Very disappointed in Destiny. *long* *TL;DR included* (Destiny)

by Kalamari , Waiting for Ghorn, FB, and BH, Thursday, August 07, 2014, 21:13 (3763 days ago) @ Joe Duplessie (SNIPE 316)

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.
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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.
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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.