Destiny: Launch Trailer series & content discussion

[GodMars]

The live action trailer was... unexpected. Doesn't affect me in any way, but it felt a bit out of place, as if it got lost in a CoD commercial on it's way to the usual Destiny stuff we've been shown.

[wittyscorpion]

Sept 4, 2014 16:06:15 GMT -5 GodMars said:

The live action trailer was... unexpected. Doesn't affect me in any way, but it felt a bit out of place, as if it got lost in a CoD commercial on it's way to the usual Destiny stuff we've been shown.

Maybe it's because the target audience are not the enthusiastic fans who are counting down the days to launch, but people who are not quite aware of the game.

I can imagine that had I not been aware of Destiny, I would be quite intrigued after seeing this trailer during a NFL game.

[mannon]

Okay, this is where the helmets are actually kind of brilliant. Since all the guardians are helmeted in all the action areas of the game they can show all sorts of stuff from that and do something like this and you can still picture yourself as one of the protagonists in the scene, just like good old Master Chief. And yet when you actually do make a character you get to decide what you actually look like under the helmet as well. This is not Bungie's first BBQ...

[wittyscorpion]

The live action trailer does a few things well IMHO:

1) It gives the feeling of immersion, when I think myself as one of the people in the trailer, it makes me feel that I am actually in the game;

2) It shows the game's potential of intimate collaborative play among a fire team of 3 friends;

3) It gives a glimpse of what enemies the gamers need to fight against: "zombies", "monsters", and robots.

All in all, I think it is very well done for its purpose.

[tooros]

Ha. I loved it. Plus - Led Zeppelin make everything better - like blue LED's do.

[wittyscorpion]

The last weekly update from Bungie, which reveals more info regarding end game content: www.bungie.net/7_Bungie-Weekly-Update---09052014/en/News/News?aid=12096

"Heroic Strikes", daily bounties, Iron Banner, Vault of Glass (the Raid, officially available on 09/16, min level requirement = 25), and customizing your loadout around exotic weapons:

Of course we’re not going to spoil the dramatic conclusion of Destiny here. However, there’s been a lot of chatter in the places where chatter happens about what awaits you after the end of the tale we’re telling in Destiny.

When our story ends, yours will begin. Check out the conversation below. It features questions harvested from the universal mind and answers that are a blend of the insights provided by Bungie designers Luke Smith and Tyson Green.

---

Q. Overall, what’s the goal of end game content in Destiny?

We want to give players and the community challenges to work on individually, and together.

Each player’s goal is to gear up, become more powerful, and face even greater challenges for a chance at the most powerful and awe-inspiring rewards Destiny has to offer.

Our goal is to curate a living world with activities for every mood. Whether you’re craving high intensity cooperative gameplay, shooting other players in the face in a variety of modes, or scouring the planets for precious resources and hunting for Public Events, we want Destiny to meet whatever mood you’re in.

---

Q. What can players expect after they achieve Level 20?

Destiny really begins at Level 20. Afterwards, each player’s power is displayed as their Light Level – this is the yellow number in their nameplate post-20 in the Tower. The way to increase that Level? Get better gear.

Strikes and Crucible matches can award powerful gear and currencies which you’ll use to buy Legendary (purple) gear from the Tower. Players can choose to champion one of our three Factions (New Monarchy, Dead Orbit, or Future War Cult) in both cooperative and competitive activities. This allows them to rank up and purchase gear from a particular Faction.

Which Faction you champion is related to what kind of build you’re focusing on. If you’re Warlock looking to focus on Discipline and Strength, you’ll be looking at the Dead Orbit Legendary Set and coveting it. If you’re looking for a great Legendary Hand Cannon you might champion the Vanguard, or maybe the Future War Cult, depending on which piece tempts you most.

Additionally, post-Level 20, players will unlock the Heroic mode progressions for Daily Heroic Story Chapters and Weekly Heroic Strikes. For example, in the Weekly Heroic Strikes, there are three recommended Light Levels and the first one, 22, will feature two modifiers.

---

Q. Tell us more about these Heroic Strikes!

A weekly rotation of very challenging Heroic Strikes (and the pinnacle Nightfall Strike) use high-level enemies and global modifiers to create challenges that require skill, gear, and sometimes creative character builds to beat.

Modifiers are one of the ways we tweak content we’ve already built. The first modifier is called “Heroic.” Heroic leverages the more difficult version of the encounters, but the second modifier is where we really start to challenge players. Take a modifier like Arc Burn – which increases all damage dealt by Arc Damage by 300%. If you’re a Bladedancer Hunter, you’re about to be an even more destructive force, and everyone else in your Fireteam is going to be scrambling for Arc weapons. But, if the enemies you’re facing also use Arc weapons, they will cut through you like paper.

We give a very similar treatment to the Daily Heroic Story Chapter, which are featured on a daily basis with bonus rewards.

---

Q. What about Bounties?

Xander 99-40, a Vendor in the Tower, will also offer Daily Bounties that send you into a variety of activities in exchange for experience and reputation rewards. These Bounties will provide Faction Reputation, either for the Vanguard or whichever Faction you’re championing, in addition to a bunch of XP.

Post-Level 20, XP is still super important to players. You are going to be seeking as much XP as possible to level weapons and armor, complete your first Subclass and make your way through the second. Bounties and the Daily and Weekly Activities are important sources of these bursts of XP.

---

Q. Was the Iron Banner I experienced in the Beta indicative of what I’ll experience in the full game?

In the full game, Iron Banner is a longer lasting event that will give players more time to engage in it.

---

Q. Beyond Iron Banner, are there other events in the game?

There are!

---

Q. How does high level weapons, armor, and abilities change how I experience the overall sandbox?

Some Exotics provide unique modifiers that might change which abilities you focus on, creating new ways to be effective in cooperative and competitive play. It’s all about options and personal optimization.

As players make their way through Destiny they are going to find out what types of weapons, talents and stats they prefer when gearing their Guardian. Thinking about it in terms of Arsenal and Builds is a simple way to start to explore Destiny’s depth.

An Arsenal example: A Pulse Rifle player may find that he wants to find a Pulse Rifle with a talent combination like Full Auto (converts the weapon to a fully automatic), but he wants Field Scout (which extends the mag and the clip to the weapons max), so he’s going to have to hunt for a weapon sates his desires.

Now, Builds: Builds continue to progress long after players have completed the last Story mission. A bunch of the synergies found within a given build don’t come online till late in this build – like the Fireborn Sunsinger doesn’t actually earn the Self-Resurrection power till very late in his progression.

There are also synergies outside of the builds in the form of both Armor Talents and Exotic Armor. Armor Talents allow players to align their arsenal and their build to create powerful synergies.

For example, a Titan might try and find weapons with Grenadier (kills with this weapon reduce the cooldown of your grenades), and marry it with a bunch of Armor Talents which also accelerate grenade cooldowns. This Titan would probably also be looking for a lot of high Discipline armor as the Discipline lowers the cooldown for grenades.

---

Q. When should I expect to give the Vault of Glass a run?

The Vault of Glass can be broken into beginning on September 16th, assuming you’ve achieved level 25. This allows all of our players a week to dive into the world, start to make their Guardians and prepare for what lies behind a giant door on Venus.

---

Q. What are some other ways you plan on continuing to support Destiny, beyond content? Do you have any support/sustain plans in the works?

Our first few weeks are already set aside to be reactive to what the community teaches us. After that, we have plans and plans, but all of the details will depend on what we learn in the next two weeks.

There are many evolutions ahead of you, Guardian. Many ends and plenty of beginnings. Be brave.

[iw5000]

That was an interesting read Witty, but it's stuff like the above that is scaring me off of this game. I feel like I could play this game for 3 days of play time, and still have no clue as to what to do or where to go... in terms of understanding all this dungeons and dragons stuff. Like the arc of glass, vault of glass, spells, potions and things like that. There's like two dozen just in the article above. Not just knowing what those are, but also knowing these things, AND having to go out and find them. Right now, that is really making me groan. I don't want to search for stuff. I'm terrible at puzzle whatever games.

[mannon]

The Vault of Glass is the raid. I don't know about it being hidden or anything. I know that with that Bungie is deliberately not spelling out everything you have to do in it, or even to start it. But people will post it online so it's really not a problem. And the raid is endgame anyway. I probably won't be raid ready for quite a while due to play time constraints, and I'll probably waste time building up all three characters instead of just one as well.

Missions are pretty well spelled out for you. Your ghost gives you a waypoint and you follow it, and starting them is all from the map screen so while you can tackle them a little bit nonlinearly and replay them, they are still pretty strait forward. I've also found that missions tend to follow a linear path. You'll go through public areas of the map you're on and those are usually pretty open, but you generally have a waypoint to where you have to go. Though there was one mission where what you needed was on enemies you had to kill, so it pays to actually listen to Peter Dinklage so you know what you're supposed to be doing. Once you're out of the public space most areas are linear with only one path through the mission aside from a couple of arena like rooms for large encounters. There are lots of distractions. But really once you get the hang of following the waypoints and listening to the dialogue it's generally not that difficult to figure out what you're doing. Of course there is also a lot of player choice. You can always redo missions or do some of them out of order. Or you can go do exploration, or the crucible, or pick a different planet if you've opened that up. You have options. But that's all optional, it doesn't matter what you pick. That's there for variety. You shouldn't stress over it, just do what you think will be fun and give you rewards that you want.

The game isn't really as complex as you make it sound. There aren't even all that many NPC's in the tower. The tower would be a single building in a whole city of NPC's in a real MMO and about half of them would have quests you would have to go talk to them to start.

[iw5000]

Yeah, I just watched some WoW videos on the whole raid concept. I think I understand it a bit better.

[hebbnh]

Have to agree with mannon here, iw5k, in that you're making the having to figure stuff out and having no clue what you're doing into a way bigger issue than it really is. If nothing else the answers to every question you could ever have will be plastered all over the internet within a week or two, plus I'm sure the peeps here will be more than happy to help walk you through stuff as well. Then again, if you know you don't like having to work out puzzles and dealing with stats and modifiers and everything else, this game may just not be for you, and of course there's nothing wrong with that.

[hebbnh]

Also regarding the stats and modifier stuff, that will probably really only come into play in 10% of the game, the hardest of the hard endgame content. If you just want to jump in and play through the main story on normal, or try out the crucible, you'll probably do fine just shooting things and using whatever gear you happen across.

[wittyscorpion]

iw5000: one good thing about Destiny is that you can play it very casually. You don't have to know any of those complex terms and just have some simple fun, through open exploration. Just jump into the open world, and explore and shoot anything that does not have "??" above their head. No obligations to complete anything, no fear of losing or failing, just shooting

There are 4 big worlds to do this open exploration, and 6 subclasses to offer significantly different way to play them. That's a permutation of 24 to have simple fun with.

Of course, this may not be your cup of tea either, if you did not really enjoy the beta that much.

[wittyscorpion]

Destiny DB: community built information hub for everything Destiny

db.destinytracker.com/

[wittyscorpion]

A few pages from Destiny's strategy guide: destinynews.net/first-look-inside-strategy-guide/

What do you see from this picture:



Is that... a Titan with sword?!

EDIT: Some people commented that it is part of the story, not real game play. We will see...

[-3055-]

I was saying how we need melee weapons for a dlc/expansion.

Hopefully with eexpansions we'll see new weapon types. Or at least unique styles of the old weapons. Like a normal semi auto pistol. Not the hand cannon scout rifle copy that we have right now.

[beavenge]

Sept 6, 2014 23:11:17 GMT -5 wittyscorpion said:

A few pages from Destiny's strategy guide: destinynews.net/first-look-inside-strategy-guide/

What do you see from this picture:



Is that... a Titan with sword?!

EDIT: Some people commented that it is part of the story, not real game play. We will see...

It almost looks like the titan from the E3 2014 Trailer has a sword on their back along with a primary weapon (picture at top of page and some clips in the video).

[beavenge]

As most of us probably already know, you get a few shiny moments with the sword... but just can't take it with you. Hopefully ends up as a power weapon in PvP...

[wittyscorpion]

Regarding the number of Raids, community built stats site db.destinytracker.com/ shows there are 3: db.destinytracker.com/activities?types=3507828487|837773392|2043403989

If that's indeed the case, it is very exciting.

[hebbnh]

Sept 9, 2014 18:15:13 GMT -5 wittyscorpion said:

Regarding the number of Raids, community built stats site db.destinytracker.com/ shows there are 3: db.destinytracker.com/activities?types=3507828487|837773392|2043403989

If that's indeed the case, it is very exciting.

Based on the description given for Crota's End ("He waits in the dark below"), I think it's safe to assume that raid will be part of The Dark Below expansion, and the "Reef Raid" will probably be part of the House of Wolves expansion.  I'm assuming it'll get a cool new name at some point.  That leaves Vault of Glass as the only raid at release, which is kind of a bummer, but was expected.  If the hard version is as hard as Bungie claims, people are going to be plenty busy with just the one raid anyway.

[wittyscorpion]

(Taking the risk of stating the obvious)

For bros who preordered/preloaded, don't forget to redeem your preorder bonus items:

a) Legendary cosmetic items: ghost casing, ship, and emblem all look pretty sweet, I especially like the emblem;
b) Vanguard armory: weapons and armors you can buy from Vanguard Quartermaster at level 5, 10, and 15. At lower levels these are significantly better than what you can get naturally in game;

How on XONE: (again stating the obvious, but it took me a nontrivial minute to figure it out, so I thought I might as well share)

1) Go to My Games and Apps
2) Highlight Destiny, then press "menu" button;
3) Select "manage game";
4) Install the 2 preorder bonuses mentioned above;
5) Launch Destiny and go to Tower;
6) Pick up a) from Postmaster, and equip;
7) Buy b) using Glimmer from Vanguard Quartermaster (in the same area as the Shipwright);

[hebbnh]

Yeah, totally forgot about the Vanguard Armory stuff until I was level 8 and all my stuff outclassed the level 5 stuff that was available. Did the same thing at level 12. Maybe I'll actually think to go there at level 15 now.

[iw5000]

Sept 6, 2014 14:10:29 GMT -5 hebbnh said:

Have to agree with mannon here, iw5k, in that you're making the having to figure stuff out and having no clue what you're doing into a way bigger issue than it really is. If nothing else the answers to every question you could ever have will be plastered all over the internet within a week or two, plus I'm sure the peeps here will be more than happy to help walk you through stuff as well. Then again, if you know you don't like having to work out puzzles and dealing with stats and modifiers and everything else, this game may just not be for you, and of course there's nothing wrong with that.

I'm not the only one who felt this. I do think it is a issue. I've now read four reviews that have had the same complaint. For example,

www.digitaltrends.com/gaming/destiny-review-yet-heres-think-far/

"There’s also a big problem with the way Destiny communicates how its more complex systems work. Have you picked up any mysterious Spinmetal, or wondered what the heck those Weapon Parts you get for breaking down uncommon weapons do? You didn’t miss a tutorial; there isn’t one. Destiny is very good at throwing players into the action, but very bad at laying out how it works. Major game systems like level progression (Did you know green rarity weapons or better have their own upgrade paths?), crafting (Those Weapon Parts are needed to unlock certain upgrades on blue rarity weapons or better, FYI.), and character development (Reaching level 15 with one character unlocks the second subclass for all your characters!) go completely unexplained in the game""

I know if I search these forums hard enough, look around enough, I probably can find the answers. And here's the thing you don't realize. When you are totally bonkers for a game (like many of you posting in this thread are), it's fun to spend hours searching around for answers to the above questions. I know, because I do it for CoD. But you people are failing to realize what it's like for the casuals. For casual players, who aren't head over heels in love with this game yet, the above process can kind of suck the life out of things. It's not fun to start playing, be confused, then have to start looking around on the net. When your interest is already at a wavering level' this can kill interest pretty fast"

[hebbnh]

Well, fair enough. I agree that there should be a tutorial of some sort, and I'm actually really surprised there isn't one. Most of those systems are pretty standard in RPG-style games so I found it fairly self-explanatory, but I can totally see your point in that people without much experience with those types of games may have a tougher time sorting it all out and could be put off by that.

[mannon]

Perhaps that is the disconnect. The game definitely does not explain systems, but it borrows from so many other genre's that most things seem pretty self explanatory to me just due the fact that I play a little of nearly everything.

I generally find the game easy to get started with and I have noticed that they did add a lot more hint prompts that weren't in beta, but there are still many things that aren't explained as explicitly as they could be, and I'm still a bit confused on the locking your class thing.

It's my understanding that you can (at some point) lock the progress on your subclass and start a new one. I'm assuming this means you can then still play both the locked one and the new one and swap between the two builds? Otherwise I just don't see the point. What I really want to know is if this would allow you to play both subclasses of a class, if it even works that way. Because I really want to play all six subclasses, but I don't want to delete my characters to do it.

[hebbnh]

Sept 11, 2014 12:35:06 GMT -5 mannon said:

Perhaps that is the disconnect. The game definitely does not explain systems, but it borrows from so many other genre's that most things seem pretty self explanatory to me just due the fact that I play a little of nearly everything.

I generally find the game easy to get started with and I have noticed that they did add a lot more hint prompts that weren't in beta, but there are still many things that aren't explained as explicitly as they could be, and I'm still a bit confused on the locking your class thing.

It's my understanding that you can (at some point) lock the progress on your subclass and start a new one. I'm assuming this means you can then still play both the locked one and the new one and swap between the two builds? Otherwise I just don't see the point. What I really want to know is if this would allow you to play both subclasses of a class, if it even works that way. Because I really want to play all six subclasses, but I don't want to delete my characters to do it.

The notes for the launch day patch state that subclass locking has been removed, so I don't think you need to worry about that anymore.

[mannon]

I see... So I guess I can't realistically play all six subclasses, I'll have to pick one subclass for each character and stick with it...

[hebbnh]

I think you're interpreting that incorrectly. Originally you could lock your subclass and all talents you'd previously selected in order to gain a stat bonus, with the downside that you lose the flexibility to switch between talents and subclasses. From my understanding, that ability to lock and gain a stat bonus is gone, which means you can still freely swap between talents and/or subclasses at any time you choose. Unless I'm just missing something.

[mannon]

Oh wait. Can you switch between your subclasses at will? I assumed changing to the level 15 subclass was permanent so if you became a Sundancer you couldn't go back to Voidwalker.

[hebbnh]

Well, I'm not sure since I'm only at level 12, but everything I've seen says you can switch between subclasses at will. Hopefully one of the higher-level Bros will chime in and help us out...

[iw5000]

Sept 11, 2014 12:35:06 GMT -5 mannon said:

Perhaps that is the disconnect. The game definitely does not explain systems, but it borrows from so many other genre's that most things seem pretty self explanatory to me just due the fact that I play a little of nearly everything..

And that is where I think my problem lies. I have almost no MMO type of games experience. I've also never gotten into games like LoL or DoTA either (the top down format seems to follow kind of close?) I'm the guy who kind of got stuck on Borderlands a bit and quit playing. These games seem very alien to me and a bit overwhelming. Plus, I am old as dirt, as picking up new things doesn't come easy. I've always mostly played bro games. CoD. Madden Football (yrs ago). GTA. and years ago, shooter games like Quake and UT. (plus some PC games like Rome, MTW series, etc...)

You can't assume everyone has done MMO and is at ease with how this game is supposed to play. :-(