Seriously, what if Destiny had been Next Gen only? How much more could they have pushed the game, if compatibility with last gen had not been an issue.

Now admittedly, I know absolutely nothing about game development. But logically it makes sense to me that when you are trying to ensure that 4 separate systems all get the same core gameplay, that you therefore are restricting the gameplay to what the weakest machine is capable of. Plus, I imagine coding the game for 4 different systems and then running servers for each system also spreads out the workforce. Then anytime you have to do a patch for the game, you need to prepare that patch for each system.

Now don't get me wrong, I really, really love Destiny. I think it is a great game, and it has without doubt, reignited my passion for gaming. So I am not bringing this up as a means of complaining about the current state of the game. For me, the idea of what Destiny could have been is more akin to Tim the Tool Man Taylor seeing an already fast amazing car and then trying to add even more horsepower.

I guess a better question is what could Destiny become in the future, or more precisely, what could Destiny 2 look like if it was current gen only?

I'm not sure how different it would be, but I wouldn't be playing it yet.

The core areas where Destiny comes up short (IMO)

- Story
- Variety in daily objectives
- "Things to do" for Lvl 25 and up players
- The limitation of the 3 person fire team

I don't think any of the above would have been improved if it were X1 and PS4 only.

Some people might argue that the 3-person team is a product of the last gen consoles, but I would heartily disagree, in that it appears quite clear that there was a conscience decision to do things in Destiny by "The rule of 3"

Rule of 3 in Rev's mind:

• 3 races
  
• 3 classes
  
• 3 abilities
  
• 3 damage types
  
• 3 weapon classes (not counting white, as they are like training wheel weapons)
  
• 3 loot tiers
  
• 3 person team (or multiples of 3 for MP)
  
• 3 types of missions (story, strike, raid)
  
• 3 levels of enemies {cannon fodder: Dregs, shanks, thralls, goblins}
  {leaders: captain, vandal, knight, wizard, minotaur, hobgoblin}
  {heavies: Spidertank, hydras, Ogre)
  

The core difference is where people fall on the matter.

Some would call it a triangle of variety

Others would call it a triangle of blandness

Just my thoughts....

It might be that the playable areas would have been bigger, and maybe would have had multiple paths from section to section. Or maybe wouldn't have been divided into those sections at all.

Definitely agree that the 3-player limit wasn't likely to have been a technical decision. After all, you can take 6 into the raid. And plenty of last-gen games supported more than 3 players in an online game, some of them with quite a lot happening at once (ever played Killzone's 32-player firefight-ish campaign thing?). I think it was just a design decision, probably tied to the fact that there are 3 classes, so ideally you can have one of each in a fireteam.

I wouldn't be playing it, and having played it that thought makes me very very sad.

It might be that the playable areas would have been bigger, and maybe would have had multiple paths from section to section. Or maybe wouldn't have been divided into those sections at all.

Definitely agree that the 3-player limit wasn't likely to have been a technical decision. After all, you can take 6 into the raid. And plenty of last-gen games supported more than 3 players in an online game, some of them with quite a lot happening at once (ever played Killzone's 32-player firefight-ish campaign thing?). I think it was just a design decision, probably tied to the fact that there are 3 classes, so ideally you can have one of each in a fireteam.

Fireteam size is not a light decision for sure. Three players right now can be pretty powerhouse; four or more would get silly for activities as they stand right now.

I mean, the credits got cut on the 360. How short were they on disc-space?

You would have found a way. You don't need BOTH of those kidneys, surely?

I wouldn't be playing it, and having played it that thought makes me very very sad.

Levi wouldn't have played it either, which would make him sad. I'm sad that I've yet to play with either one of you.

Destiny has been in development for years. The new systems only launched last year. So Destiny was pretty far in development by the time the new systems launched.

In order for Destiny to be new consoles only they would have had to know the specs for the new systems years in advance and from what I've heard from my friends at Microsoft and Sony the system specs weren't locked in till pretty close to launch.

We are also in that phase between systems were developers have not yet learned to push the systems and right now it's a lot easier for the developers to work on the older systems cause of the years of experience working with them. So even if made from the ground up I doubt the game would have been much different.

As for the resources to put the game on all the systems it was just a matter of porting the game. When I was working for Activison and Neversoft on games that launched on multiple systems you would have most of the team working on the lead platform which in Call of Duty's case is Xbox. Once the lead platform was far enough along smaller teams would take the game and start porting it over to PS3, and the WII. Those builds were always weeks or months behind the main platform. The teams were always small and most of the time were team members who's work was done and needed something else to do before working on DLC to help minimize down town and save money.

I wouldn't be playing it, and having played it that thought makes me very very sad.

Levi wouldn't have played it either, which would make him sad. I'm sad that I've yet to play with either one of you.

Lol that's right! The three of us should get together, levels be damned.

The problem is cut campaign, cinematics, locations, etc.

Remember how everything you see is playable space, 'you can go there?'

I think that the game got too big, and too ambitious. Activision (or Bungie) wanted buy-in from previous gen, bc the install base was larger than current gen. They get to experience the game same as everyone else, and then carry their characters forward with them when they finally do upgrade their system.

I mean, the credits got cut on the 360. How short were they on disc-space?

They must have been really short. Assuming 720p Bink video (Bungie has used Bink all the may back to Myth, and in all the Halos), the credits would be around 75-100MB. It'd look like shit just like most of the Bink videos did, but that's how big it'd be.

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