Destiny: Launch Trailer series & content discussion

[wittyscorpion]

Mars:



Venus:



Official launch trailer:

It doesn't matter who you were, only...

who you will become.

PS exclusive content trailer:

[-3055-]

Looks awesome as always. Do we know if "earth" is just old russia or if there are multiple different locations?

[wittyscorpion]

Aug 15, 2014 12:21:46 GMT -5 -3055- said:

Looks awesome as always. Do we know if "earth" is just old russia or if there are multiple different locations?

I have seen conflicting stories about that.

1) In the past, concept arts were shown about the various locations on earth. Besides Old Russia, there are also the following:

Old Chicago



Mumbai Push



2) However, looks like Bungie confirmed that there is only one playable area per planet: www.eurogamer.net/articles/2014-07-28-bungie-reassures-fans-disappointed-that-destiny-only-has-one-playable-area-per-planet

My guess? Old Russia only for Destiny 1, while the others to be added in expansion packs or sequels.

[mannon]

I guess that makes sense given they want to have as much variety as possible right now, but I really hope we get more locations on Earth in the future.

[wittyscorpion]

At Gamescom, Bungie's community manager Eric Osborne did an interview: uk.news.yahoo.com/destiny-interview-bungies-eric-osborne-crucible-halo-10-060940973.html

Regarding expansion packs, he has the following to say:

IBT: Will additional post-release content be primarily PVP-based or story-based?

EO: "It's all of the above. Like the core game we want to see what we can bring to players in terms of expansion packs that are holistic. We want them to have story, we want them to have a theme, we want them to have co-op experiences, competitive experiences, we want them to have weapons and armour and gear. So we want to give players freshness across the board.

"It's a big opportunity for us. In the past we did a pretty good job in Halo supporting the competitive multiplayer community – we were really proud of that - but we left a lot on the table for people. We saw people who continued to play campaign pretty much ad infinitum but we never really gave them anything for that. That's because we didn't have the technology, the foresight or the team to support it.
"With Destiny we attack that aggressively from the beginning."

Cross over to what Bungie has said about the first expansion pack, The Dark Below: www.xboxachievements.com/news/news-19003-Bungie-Describes-How-The-Dark-Below-Will-Thread-Into-Destiny.html

Speaking to Joystiq, Bungie’s Director of Production Jonty Barnes said, "The Dark Below is actually a really interesting expansion; it's got its own story. We call it an expansion because it has one of all the activity types from Destiny, so it's story, strike and beyond – and competitive and cooperative experiences in there. As well as new gear, new armor, new weapons and everything else.

“Some of that attaches to existing places that you're familiar to, so you might find that as you're going through new areas, that you actually collide with players who are just playing the existing Destiny content. You'll have those collisions. We always want to create spaces where people can get together and cooperate, and we feel like that is a big innovation in Destiny.”

1) Note the words he is using here: "it's story, strike and beyond". Sounds like new Raid is likely.

2) Also note that he mentioned "new areas". I believe that things like Old Chicago mentioned earlier will manifest themselves here.

[wittyscorpion]

Regarding expansion packs, as I mentioned earlier it is my belief that the 2 announced are just the beginning. As Eric Osborne said in that interview:

IBT: Destiny has been called a '10-year project'. Does this mean the standard DLC followed by standalone sequels model or will this game serve as a foundation with add-ons of varying size released for years to come?

EO: "Really it's a little bit of both. We have a lot of runway and a lot of plans, but our goal right now is to get Destiny 1 out for 9 September, we do have some concrete short-term plans but we're going to be flexible. The market will dictate, the community will dictate some of our decision making. We want to have a defined plan, a blueprint to go off, but we're also not cocky enough to believe that we can see ten years into the future. The 'ten year plan' is much more about the ability and confidence to say that...

"In the past on Halo we had a whiteboard with an airplane on it and we'd draw flames on the back of a plane as we came to the end of the project. And out the back of the plane we'd eject all these features which we didn't have time to make. People would lament, they'd go to the board and be like 'Oh man, here's this thing that I really loved and we're just abandoning it.'

"With Destiny we wanted to say to ourselves 'let's not do that'. Let's take these plans and incubate that, put it on the backburner, let's give ourselves the ability and flexibility to continue to build and grow and change over time."

Until the game actually launched and is as successful as they expect, they are going to be cautious and not to get too ahead of themselves because "The market will dictate, the community will dictate some of our decision making".

From my optimistic point of view as an enthusiastic fans however, the game will be successful enough to warrant a Destiny 2. In that case, I believe (pure speculations here) that they have plans to have at least 4 expansion packs to fill the 2 year gap between the 2 major releases, more if the gap is bigger. As a result, the concern of only having 4 playable areas at launch is not a big deal any more, at least not until we exhausted the main game and pack 1, which should be enough to keep us playing through Q1 2015.

If we don't get additional content after that (say pack 2 won't be released until end of Q2 / beginning of Q3), Iron Banner is an interesting arena for "end game" fun: just bring your insanely high level gears in there and try to dominate

[-3055-]

Aug 15, 2014 12:39:15 GMT -5 mannon said:

I guess that makes sense given they want to have as much variety as possible right now, but I really hope we get more locations on Earth in the future.

Yeah but earth is so diverse. They can have a really vertical map based in like new york or tokyo, or an icy map, or a forest-y map. Venus, Mars, and the moon all look the same throughout their planet.

[GodMars]

Aug 15, 2014 21:26:12 GMT -5 -3055- said:

Aug 15, 2014 12:39:15 GMT -5 mannon said:

I guess that makes sense given they want to have as much variety as possible right now, but I really hope we get more locations on Earth in the future.

Yeah but earth is so diverse. They can have a really vertical map based in like new york or tokyo, or an icy map, or a forest-y map. Venus, Mars, and the moon all look the same throughout their planet.

From what I understand, those planets have been subject to terraforming.

[wittyscorpion]

On a related topic, gameinformer had an interview with Destiny Devs regarding beta: origin-www.gameinformer.com/b/news/archive/2014/08/16/-destiny-devs-explain-fireteam-size-old-russian-real-estate-and-the-unbeatable-ogres-from-the-beta.aspx

The wording bungie devs used make it sound like that there are still areas of Cosmodrome that players did not get to play with during beta. This bears the question: how much area of Cosmodrome was not explorable during beta due to gating with unbeatable enemies?

I was under the impression that we were able to exhaust the entire playable area:

1) The cave guarded by the unbeatable orge near the broken helicopter: isn't that just a small cave with a dead end?
2) The so called "grotto" area that includes a cave full of unbeatable hive enemies leading to an open area near shore with a few unbeatable bosses. I thought we were able to explore the area from both ends, go through the entirety, and reach the other end.

One thing for sure: even if we have seen all the areas in Cosmodrome, there are still a lot of things to do once we reach higher level. In other words, what you can do in a playable area is level driven:

There are activities as you get to a higher level that will drive you back to the Cosmodrome. It's got this point that when you get toward exploring a lot of the areas, we still have new things for you to do. We're always going to be changing it up. We haven't even talked about raids or other things like that."

This is exciting to know. PvE players were worried that: if one area can be easily exhausted over a weekend (like in beta), and there are only 4 areas, they are going to "beat" this game quickly and don't have much to do afterwards.

[mannon]

We were able to get to all of those areas, but there were a few doors inside buildings that looked suspiciously like they might be open under the right circumstances similar to the way certain doorways are closed off during various missions and the end of the Devil's Lair is closed off after the tank if you go in via exploration instead of the strike.

I for one really hope they expand on the exploration aspect of the game as time goes on. I think it will be one of the most played modes, and it has a lot more potential. As it is picking up the missions from the beacons just feels random. Once you done all the varieties they have to offer it feels samey. There's not really even any difference in one beacon vs another. I would prefer if which specific beacon you activate actually meant something. Personally I think it would be a nice goal to activate and complete every beacon, but the beta system made that pointless. Any beacon was as good as any other, so it meant nothing.

I also think it would be damned cool if you could sometimes activate missions that played more like the story missions, only you started them from exploration rather than from orbit. Or for that matter, why do we have to select missions from orbit? Why not just have the game plunk us down on the surface and you activate all the missions from there, on the ground? That would be so much more immersive. Oh well... Not gonna look the gift horse in the mouth... Though I really do hope they revamp the whole orbit thing.

[mannon]

I have no doubt that a dedicated player probably can see all of the in game terrain within say two weeks of hard play, but the majority of people will probably take longer. Though that may be due mostly to the raids, and we really don't know about that either. If the raids are as hard as advertised it may be even longer before the first group of players manages to beat one. I am assuming that at least part of the raid(s), (I'm hoping we have at least two at launch) will be in terrain unavailable to other missions.


BTW Yes I can confirm the knight/ogre cave is just a small cave. Usually a knight with a melee weapon would spawn and he was 99% too derp to kill you if you were riding your shrike so you could just push him off and go inside for the dead ghost and loot chest. Good times. The ogre would murder you mercilessly regardless, but was still fun to dick around with and zerg rush. KDR be damned.

The "grotto" was connected via caves to the shore area with level 20 mobs and to the area in Devil's Lair just before the lasers in the strike. There was also a pitch black cave near the shore entrance. I don't know where it led as it was full of unbeatable thrall and my NOPE! reflex kicked in hard. Not looking forward to that one... (he says, only half lying) heh

There was also an underground area at the coast at the transmission tower. I think some sort of subway or something. I was told it led out somewhere else as well, but never went all the way through. Lots of unkillable knights in there and the shrike trick doesn't work on them all.


Exploring the places we weren't supposed to go was actually great fun. Enough so I think it would actually be pretty great if there were places with enemies no one can kill, where you just have to explore via agility, stealth, luck, and guile. There were so many great moments running away from things and screaming like a little girl. heh Quite the rush to just barely escape from unbeatable monsters, or to finally manage to get past them to explore the grotto. Anyway... Now I'm just reliving the beta. I better go distract myself before I start jonesing for Destiny even worse.

[wittyscorpion]

I just realized one thing: if there are 4 planets/moons with one playable area each, wouldn't it be logical to conclude that each should feature a Raid? It would be really odd if some have one and some don't...

On the similar token, there are 4 races of enemies: Fallen (earth), Hive (based at moon, also come to earth), Cabal (based at Mars), and Vex (based at Venus). Wouldn't it be logical to have one Raid per enemy race?

I am suddenly very hopeful that there will be at least 4 Raids

[wittyscorpion]

Venus game play trailer:



Title changed, OP updated.

[wittyscorpion]

Official launch trailer:



Regarding supers, this trailer offers the first glimpse of Ward of Dawn, at 1:34 mark.

Title changed, OP updated.

[wittyscorpion]

An in-depth interview with Bungie, long read, good to fill in the gaps between now and launch : www.eurogamer.net/articles/2014-08-21-bungie-on-the-destiny-level-cap-raids-and-game-size

My biggest concern is still the size of the game, Bungie addressed that concern below:

There are four worlds to visit: Earth, the Moon, Mars and Venus. And within each of those just one place to explore. You must have seen the debate about the size and scope of the game on day one. What's your take on that debate?

Jonty Barnes: If I'm honest with you, it blew my mind, because it's the biggest game we've ever made. I don't think people understand the depth and amount of gameplay there is in Destiny. It was a big beta. So the first thing, I was like, well that was a huge beta. I don't understand how people could have that concern when you think about that and all the different planets we're going to open up and the gameplay we've got there.

I'm not worried about it, because I honestly believe Destiny is a huge game. I can tell you that through blood and sweat as well. It's been a huge game and undertaking for us. Compared to anything we've done before, if you're going to do a comparison, you're laughing, honestly.

It was surprising, but part of that is, because we have all these connected spaces - we've got lots of locations but we drive them to be connected so we have all these collisions of people. However you divide something up, you can make a number look big or small. In people's heads they don't really understand what that is.

Jesse van Dijk: People have had a glimpse of the moon. Mars and Venus - people have not seen those at all. But in addition to all of that real estate, what's important to emphasise is as your character progresses through the leveling system and as you acquire more powerful arms and gear, the way you play the game is going to change.

Jonty Barnes: Yeah. You haven't experienced all of earth. If you're a higher-powered Guardian you'll be doing additional experiences on there that are harder that open up combatant behaviours that aren't available at the lower levels.

Jesse van Dijk: That cross-section of the experience is going to be very different from the experience from the beta, which was just the tip of the iceberg. It's not so much just a vertical branching out into more content, but it is also a horizontal one. We're offering you different ways to experience all of this world.

Jonty Barnes: For us in the studio, it was not something we were instantly worried about. The one thing we're not worried about Destiny is, is there enough game there? I can assure you, it's a huge undertaking. It's a huge game. I don't think anyone's got anything to worry about.

Oh, and Mercury. There is a multiplayer map, which is the only time you get to visit Mercury on the launch content of Destiny 1. And it's called The Burning Shrine. It's one of the most beautiful multiplayer maps. It's right by the sun so the skybox is incredible. Also it has changing Vex blocks, so your sightlines can be totally disrupted during competitive multiplayer. It's by far my favourite map, because it's changing reality.

It seems to me that they are not denying that we have seen most if not all the "static" size of Earth in beta. Their point is that the ways we play and experience that world dynamically are huge and we have only seen the tip of the iceberg.

For example, it's great to see that they have plans to enrich exploration mode after digging through stats collected from beta:

There was a huge amount of value in seeing how much people liked to explore and how we can we make that a better experience. What are we going to do to evolve the explore mode and patrol so beyond 9/9, what will we do to update the world to make them even more fulfilling?
...

We've got plenty of ideas! We've got some things like UI readability we've got for day one that's just better. But we do have things we're going to change over time that will make those experiences better. You'll see stuff and you'll go, hey, have you seen what they've done to the explore mode recently? Maybe we should do some of that - it seems a lot better. We're going to try to do that for all of the game and build on the world.

[wittyscorpion]

Regarding Raids and size of 6:

Some people are concerned they won't have enough friends to do a raid, and therefore miss out on the content.

Jonty Barnes: We're going to see people self-organise. We're seeing people in the Tower already gathering saying, who's going to commit for a raid?

It is about that commitment part. If you just casually matchmake... you can see people jump out of competitive multiplayer games in matchmaking. In Strikes you can continue with two if somebody jumps out. You can still have that experience and not feel robbed. A raid requires six. If you've got five players in the raid, you're not going to win. You're not going to get through. I can tell you now, it's really tough, and it's intentionally meant to be that way. We've all got roles to play. So it requires a commitment of six people. That was very intentional.

It's about the group dynamic. It's not just about a casual dynamic. It's about an understanding of people committed to playing the roles in raids. And preparing. With raids, you don't just jump into them. You've got to prepare before you go in, and decide, what are you doing? What am I doing? Let's all talk about it in orbit. Okay, what role are you going to play? Well, I'm an x Titan, whatever type of Titan I am, and I'm going to be defensive and hold positions. And, have you played this before? Yeah, I found success when I did it this way.

We don't explain what to do. You've got to work it out. It's very unlike any other activity we've ever done before. It's exciting. People will play it more and get more organised about it. We've seen that in other games where people have created sites of raid finders for MMOs. We may see that.

Looks like you can try with less than 6, but unless you have 6 players, you are going to fail on your face.

that smells like a challenge. In that case, challenge accepted .

Since we have very limited number of Raids, we have to figure out creative ways to play them over and over again. Different classes, different subclasses, different roles, and less players

[hebbnh]

As much as they've talked up the difficulty of raids, they better hope some group doesn't somehow manage to beat one on launch week or something ridiculous. Bungie's gonna look pretty stupid if that happens.

[mannon]

I doubt it's possible considering you'll have the highest level enemies in raids and you can realistically only kill enemies a few levels higher than yourself. It will take a little time for people to get to level 20 and get the gear they need to get up to level 25 or so at least. And for all we know that gear may only drop in the raids themselves.

[wittyscorpion]

Ice Bucket challenge has hit Destiny's Ghost, from moon:

[wittyscorpion]

1) totalxbox.com's Q & A with Bungie: www.totalxbox.com/80645/features/the-future-of-destiny-bungie-talks-contracts-sequels-side-projects-and-halo/

The discussion is mainly around the relationship between Bungie and ActiVision.

2) Newsweek Destiny collector's edition will hit the stand this week: www.oneofswords.com/community/1os/blog/2014/08/27/newsweeks-destiny-collectors-edition-now-available

3) PS exclusive trailer:



4) Major Nelson's interview on Destiny MP:

[wittyscorpion]

This one is must watch, what to expect after launch from IGN: www.ign.com/videos/2014/08/27/destiny-what-to-expect-after-launch

1) They intend to expand the world incrementally, "will built upon the universe rather than restart the universe";

2) This video explained all Crucible game mode in detail;

3) Regarding Raid: must have 6 to succeed. He said "you may only do one phase over one evening" (4:20 mark), this seems to imply that the Raid can be played through multiple interruptible phases;

[GodMars]

I'd link it but I'm lazy this morning: beards were one of the most requested items out if beta. Doesn't sound like they'll be available for character customization at launch, but they're coming.

[tooros]

Aug 28, 2014 7:08:07 GMT -5 GodMars said:

I'd link it but I'm lazy this morning: beards were one of the most requested items out if beta. Doesn't sound like they'll be available for character customization at launch, but they're coming.

Yaarr Dude....

[wittyscorpion]

Destiny panel at Pax, is currently being streamed live:

[wittyscorpion]

Well, 30 minutes into the broadcast, the streaming got screwed up before it got to the good part of post-launch support plans.

EDIT: actually it's PAX that screwed up and the room went dark. The stream is resumed with just voice.

Not a lot of info are revealed, something noteworthy:

1) Sounds like Auto Rifle is being nerfed for PvP;

2) They have built something they thought the gamers would like to play, but they expect that they screwed up many things and anxious to see how people actually play it. They have an infrastructure in place to 1) see how the games are played, and 2) fix things over time to improve game play (example: give players the freedom to choose when to show their faces or wear helmets at tower).

[wittyscorpion]

Destiny launched www.destinyplanetview.com , for players to explore the Destiny universe to pass the time until the game is launched.

Official trailer of destinyplanetview:

[wittyscorpion]

PS4 timed exclusive Crucible map "Exodus Blue" walk through:

[wittyscorpion]

Live action trailer: it's always cool to see a game demonstrated in live action setup



PS4 exclusive Strike "Dest Palace" walk through: also provides details on the enemy line up of Cabal

[hebbnh]

That live action trailer is pretty sweet.

[wittyscorpion]

Sept 4, 2014 13:40:17 GMT -5 hebbnh said:

That live action trailer is pretty sweet.

It is probably designed to attract interest from a broader audience, and will be shown during today's first game of the NFL season. That can't be cheap, ATVI's marketing push behind the $500 million investment is going full out.