Space magic was the most disapointing part of the demo

As cool as #SPACEMAGIC could be, what was shown in the demo struck me as... lacking. Here's a rundown of what we saw.

1. Some kind of Damage over Time solar flare magic (Warlock)
2. Some kind of explosive magic with a large impulse (Warlock)
3. Some kind of direct damage magic that would stay in place for other people to damage (Hunter)
4. A gun buff which seemed to make the next two - three shots extra explody (Hunter)
5. A ground pound ability that created damage in a local area (Titan)

Each ability had a separate cooldown.

Okay, so out of the 5 abilities shown, 3 of them act just like Grenades from Halo, with some minor twists. 1 other (the Titans pound) is like a grenade that explodes at your feet. The only twist was the gun buff used by the hunter, but even that was basically a boost to damage. Direct damage dealing abilities seem like the wrong way to go. Why do you need to shoot magic to damage enemies when we already have dozens (hundreds?) of neat guns that do just that?

What do these abilities add to the game vs. grenades? As far as we've seen, not all that much. Due to the transition from a resource to manage in combat to a cooldown, it actually looks less interesting than a grenade to me. If Bungie wants to reclaim something interesting, they need to make spacemagic do things that change the way you play.

So what are the options?

While a couple of direct damage abilities make sense, I'd like to see bungie roll with more variety. The way I see it, abilities should fall into one of a few groups
1) co-op focussed abilities (Heal, restore ammo, charge friends cooldown)
2) Movement/ abilities to avoid damage (Teleport, speed boosts, portable cover, distraction abilities)
3) Restrict enemy movement, Lay traps, debuff, open weakpoints,
4) Damage that can combo (Think biotic explosions in ME, or doing a fire-crow combo in)

So while I'm sure Bungie has more cool stuff in store, seeing all the focus on the least interesting type of abilities was disheartening.

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I think more will be shown, but I'm waiting for magic that cause enemy behaviors to change. Like a rage salvo, that causes hurt enemies that would normally hide behind cover to charge you in a berserk rage. Obviously, this will not be optimal in some situations where a Fallen Captain is full health and licking his lips in anticipation of soul engulfing, and now thanks to your plucky young space mage is whooshing straight for you.

Stuff like that or a magic enhancing weapon that does no damage, but increases magic power... like a keytar.

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I think more will be shown, but I'm waiting for magic that cause enemy behaviors to change. Like a rage salvo, that causes hurt enemies that would normally hide behind cover to charge you in a berserk rage. Obviously, this will not be optimal in some situations where a Fallen Captain is full health and licking his lips in anticipation of soul engulfing, and now thanks to your plucky young space mage is whooshing straight for you.

Stuff like that or a magic enhancing weapon that does no damage, but increases magic power... like a keytar.

Yea, thankfully most of this stuff is stuff they can just kind of add to the game, these aren't design issues that look to be central to the game. E3 was just a fun avenue to show us something unique to spacemagics, so I was hoping we'd see that.

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I actually have been thinking about this in relation to grenades from Halo and I think I prefer the cooldown, but I think it needs a steeper cooldown. The reason I prefer the cooldown in Destiny is because the environments are so vast. In Halo I sometimes found myself (mostly in some of the flood levels) reserving my grenades because I was not finding very many, and would not use them because I was afraid to be without one when I needed it. This actually was good in a lot of ways in Halo, but in Destiny with the huge environments I think cooldown combined with a possible magic meter could actually make more sense.

Despite that little tangent I do agree that I hope there is more variety in magic in the final game. Partly I think we saw the more flashy magic in the gameplay demo for purposes of time, hopefully we will see some really awesome stuff in the final game (and future gameplay features).

Also one small note: being able to drop a grenade at your feet without taking damage would be pretty awesome!

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Also one small note: being able to drop a grenade at your feet without taking damage would be pretty awesome!

As long as nade jumps came back ;).

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I definitely agree with the desire to see more variety in the SPACEMAGICS. But I am already very pleased with what we have been shown.

In the demo, on the bottom left of the screen, part of the HUD looks to me to be icons for equipped weapons, grenades, and SPACEMAGIC. Seeing slots for your SPACEMAGIC makes me think we haven't seen everything yet, and with BUNGiE being as tight lipped as they have been, I think (hope) there are some pretty sweet surprises yet to come.

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I definitely agree with the desire to see more variety in the SPACEMAGICS. But I am already very pleased with what we have been shown.

In the demo, on the bottom left of the screen, part of the HUD looks to me to be icons for equipped weapons, grenades, and SPACEMAGIC. Seeing slots for your SPACEMAGIC makes me think we haven't seen everything yet, and with BUNGiE being as tight lipped as they have been, I think (hope) there are some pretty sweet surprises yet to come.

Yea, I don't doubt there will be some more avenues to go down. I'm just hoping that what we saw isn't close to all that's possible.

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Space magic was the most disapointing part of the demo