the entire group gets punishing enemies, sometimes to the point where some teammates barely graze the enemies, even if they have gold-tier weaponry...

While I don't think Destiny should go this extreme route, it does increase the need to co-operate if one of your teammates affects the overall experience for better or worse.

I contrast this with Dead Island's somewhat odd system where a low level player sees an enemy as a level 5, and his high-level teammate sees that exact same enemy as a level 30. You end up challenged no matter how much "better" you get at the game, which may or may not be a bad thing...

We also need mission and difficulty completion icons.

Yeah, this. Also maybe some emblems tied to difficulty progression. I loved the completion-tracking that Halo 2-ODST had on your profile.

A boost to raw enemy power, plus some mixing up in their spawns, is pretty much exactly how Halo has always worked.

Even the "change to intelligence" is mostly just a result of the enemies being assigned higher aggressiveness due to their increased power (and, per Bungie's ancient Halo 1 AI talk, they seem smarter 'cuz they got more health).

Yeah but, even on Legendary, specials/critical were still really powerful:

• PP overcharge - bring down shields instantly, pop Brute armour, stun vehicles
  
• Unarmoured headshot with precision weapon - instant kill
  
• Assassination - instant kill

In the Destiny Beta, on the other hand, if the enemy is a couple of levels above yours, instead of making 2-3 headshots for the kill, you have to make 6-10 headshots*!

That gets tiring really quickly.

*numbers are illustrative and not accurate

Good points. But on the other hand, you upped the difficulty and as a result... the difficulty went up! The bigger issue to me is whether an early strike will be fun once I'm level 20. Perhaps there are more difficulty levels and those Nightfall modes to fill that gap?

In the meantime, I'll just say that you sure did view a vertical slice that was explicitly stated to be unlike the actual game as a definitive example of the final product...

And where did you hear such a thing? Could you please link to a source?

I fail to see the difference.

Upping the difficulty in Halo increased the number of enemies, swapped lower ranked enemies for higher ranked ones, and made all enemies tougher and more powerful. Upping the difficulty on the Destiny Strike did the same in all those categories, I believe. What am I missing? It seems like you want a two step difficulty selector (Level, then Difficulty) vs Halo's Difficulty only selector??

Attack an enemy two levels above you, and you do 50% damage. 10 above, and you do 1 damage. You never do 1 damage when you select legendary in Halo. The solution to not doing 1 damage is to level up, not to get better.

The little number on their name tag. The square containing the number would get a yellow outline / glow that pulsed a bit. I saw it in single player, I did not know or realize you could see them on enemies in multiplayer...

Now that I see it I can't unsee it. This is really good to know!

Just the little bit of info that should go in a DBO Noob's Guide To Destiny..

I fail to see the difference.

Upping the difficulty in Halo increased the number of enemies, swapped lower ranked enemies for higher ranked ones, and made all enemies tougher and more powerful. Upping the difficulty on the Destiny Strike did the same in all those categories, I believe. What am I missing? It seems like you want a two step difficulty selector (Level, then Difficulty) vs Halo's Difficulty only selector??

Consider skulls. To increase the challenge and promote longer runs, Co-op night ALWAYS required the Thunderstorm skull, which made the game less fun, since enemies all became sponges that you had to expend large sums of ammo on. That was different than the change in the encounter itself that came with raising the difficulty, and that's the true distinction that people want, I think: Pick your difficulty level separately from your skulls. Right now, Destiny is all about stacking skulls rather than tweaking encounters.

I think that's my biggest problem with Destiny, and it occurred to me in the Alpha when Sammy, Paddy, and I tackled it on Legend difficulty. We were each a different class, with different weapons, and Paddy was a level 8... And yet, we got our junk handed to us equally, because all of our differences and special qualities meant diddly shpoop against the endless stream of bullet-chugging Captains that steamrolled us over and over again.

There wasn't even a need for the Camo Gregs, or the Shanks, since the inefficiency of our limited ammo provided the enemy with all that they needed for victory...

_________

Take Warframe, for example (Oh God, here he goes again with the Warframe): say that you're a level 5 character, with a weapon that specializes in Slash (flesh) damage. You start out in a level 5 map going up against basic enemies: Grunts, armored grunts, Shield troops, and the occasional Heavy gunner or Demolitions troop.

Your gun gives you an edge against most of the enemies, but still holds up well against the general troops, with shots to unarmored flesh still being able to critically wound the more dangerous foes.

Now say you were to take your level 5 character into a level 30 map (which you totally can). You see a basic grunt, and you pop his exposed head with your level 5 rifle. Guess what happens? He dies! Boom. Headshot. Critical damage. You are still able to hold your own against enemies that can now kill you with a handful of shots.

-

So where's the challenge? The encounters change. Now, as you continue to fare well against the grunts and shield troops, you see an armored ball rolling towards you, and your shots just bounce off the quickly approaching mass. It knocks you out of cover, exposing you to gunfire. Somehow, you are able to scurry away towards a different bit of cover. You aim at another basic grunt, who ran up close... but there's something different... He's glowing red, with flames around him. Before you can pop a headshot, he erupts into a massive fireball that blasts you across the room. With your shields fried, and your health in the single digits, you take off running. Suddenly you fall flat on your face. You exposed yourself too long, and a new enemy harpooned you, and is dragging you back towards the group as a large enemy that causes life-draining toxic damage to any player who veers to close waits patiently...

While you were clearly not equipped for success, the fact is that you stood a chance against the enemy, regardless of difficulty. The difference was what was thrown at you, and how much punishment it could dish out in a moment of carelessness. And that's without mentioning that you could have three teammates of varying levels, with varying weapons and unique skills helping you, taking advantage of what you can bring to the table while compensating for your weaknesses.

_____________

Games like this are why I've always hated bullet-sponge enemies, and the "more health=difficulty" mentality of developers. Play the first Modern Warfare. Normal difficulty, you're gunning down countless enemies as you casually walk down the narrow street.
Veteran difficulty, and now every bit of cover on that street is precious. Every enemy is a terrifying sight. And yet, they all still go down in one to two shots... But your experience isn't one of twitch combat anymore. Now every single room is a puzzle. Every enemy is a pattern that must be figured out and countered...

I would like a way to make the open world areas, like Old Russia, harder, however.

In the meantime, I'll just say that you sure did view a vertical slice that was explicitly stated to be unlike the actual game as a definitive example of the final product...

And where did you hear such a thing? Could you please link to a source?

Can't be bothered to look for it at the moment, but I believe it was a BWU where someone said that the condensed playspace was scripted to repeatedly test out as many variables as possible, which explains enemies spawning over and over, and over, sometimes right in front of you, seconds after dropping the last enemy. Surely that will jog someone's memory of what the source is, but yeah, they made a point to highlight the fact that there were shenanigans to be expected...

Consider skulls. To increase the challenge and promote longer runs, Co-op night ALWAYS required the Thunderstorm skull, which made the game less fun, since enemies all became sponges that you had to expend large sums of ammo on.

Shorter runs are less fun IMHO, but don't tell Snipe. Thunderstorm relates to rank. I'd usually require Mythic (increased health), and Tough Luck, which does change enemy behavior. I experimented and sometimes required Tilt, Catch, or Black Eye, but people complained.

In defense of enemies that require more bullets to down, more bullets are being used when more people play, and on co-op night, assists count as much as kills. :)

Why are you even trying to troll me? We used to be partners in crime, I know all of your tricks, bro. I think your efforts are better focused elsewhere. :/

The opening cutscene was really cool, and got my hopes up for the rest of the game.
Astronauts on Mars?
Cool!
Why do they have guns?
Rain? What?
Whats that big ball?

I find you’re being WAY over the top here. ANY game require you invest a basic amount in its story. Complaining about this is pretty weak.

Next thing I know, Tyrion is waking me up to tell me that I've been dead for centuries, and we need to GTFO now or these big alien dudes are gonna push our shit in. A bit of running, and the littlest Lannister finds me a gun. Now, I like the M4 as much as anybody, but it's been hundreds of years and we're still using them? Come on.

Do you want a real answer here or are you just complain to hear yourself to complain? The real answer is most of humanity was killed and there’s only a few places left in the solar system even capable of making new guns… and none of those places are a corridor in an abandoned Russian cosmodrome.

Also, I don't know who this Tyrion person is. Referring to one character as another is unnecessarily grating, but then that's probably what you were going for. I wish you had taken a more mature approach. :/

Immediately I notice how familiar the game feels. I've been playing Halo for over 11 years now, and Destiny's roots are obvious, but it's also different. The addition of an Aim-down-the-sights mechanic is one that feels foreign and out of place, but at least it's not always necessary. It's quickly apparent that all of the big scary aliens are easily killed with a simple headshot or two, and it turns out, there's really no reason to be scared at all.

There was even less reason to be scared during the initial run to the Pillar of Autumn’s bridge back in 2001. There’s real, honest complaints about a game and then there what you’ve been doing these first few paragraphs…

Tyrion guides me to this busted old ship and tells me we're gonna fly it to "The City." "Okay, bro. Let's-a-go!" We get there and grab some supplies because we need to go back to Russia to get a warp drive. Without it, we can't zoom to the Moon or whatever. Which is absolutely fine by me, but he's very insistent.

Again, you don’t seem to have even given the game a fair chance. Why should anyone take your story complaints seriously? I’m going to go ahead and skip forward a ways since you weren’t even trying to give a serious impression of the game.

The problems of Campaign.

• First, the lack of variety in the combat. Every enemy is defeated in the same way. To kill a Dreg, Vandal, Captain, Acolyte, Thrall, Knight, Ogre, or Wizard, you shoot them in the head. The Servitor too, but its weakpoint is the eyeball. The Shank and Shrieker are the only two that I haven't found a weakspot on. Shanks usually go down in one shot anyway, so they don't really need one. Captains and Wizards do have shields, but with the ability to always have a sniper rifle with basically unlimited ammo, that never really matters.

Compare this to Halo (because it's pretty much unavoidable). Yes, the goal is to shoot everything in the head or other weak spot, but you have to do something else first to make that possible. Every enemy has something special that makes it unique. Jackals need to be shot in the hand or foot so they'll flinch and expose their head for a short time. Elites have shields (this is different than the Captains and Wizards because you don't always have a power weapon with you in Halo). You have to get their shields down before you can headshot them. Brutes have a helmet you have to remove first, and they berserk if you kill their friends (with varying effectiveness depending on what game you're playing). Drones and Skirmishers are fast and hard to hit, and occasionally have shields of their own. Hunters you have to get behind (or land some lucky shots from the front), which usually involves getting in close, and they always come in pairs. Engineers you'll want to pop first, or every other enemy will get an overshield. Grunts are the exception, but they're just cannon fodder. A distraction while the bigger aliens try to kill you. Dangerous in groups, and they flee when their leader is killed.

Do you see the difference? All of Halo's enemies have something that makes them unique, and mixes up the combat. There's nothing special about Destiny's enemies. You just shoot them in the head. It's boring and repetitive.

Meh. I think you rationalized away the Destiny unit’s protections. Fallen Captains are very much like Elites. Hive Knights can form an invincible shield. I expect the Cabal units with big shields to act somewhat like Hunters, and who knows what the Vex do. Are there a couple more units in all of Halo than in the Destiny beta that require a second step for an easy kill? Perhaps. But you’re blowing that small difference way out of proportion.

[*]I wasn't challenged once. There is no difficulty to speak of. Even in single player, death just means you have to wait four seconds to get right back to where you were, with no penalties. There are occasionally rooms or small areas that don't allow you to respawn, but if you just sit back and shoot heads, you'll not have any trouble. Furthermore, if you're in a fireteam, dying in these areas isn't even permanent. The respawn time is just extended to 25 seconds. It's a lot harder to fail than to complete your objective, even with bosses.

The Beta was limited to a low level cap and what seemed to be tutorial level missions. It seems foolish to judge the entirety of Destiny by it, just as one wouldn’t judge all of Halo by its first level.

[*]Speaking of bosses, Destiny's are terrible. They take the term bullet sponge to the extreme. With a ridiculous amount of health, and two instant kill attacks, your only option for the Devil Walker is to stand behind one of the various pillars in the area while whittling away at its health, and deal with the occasional Fallen squad (which are just there to give you ammo), until it explodes fifteen minutes later. The second boss is much the same way, requiring the player to shoot its eye for ten minutes while swatting at the Fallen flies for ammo.

At the very least you can shoot off the four shot blue pulse launcher. Doesn’t completely address your boss complaint, but… well woe to those that use the term “only option.” :)

[*]Enemies infinitely respawn. Now, this is honestly to be expected in Explore mode. I mean, the world would feel empty pretty quickly if the enemies were permanently dead. However, they turned up the dial quite a bit too much. When I'm making my way through the plane graveyard, and the Fallen I just killed on the other side of the plane where I just was, start shooting at me ten seconds after I killed them, that's ridiculous. Should limit the respawning to explore mode. Having them respawn while I'm on a mission makes it feel like I'm not making any progress.

This one I agree with a bit. But then I also don’t want the world permanently depopulated by the fireteam in front of me.

[*]The aliens have no personality. They feel like soulless robot monsters. I never get the sense that they're scared, or happy, or curious. They either don't know I'm there, or they do. When they notice me, they're not shocked to see me, nor do they beat their chest with pride at the prospect of a challenge. It's just "TARGET ACQUIRED: FIRING MAIN CANNON."

Compare this, once more, to Halo. Or Gears of War. You can understand the Covenant and the Locust Horde's motivations, and get a sense of what they're feeling. They'll taunt you, get angry when their brothers die, or run from you if they're scared. At least, the Grunts and Jackals will. You get the feeling that these are sentient beings, with thoughts and emotions. Something I'm not getting from Destiny.

I’ve seen enemies taunt when they’ve shot me off a sparrow. Lower class enemies will often flee and hide if you beat their handlers. Are their emotions less obvious? Of course, it’s pretty hard to beat “Leader dead! Run away!” I think the emotional states of surprised, afraid, taunting, etc are present, however. I’m going to have to play more to really get a feel if they unit’s individual actions are under exposed or not grand enough to notice. It is possible that they are…

[*]Randomly running into other players while out and about is pretty cool. Why can't I talk to them? I think proximity chat should be enabled within shouting distance, communicating outside of hand gestures seems important to me. Maybe they want to show me something, or they heard a story from another guy earlier and they want to share. As long as there's a quick and easy way to mute them in case they're annoying, and an option to turn it off altogether, why not let us talk? Seems pretty unsociable in a game that's supposedly designed for the opposite.

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I agree there should be more options. I think the way it was in the beta is an ok default, especially for a T rated game.

PvP, and being the best in the world (briefly).

During the early access timeframe, there weren't a whole lot of people on. I kept seeing the same thirty or so names over and over. I played with several Bungie employees, a bunch of Microsoft employees, the guy who makes RoosterTeeth's music, and, oddly enough, a Treyarch higher-up. With so few people in the Beta, and only a small portion of them searching in the Crucible, I didn't get any matches in for a few days. On the 18th, the planets aligned and I participated in what I can only assume were the first two matches of the Beta on Xbox 360. The vast majority of the regulars on this forum have played Halo with me more than a few times. You know my style. Well, Bungie let me spawn with a sniper rifle, and my kill to death ratio for my first Destiny match was 4.25. I don't think I should spawn with the tools I need to dominate, I should have to earn them.

I deleted my main character the last day of the beta so I don’t have a link to the stats, but I got occasional 3 and 4 K/D games as well. And I didn’t do it by camping with a one shot kill rifle. I attribute some of those good games to most not being used to Destiny but some of it was certainly me adjusting and doing well. My first two dozen games or so my K/D was well below 0.5…

Bungie's philosophy with Destiny is clear; they want bad players to succeed where they shouldn't. It's all very frustrating when, like Halo 4, there's a good multiplayer game hiding in there. It's just covered in shit.

Yeah, completely disagree here. I’ve already gone into why. To quickly repeat though, there is a massive difference between a player succeeding where they shouldn’t and someone outplaying you. The first would be someone killing you via a glitch, or bug, or cheat. The second is them being better at Destiny than you in that particular encounter.

[*]Next, the low time to kill. This is one of the biggest problems. Although it isn't Call of Duty length, it's still far too short for personal skill to really matter. A low time to kill places greater emphasis on positioning (which you have little control over in a game with respawning), than a player's aiming skill. In Halo, Gears, or TF2, I can start taking damage from behind, and still have time to turn around and beat my attacker because I have better aim and strafing than they do. That's not the case in Destiny. If I'm getting shot from behind, I'm going to die.

Don’t get shot from behind? Ok, that’s a bit tongue in cheek, but it’s a different game. In my experience, in that I frequently used Scout Rifles or Hand Cannons for my primary gun, I had to use about the same amount of aiming as I do in Halo with a DMR. Perhaps a bit more since the enemy could kill me quicker with their Auto Rifles. A missed shot by me was probably a bit more disastrous in Destiny than in Halo… I guess I’m not seeing the lack of emphasis on aiming that you are…

[*]The ability to start the game with any gun eliminates the need to have weapons on the map. Without weapons on the map, there is no risk/reward to acquiring power weapons. You can automatically have a sniper rifle; you don't need to earn it. You don't need to hold down sniper spawn, you are sniper spawn. This discourages movement, and empowers camping. If I can sit on the rock above point B and rain down unlimited sniper ammo* on my unfortunate victims, why would I ever move?

It encourages camping, even in an objective gametype, because killing gives your team points, too. The best strategy on any map was to hold B and C, and just slaughter the idiots who dared to approach them. There's no reason to take A, even though we easily could. If they have A, then we know where they'll spawn. We get more objective points than them because we hold two bases to their one, and we're out-slaying them because we're camping.

I agree. This may become a problem. The “don’t take A” thing was already being used during the Beta… As discussed before, I don’t think you having unlimited sniper ammo is that big a deal since Destiny gives your enemies tools to better avoid, approach, and engage you.

[*]I imagine you're all familiar with the Interceptor by now. In the Beta, it was an unstoppable machine of death. I don't think I have to do much explaining here, it speaks for itself. Then it kills you. Over and over. If it sees you first, you're dead. If you see it first, run. If the driver is an idiot, you might be able to take it down with a super. If you get everyone on your team to focus fire on it, it'll go down eventually, but not without taking a few of you with it. What I like to do is get someone to distract it, them take the drivers head off from the side. However you do it, you had better do it fast. Otherwise, it could easily cost you the game.

I didn’t have quite the problem with the Interceptor that others had, but admittedly this is because I chose a “Run away! Run away!” strategy at all times.

It's very fast and kills a Guardian or Sparrow in one hit. Pike in two. To fix it, I'd decrease its health by about two thirds, and slow its rate of fire. Even better, It could require a driver and a gunner. Would promote teamwork.

Since the Beta, Bungie has announced that they'll nerf the Interceptor. I definitely agree with lowering its rate of fire and reducing the blast radius of the rockets. Not sure I understand what they mean by "arming shape", so no opinion on that. I do not agree with having only one on the map. With there being two, they always end up fighting each other. This usually results in one being destroyed, and the other being severely damaged*. That gives the team who lost their Interceptor a much better chance to take out the opponent's death machine.

The aiming shape I think referred to its proximity fuse. In the full game Interceptor pilots will need to be more accurate because the missiles will be less likely to airburst near enemy Guardians.

*In my time with the Beta, I couldn't tell if a vehicle being visually damaged mattered or not. Halo has had three different vehicle damage models. In Halo: CE, any damage done to your vehicle was permanent, and when your health ran out, you exploded. In Halo 2/3, your vehicle would take visible damage, but as long as the occupant(s) still had health, the vehicle was fine. In Reach/4, vehicles had health tiers. They could take damage to a point, and heal if that line wasn't crossed. If the damage went beyond that tier, the health was lost, but it still healed to the nearest tier. I wasn't able to determine how Destiny's vehicles worked.

My guess is something close to the health tiers model. The Interceptor seemed to gain a player’s shields, but damaging one especially severely did seem to help the next person take it out even if it had time to recharge.

[*]One of the most annoying parts of the multiplayer is the Supers. Titans can slam the ground and instantly kill everything around them. Warlocks can fly up in the air and Kamehameha wherever they're pointing, killing everyone in the area of effect. Hunters can go Super Saiyan and activate their golden guns, killing anything they almost hit. That's right, they don't actually have to hit their target to kill them, and they get three shots. They're acquired periodically (about every three minutes) throughout a match, and people don't actually have to do anything to get them. Getting points will speed up the process, but the super bar fills up automatically.

This is bad because players don't deserve those kills. They didn't best their opponent, they're not more skilled. They just pressed LB+RB to get free kills. It really discourages going for the objective when you know somebody can just press a button and you're done. Combined with having any weapon on spawn, and the Interceptor, instant death is a very common occurrence in the Crucible. The worst part is, your enemy doesn't have to be better than you. The game basically kills you on its own just by being as broken as it is.

What you call broken I call a different game. Supers did charge significantly faster if you captured points and got kills to the point I think I got supered twice by the same guy in one match before my super was ready, so there is a positive reinforcement to playing well and using the supers well. If one Super had dominated I would have had a problem but I thought they came out surprisingly well balanced to each other all things considered.

[*]The most important part of teamwork is communication. In Destiny, you can't talk to your teammates unless they're in your fireteam. I shouldn't have to invite people to my party just to talk to my teammates. Hand gestures aren't going to cut it. This one is pretty important, and not against their vision for the game. It may be my only point that has a chance of being fixed.

Right.

Also, I'd like to have proximity chat. Demoralizing and angering the other team is always a good strategy, and sometimes teabagging isn't enough.
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If that’s your attitude then I’m glad you aren’t buying the game. What’s a good strategy and what is appropriate or sportsmanlike are two very different things. Yelling and tea-bagging are unacceptable in my book. Period. (Using the dance emote in Destiny is just fine however)

These are general problems and disappointments.

• There is a disturbing lack of customization in this game. I can't select the color of my armor, emblem, ship, or sparrow. There aren't many armors, emblems, ships, or sparrows to choose from in the first place. I think it'd be cool to customize your guns, too. I'd probably like my guns a lot more if I could choose their colors. Also, it looks like there are no custom games in Destiny at all. Which brings me to...

As others have said, color options were in the Alpha (apparently) and will be in the final game.

[*]The weak feature-set. With Halo, Bungie were pioneers in bringing PC game features to consoles, and inventing new systems of play. First it was the FPS alone, then they created matchmaking. Halo 3 added theater mode, Forge, rendered films, and screenshots. Nobody else was bringing all of these things to a console in one game. They were ahead of the pack. With Destiny, that is no longer the case. The way you run into players in the world randomly is seamless, and very cool. It's just disappointing that they felt things like theater weren't important enough to keep.

Agreed. I like theater mode.

Remember all of Pete's awesome mini-games? There will be none in Destiny. You won't see any Destiny machinimas*. Remember Hedge and BlueNinja's awesome panoramas? You aren't going to see any from Destiny*. Screenshots will always have a visible HUD and gun*. You won't be able to inspect your clips from every angle.

*Unless they get creative and someone figures out how to disable the HUD and lower their gun.

Red vs. Blue began with a crosshair on the hud, didn’t it? I would be fairly surprised if Bungie did not include some helpful things for machinima though. We’ll see I guess…

[*]Destiny is being billed as a social game, but you can't talk to anybody unless you know them already. In Crucible, it's ridiculous that you can't hear your teammates if they aren't in your party. I've been over it, but communication is extremely important in multiplayer. In Campaign, proximity chat should be enabled for nearby Guardians. It would be cool as hell to run into another fireteam in the wild, swap war stories, and go about your respective business. Or tell them about a loot chest you just came from, or convince them to help you take out a high level enemy so you can get whatever it's guarding. Or whatever.

Again, I think silence is a good default, especially when some think angering other players is a good strategy.

[*]They talk about how there are more guns in Destiny than in all the Halo games combined. There are actually only nine guns in Destiny, with many small variations. The guns within each of the nine gun classes operate the same, but have small statistical differences. Every scout rifle is functionally the same. Having a smaller magazine and a slightly lower rate of fire does not make it much different. There are also no alien guns you can get for yourself. That was pretty disappointing. Bungie has been pretty inventive with alien weaponry in the past, and I was looking forward to what they had come up with this time. Most of the enemies use the same Needler-like gun, and the player can't pick it up.
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I do hope for alien weapons. Even the alien guns are named in the kill cam so it’s possible they are player usable. Also, I disagree with the guns being the same. The special abilities of the higher level guns looked to really be able to mix things up. Just in the beta I had a revolver that reloaded in half the time or less if I emptied its magazine. I got some extra kills because of that. Other guns could do additional damage, or regenerate ammo, or maintain stability, or quicken one of your cooldowns, and those were the simpler guns. The really high end stuff were getting pretty crazy with their abilities and often had more than one.

Even beyond that, I had a definite preference for one of my scout rifles over the other because it’s firing rate and power suited my play style more than the others.

Overall, I think this was a pretty disappointing review of the beta by you. You start with a purposely grating attitude in unfairly criticizing the story. You then move into the "they didn't deserve that kill" mindset which I highly disagree with. Some of your complaints were also uninformed like being able to customize colors. And to top it off you admitted that you think angering teabagging players is acceptable behavior. You have a handful of good points. Halo probably does have more expressive enemies. The rollback of the non-core feature set like Theater is disappointing but in my opinion you did not make up for your intentional lack of maturity.

In then end, if you really stand by some of the things you said, I think it is a good thing that you plan to stay away from Destiny.

It's not Halo.

:(
I know, and I'm not saying it should be. I tried comparing to other games so people wouldn't think this.

There are a lot of beefs stated in the OP that I can't completely disagree with, though. I see the logic, but we've seen so little of Destiny, I think it's premature.

I also tried to focus on things that applied to the full game. For example, I didn't comment on the story at all. I said I wasn't interested, but that was from being put off by the gameplay. The story could be amazing for all I know, or it could suck. Either way, I'm not going to buy a video game for its story.

• Enemy personality needs dialed up a bit. I think there's time. Hopefully we'll see more of that variation thrown into relief once we fight the Vex and Cabal. Not to mention get to sink our teeth into the story.

Maybe. The first two races being like they are though, isn't a good indication.

[*]Weapon selection does seem slim, though varied enough I could live with it for a while. I suspect alien weapon types are going to come into play eventually. As long as the base weapon type balances well in standard PvP, the version used in PvE and Iron Banner can be tweaked.

How many guns did Marathon have? I think Halo 1 had more than 9. Not that more is better. As long as they're varried and fun to use, you could probably get away with 6 guns in a shooter. Thing is, Destiny's guns are all things we've seen before. Other than maybe the fusion rifle, but even that operates similarly to things we've seen before.

[*]The vehicle selection gives me pause. Everything is some flavor of hoverbike, and there's no cooperation in operating more formidable death machines. At least that we've seen. There could be more held close to the vest.
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3 vehicles does seem low. I'll bet they have tanks or some flying vehicles hidden.

Those things aside, I'm extremely pleased by everything else we've seen. There's a bunch we know about that we haven't gotten to play with yet, particularly exotic weapons and subclasses, along with the aforementioned races. And Raids.

People keep bringing up exotics. I would need to see them.

It's still way too early to call, I think. Hang in there. Even if you're not digging the new gameplay formula yet, see how the whole package stacks up.

~m

- No text -

I'm going to cut all of the bits about the story. I did not complain about the story, I don't have enough information to judge it either way. I was merely disinterested because the gameplay was bad, I even said flat out that I thought the opening cutscene was really cool.

Also, I don't know who this Tyrion person is.

Peter Dinklage plays Tyrion Lannister on Game of Thrones. My Ghost's name was Tyrion.

Meh. I think you rationalized away the Destiny unit’s protections. Fallen Captains are very much like Elites.

Right, except the Captain's shields don't matter much since you always have a power weapon.

Hive Knights can form an invincible shield.

Yes, and it heals them, too. Although, I can always one-shot them on account of the power weapons thing.

I expect the Cabal units with big shields to act somewhat like Hunters, and who knows what the Vex do.

Exactly, we don't know how they'll be. That's why I only complained about the Fallen and Hive.

Are there a couple more units in all of Halo than in the Destiny beta that require a second step for an easy kill? Perhaps. But you’re blowing that small difference way out of proportion.

It's no small difference, every enemy in Destiny (at least Fallen and Hive) is most efficiently fought the same way. Every enemy in Halo had something about them that made them unique, and mixed up the combat.

The Beta was limited to a low level cap and what seemed to be tutorial level missions. It seems foolish to judge the entirety of Destiny by it, just as one wouldn’t judge all of Halo by its first level.

It was more about how enemies acted. I could just sit back and shoot their heads to win, in every situation. They never rushed me or anything like that (except Thralls, but they're so weak that they never even got near me). They would sometimes take cover, but that didn't matter since they would keep poking their heads out and letting me shoot them.

At the very least you can shoot off the four shot blue pulse launcher. Doesn’t completely address your boss complaint, but… well woe to those that use the term “only option.” :)

Right, and that's good. Imagine though if shooting off that pulse launcher angered it and it started chasing you. Then you have to shoot the legs while avoiding shots until he stumbles, allowing you to shoot it in the power core on its rear. Or, you could jump on top of the tank, shoot off the hatch, and toss in a nade. Killing the occupants (assuming there are occupants). Wouldn't that be way more fun than shooting his legs for 15 minutes?

This one I agree with a bit. But then I also don’t want the world permanently depopulated by the fireteam in front of me.

In a story mission, there are no fireteams in front of you. I did say they should respawn in explore, just maybe not as much.

I’ve seen enemies taunt when they’ve shot me off a sparrow. Lower class enemies will often flee and hide if you beat their handlers. Are their emotions less obvious? Of course, it’s pretty hard to beat “Leader dead! Run away!” I think the emotional states of surprised, afraid, taunting, etc are present, however. I’m going to have to play more to really get a feel if they unit’s individual actions are under exposed or not grand enough to notice. It is possible that they are…

I was never taunted, and I think some of you guys are confusing taking cover for fleeing. It would be cool if they could speak broken english to taunt you or beg for mercy.

I agree there should be more options. I think the way it was in the beta is an ok default, especially for a T rated game.

Like I said, as long as there is a quick and easy way to mute people or turn it off altogether, I don't see a problem.

Yeah, completely disagree here. I’ve already gone into why. To quickly repeat though, there is a massive difference between a player succeeding where they shouldn’t and someone outplaying you. The first would be someone killing you via a glitch, or bug, or cheat. The second is them being better at Destiny than you in that particular encounter.

I deserve to die if someone out-snipes me, or if I get out shot in a one on one battle. Or if multiple opponents are sticking together and get the jump on me while I'm alone.

I do not deserve to die because somebody's free kill meter is charged, and I happen to be in the area.

Don’t get shot from behind? Ok, that’s a bit tongue in cheek, but it’s a different game. In my experience, in that I frequently used Scout Rifles or Hand Cannons for my primary gun, I had to use about the same amount of aiming as I do in Halo with a DMR. Perhaps a bit more since the enemy could kill me quicker with their Auto Rifles. A missed shot by me was probably a bit more disastrous in Destiny than in Halo… I guess I’m not seeing the lack of emphasis on aiming that you are…

With a higher time to kill, people have to keep their aim on target longer to get kills. It takes more skill to do so. Lower time to kill means individual aiming skill is less of a factor in who wins an encounter.

I agree. This may become a problem. The “don’t take A” thing was already being used during the Beta… As discussed before, I don’t think you having unlimited sniper ammo is that big a deal since Destiny gives your enemies tools to better avoid, approach, and engage you.

In Destiny I was almost unstoppable. I had unlimited sniper ammo, and even if I was killed, I'd be right back at it 10 seconds later. In Gears or Halo, I first have to earn my guns by fighting for control of where they spawn. Then I get 10-12 shots. If someone kills me, then now they have the gun, and it's my job to get it back. When the ammo runs out, everyone has to wait a couple minutes before the gun respawns, then we fight over it again and the cycle repeats.

I didn’t have quite the problem with the Interceptor that others had, but admittedly this is because I chose a “Run away! Run away!” strategy at all times.

Smart move.

The aiming shape I think referred to its proximity fuse. In the full game Interceptor pilots will need to be more accurate because the missiles will be less likely to airburst near enemy Guardians.

That makes sense. A good decision, then.

My guess is something close to the health tiers model. The Interceptor seemed to gain a player’s shields, but damaging one especially severely did seem to help the next person take it out even if it had time to recharge.

In campaign though, any damage the Sparrow took was permanent. That could be different in multiplayer.

What you call broken I call a different game. Supers did charge significantly faster if you captured points and got kills to the point I think I got supered twice by the same guy in one match before my super was ready, so there is a positive reinforcement to playing well and using the supers well. If one Super had dominated I would have had a problem but I thought they came out surprisingly well balanced to each other all things considered.

Okay, I guess they can be balanced against each other. That doesn't mean they're balanced with the rest of the sandbox.

If that’s your attitude then I’m glad you aren’t buying the game. What’s a good strategy and what is appropriate or sportsmanlike are two very different things. Yelling and tea-bagging are unacceptable in my book. Period. (Using the dance emote in Destiny is just fine however)

Hey now, I don't do it. I'm not going to deny that it's a sound tactic, though.

As others have said, color options were in the Alpha (apparently) and will be in the final game.

That's good, but, people complained about having to unlock emblems in H4. This is a whole new level!

Red vs. Blue began with a crosshair on the hud, didn’t it? I would be fairly surprised if Bungie did not include some helpful things for machinima though. We’ll see I guess…

Red vs Blue was started in the infancy of machinima, though. I don't see that going over well these days.

Again, I think silence is a good default, especially when some think angering other players is a good strategy.

In campaign? Running into random people could be awesome. Swap war stories, tell each oter about hidden items, whatever. If you don't like them, mute them. Or... challenge them to a crucible match right there in game! If they accept, it takes your parties right to a private game where you can fight it out.

I do hope for alien weapons. Even the alien guns are named in the kill cam so it’s possible they are player usable. Also, I disagree with the guns being the same. The special abilities of the higher level guns looked to really be able to mix things up. Just in the beta I had a revolver that reloaded in half the time or less if I emptied its magazine. I got some extra kills because of that. Other guns could do additional damage, or regenerate ammo, or maintain stability, or quicken one of your cooldowns, and those were the simpler guns. The really high end stuff were getting pretty crazy with their abilities and often had more than one.

I really would have to see how much variance these high tier weapons have, so no comment. As for the examples you listed, that's just not enough. Think about the difference between a plasma pistol and the needler. Or the shotgun and BR. THOSE are different guns to me.

Overall, I think this was a pretty disappointing review of the beta by you. You start with a purposely grating attitude in unfairly criticizing the story. You then move into the "they didn't deserve that kill" mindset which I highly disagree with. Some of your complaints were also uninformed like being able to customize colors. And to top it off you admitted that you think angering teabagging players is acceptable behavior. You have a handful of good points. Halo probably does have more expressive enemies. The rollback of the non-core feature set like Theater is disappointing but in my opinion you did not make up for your intentional lack of maturity.

Maybe with the context I've provided here you'll enjoy it more.

In then end, if you really stand by some of the things you said, I think it is a good thing that you plan to stay away from Destiny.

Well that was a lot. Do you feel better now that you got it all out? ;)

A bit. The thought of all the replying I have to do now is a little overwhelming, though.

Interesting points and thoughts in your post. Some I agree with, some I don't, some that didn't apply to me.

I'll cut your multiplayer portion because I largely agree and have nothing to add.

Enemies

You bring up an interesting point about the enemies and personalities. Perhaps I was one of the lucky ones? I can recall SEVERAL times where I was a level 8, and I'd run up on two lone level 2 Dregs in explore mode and they'd run away from me.

Likely taking cover, not fleeing from you.

I also recall a couple of times where I had a Thrall (Flood zombie)cower from me, like it would shake it's head and cower. It's possible that is NOT what it was doing, and I couldn't duplicate it, but I swear it happened once I greased a bunch of his friends or something.

Sounds like a glitch. Not something I experienced.

As for the rest of the enemies... you've got a point. I can't recall any of the other enemies at any other time really doing anything other than staying in their little areas. Sometimes a Knight would pull up a shield when I was donging on him from afar, but he'd just stay there. If I did that shit to a Hunter in Halo, he starts walking towards you to make you regret it.

Plus, you can't one shot a Hunter with your sniper (Halo 3-onward).

The Tank was boring, and just like a scarab but smaller. Shoot leg, fall down, shoot glowy part for extra damage.

Now for the Sphere boss (Sepiks Prime) I had a way different experience, but I was running all over the map too, so maybe that made a difference? Basically, he'd follow me everywhere and turn on his vacuum beam and kill me if he got me in a corner. Lol, there was one time he was with the two randoms, and I was donking on him from afar and he just tele-ported away. I looked for him and could not find him, then I looked up, and then I died. I thought that was pretty fun haha. But other than that, he was no different from the little guys and ultimately just took longer to kill.

Maybe I was too busy to notice, but looking back, I see it now. They were pretty bland. I hope that was just beta being beta.

Something like that isn't going to change from beta. Especially with only a month to release. Look at how much changed from the H3 and Reach betas. Not much, and that was with four months between beta and release.

Weapons

Everything seems the same to me. A rifle is a rifle is a rifle blah blah blah. I had the same feeling of overload that I did the first time I played MW2 where it was like "Oh shit, how do I know what guns are the good guns? There are so many guns...they all look the same and yet are slightly different! What do I use?".

I don't think it's CoD level bad, but yeah. I see the similarity.

I didn't bother looking at names- I won't remember that shit. I found one I liked later on that was basically the DMR from Reach. That was my favorite. Then I found that same gun, but it was named differently for some raisin, but the only thing that was noticeably different was a larger mag. Hooray!

Same thing, different name.

I said the same thing about alien weapons. Hopefully you can use them later, and they were just hiding that for the beta. I noticed that when I got killed by enemies that it would tell me the name of what they used to kill me. That bodes well I think.

Hopefully. Alien weapons always seem to be the most creative. Which makes sense.

Melee pisses me the fuck off and I played as Titan, so I should have loved it right?

Eh, I dunno. Melee felt pretty solid to me. Maybe a little too much lunge, but I'm used to that by now. Doesn't make it okay, I've just stopped noticing it.

Well I play sneaky. Multiple times I would sneak up on a group of Fallen, and I'd melee them in the back and it wouldn't insta kill them. This needs to be a thing. Maybe not for Captains and larger boss type enemies, but I should be able to ninja pretty much any lower type of enemy, regardless of level. Also, why no assassinations? The hunter knife in particular begs for it! It's not like Microsoft and Halo own the term or action- what gives??

Every time I tried to be stealthy, I would always be noticed when I got within five feet of my target. Even if I didn't make a sound, and none of them could possibly see me, they would instantly turn around and start blasting.

I like the type-damage mechanic- very Metroid Prime-ish. I like that certain races are move vulnerable to certain types, but that should apply to more than shields. That mechanic does encourage variety in weapon use, which is a good thing. However, in the beta, with fusion rifles for example it just meant that I used the exact same gun (3 slots) but with a different buff on each one. That's not exactly variety. That's like a peanut butter sandwich with white, wheat, or other. It's still a sandwich.

I didn't know what any of that meant, and it never seemed to matter. Bad guys went down equally fast if it was a fire weapon or a water weapon.

Art Style and world stuff: I must be missing something, but this game does not feel or look like Halo to me. It SOUNDS like Halo, but that is it, to me. Old Russia didn't wow me, but was nice to look at. The Moon however was fan-freakin-tastic and I want to go back. Did you get to do the moon? The hive stuff actually had atmosphere and was very crypt-like. Also, are they called Hive "Tube" or Hive "Tomb" ships? Anywho, that area was cool and exploring it with Paddy and Bones was the highlight of the Beta for me. I've got a good feeling for the rest.

The feel like Halo comment was about gameplay. Not the art.
Yep, I went to the moon. Reminded me a lot of Gears 2. Old Russia reminded me of Jacinto, as well.

I think the characters look stupid as hell. I don't get the obsession with capes and pieces of cloth with clashing colors and emblems on my character. I don't get the tribal face paints yet future everything else. I don't get the Decepticon looking Space ships. Why should I spend money one one? So I can look at it? It doesn't do anything. Why should I care about it?

I agree on human characters. Hated 'em. I liked the alien designs, though. Especially the Captains.

I have to disagree with most of your story complaints because there is much more to see, and hopefully the dead ghost\grimore cards fill in gaps and make you want "more". As long as I don't have to leave the game to go read them.

I didn't have any story complaints, so I don't see how you could disagree with them.

There are no characters I feel close to, or care about. When you are in a fire team with other players and you advance in the story, the cutscene only shows YOU. YOU are the center. YOU are the nexus. YOU are the only thing that matters, and thats fucking stupid. When Paddy + Bones + I play, I didn't see their characters. THEY were the ones who completed the end mission objective, yet I'm the one getting thanked?

May have been too much work to animate the other two players. Idk, but I agree it would have been cooler if your friends were in the cutscene with you.

C'mon. Halo 3 and Reach did this much better. Everybody was included, even if it was minor.

I don't remember anyone but Chief being in H3's cutscenes, with the occasional Arbiter. Those red and blue elites were never there, IIRC.

In Reach, I remember that only one player was in cutscenes. the only thing like that was whoever lasted longest during the last mission was the one in the cutscene (I think).

My Musings.

Destiny IS an MMO. I don't care who says otherwise. It has all the grindy bits that make it one. Your sole motivator outside of the story is a quest for stuff. It's still fun, but I don't know why. I don't like that we can't get more than 3-6 in a group. I was REALLY looking forward to getting 16 of us together and just steam-rolling the countryside, but it is not to be.

Never played an MMO. Can't really comment on that one.

Yet for such a social game, it's the least social thing I've played in a lot of respects.

Doesn't even let people talk to each other.

I'm getting it, but I'm not worried about day 1, pre-orders or any of that stuff. I want to play more campaign with you guys, and that's pretty much it.

See you in November.

I agree wholeheartedly with you that Destiny doesn't want you to fail. Destiny wants everyone to do well, everyone to be a winner. That's why they don't show you deaths, you get supers for just standing and a sure kill if you can just point in someones general direction. It wants you to get multi-kills and to feel like a tank (in MP and solo). There is no penalty for death. The only times that there was any, was the no-respawn campaign zones, and hoping that my random teammates didn't die. Sometimes that was tense. Beyond that, I did get the feeling that something was off. It felt too easy. Even with difficulty bumped up as high as it would let me, all that really did was make things more bullet spongy. The enemies didn't really get smarter.

Again, I hope most of that was beta being beta. We'll see!

This close to ship? Don't count on it.

It was more about how enemies acted. I could just sit back and shoot their heads to win, in every situation. They never rushed me or anything like that (except Thralls, but they're so weak that they never even got near me). They would sometimes take cover, but that didn't matter since they would keep poking their heads out and letting me shoot them

In the first mission Thralls did indeed rush. In the strike Dreg, cloaked Vandals, and Shanks would all rush at various times along with a mini-boss level Captan. There's also some knife only Vandals out in the world of Old Russia. During the Spider Tank public event I was fighting it alone one time and got nicely flanked by both Shanks and Vandals to the point I was hoping help would arrive to bail me out. On the Moon the Fallen did a decent job of entering the first complex and coming after us and at the Temple of Crota it was one big rush as several enemies spilled out to greet us. (While awesome music blared!)

Maybe you just didn't play enough or didn't set the difficulty high on the Strike?

I do not deserve to die because somebody's free kill meter is charged, and I happen to be in the area.

One. it is not a free kill meter. Nova Bomb has a limited range and is dodgeable. Fist of Havock has roughly the range of a grenade requiring someone to get next to you to use it. Golden Gun has around a ten second window of opportunity and puts a lot of pressure on its user to make every shot count. Powerful? Yes. But really not much more so than having a sniper or shotgun with you at all times. With the recharge on the Super you can and will almost certainly do more damage with your special weapon that you will your Super during a match.

Two. You weren't playing Halo. You were playing Destiny. The rules are different. The game is different. Knowing what class of enemy you are fighting is part of the strategy. Staying mobile and off the capture points unless you have a good reason to be on them is part of the strategy. I think as I get better straight up dodging Supers will increasingly become part of my strategy. I'm also very much looking forward to the day when my Titan can counter the offensive Supers with his Ward of Dawn bubble shield (how is something a free kill meter if the thing it activates is non-lethal?) forming a very interesting counter strategy.

Besides it wasn't like there weren't very quick deaths in Halo. It's my opinion that the sniper rifle, shotgun, and rocket launcher in Halo are cheap free-kill weapons. Instead of fighting me equal to equal people sometimes killed me with those one shot weapons and there was little I could do about it. Some of those weapons were just leaning against a nearby wall near the enemy's spawn point at the start of the match. And they came back every couple of minutes.

If you really truly want games to be skill vs skill you shouldn't allow any power weapons and should keep everyone absolutely equal at all times.

With a higher time to kill, people have to keep their aim on target longer to get kills. It takes more skill to do so. Lower time to kill means individual aiming skill is less of a factor in who wins an encounter.

I have to get my aim on you before you get yours on me. I have to keep my aim on you longer than you keep it on me. The kill times may be shorter in some cases but you still have to be more skilled than the other person. Plus now you're under increased time pressure. I'm not convinced it doesn't all average out.

In campaign though, any damage the Sparrow took was permanent. That could be different in multiplayer

I didn't take the time to test it. The Pikes and Interceptor certainly stayed at some level of damage. Whether they recharge any or not is still up in the air as far as I know.

Hey now, I don't do it. I'm not going to deny that it's a sound tactic, though.

It's not a sound tactic because it should not be a tactic at all. Back in my middle school days a tactic to avoid losing at Starcraft in our weekly computer class games was to walk over and switch off one of the enemy's computers... But anybody that did it was no allowed to play from then on and next time. Likewise those that abuse speech or teabag should be banned.

I really would have to see how much variance these high tier weapons have, so no comment. As for the examples you listed, that's just not enough. Think about the difference between a plasma pistol and the needler. Or the shotgun and BR. THOSE are different guns to me.

We don't know we've seen all the gun. The enemy has access to named mortar launchers and tracking projectile gun, and as others have said it's been hinted that there may be more alien weapons in the game for Guardians to use. It may turn out to be a false rumor but right now it's too early to judge Destiny's complete weapon set.

It's just far too easy all around. So yes, your general players might get more kills because Bungie is highly catering to them, but that doesn't mean that the really good players won't also benefit big time by the ability to kill easier.

That's because everybody was level 8? You were playing with pretty much everybody. I'd hope that in the final the matching algorithm would put you with players near your skill.

Nope. Level in Destiny has proven not to matter beyond what gear you have, and even then that only really matters in Iron Banner. I was using a very, very weak gun in Crucible that I got well before level 8 that had a higher Impact stat. Doesn't matter if I was playing with pretty much everyone, because again, levels don't matter since you get those based on random play experience and not from any actual skill. I could get to level 20 just by playing nothing but Story mode, hop into Crucible, and continue to rock people as I was.

As to your last part, I'd like to hope that they have some way of matching me based on skill, too, assuming they can determine it based on the extreme lack of balance, ease of kills/death, and balance issues.

I was thinking about this whole thing more, and it's still not of much help, you know? Okay, so let's assume we see it pulsating or whatever on that guy in that enclosed tunnel area on Venus. That guy could have hit his triggers and activated it. The dude who killed him in that gif would have been dead. Why? Warlock has a ranged blast, Titan Hulk Smash leaps at you, and in the case of the Hunter, if they activate that before rounding the corner, all they have to do is fire in the general area of your pinky toe, miss, and still get the kill. Dunno.

Supers are whack, and seeing them coming from a distance is about the only way to survive them aside from just dumb luck. I found myself really only surviving them when in a Pike, Interceptor, or on the Sparrow. And by surviving, I mean against Titan and Warlock only.

I was thinking about this whole thing more, and it's still not of much help, you know? Okay, so let's assume we see it pulsating or whatever on that guy in that enclosed tunnel area on Venus. That guy could have hit his triggers and activated it. The dude who killed him in that gif would have been dead. Why? Warlock has a ranged blast, Titan Hulk Smash leaps at you, and in the case of the Hunter, if they activate that before rounding the corner, all they have to do is fire in the general area of your pinky toe, miss, and still get the kill. Dunno.

Supers are whack, and seeing them coming from a distance is about the only way to survive them aside from just dumb luck. I found myself really only surviving them when in a Pike, Interceptor, or on the Sparrow. And by surviving, I mean against Titan and Warlock only.

I agree that the indicator isn't much help. I didn't even know it was there so for me it was no help. Even knowing about it I think you'll do far better buy assuming a Super and guarding against it by using your radar, keeping some distance, and avoiding running into tunnels than by spending time looking for a somewhat hard to see indicator.

How many guns did Marathon have?

M1 has seven, if you count fists as their own weapon:

Fists
Magnum
AR
Fusion Pistol
SPNKR
Flamethrower
Alien Weapon

I think Halo 1 had more than 9.

The original game has eight player-usable weapons:

Pistol
AR
Shotgun
Sniper
SPNKR
PP
PR
Needler

In the first mission Thralls did indeed rush.

Thralls weren't in the first mission. I did say, though, that Thralls rushed. It just doesn't matter since they're so weak. One shot and done.

In the strike Dreg, cloaked Vandals, and Shanks would all rush at various times along with a mini-boss level Captan.

That actually was a case of you being in their assigned spot. They weren't rushing you, they were just heading to the place they were supposed to go. The place you were whittling away at the tanks health from. Those guys were there to provide you ammo, since you're going to be doing a lot of leg shooting. Or eyeball shooting. Same situation with both bosses.

There's also some knife only Vandals out in the world of Old Russia. During the Spider Tank public event I was fighting it alone one time and got nicely flanked by both Shanks and Vandals to the point I was hoping help would arrive to bail me out. On the Moon the Fallen did a decent job of entering the first complex and coming after us and at the Temple of Crota it was one big rush as several enemies spilled out to greet us. (While awesome music blared!)

Maybe you just didn't play enough or didn't set the difficulty high on the Strike?

I played plenty. 40 something story missions, did the Strike 14 times, and ~15 explore sessions. I made sure I was thorough. I also always made sure the difficulty was set to its highest setting, but that doesn't do much. Enemies are a higher level, which means they have more health, and I do less damage. It didn"t change their tactics or behaviors. The only result of bumping up the difficulty was that it took a little longer.

One. it is not a free kill meter.

That's exactly what it is. When it fills up, you can use your super to get free kills.

Nova Bomb has a limited range and is dodgeable.

Dodgeable how, exactly? There's no dodge button. No evade. If the user aims anywhere near you, you're dead.

Fist of Havock has roughly the range of a grenade requiring someone to get next to you to use it.

Yep. They get next to you, and instantly kill you. 3 people taking the objective you're covering? Facing certain death? No worries, Power Fist© has you covered! Instantly fry all of those idiots with just the touch of a button!

Golden Gun has around a ten second window of opportunity and puts a lot of pressure on its user to make every shot count.

Yeah, ten seconds to be God. How stressful. Ten seconds where you can kill anything in one shot just by shooting in the general vicinity of it. I don't know if I'd be able to handle that much pressure. /sarc

Powerful? Yes. But really not much more so than having a sniper or shotgun with you at all times.

Right, and it's not nearly as bad. Spawning with whatever you want is a much bigger problem than supers. Doesn't mean supers are okay.

With the recharge on the Super you can and will almost certainly do more damage with your special weapon that you will your Super during a match.

Absolutely, and that's why choosing whatever weapon you want is a much bigger problem than supers.

Two. You weren't playing Halo.

Obviously.

You were playing Destiny.

Unfortunately.

The rules are different. The game is different. Knowing what class of enemy you are fighting is part of the strategy.

What class the enemies were was completely irrelevant. They can all activate their free kills at any time, regardless of class.

Staying mobile and off the capture points unless you have a good reason to be on them is part of the strategy.

Playing the objective seems like a good reason.

I think as I get better straight up dodging Supers will increasingly become part of my strategy.

I'd love to hear how you plan to do this.

I'm also very much looking forward to the day when my Titan can counter the offensive Supers with his Ward of Dawn bubble shield (how is something a free kill meter if the thing it activates is non-lethal?) forming a very interesting counter strategy.

They're putting the bubble shield in? Frackin hell. Well, I guess at that point, it becomes a free invincibility meter. Not a whole lot better.

Besides it wasn't like there weren't very quick deaths in Halo. It's my opinion that the sniper rifle, shotgun, and rocket launcher in Halo are cheap free-kill weapons.

To get those weapons you have to fight for them in Halo. You pay for them in blood. You do not have to earn your super. It is given to you for free.

Instead of fighting me equal to equal people sometimes killed me with those one shot weapons and there was little I could do about it.

You could try killing them and taking it for yourself. Then they won't have it and you can kill them while they try to take it back.

Some of those weapons were just leaning against a nearby wall near the enemy's spawn point at the start of the match. And they came back every couple of minutes.

If they get one at the start of the match, then so does your team. If Blue sniper loses to Red's, then Red sniper has earned a few seconds of uncontested killing. Once someone on Blue picks their sniper back up, Red has to fight for the right to party again.

If you really truly want games to be skill vs skill you shouldn't allow any power weapons and should keep everyone absolutely equal at all times.

The skill in power weapons comes from acquiring them (and knowing how to use them, obviously). Start stripping everything out of the game and you're getting into MLG thinking. No variance isn't fun. My issue isn't that there are power weapons or supers in Destiny, it's how you get them. There's no risk/reward. You just have them.

I have to get my aim on you before you get yours on me.

This applies to every online shooter. It is the first advantage a player can get in a single engagement. How much it matters depends on the time to kill. If short, then whoever sees who first is probably going to win. If longer like Halo/Gears, then whoever gets jumped has a chance to come back.

I have to keep my aim on you longer than you keep it on me.

Also applies to all shooters.

The kill times may be shorter in some cases but you still have to be more skilled than the other person. Plus now you're under increased time pressure. I'm not convinced it doesn't all average out.

They're shorter in all cases, wich takes less personal aiming skill and gives the person being attacked no chance to counter. You're not under increased time pressure because before you know you're being shot, you're dead.

It's not a sound tactic because it should not be a tactic at all.

Whether it should be or not doesn't change that it is.

Back in my middle school days a tactic to avoid losing at Starcraft in our weekly computer class games was to walk over and switch off one of the enemy's computers... But anybody that did it was no allowed to play from then on and next time.

That's not comparable at all. Turning off the computer ends their game completely. Yelling at them and telling them they suck doesn't stop them from playing.

Likewise those that abuse speech or teabag should be banned.

Whoa there, that's a bit extreme, isn't it? The goal there is to piss them off so they don't play as well. Wouldn't repeatedly taking their heads off with my sniper accomplish the same thing? Should I get banned for that, too? Be realistic.

We don't know we've seen all the gun. The enemy has access to named mortar launchers and tracking projectile gun, and as others have said it's been hinted that there may be more alien weapons in the game for Guardians to use. It may turn out to be a false rumor but right now it's too early to judge Destiny's complete weapon set.

Well I'd say that's some pretty good evidence. We'll have to wait and see, though.

One. it is not a free kill meter.

That's exactly what it is. When it fills up, you can use your super to get free kills.

Nova Bomb has a limited range and is dodgeable.

Dodgeable how, exactly? There's no dodge button. No evade. If the user aims anywhere near you, you're dead.

Fist of Havock has roughly the range of a grenade requiring someone to get next to you to use it.

Yep. They get next to you, and instantly kill you. 3 people taking the objective you're covering? Facing certain death? No worries, Power Fist© has you covered! Instantly fry all of those idiots with just the touch of a button!

I think as I get better straight up dodging Supers will increasingly become part of my strategy.

I'd love to hear how you plan to do this.

About the Supers, except for the Golden Gun, I actually got pretty good at dodging them once I set my mind to it, as opposed to just giving up and embrace the hurt.

If you double-jump (for speed) away from from a Titan (to his/her sides is more consistent, in my experience) as soon as he/she does the Fist jump, you might even be able to escape without a single pixel of damage. I've done it consistently on the last two days of Crucible, failing much less than a third of the times I tried.

Now, Nova Bomb is a bit harder, especially if it has the tracking perk, but sprinting away when the Warlock charges up (thumbstick sensitivity should be pretty high to let you turn away fast) allied with a double jump when the Nova Bomb actually approaches works. I'm not gonna lie, it worked for me only a handful of times when they were 1v1 with me, but at least it wasn't 100% guaranteed to kill me. But when they weren't specifically aiming at me, it was pretty easy to escape the blast zone like this.

Likewise those that abuse speech or teabag should be banned.

Whoa there, that's a bit extreme, isn't it? The goal there is to piss them off so they don't play as well. Wouldn't repeatedly taking their heads off with my sniper accomplish the same thing? Should I get banned for that, too? Be realistic.

Well, if you already excel at the latter, why do you need to verbally abuse people? I mean, I'm all for proximity chat, but verbal abuse with the intent of disrupting a person's peace of mind is very douchy, IMO.

Whoa there, that's a bit extreme, isn't it? The goal there is to piss them off so they don't play as well. Wouldn't repeatedly taking their heads off with my sniper accomplish the same thing? Should I get banned for that, too? Be realistic.

No, you be realistic. Being good at a video game is not the same as telling someone they suck or worse. That you're even defending this is pretty sad.

As for the rest, I disagree entirely.

Regarding customization: I believe Bungie only showed a tiny taste. Shaders, exploration, new gizmos, whatever.

What I have been hoping for doesn't seem likely to happen: that either individual players or, failing that, clans can customise their emblems. That doesn't seem to be something they have in mind for Destiny, having been dropped in favour of pre-built emblems that you can unlock.

That's vastly inferior to the logo system of all the Halo games since Halo 2 in my opinion, since players are constrained in two ways: the options they have available to them (a smaller range, since most options need to be unlocked), and the options they actually like. I understand the desire to make some options unlockable (cosmetic rewards as well as item upgrades), but I'd have much preferred something similar to Diablo 3's banner system: you have a palette of design components from which you can create your own emblem (like the Halo series) but various components are unlocked throughout the game, for achievements mostly.

I'm interested to see how the shader system will work, but I'm slightly concerned that limited availability of the rarer shaders combined with personal preference will result in a shallow range of actual appearances. The beta felt very identikit with players of each class all looking more or less the same. Time will tell if that is true at release too.

Damn, i agree with everything you just said. Im upset because i didn't realise it till i read your post. I think you just ruined Destiny for me. :(

I think you just ruined Destiny for me. :(

I agreed with a lot of what Snipe said, but that doesn't mean it's ruined Destiny for me; you can be disappointed in the things that didn't meet your expectations and still enjoy the game. I was disappointed with Halo: Reach, but I still really enjoyed it.

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