What needs to happen with Destiny 2 (Destiny)

by Ragashingo , Official DBO Cryptarch, Sunday, December 07, 2014, 14:20 (3879 days ago) @ Cody Miller

Just a few random thoughts of my own. I think we want may of the same things though occasionally for different reasons

I think one of Destiny's biggest problems is it has very little follow through.

When we kill Sepiks Prime, a hugely important part of the House of Devils' leadership, we don't get to see the result. That's the end of the Fallen story thread which is a huge shame. Even just one mission showing the House of Devils in a panic (packing up, perhaps fighting among themselves) would have done wonders to drive home that we'd done something important. Similar things could have been done with the other three races' story threads. Just one or two missions that show we had shifted the tide and were winning or at least having an impact.

There needs to be closer connections between story missions.

In Halo, rescuing Captain Keyes lead directly to locating the Silent Cartographer which lead directly to the Assault on the Control Room... and so on. Destiny has that... a bit: An unnamed Guardian detected something strange going on at the Skywatch station before she was shot down (that's her ship crashed at the beginning of the Cosmodrome), which leads to us preventing the Fallen from cracking Rasputin's firewalls, which leads to a Guardian team we don't meet getting killed as they recover keys to Skywatch's communication array, which leads to us plugging Rasputin in and his (rampant?!) expansion throughout the solar system including the AI core at the Colvis Bray tower on Mars.

The pieces are there... but there are no strong connections making it clear that we were playing through a chronological series of events. The sentence or two our Ghost says to us about the upcoming mission doesn't compare to the awesome Cortana monologue as we land on the Silent Cartographer's island. Being able to play some of the missions out of order is fine second time through, but they should unlock one by one the first time which would give more certainty to the writers allowing them to know what the player does and doesn't know. That way they wouldn't have to hold back in fear of a player not understand what was going on because they played The Array before The Warmind, or whatever.

Destiny needs longer missions or at least more of them.

I think Destiny's Story missions were shorter by design, not by incompetence. I think Bungie wanted to provide smaller chunks of action so a fireteam of busy people could accomplish one or two things even with limited play time. But I long for hour long missions like Assault on the Control Room. If anything were possible I'd see the short story missions tripled in number. Not every one would be save the world important, but they'd come before and after an increased number of somewhat longer Strikes. Two or three or more story mission would connect and pave the way for a Strike which would lead to a few more story missions and then another Strike and so on. I feel a good number would be three Strikes with surrounding, supporting Story missions that would all lead to a Raid centered on each race. It would lead to more content, more rising and falling story movements, and then a big finale at the end of a story thread.

Destiny's missions need unexpected events.

When I think back to Halo there were tons of interesting, partly story driven moments in each mission. In Destiny we too often push our way through to an objective, kill some enemies, and then magically leave after the countdown ends. At the very least makes us fight our way back out! Sure, some missions do a bit extra here and there beyond the main objective, but even then it's mostly a target of opportunity we need to kill. In Halo there would often be events that would force us to reroute or change our plans. In Halo 2, for instance, Cortana leads the Chief to one of High Charity's brigs to rescue some marines we didn't even know about. In Destiny the only event I can think of that interrupts our path at all is the Cabal's little ambush on our way to charge the Gatelord's eye... and even then all we do is fight through in the direction we were going anyway.

Patrol missions should stay but should support the current story thread as needed.

Randomly generated missions in an open-ish world make sense to allow our Guardians to be doing things other than saving Humanity each and every time we go outside. I think they could be used a bit better though. There could still be a few general ones, kill enemies, collect resources, whatever. But, as you do story missions new patrol missions should open up. Perhaps while patrolling we could fend off a randomly generated Fallen counterattack on a location that we took from them in a proper story mission. Or track down fuel to keep a communication station online. Things like that.

What I'd want is each story mission to unlock one or two related repeatable patrol missions. A setback in the story might even disable a previous type of patrol mission. If a previously secure firebase is destroyed in the story then the patrol missions to reinforce it during an attack would also stop appearing. I generally like patrol missions now, but it would be some much neater if they were better integrated into the bigger story!

As for the grind... I think providing a true wealth of interesting, connected events would address a lot of complaints. Beyond that, care and thought should also be given to eliminating any dead zones in the game's leveling and upgrade paths. Big events like Raids should be accessible to everyone who has progressed far enough through the story. I'm fine with hard modes and heroic difficulties requiring some investment to unlock or survive, but even then players should have a defined way to get there with a clear indication of progress towards their goal in addition to the occasional good loot drop that propels them unexpectedly forward.