Thoughts on Destiny

[GodMars]

Sept 28, 2014 14:16:12 GMT -5 timeitself said:

Despite trying to be, Destiny isn't a MMO. IT completely screws over the pacing and difficulty. Just playing the story means you'll be under leveled. Stop and play PvP for a while and you'll be over leveled and there goes some of the fun. Some of the hardest parts of the game are early on with the thrall rushes and you're using whatever gear you found by the side of the road. Once you beat the story and hit level 20 you hit a wall for the new content until level 26 and can get into the raid. I'm guessing the second part takes longer than the first. You can't just play PvP to get there because you'll need materials for the various weapon and armor upgrades. It feels so padded out and not designed for the kind of challenging runs that were the best reason to replay the halo campaigns.

20-26+ is just gear. That's no different the vast majority of MMOs out there once you hit max level. Levels past 20 are just a repackaged gear check to make sure you have what's needed to take on the harder challenges.

[wittyscorpion]

Sept 28, 2014 12:44:57 GMT -5 wittyscorpion said:

Regarding content:

Story missions: level gated playlists similar to Strike would be great, with matchmaking supported;

Strike missions & Raids: more, ideally double the current amount;

Patrol: more interesting side missions and more challenging public events

PvP: more maps, and mix bag playlists that rotate through different game modes

Social: beef up clan related features

Talking about wishes being granted (gold quote above) , leaked expansion details reported by GodMars and n1gh7: denkirson.proboards.com/thread/7327/meet-expansion

4 more Strikes: almost 100% increase
2 more Raids: 200% increase

[wittyscorpion]

My random thoughts on PvP in general (for specific PvP discussions see dedicated thread)

1) It seems to me that once a player reaches level 29/30, he will not have much incentive to keep playing PvE. He may play the weekly requirements to earn reputations/marks/etc, but beyond that there are not much to achieve. I have already over heard some high level friends in party talking about switching to other games until the expansion comes out.

PvP usually serves as a good player retention tool in such situations.

2) The problem here is that many players only play PvP for the weekly marks, bounties, etc, these are the people who are doing it to push their levels, not because they are fans of PvP.

I don't have much of a sense of how many players are playing PvP by choice, and how many are playing it for leveling/looting. If the latter is the majority, then it is a sign that something is not right and Bungie needs to address.

3) Usually, a new PvP experience requires a fairly steep learning curve. For a player who is new to the game, it is expected that he will suck for the first N hours of playing. Over time, he will get better at the game and start enjoying the game more. The real fun begins once he reaches the advanced stage.

I don't know about the other bros here, for me the above happens every time, even for CoD, which has similar game play among installments. The early "suckiness" won't discourage me from playing it as long as I am getting better compared to myself.

Why is Destiny's PvP relatively unpopular among players, at least the bros here? It is unclear to me whether it is because of the learning curve above or the core combat sandbox is just not fun.

4) As things stand right now, Destiny PvP won't pose serious challenge to CoD:AW, even less so than Titanfall. As soon as AW is launched, most of the CoD players will flock over there. 1 week later when Halo MC is launched, hardcore Halo players may switch to that.

Will Destiny offer a solid alternative for PvP fun? It remains to be seen but things don't look optimistic right now.

[GodMars]

Witty, it seems most of the CoD players I know are engrossed in the PvE because they've never had that kind of multiplayer experience before. They tend to limit their PvP to what is required in terms of bounties, rep, and marks.

I'm almost totally focused on bounties and getting the weekly and dailies done regularly. But as long as I'm playing with friends I'm generally having fun.

[mannon]

Oddly enough while I pretty much read everything here and a few things elsewhere on Destiny and just gobble it all up I just can't get into this discussion. I'm bored to tears with hearing bad reviews and stuff people don't like about Destiny. Great info for someone who hasn't played it, but it's all just so much noise to me at this point. I respect people's opinions, and yeah the game is a bit light on content. Mainly I think it's just not a game for everybody. Bungie tried, maybe even a little too hard, to make it appeal to as many people as possible, and really hoped to live up to their own hype. But let's face it, anytime you get that game messiah kind of hype there's going to be some backlash. *shrug*

Anyway. The OP doesn't like Destiny and listed reasons. Makes sense, and I respect that. Personally the game scratches multiple itches for me that NO game has in years. Not Borderlands, not CoD, or Torchlight, or Halo... nada. Although I have greatly enjoyed many of those games. I say this not as a fanboi who has just bought into the hype and stands here to defend it. I'm not defending anything. Destiny is not perfect, it has problems. I still think going to orbit, while looking cool, is a glorified menu screen that introduces an unnecessary load screen into my game play. I shouldn't have to go to orbit at all, just pick a destination and go from one thing to the next. In fact if I'm not even leaving the same area I shouldn't have to go to a load screen at all. It's kind of annoying. But then it's also a time sink, and it just fits Bungie's philosophy for the game to break up your gameplay into distinct missions. I would have preferred the area on Earth be directly adjacent to the tower and just outside the wall, and our means of going back to the tower be simply... going there. It would have been awesome to look out in the distance from the tower and see the landmarks you know so well from your missions. Anyway... I'm getting off topic.

I'm just chocking it up to Destiny isn't for everyone. I don't think it's remotely as bad as some people are saying, in fact I think the game is pretty fantastic. *shrug* Now I have to go, a public event just started!

[wittyscorpion]

Another conspiracy from the community on why the story feels inadequate for a game that has been in development for a long time:

www.reddit.com/r/DestinyTheGame/comments/2hqmkb/how_destinys_content_completely_changed_over_the/

The gist: something happened at the end of 2013, caused the lead writer to leave and the entire story being rewritten.

[GodMars]

i really don't think it's really anything more than content "cut" to be later released in the expansions. It sucks, but it's business, and we're all stuck with it. This is relatively minor compared to what they've done to my beloved Civilization franchise.

[iw5000]

I think some of you guys are taking it to hard, to personal, the negative reviews coming in. I say that because I have never seen in the four years of being on this board, this amount of analysis and concern over what other people's opinions are. It's a bit baffling.

I think some of you really wanted this game to be the best thing ever... and unfortunately, it's not going to be. Doesn't mean that game still can't be a good time. Don't stress it. Take examples like me to heart. I didn't like the beta. Was late buying the game. But after playing it a few weeks now, I'm having fun. There are people like me out there who might surprise you. For another example, take CoD Ghosts. CoD Ghosts was THE worst of the CoD series, horrible review after review over time. But yet I still played it all year. And guess what? I will say without question, CoD Ghosts turned out to be the best experience for me due to Clan Wars (not the game itself though). One never knows. Don't worry about other people.

[mannon]

Hah! I had totally the opposite experience, having loved the beta and just diving into the release with abandon, but I totally agree with iw5000 here. Destiny is what it is and all of this is much ado about nothing.

[tooros]

I'm sad it wasn't quite the Skyrim/CoD/Borderlands MegaMix I was hoping for but I'm still loving it. I'm still deeply hooked. I love the Co-Op blasting. The music and feel is top notch. The GUNZ are excellent.

I'm in for the long haul.

I fail to notice my disappointment as I'm giggling, howling and raining sh1t down on every "Wizard and Lizard"* that comes my way every night.

*Stolen from iw5000 - love it.

[markopolo]

I echo IW5000's post.

I've done a lot of research about the game, wavered a lot back and forth about getting it, took the plunge and after only playing it for a few hours last night, I know I'm going to like it.

Foxtrot the haters

As for my initial 2 hour experience:

I created a voidwalker warlock, just because I think they're cool and from videos and research I've seen, the Novabomb kicks ass. I think (hope) that race has nothing to do with the game other than appearance, so I created an Exo. I have several weapons collected (I prefer the autorifle, not so much the scout or the pulse) and I think I have 2 preacher shotguns which I suck at using.

My biggest problem: COD has ingrained in me to use the R1/L1 buttons to aim and shoot... and now, by default, when I go to aim at someone, I waste a vortex grenade and look like a douche

[malgato]

I wish they would boost Scout Rifles (I know they have said this is coming). They just don't kill nearly as effectively as auto rifles. Historically, Bungie has rewarded precision shooting, so the Scout Rifle should be the best pony.

[iw5000]

Sept 29, 2014 11:57:52 GMT -5 malgato said:

I wish they would boost Scout Rifles (I know they have said this is coming). They just don't kill nearly as effectively as auto rifles. Historically, Bungie has rewarded precision shooting, so the Scout Rifle should be the best pony.

I honestly don't even feel much of a difference between any of the guns. Auto, scout, pulse, etc...I just use whatever does the most damage.

[wings]

Sept 27, 2014 13:36:13 GMT -5 pachiderm said:

Sept 27, 2014 4:17:07 GMT -5 wings said:

Being able to spawn with a sniper rifle or a shotgun is ridiculous because?

Because it makes everyone a potential powerhouse at close or long range, and it makes primaries almost exclusively mid-range weapons. It also effectively makes Scout and Pulse rifles weaker than Auto Rifles. In Halo you had to pick these guns up on the map and they were usually limited to about 1 or 2 for each map. Now everyone's got them and I see more people crouched with a shotgun in corners and watching their team's flank with a sniper rifle than I ever saw in Halo.

Primaries are almost exclusively mid-range weapons because full auto rifles are in that class. They are not designed to have a significant use in short range or long range like they do in COD so you have to think when to use which weapon when anticipating engagements before and during a match. Perhaps scout rifles could do with better body multipliers but then sniper rifles would have to better them on that front so they are not outclassed or full auto rifles deal less damage per round while suffering more damage drop-off than scout rifles. I can't see how someone can beast in short range because the last time I tried them they didn't even have a OHK range of 10m, and the maps I've seen don't really allow shotguns to be used for anything other than corner tactical loitering with them. If you want to see shotguns used properly then look at the maps in Gears of War (Checkout, Gridlock, Rustlung, Trenches etc).

[hebbnh]

Scout rifles work really well from longer range, as their damage doesn't drop off so severely like the ARs do. This is especially noticeable in large PvP maps like the moon base. At distances where ARs struggle to get more than a hit or two and barely do any damage when they do hit, scout rifles are still very accurate and remain a 4 shot kill if you hit the head. Unfortunately you rarely need (or even get much of a chance) to do any fighting at that distance in PvE, which makes them kind of pointless there IMO. They also get destroyed by ARs in most PvP situations. Moon base is the only map I've had much success with them.

[iw5000]

Sept 29, 2014 7:44:23 GMT -5 wittyscorpion said:

Another conspiracy from the community on why the story feels inadequate for a game that has been in development for a long time:

www.reddit.com/r/DestinyTheGame/comments/2hqmkb/how_destinys_content_completely_changed_over_the/

The gist: something happened at the end of 2013, caused the lead writer to leave and the entire story being rewritten.

Very interesting post.

Unfortunately, none of the solutions work. It's to late to try and add back the story. That ship has sailed.

[wittyscorpion]

Sept 29, 2014 8:00:13 GMT -5 iw5000 said:

I think some of you guys are taking it to hard, to personal, the negative reviews coming in. I say that because I have never seen in the four years of being on this board, this amount of analysis and concern over what other people's opinions are. It's a bit baffling.

I think some of you really wanted this game to be the best thing ever... and unfortunately, it's not going to be. Doesn't mean that game still can't be a good time. Don't stress it. Take examples like me to heart. I didn't like the beta. Was late buying the game. But after playing it a few weeks now, I'm having fun. There are people like me out there who might surprise you. For another example, take CoD Ghosts. CoD Ghosts was THE worst of the CoD series, horrible review after review over time. But yet I still played it all year. And guess what? I will say without question, CoD Ghosts turned out to be the best experience for me due to Clan Wars (not the game itself though). One never knows. Don't worry about other people.

Compared to what I saw in other forums, the bros here are pretty calm and objective about the game. I don't think anybody took the negative reviews hard, all opinions are acklowledged, extreme views are checked and balanced, it's a great discussion.

Satisfied or disappointed, like it or not, plan to play a month (until CoD:AW or Halo MC) or a year, the game is not as good as fanboys boasted it to be, and not as bad as haters bashed it to be.

IMHO, the good news for bros who enjoy playing it, is that: the game has a solid foundation to expand with more content. Such foundation is difficult to get right from software development point of view, so with this in place I am optimistic about the future of the franchise.

[TheHawkNY]

Sept 29, 2014 11:10:38 GMT -5 markopolo said:

I echo IW5000's post.

I've done a lot of research about the game, wavered a lot back and forth about getting it, took the plunge and after only playing it for a few hours last night, I know I'm going to like it.

Foxtrot the haters

As for my initial 2 hour experience:

I created a voidwalker warlock, just because I think they're cool and from videos and research I've seen, the Novabomb kicks ass. I think (hope) that race has nothing to do with the game other than appearance, so I created an Exo. I have several weapons collected (I prefer the autorifle, not so much the scout or the pulse) and I think I have 2 preacher shotguns which I suck at using.

My biggest problem: COD has ingrained in me to use the R1/L1 buttons to aim and shoot... and now, by default, when I go to aim at someone, I waste a vortex grenade and look like a douche

You can invert them in the options menu. First thing I did.

[markopolo]

Sept 29, 2014 12:41:32 GMT -5 TheHawkNY said:

You can invert them in the options menu. First thing I did.

God bless you and yours.

[mannon]

Really? I sure do. Pulse especially... It can do it's job but it's an awful lot of work compensating for vertical kick every shot to keep the burst clusters tighter. I don't like it just because of that. I have to concentrate a lot more on the mechanics of firing or sacrifice some of it's effectiveness. Auto rifles require some work at range, but are fairly consistent once you start firing, at least in what you can control and what you can't there's no point worrying about. Scout rifle to me is just butter. Have to use better timing than auto, but really don't have to worry about compensating at all. Hand cannons take it to a further extreme with even more damage, slower firing, and smaller mags, though they also have less range, (somewhat made up for by high overall damage).

Although with all of them you are going to be milking headshots for efficient kills so I guess that can feel the sameish. I think pulse rifle, (within a certain range) is probably the easiest to get a headshot with if you only need one of the burst to hit against. If you fight enemies that can survive one or two headshot hits then it gets to be much more difficult to use effectively, (partly why I don't like it in crucible). Not that it isn't possible to get the full burst into a all headshot cluster, but it's not easy while also dodging and range is limited on that. Hand cannon is great if you can use cover and just pop headshot after headshot then retreat to reload and recharge shields, (or if your gun gets super fast reloads after a precision kill, then you almost have free reloads). Scout and Auto rifles seem the most similar to me though they largely require different compensation techniques. Scout is more timing and auto more tracking and some downpull vs vertical recoil. I also don't tend to hipfire scout or pulse rifles much. I'll melee or switch to shotgun more often in close quarters. Auto rifle and Hand Cannon I use hipfire some more here and there in CQC.

It's not a huge amount of weapon variety, especially since I shy away from low impact high RoF weapons, but it does the trick.

[iw5000]

Sept 29, 2014 12:41:13 GMT -5 wittyscorpion said:

Sept 29, 2014 8:00:13 GMT -5 iw5000 said:

I think some of you guys are taking it to hard, to personal, the negative reviews coming in. I say that because I have never seen in the four years of being on this board, this amount of analysis and concern over what other people's opinions are. It's a bit baffling.

I think some of you really wanted this game to be the best thing ever... and unfortunately, it's not going to be. Doesn't mean that game still can't be a good time. Don't stress it. Take examples like me to heart. I didn't like the beta. Was late buying the game. But after playing it a few weeks now, I'm having fun. There are people like me out there who might surprise you. For another example, take CoD Ghosts. CoD Ghosts was THE worst of the CoD series, horrible review after review over time. But yet I still played it all year. And guess what? I will say without question, CoD Ghosts turned out to be the best experience for me due to Clan Wars (not the game itself though). One never knows. Don't worry about other people.

Compared to what I saw in other forums, the bros here are pretty calm and objective about the game. I don't think anybody took the negative reviews hard, all opinions are acklowledged, extreme views are checked and balanced, it's a great discussion..

I didn't mean for the above to come across like everyone on this board is throwing a hissy fit. It's certainly not 'SBMM-GATE' all over all again, which was a complete embarrassment to this board. I meant it more in terms of the sheer amount of posts and threads discussing 'how' the game was reviewed. The post themselves have been well written, well thought out. ...it's just the sheer number of them. I seriously don't remember a single thread, or even a single post, discussing what review CoD Ghosts or BO2 got.

I suppose this being a new game franchise, that made it so?

[wittyscorpion]

Sept 29, 2014 12:02:48 GMT -5 iw5000 said:

Sept 29, 2014 11:57:52 GMT -5 malgato said:

I wish they would boost Scout Rifles (I know they have said this is coming). They just don't kill nearly as effectively as auto rifles. Historically, Bungie has rewarded precision shooting, so the Scout Rifle should be the best pony.

I honestly don't even feel much of a difference between any of the guns. Auto, scout, pulse, etc...I just use whatever does the most damage.

One thing you might not br aware of is the difference between attack and impact. One weapon class with bigger attack stats may do significantly less damage than another weapon class with much smaller attack number, if latter has bigger impact.

Scout Rifle in general trumps auto and pulse in terms of impact.

[iw5000]

huh?

[mannon]

He's talking about the difference between attack and impact on damage I think. Generally higher impact weapons do more damage per hit.

[wittyscorpion]

Sept 29, 2014 13:20:17 GMT -5 iw5000 said:

huh?

I just updated my post by changing "damage" stats to "attack" stats, which is more accurate.

EDIT: see this post for more info

denkirson.proboards.com/thread/7243/destiny-attack-impact

Note that the above info is from beta and might be a little bit out of date. I will update it when I find time.

[TheHawkNY]

There are some simple tweaks they could make that would make the game a lot better.

Obviously, chat issues are one thing that stand out.

The 3v3 PvP modes are fun, but the revive mechanic is bonked. If you have the choice, it's safer to revive a teammate than to actually fire at an enemy. I can't tell you how many times I tried to kill an enemy who was reviving and they were invincible. Incredibly frustrating.

Need more shards. It's going to take me weeks to level a single piece of armor playing very frequently. I don't want to level the pieces I have, because I don't know if I want to keep them long term, and there's no way to get the shards back.

The patrol missions need improvement. Right now, you play patrol in order to look for materials/chests, and basically the patrol missions are just something you pick up because you're already there. It should be the other way around - I'm doing patrol because I have fun doing the patrol missions, and I just happen to find materials/chests along the way. But the patrol missions are boring - drive to the other end of the map on your sparrow to scout an area, kill a few low level enemies, or drive somewhere to kill a specific low-level enemy. The only interesting thing that ever happens when you're doing a patrol is public events, and that shouldn't be the case. At the very least, they could stand to further increase the occurrence of public events or make things like the swarm that happens on Cosmodrome much more common.

How is there not a survival mode yet? People were willing to stand and shoot at the entrance to a cave for hours on end. We just want to shoot a never-ending supply of enemies.

[iw5000]

Agree. Driving endlessly around a map looking for Helium thingy's (inset whatever material you are looking for) gets old.

[mannon]

I would definitely like to see some more depth to the patrols. I don't really drive around looking for resources, though. That does sound boring. Personally what I do most often on patrol is pick an area and clear it completely of enemies, chests, and resources. In some places the enemies and sometimes even the chests and resources respawn before I even finish so I'll wind up making a few passes through just because I'm in a groove, then a public event will start, or a patrol will send me elsewhere, or I'll just decide to and I'll move on.

I do have a few favs more individual spots I tend to visit regularly and just do once in passing then move on. These are places like the captain's cave from the inclined wing in the mothyard, the higher level captain cave below the paths up the hill into the entrance to Skywatch from the Mothyard, and the room under the heliport in Skywatch. I've also taken to clearing the area nearly dead under the Cosmodome player spawn. All but the first usually have a chest as well.

As far as the chests and resources go I mostly just check where I've seen them spawn and keep an eye out for them as I'm about my business. They aren't really enough of a reward to send me skittering off hunting for them. In fact the resource bits are less valuable than in Beta since you now get resources in chests. For me they are just a piece of candy to pickup while I'm poking around. Though if I see one, I MUST pick it up.

[iw5000]

wow

Around the 6 min mark. Is this true? The designers goofed up with the coding? This is some interesting stuff, about how Bungie didn't check the final game's coding before shipping out.

[TheHawkNY]

No, it was coded as intended. From the dev notes:

Long ago during development, the Cryptarch decoded engrams of a given color into gear of that same color. Early in 2014 we added randomness, both for better and worse, to the decrypting process. The result was that end-of-session engram decoding got a lot more exciting and the Cryptarch himself suddenly acquired a personality. Both of these experiences were positive additions to the game.

But we didn't adequately communicate the potential random outcomes of decryption. Players see what looks like the familiar metaphor of item identification, while the Cryptarch thinks he's opening a grab bag of loot. Rage sharding of blues ensues. Expect to see changes to address this soon.

They thought by making it a bit more random, it would introduce a little excitement. What actually happened is that the randomness inspired rage from players, who naturally expected that a decoded piece of gear would be the same color as the engram it was decoded from. The frequency with which an engram would decode to a lower level piece of gear was far too high, making the problem worse. Had they simply not given encoded engrams colors corresponding to the colors of the gear, it would have worked fine. But it wasn't a problem with the coding itself, it was a problem with the expectations they set for what you would get for an engram.