The Rest. (Destiny)

by Ragashingo , Official DBO Cryptarch, Friday, August 08, 2014, 16:37 (3762 days ago) @ Joe Duplessie (SNIPE 316)

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.