Assortment of HoW thoughts (spoilers) (Destiny)

by MacAddictXIV , Seattle WA, Wednesday, May 20, 2015, 14:54 (3718 days ago) @ Monochron

Finished up all the unique activities last night (save for the higher level PoE events) and thought I would give my opinions on this DLC as whole. Let's break it down into sections.

Story
Much more engaging and interesting than TDB story. While the overall goal was still "kill group A of bad guys so they can't do bad stuff anymore", approaching from a more tactical hunt and destroy viewpoint was interesting. I understood early on, for instance, that Skolas was looking to rally other houses to his cause. Skolas was actually somewhat intelligent; he understood that the Wolves were not as powerful as he needed them to be and he is actively trying to change that. He isn't just a ravenous enemy looking to kill everything he can. Though maybe he is a little of that too. In the mission where we find the Kings meeting with the Wolves there is even a slight sense of "damn, we were too late", creating urgency that the rest of the game has always been lacking. Our enemies seemed legitimately one step ahead of us.

I really liked this story arc as well. As you said, it painted the bad guy with a whole lot more than just "Kill the good guys cause I'm supposed to" vibe.

Skolas's belief that he is the mythological "Kell of Kells" goes further to show that he is a little more than a blood thirsty bad guy. He's ego-maniacal and probably legitimately crazy. I would have been really interested to see his character developed a bit more, maybe through cut scenes or longer sequences with him having dialog. Having Riksis translate everything Skolas said worked at first . . . but after we realized that Skolas was never saying anything important it became a bit tiresome. If we had had a real-time translator plugged into our Guardian's helmet or something and could have actually listened to Skolas a bit more we could have had a better chance to really understand his motivations. Did he do all of this simply to become the Kell of Kells or did something happen in the Reef to prompt this? Is he trying to get revenge for something terrible the Guardians or the Awoken did in the past? Maybe it is in the Grimoire, but as faras I can tell he just wanted to make the Wolves really strong. Which is pretty boring.

I feel like this could have been solved partly by what you mentioned but also by actually NOT killing the guy. I understand the urge to kill all the bad guys. I mean, that is what guardians do. But I feel like it's too easy. I think of fallen as rouges, scavengers, sly creatures that use traps and intrigue and not necessarily brute force (like the cabal) to get what they want. So it should be MUCH harder to track and kills their Kells.

I want a story arc where we were unable to kill someone and we are left to ponder "Shit, now what is that guy going to do?" instead we are just waiting for the next bad guy to kill.

A example is after Halo 1, when Guilty Spark was seen flying away at the very end, my first thought was "oh great, now what is that little dip shit up to?"

Having Petra and Rikis doing voice over was a big improvement over previous missions. I have to take back something I said last week about doubting that any of these characters were my allies, Petra and Riksis absolutely felt like it. They weren't super fleshed out but we got to know a little about their motivations and got the impression that they were actively helping us. Would it have been better if we had seen them helping us rather than having them tell us they were helping? Yes. Riksis's voice acting got a little . . . grating after a while, but I think the intent was to make him dramatic anyway. Petra's voice acting had have emotion and humor, I am tempted to call her Destiny's very first character.

I have my own thoughts on Petra...

PoE
It is certainly fun so far. I have a feeling that the destroy/disable mines objectives will get old very quick though. I was surprised at how the difficulty ratchets up for the boss wave however. The level 28 run I did last night saw no deaths up until that round where we had somewhere around 8. It's a little disappointing that there aren't many new enemy mechanics aside from the rainbow shields on higher difficulties. We have been fighting bullet sponges since launch now, but maybe Bungie sees it as a tried and true activity. I don't see PoE holding my attention like the Raids still do, but at least they are a fun new way to get sweet lewts. Speaking of lewts...

I was happy and disappointed with PoE. I was happy that the mechanics of it was not just "bunker down and kill until no one is left", you had to keep moving or you were dead. Also, it actually required a lot of team communication. If your team mates died, you had to find a way to stall until you revived them or you where screwed.

I was disappointed by the lack of build up. I felt like either it was either really easy, or really hard. That leads into what I hoped PoE could possible be. That is an ever increasing challenge arena. That could be a never ending challenge or an end point that only the best 0.01% players could beat. Both of these could be seen in the future, but maybe they just wanted to test the waters first.

Loot Drop Rates
I am really surprised at how high the loot drop rates are. From what I can tell using a Treasure Key in the PoE usually gives you an Exotic, a Legendary, and various Motes or Coins. That is per-run. I saw people yesterday get 4 Exotics from a couple hours of playing. Plus all sorts of new Legendary weapons and gear. Every video I have seen of people completing it has given a couple things in that range. Compare that to Raids in which you were very very lucky to get one exotic for an hour or two of playing and it looks like I will be full of new drops before too long.
I'm not sure that this is a good thing. I don't want to get too deep into an investment system debate, but I don't see this keeping investment system proponents invested for too long.

Totally agree.

Teleporting
I don't fully understand this yet so maybe you guys can fill it in. It looks like certain activities will now teleport you to a different area if you are "camping". For instance, if you stay in a certain hallway in PoE trying to hold your ground, then game teleports you out into the open. Or, as happened to me in the Nightfall, if you manage to get locked out of a room due to an overzealous door the game will teleport you into the middle of that room surrounded by enemies. If this is true, I think it is pretty terrible. Finding a good strategy and sticking to it is something that I find really fun in Destiny. If that strategy is running circles around the enemies dodging shots, cool, if it is defending a good location, I can't do it? I assume this is a proactive anti-cheese method, but I don't know. Staying too long in a Titan's bubble might be dangerous now if the game is going to teleport you right in front of enemies. Hopefully the teleports aren't to random locations, if not then we can at least use a little strategy.
But Teleporting me and Skwatchee in front of enemies during the nightfall because the game decided to lock us behind a door? Not cool.

I never experience this.

Bam. Thems my thoughts. Overall, I'm definitely still enjoying it.

Yeah, same.