Yes - you're very right there. One of my favourite places in the Tower is the Speaker's chamber, overlooking the Traveller, on the balcony. I love sitting there and watching the city. It is beautiful.

I know it's a very commonly used example of 'downtime' in this fashion but there's always

Great post. I miss the silence after a battle. It wasn't silence actually. Halo breathed.

White space is important.

The game has incredible atmosphere throughout the entire experience, yet there are very few places where the game really lets you pause to appreciate it. In the wilds you have maybe a minute or less before enemies start shooting at you again, so it feels like you constantly need to focus on them. Back at the tower it's running from one green diamond to the next, spending time in menus... But the times where I actually stop in between decoding engrams and upgrading, I feel like I've found the true joy of the game. It's beautiful, tranquil, serene... Lots of other synonyms for peaceful and relaxing. One thing I really like about Destiny is how casually it's played. It's great for coming home from a long day at work and just relaxing to. The problem is that the game itself has very little relaxing content in it, save for what you make for yourself in between playing the actual game.

I guess if I could make a suggestion to the developers, I'd just love to see some more focus spent on creating peaceful periods of downtime for the player too. A LOT of effort was put into perfecting the systems and art that makes this world beautiful, and yet I feel like most players will never appreciate just how deep that goes, simply because the game rarely encourages them to.

I agree, but I also think it's a risky thing.

Players that want downtime can generally create it themselves, assuming the enemy spawn timers aren't too aggressive. It rarely works the other way though - players have to get pretty creative to make boring/empty sections of the game exciting.

Force too much downtime on your players, and those that want a fast-paced game will accuse you of padding the completion time. Better to let the game allow downtime but not force it (unless you've got a really compelling narrative/experience reason for it).

There's some nice downtime between encounters. The first time I ran it my group sat around an imaginary campfire while everybody went to the bathroom, got drinks, and talked about how awesome that templar boss was.

It's probably a result of the QA that has been hitting this thing full time for a year. They don't want to rest. They will probably report dead zones or quiet times as issues that are essential in a "Play it and shelve it" single player game. They are professionals. They have probably played nexus more than anyone post release and not out of love for it, but out of duty. And good job to them! The game is silky smooth and mostly bug free outside of some (recent) dodgy network stuff.

Though, given that, I don't understand how the unskippable cutscenes didn't get flagged. And if they are in engine, why don't they show your team mates? Halo always fell short on this promise as well and it annoys me (In engine cutscene, which is amazing for continuity, with chief holding a gun you didn't touch the whole mission which ruins it a bit).

The game has incredible atmosphere throughout the entire experience, yet there are very few places where the game really lets you pause to appreciate it. In the wilds you have maybe a minute or less before enemies start shooting at you again, so it feels like you constantly need to focus on them. Back at the tower it's running from one green diamond to the next, spending time in menus... But the times where I actually stop in between decoding engrams and upgrading, I feel like I've found the true joy of the game. It's beautiful, tranquil, serene... Lots of other synonyms for peaceful and relaxing. One thing I really like about Destiny is how casually it's played. It's great for coming home from a long day at work and just relaxing to. The problem is that the game itself has very little relaxing content in it, save for what you make for yourself in between playing the actual game.

I guess if I could make a suggestion to the developers, I'd just love to see some more focus spent on creating peaceful periods of downtime for the player too. A LOT of effort was put into perfecting the systems and art that makes this world beautiful, and yet I feel like most players will never appreciate just how deep that goes, simply because the game rarely encourages them to.

Agreed. The system encourages rushing through most parts of the game. I've taken to navigating Venus on foot sometimes, just to enjoy the atmosphere and scenery, and the feeling of being in an expansive environment that I don't get when I'm rocketing around on my Sparrow. Also, avoiding the repetitive patrol missions in favor of just exploring. Though the soundtrack doesn't always fit well with simply enjoying the view.

"there are very few places where the game really lets you pause to appreciate it. In the wilds you have maybe a minute or less before enemies start shooting at you again.."

I think that's a good way of putting it! Another way of putting it is that the world of destiny is claustrophobically small and dense.

Last night, for maybe the first time since I started playing, I walked up to the window behind the three vanguards and looked out to the rolling hills in the valley outside the city.

I realized that the game I was hoping to play is out there - if you could take on that vast space with a sparrow, alone or with a fire-team, speeding out over the hills and through the light forests, finding signs of enemy incursion and eventually recon parties of fallen, small outbreaks of hive... A space you could wander without constantly coming into contact with artificial walls and new clusters of enemies with no clear motivation for being in a given place except to shoot at you as soon as you come around the corner.

Here's hoping when there's a chance to design new "destinations" they actually try to make them "open". That free exploration and transit time is I think exactly what you're noticing as a lack of "downtime".

Me and Avatuer were there for nearly an hour talking about stuff and catching up. In true B.org style, I intended to go to bed and ended up staying up an extra hour or so just hanging out. good times.

The game has incredible atmosphere throughout the entire experience, yet there are very few places where the game really lets you pause to appreciate it. In the wilds you have maybe a minute or less before enemies start shooting at you again, so it feels like you constantly need to focus on them.

Couldn't agree more. Those respawn timers-- the ones set to six seconds that led to loot cave farming-- should probably be increased across the board. I'm sure they're afraid of people overpopulating an area and standing around with nothing to shoot at, but it robs the player of any sense of achievement or progress when enemies respawn so quickly, in addition to making them feel like they need to rush across the landscape or be in constant motion.

The same applies elsewhere. I think the idea of strike playlists is great. I'm enjoying them. But when a series of encounters consumes 20-40 minutes, I do NOT want to start another one up again in 30 seconds. I do not want to be rushed away from the results screen and back into matchmaking just because it is convenient for the system to do so. More than once I've had to bail at the start of a strike because I failed to cancel matchmaking while looking at the postgame report.