When death is of little consequence (Destiny)

by Ragashingo , Official DBO Cryptarch, Tuesday, August 12, 2014, 16:05 (3760 days ago) @ Avateur

They're not lying. This is an area where Destiny gameplay is so far different from Halo gameplay that I'm having a hard time picturing how this is really going to work. Ranked in Halo worked a hell of a lot better than in Social, but they also experienced many problems in Ranked. Social playlists seem to have no real coherent matchmaking system in any of the Halo games when it comes to matching for skill.

Then there's my argument that Destiny seems to throw skill and balance largely out the window. This game is absolutely not Halo in that respect. I'm very, very skeptical at the thought of a system that will actually find some meaningful way to balance teams or individual players in Destiny. I'd be more than happy to be proven wrong come launch, though.

I don't know. I tended to have decent Halo games with the occasional time where my team won decisively and the times where we got stomped. If Destiny can deliver that much... well that's enough for me. It will be interesting to see what it does with remaking new Guardians and how loot and gear will affect things. I guess I don't see what's so hard with getting a good match. A lot of the same stats that applied in Halo apply in Destiny. Yeah, the game plays a little quicker but it's not like we're moving and reacting so fast that the behind the scenes systems can't keep up. If anything Destiny has more data points it can use to help it match.

Aiming. Maybe you see me first and my teammates first. You get those shots off first. Unlike Halo or many other shooters, there's no real hopes for escape and no way to strafe you. This falls into Call of Duty territory now. I'm dead. You win. Your Super is powering up faster.

It doesn't play that fast. Were there some times I got shot at and could not escape? Sure. But you can die very quickly in Halo as well. I miss the long AR battles of Reach, but disengaging and running away to fight another day seemed a lot more valid to me than you're making it out to be. I got some fun kills by retreating then hiding around a corner, or catching an enemy off guard while he was sprinting after me (since it takes time to reready your weapon after sprinting) or with a knowingly placed grenade.

I may be unintentionally downplaying the kill times slightly, but to me it felt like Halo tactics still worked, except maybe strafing. With most guns in Destiny having good sights and more guns having a decently tight shot spread I would imagine trying to absorb incoming fire is not as valid an option in Destiny as it was in Halo.

Positioning and map control I'll call the same thing. We'll pretend this is the Beta still and we're talking about the Moon and Venus. You have B and C. That's all you need to spawn camp and control the tunnels/center depending on which map. Trust me. I and my team did it PLENTY. We may be completely even, but you have us pretty screwed for the rest fo the game barring a really heroic and lucky effort. Camping applies to this as well. Camp C with a sniper rifle on Venus, bye bye people who come in. Camp center tunnels on Venus with a shotgun, bye bye people who come in. I could go on, but nah. The same applied to the Earth map, btw. The Mars map was the only one that seemed to really fluctuate.

On the larger issue I see positioning as the more personal issue of which way you are facing and where you are standing to best control your next engagement. Map control is more about which points you control. If your team positions people away from the control points to slow and disrupt and flank the enemy. And grabbing or defending the heavy ammo spawns. For the specifics:

How much of the above is actually a problem though? If you can successfully take and defend B and C isn't your reward having an advantage over the other team? I get what you're saying. But at this point I'm just unsure whether this is a map problem, game type problem, or an expected situation of one team not doing as well as the other.

As for the camping on Venus... I'm not so sure I see the problems there. A sniper standing at C is a tough problem sometimes when coming from A, but the solution is approach cautiously and not use the long end of the tunnel if someone has a good position down there. The map gave you two more ways to engage them, the entrance to that section further down near the marsh, or loping around behind them using that circular room. I had a lot of fun nervously watching my motion tracker wondering just where the enemy was going to come from.

Campers in the tunnels? Well, use your motion tracker and be careful in the tunnels. Or don't go in them. People camping is not a new issue. Heck, in Reach a lot of the time people could camp AND be cloaked!

Now as for gear and weapon usage, you just threw in something arbitrary and unrelated to skill. If we're implying that my gear or weapon is better than yours, that has nothing to do with me. But you're saying I have to aim it, right? That's true in all shooters. It's a shooter. Destiny doesn't work like a lot of shooters or even Halo in that you really gotta get that BR up and land those headshots if you want to win. In lots of shooters, you can get the jump on me, start shooting and hitting me, and I can turn around, get my exquisite strafe going, and still end up the victor. I don't think I ever pulled that off in Destiny (and people DEFINITELY weren't pulling it off against me).

I guess I never practiced "exquisite strafing" before. :p Destiny is certainly more about pointing in the correct direction or retreating if you aren't. I also suspect it doesn't support exquisite strafing as well as Halo because of the faster kill times. But, it tells you which way the enemy is coming from so pointing the wrong way is often going to be your fault, barring someone spawning in behind you...

Gear is a bit mixed. Gear usage isn't "skill" in the same sense that aiming is, but finding and equipping the best gear and gun you can is a part of what will make you successful in Destiny. You can have the best aim and response time of anyone ever, but you won't do well if you stay with the default gun and armor. If you were playing other games then sure, you don't have to worry about gear. But you do if you are playing Destiny.

Double jumps definitely can take skill and be used in skillful ways. Too bad shooting can seriously turn to shit if you're the one doing the double jump. I use it more as survival or quick movement to places or for my Super. Maybe I just lack skill in shooting while doing it?

Nah. I can't recall any significant kills I got while in the air. Double jumping for me was all about getting to a good place to shoot, getting from point to point, or part of evasion and retreating. The Warlock, at least, does have one neat perk that suspends them in midair when they aim down the sight which might put an interesting and useful twist on shooting and jumping, but nobody had it in the beta.

Getting the most points out of a Super is largely luck. There's no skill in pressing the "Murder Everyone Now" button to either kill the one person who's there, or in pressing it when you were lucky enough to run across a cluster of people standing in a zone trying to capture it. If I hold onto that Super forever hoping for the latter to come true, I may never be presented with that. Absolutely zero skill. Yeah, that's a risk/reward thing, but that risk/reward is based on luck and random timing, not your own skill or actions (I suppose beyond actually landing the super if you find the cluster when in Titan or Warlock. If you miss with that Golden Gun, well yeah, that's on you because you don't even need a direct hit to get the kills with that thing lol).

First. There was never a "Murder Everyone Now" button. Yes, Supers are powerful, but they miss, they can be used at the wrong time, and you can be killed while trying to use them. Several people now have inflated them to this instant kill, always kill status which is just wrong. The actual kill range of Supers in the beta was ZERO to SIX. Ignoring the zero end is being disingenuous.

Second. Getting more than one kill out of is not so much luck as it is your enemy not playing well. I often stayed off and away from control points while a teammate captured them so I could both provide some forward cover and so I could avoid giving the enemy a double or triple kill. If you were the attacker and could only find one person to super around that control point that's me playing smart, not you being unlucky.

You're treating the lack of a mutikill with a super as some reflection on your ability when really it's much more largely associated with the way the other team plays. I suspect as Destiny goes on people will increasingly do what I did and purposely try and limit the damage a Super, or even just a plain old grenade can do. Further, that's not so different from Halo. In Halo I'd often try and position myself outside of likely grenade miss radius of my teammates so I could move in and respond to an enemy that was expecting damaged opponents. Really, a Super is a kinda like a big grenade...

I play at a very high level in not just Halo or Destiny, but in many, many shooters. Destiny is by far just about the only shooter where I don't feel like I'm doing super well based on my own skill and ability. If anything, the most skill I'll attribute to my kills are my knowledge of the maps and my ability to anticipate how other people will play them (so that I can see them first and be guaranteed my kills). This carries over into map control (hold B and C, who cares about A, and murder them as they come down the narrow directions to try and get to B and C. They're sheep to the slaughter). I rarely used Supers and found myself largely forgetting that I even had them. None of what I'm describing feels truly earned. It's all too easy.

I can't argue with this, but I also can't relate to it. I had fun moment to moment in Destiny's multiplayer except for my first 20 games where I sucked. It was like Halo but faster but with more options for me to use against an enemy. That the self-proclaimed high level players seem to feel this way... well I'm not sure what that means either.

I think I just covered a ton of this, but yeah. Seeing someone first isn't skill. It's luck. Good thing I happened to be looking in that particular direction (on a map as big as the Moon), or that we have them spawning at A so that really they can only ever come from one of two (maybe three) directions on Venus. Gear is arbitrary and has nothing to do with skill. You got what you got based on what the game randomly provided you. I may or may not have better.

Motion tracker and map knowledge largely tell you which way to point. If you own B and and are capturing C on Venus it's probably best to point towards A. Especially if you're tracking motion from that direction. I think seeing someone can be luck, but it's not only and not always luck.

Gear is more complex, yes, but you're going to have to make the case that the game hates you specifically for gear distribution to be much of an issue. The most likely thing is people on the opposing team will have gear similar to yours.

Supers are cheap, you can earn them by literally just standing around doing nothing all game, and they're also tied to incredibly dumb luck as far as getting kills. I personally don't care about them, and if I get killed by one, oh well. It's just a really lame way to die that, again, really doesn't take any skill in my opinion.

Supers take roughly the skill of a rocket launcher. I don't recall rocket launchers being this controversial. That everyone gets a Super means more people get to have fun creating havoc instead of just the people who know the maps and have respawn timers counting down off to the side. Personally, I'd advise you to stop ignoring features of the game you're playing. Supers are a lot of fun to use and I think if you used them instead of ignoring them you'd be a lot more accepting of them.

Destiny gives so many gun and armor options. Even in Iron Banner, I just about only used an auto rifle, shotgun, and LMG. I used a sniper rifle on a few occasions to see if I liked it. I didn't. Same with Scout Rifle. I didn't use the AR that everyone told me to use with endless rate of fire and awesomeness. I largely stuck with an AR that I obtained prior to becoming level 8 that happened to have a slightly higher impact rating. I don't think I ever really paid attention to or cared about armor. I just threw on whatever had a high number. I still won the majority of my battles and games. I don't attribute this to my type of guns or armor (nearly unlimited ammo for ARs and shotguns lol), ability to aim, Supers, or ability to out-shoot someone (since all that comes down to is if I saw you first, and beyond that I'm dead).

Again. I don't know. Maybe you're just too good? You experience seems so different from mine that I really have no way to explain it. :(