What's annoying, is when you are running to pick up a spirit bloom, and is disappears before you can harvest it. That must have something to do with other players picking up other spirit bloom, but how does that work?

A resource sticks around for a bit before despawning in your instance after someone picks it up in theirs. Someone might have harvested it and run off before you got there.

Not quite: you're in the same instance. Some other guardian you can see running around picked it up already.

I'm guessing Cody mentioned Spirit Bloom as that is the one most visible from a distance and also looks the most similar between picked and unpicked. It actually happens with all the resources.

It's takes about 15 seconds, I believe, after picking before it disappears completely from your instance.

What's annoying, is when you are running to pick up a spirit bloom, and is disappears before you can harvest it. That must have something to do with other players picking up other spirit bloom, but how does that work?

A resource sticks around for a bit before despawning in your instance after someone picks it up in theirs. Someone might have harvested it and run off before you got there.

.. are the areas just on big invisible timers and that spinmetal that appears by that truck does so from 6:30-6:45pm then from 7:15 -7:30pm and so on (game world time) for all 3.2 million players?

Definitely not this. If you stare at a resource and no-one picks it up, it stays there indefinitely. If you pick it up, another spawns somewhere in the area after the one you picked up has de-spawned, so you never 'run-out' in any given area. There would be no way to keep it in sync.

What's annoying, is when you are running to pick up a spirit bloom, and is disappears before you can harvest it. That must have something to do with other players picking up other spirit bloom, but how does that work?

.. are the areas just on big invisible timers and that spinmetal that appears by that truck does so from 6:30-6:45pm then from 7:15 -7:30pm and so on (game world time) for all 3.2 million players?

Definitely not this. If you stare at a resource and no-one picks it up, it stays there indefinitely. If you pick it up, another spawns somewhere in the area after the one you picked up has de-spawned, so you never 'run-out' in any given area. There would be no way to keep it in sync.

Sorry for the low-effort post; but this resonated with me.

It's totally K. Reddit, this is not.

and destroyed a major source of the Hive's power along with Crota's legendary sword.

LOLOLOLOLOLOL

legendary my butt. "The most powerful weapon ever yielded against humanity." give me a break. Worse than nukes? worse than the Vex? Worse than whatever "killed" the traveler? But, weak enough that a lowly guardian that has been dead for Hundreds of years was able to overcome it?

If that sword was the bane of our existence, then we are screwed as a species.

I know the Lord of the Rings comparison, while awesome, can come off like a joke, but in this sense I think it's a really good comparison. I'd argue that the sword was easily dealt with because its master was seemingly gone. They were preparing to bring him back, but luckily we got to the sword and dealt with it, right?

Well, we know that Crota's gonna be back in the next Raid, and for all we know, that nasty sword might come back with him. Maybe we delayed the inevitable? Now we may have to actually defeat Crota AND that sword to put an end to the horror?

Just gotta drain the light, it seems...

You start the game and it's "Hey, you we're dead, now your not, we gotta go, I can't tell you why" ... Even when you'd THINK there'd be time, Destiny doesn't have time for you.

But you're supposed to have time for Destiny?

These words are resonant

Hmm. Bungie added stuff to the loot cave easily enough and can alter kill zones and buffer zones, but those are probably just updates to the world files that everyone has to share. I wonder if doing something like removing the crashed Jumpship from Old Russia after completing mission 3 or whatever would require a duplication of that entire section or maybe even the entirety of Old Russia?

That would be interesting and I'd be all for it, but it would come at the cost of new players experiencing the world as it was. Plus, playtesting would be hard.

I was thinking something more along the lines that if you were playing a level 2 mission and I was playing a level 6 strike, but we ran across eachother in the wild, we would actually have a different visual of the world. The same geometry might be there, but the visuals would reflect my actions that led to that point. Think Assault on the control room vs 2 betrayals. They used the same geometry (for the most part) but the visuals told a very different story. I don't know anything about implementing art in games, but it seems like this might be easier to do than altering the landscape and having to playtest that for bugs.

Am I in a dream-world, or would this type of thing be technically possible? Are playtests for new art assets harder than I imagine them right now?

You also got me thinking about chests and resources. Are they really randomly placed when you enter an area or are the areas just on big invisible timers and that spinmetal that appears by that truck does so from 6:30-6:45pm then from 7:15 -7:30pm and so on (game world time) for all 3.2 million players? It'd be neat to go into party chat with a few people then travel separately to the same part of a world to see if all the resources show up in the exact same spots...

I am also curious about this. I would love to understand the mechanics of the game-world's rules a bit better.

You also got me thinking about chests and resources. Are they really randomly placed when you enter an area or are the areas just on big invisible timers and that spinmetal that appears by that truck does so from 6:30-6:45pm then from 7:15 -7:30pm and so on (game world time) for all 3.2 million players? It'd be neat to go into party chat with a few people then travel separately to the same part of a world to see if all the resources show up in the exact same spots...

One of the strengths of the Halo games was that the environments of the world could help tell the story and reinforce your impact on the world over time. Think of the difference between the first have of Halo CE and the second half. Your actions in the world and the unfolding narrative allowed for the same geographic spaces to feel very different. The same can be said for the settings in Halo 2. High charity as the Arbiter is very different than High Charity as the Master Chief. Everything was moving forward towards a culmination and the environment helped reinforce this. In Halo 3, the whole skybox changed after I blew up that covenant gun. Even nostalgic visit to Alpha Halo II carried weight because of the narrative arc of these environments.

Destiny cannot do this. Every story in Destiny starts in the same geographic location, but people may be playing completely different moments of the narrative while occupying the same space. As such, the environment is crippled in its ability to tell stories about the events depicted in the game. Sure the environments can tell the story of the world before you showed up, but it cannot react at all to your actions. Your agency in the world feels a little bit empty. In Halo, when we replayed a level, we understood that it was linked to a particular time-frame in the narrative. There wasn't a disjointed feeling when we replayed it because the environment reflected that moment in time. In Destiny, when I replay a mission, I'm left feeling like I haven't really done anything.

A static game world is the biggest narrative challenge in my assessment. This feeds into the lack of an antagonist because, like player's character, they cannot affect change in the world. Sure, the grimoire alludes to the significance of our actions, but nothing is there telling me I saved the city. No one at the tower is greeting me as a champion. No one got threatened by the Darkness/Fallen/Vex/Hive.

This is sad because the encounters that are available as a result of their decision to have a shared world are amazing. I have so much fun in the environments they made. I love meeting strangers in the wild and I love the feeling it accomplishes. On the other hand, this comes at the cost of telling a story in which we have an impact or real agency in the world.

I'm trying to think of ways they could overcome this in the future. Maybe they could have different skyboxes and lighting depending upon when the missions are supposed to take place in the timeline so that a person doing a mission at the beginning of the game would see the world a little bit differently than someone who has already completed that portion. Keep the geometry the same, but instance the art. This is probably not technically possible but... one can hope.

I'd love to hear other people's thoughts on this. Are there any other creative ways to tell your story through the environment in a game like Destiny?

Though to me, the Sword pf Crota level kind of sums up everything I disliked about the story.

"Big sword, evil, very dangerous, go destroy it". Okay, cool. Good start.

"It was created by 4 swarm princes. To destroy it you have to kill them". Okay, thats at least kind of interesting. But that's where it stops.

Who/what are swarm princes? How did they create it? Did they forge it? Why don't they make another one? Does it have something to do with the ritual site? What kind of rituals take place there? Why is one prince at the ritual site while the others are guarding the sword? Is it a promotion? Demotion? Why does killing them destroy the sword? Is it bound to their "souls"? And why, WHY is the sword just in the middle of a big landing halfway down the Hellmouth, not in some kind of armoury or relic/throne room.

I feel just a little bit more detail would make that level feel like so much more than just a quick tour of the Hellmouth with a cool setpiece at the end. Give the princes a personality, or at least something unique. I've been fighting yellow Knights for hours at this point, so theyre not exactly intimidating. Tell me the ritual site is for something awful - make me really want to kill that Prince.

The same could be said about a lot of levels, but Sword of Crota in particular kind of encompasses the lot. I know theres a lot of cool lore behind Destiny in the Grimoire cards. Show us some of that?

Dang, I know why Destiny wasn't that satisfying story wise: we had no antagonist.

The original Halo had almost as few actual characters as Destiny, yet we had an antagonist in 343GS. Someone to struggle against, with clear motivations of his own. We don't want him to succeed, so we strive to beat him.

Destiny doesn't really have an antagonist. We don't know the motives of the Darkness or the Vex, but more troublesome is we don't know what is at stake. If 343GS fires the ring, we all die. We don't want that to happen, so we try to win. But what is the Black Heart doing? What will happen if we don't stop it? We don't even see any effect from it at all, so it's hard to know why to care.

The very least that could have been done is perhaps have the Traveler's protective shield start to shrink as the black heart drains its energy or whatever. The outskirts of the city could become vulnerable, and perhaps be overrun. At least we'd have some kind of tangible reason to fight the darkness.

When is Destiny 2 coming out again?

Part of the issue is there are so many things going on at once. Three different races to fight, with no clue about their motivations, and no leaders who seem to make decisions. A bunch of different settings, with no particular investment in them besides what happens to the Last City, which is far away from any actual gameplay. The Darkness, non-specific, and incorporeal as far as I can tell.

In contrast, the Halo series focused on one setting at a time, and had a number of single characters as villains. In addition to 343, the Overmind, Tartarus, and the Prophet of Truth. I always thought of the Flood as the main villain of the series, which had a very simple aim, and even a voice by the second game.

I guess they could be playing a long game, stretching out the story over multiple titles, but if that's the case, this first installment has definitely suffered as a result. And being able to fly around the solar system is cool and all, but the lack of a consistent setting makes the story even more unfocused. Seems to me like the Queen of the Reef and her brother are the only actual characters in the game, and I'm not even sure why they're necessary. Well, okay, there's also the time-traveling EXO, but she doesn't really do anything besides be mysterious. And when I say character, I mean someone who has a role in the story besides just handing out quests or delivering VO.

I would definitely like to see at least The Fallen get some proper villains at the helm, who actually have a role in the story, instead of just being strike bosses that I know nothing about (which makes it hard to care about killing them).

I actually like that line and that whole encounter because it's more than just the one line. It's the one instance that Destiny lays out some neat clues that anyone can follow. We have in front of us an Exo who was not resurrected by The Traveler. She somehow knows about things beyond The City's influence. She somehow understand's the threat of the Vex. And, perhaps most intriguingly, she has a ship and allies or crew of her own that are having to be careful to stay hidden while going about their interventions. There's a lot packed in to that one cutscene. Most of it is unanswered mysteries, sure, but they fee to mel like mysteries that help expand Destiny's universe.

It is strange, because it seems like the beginning of the game is packed with cool stuff like that, but the end peters off.

Like, the opening has tons of cool stuff happening like your ghost turning on the lights, and a neat little scripted moment to make the world feel more alive. You emerge and a fallen ship warps in and knocks stuff down. The Warmind mission has you opening an array. You get a tons of cutscenes all through the beginning, advancing the story along.

But then the rest of the game is dead by comparison. You get fewer story moments, and there's little to no scripted stuff in the levels that feel 'big', or make the world feel like anything that you can actually affect.

In general I'd say the Halo games relied on the strength of their core gameplay and the strength of their cutscenes to tell a good story. Each Halo game was pretty for its time but they always felt a bit... fixed and stagnant. I always wanted a bit more Call of Duty or Gear of War in my Halos where big interesting things in the level itself helped tell the story and drive you forward. Bungie tried a bit with Scarabs but they turned out to be big set pieces that mainly spun in circles. The best they ever gave us was the UNSC Frigate battling the Covenant Corvette. That set piece looked epic and it accomplished that feeling of having others in the world carrying out their own mission to help you accomplish yours.

Destiny could once again get by one strong interesting cutscenes like Halo did, but it sure would be neat if Bungie would step up things a notch and get more storytelling out of things happening around you and to you in the world.

and destroyed a major source of the Hive's power along with Crota's legendary sword.

LOLOLOLOLOLOL

legendary my butt. "The most powerful weapon ever yielded against humanity." give me a break. Worse than nukes? worse than the Vex? Worse than whatever "killed" the traveler? But, weak enough that a lowly guardian that has been dead for Hundreds of years was able to overcome it?

If that sword was the bane of our existence, then we are screwed as a species.