official Destiny

[+Asmodai MVC]

I haven't read all 24 pages so far of this thread but I figured I'd share my thoughts of the Destiny Beta [PS4] and I expect the mods would growl at me if I made my own thread so here goes:

 

First let me say I'm not a FPS gamer.  I didn't preorder the game, I had no intention of even buying the game, I got into the beta because on of my friends gave me one of his codes and I figured it's free so what the heck, let me give it a try.

 

Story Mode: I enjoyed playing through the story the first time.  In fact I enjoyed it way more then I expected I would, not because it has some great plot just because it was more fun then I remember FPS games being.  I even remember thinking to myself that maybe I didn't dislike FPS games as much as I thought.  When I started my second character though I HATED playing Story mode.  It's totally linear and to make matters worse you can't skip the long cut scenes.  Typically for me if a game is linear, no matter how great the story, it's a rental not a buy because it has minimal replay value.  I don't really care much for canned plots in games, I'm an open world gamer and for me if I want a strong plot I'll watch a movie.  I want to MAKE the story in my games through my own actions and decisions not have it handed to me.  I hope the final game has some sort of branching in the story line, multiple paths through missions, etc. so it isn't exactly the same thing each time.

 

Explore Mode:  This is my favorite part of the game.  I enjoy running around, doing little side missions, and collecting loot.  As an open world gamer this is where I thrive but it's very disappointing to me that there is only one of these zones per planet in the game.  The only place on all of planet earth I'll be able to play is a Russian Cosmodrome, really!?!  This reeks of loads of $$$ you're going to have to spend after release to buy DLC to play in additional areas.  What is there is nice but I wouldn't consider it worth a $60 game to be able to play in 5 or so maps like this.  I mean the moon is one thing because the moon is a bunch of same looking craters but for earth there should be several Explore maps with various climates all over the world.  I love to battle it out in a jungle, through a destroyed city, in the mountains, etc.

 

Strike Mode: There is a single strike mode in the beta and generally I enjoyed it but the big walker thing has way too much health and it gets tedious trying to kill it after a while. Again there isn't much variety here for any sort of replay value.  I assume in the final game there will be a bunch of different strike missions though but again this reeks of tons of DLC you're going to have to buy to get new missions.  Also for these missions a team size greater than 3 seems like it would be more fun.

 

Crucible Mode:  I played this mode last.  Again I generally had a good time playing the rest of the game before I tried Crucible (biggest concern being replay value).  I was seriously thinking I might have given FPS games a bad rap in my mind and that I might very well buy Destiny even though I had no real interest in it before my friend gave me the beta code...  then I tried Crucible.  Again I'm not a FPS gamer so I haven't honed my skills on CoD, Battlefield, Halo, etc.  I seemed to do just fine in the other modes but against people who play tons of FPS quite frankly I suck.  As a result Crucible matches for me amount to spawn, run 100 or so meters, die, respawn and repeat.  My first match I remember thinking "Oh yeah, THIS is why I hate FPS games!"  I have no intention of ever spending the hours upon hours of practice it would take to compete with others who play FPS games all the time.  There are too many other good games out there so this mode, while it may be great for FPS fans (or maybe not, I have no idea) is a total waste of time for me.  I played like 6 Crucible matches or so (two for each character class, one each of the first two crucible missions in the beta).  It seems to me like I'm getting one shot in Crucible missions so the fact you heal is pointless.  I don't see my health go down and then die, I just die, instantly.  I don't know if my armor sucks compared to their weapons or what.  Most of the time I don't even see who killed me.  I'd just as soon never play Crucible again, there seems to be entire stores devoted to gear purchased with crucible credits so my fear is if you don't play Crucible missions then you don't get the good gear.  If that's the case then I will absolutely not buy Destiny, it's clearly only for hardcore FPS players, I hope it's not.  Likewise I think this is what they're banking on for replay value since there will be so few explore maps and the story is so linear.  Again, I hope that is not the case.

 

Classes/Races:  I made my first character a Titan and had a good run through to level 8 (excluding the Crucible missions).  I figured the Titan would me the most straight forward, least finess, class and as a noob the best one to try.  No real complaints with the class.  My second character I tried a Hunter and was HUGELY disappointed.  I keep hearing it described as a recon, scout, stealth class but it has none of this.  The game appears to have no concept of stealth at all.  The baddies see you in the light or the dark, everyone can use sniper rifles, throwing a dagger or shooting a golden hand cannon doesn't say stealth or recon to me.  There really seems to be very little difference in the classes as all.  I got all three classes to level 8 and sure you unlock different power sets but they don't make THAT much of a difference.  Most of the time you're using your standard weapon and everyone uses the same guns.  The armor LOOKS different per class but appears to be purely cosmetic so why even bother restricting it to class, just let people pick what they want to look like by selecting whatever armor they want.  For melee the standard Titan punch, Hunter Stab, or Warlock force thingy are again seemingly just graphical differences.  So the real class differences seem to just be in the special power and the grenade types.  Races are also apparently purely cosmetic so there's not much else to say about them.

 

Misc:  I found it odd that you can't give your characters names.  I found it odd that there is no low-G feel to the moon mission.  The android companion app is the best companion app I've seen so far with my only real complaint being that it won't let you toggle the helmet on your characters.  Pretty much the only thing you get to do at character creation is customize your face but the only time you aren't wearing a helmet is at the Tower and even the companion app doesn't let you see the face you spent the time to customize.

 

Overall I went from not caring about the game at all to being intrigued by it.  I haven't read a lot about it since I wasn't really expecting to get it so maybe it's all been answered but if my replay value concerns are addressed and you don't screw yourself out of most of the good gear by avoiding Crucible (again, no intention to ever play that again) then I may very well end up getting the game.  If not though at least I had an overall good time playing the beta.

[HawkMan]

I don't know about the PS4 version, but the crucible should be better at launch when there are more players and the match maker can match players based on skill. At least on live the skill rating in general is very good for the games that use it and don't try to invent their own wheel.

[trooper11]

I have to echo the thoughts about the Crucible section:  I don't see myself participating much at all.

 

Again, its probably fun for big fps fans, but I had no fun at all. 

 

Maybe its better running with friends, but I'm really not interested in finding out.  I'm much more interested in other parts of the game.

[HawkMan]

The crucible as it as in beta wasn't fun. matchmaking was bad and the other team was all higher level.

 

if it's balanced and you get matched with people of your level who suck as much as you. then it's a lot more fun. 

[spacer]

I didn't have much trouble with the matchmaking. What they really need to fix is the lag. It's simply unacceptable that there is so much lag that you can melee and kill someone, but they don't die for another 2 seconds. In that time, they can continue to fire and kill you right back. That happened more than a few times during the beta, and it really needs to be sorted out.

[arseny92]

Managed to stream it on Twitch on the last day, exported to YouTube. If someone wishes to take a look: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9nebur1rbBA .

Though please do not throw tomatoes at me please, if you consider this to be a bad play: as it's one of my first attempts to play a shooter game on a console

[spacer]

Managed to stream it on Twitch on the last day, exported to YouTube. If someone wishes to take a look: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9nebur1rbBA .

Though please do not throw tomatoes at me please, if you consider this to be a bad play: as it's one of my first attempts to play a shooter game on a console

If it was your first attempt, what did you think of it? It being the experience and control scheme, I mean. I think Bungie has always been good at leveraging the inherent benefits of controllers, as well as, limiting the downsides too when it comes to shooters. Destiny feels pretty good to me control-wise.

[+Asmodai MVC]

I think Bungie has always been good at leveraging the inherent benefits of controllers

I know it's not what you meant but this reminded me of a slight disappointment I had. Nothing major but I was disappointed that they didn't do jack with the special capabilities of the PS4 controller. They treat the touch pad just as some giant button which stinks and they didn't bother to use the speaker at all. I think it would be cool to be able to scroll with the touch pad (like on maps or on your gear screen for example) and to have the option to have your ghost speak to you through the controller speaker. I know everyone wouldn't want that so it should definitely be an option and it's not a big enough deal to push my buy decision one way or the other but it would have been nice.

[spacer]

Bungie announced today that raids will NOT have matchmaking. That is a HUGE disappointment and an idiotic design decision if you ask me.

 

In fact, now that I think about it, that decision effectively cuts out raids from content I'll be able to do, which means I can't get end-game gear through PVE which effectively kills any motivation for me to play once I finish all the story missions.

 

Awful, awful decision.

[Brendeth]

Bungie announced today that raids will NOT have matchmaking. That is a HUGE disappointment and an idiotic design decision if you ask me.

 

In fact, now that I think about it, that decision effectively cuts out raids from content I'll be able to do, which means I can't get end-game gear through PVE which effectively kills any motivation for me to play once I finish all the story missions.

 

Awful, awful decision.

 

I remember the old days of WoW and just spamming chat with "LFG", it'd be a shame if we'd have to do the resort to the same with Destiny. Hopefully they'll end up just adding matchmaking via a post-launch patch.

[The_Decryptor Veteran]

I doubt we'll see that, they've designed it like that on purpose (They want you to design a team to tackle it, not just have random people added to the group)

They could always add it, but it would conflict with the way the raids are designed.

[Brendeth]

I doubt we'll see that, they've designed it like that on purpose (They want you to design a team to tackle it, not just have random people added to the group)

They could always add it, but it would conflict with the way the raids are designed.

I'm not going to have a problem finding friends to play this with, but for people whom don't have that luxury it is a bit of a downer. I guess the raids could work like public events and chuck other fire teams into the fray also?

[spacer]

I doubt we'll see that, they've designed it like that on purpose (They want you to design a team to tackle it, not just have random people added to the group)

They could always add it, but it would conflict with the way the raids are designed.

They kind of, sort of said their reasoning was that raids need a dedicated team and communication to finish them. That is easily fixed if Bungie would just allow voice chat with randoms and add some type of queue penalty for rage quitters. You give players the tools they need to communicate and you give an incentive to not bail on a team that failed a few times. Also strikes already have matchmaking fill in open slots if someone leaves part-way through. So why can't that happen for raids too?

 

People have countered this argument with "if pugs keep failing they'll just complain that the raid is too hard and cry for nerfs; ruining the whole mode for clans." Well again, that's easily solved. Every "activity" in Destiny has an info card that pops up when you hover over their node in the map. Just put a disclaimer on the raids that says it's extremely difficult. In addition, Strikes and Story missions have multiple difficulties, so why not raids? Have a normal difficulty that pugs can probably finish if they're persistent, and have a hard mode that truly can't be done without extreme coordination and communication. Pugs MIGHT be able to do hard mode, but it would be extremely difficult.

 

It really boils down to this: I'd rather get the chance to see some of the content and continually fail at it in a pug, than never have the chance at all.

 

All of the solutions I mentioned are either already in the game for other modes or are easy fixes. This decision by Bungie is beyond stupid.

[Alladaskill17]

I'm not going to have a problem finding friends to play this with, but for people whom don't have that luxury it is a bit of a downer. I guess the raids could work like public events and chuck other fire teams into the fray also?

For those on neowin who need friends to play with, for the reason stated here, add me. I've got probably about 5 ppl ill be playing with on/off.

[HawkMan]

I know it's not what you meant but this reminded me of a slight disappointment I had. Nothing major but I was disappointed that they didn't do jack with the special capabilities of the PS4 controller. They treat the touch pad just as some giant button which stinks and they didn't bother to use the speaker at all. I think it would be cool to be able to scroll with the touch pad (like on maps or on your gear screen for example) and to have the option to have your ghost speak to you through the controller speaker. I know everyone wouldn't want that so it should definitely be an option and it's not a big enough deal to push my buy decision one way or the other but it would have been nice.

 

the touch pad is just awkwardly placed to be used. and why would the ghost voice come from your hands as opposed  from where he actually is on your surround system...

[ichi]

why would the ghost voice come from your hands as opposed  from where he actually is on your surround system...

 

If you have a surround system. IIRC you could choose between speakers, headphones or both for the ghost's voice, so it'd be a matter of adding another option for the controller's speaker.

 

They used it for the audio records in Watchdogs and it worked fine, IMO. It helps to set the specific audio apart from all the other enviromental sound.

[spacer]

Controller speaker support would be a neat feature, but more than that I really hope they separate the audio volumes in music/effects/voice like most other games do. I prefer to have the voice way higher than everything else the first few times through, so that I don't miss any of the conversations.

[ichi]

Controller speaker support would be a neat feature, but more than that I really hope they separate the audio volumes in music/effects/voice like most other games do. I prefer to have the voice way higher than everything else the first few times through, so that I don't miss any of the conversations.

 

I enabled the subtitles in the beta for that reason, but they look like crap  :/

[spacer]

I enabled the subtitles in the beta for that reason, but they look like crap  :/

Yeah, Yellow text doesn't show up very well on a lot of different background colors. White text with a either a black stroke or a darkened bar background would have been better.

[+Asmodai MVC]

the touch pad is just awkwardly placed to be used. and why would the ghost voice come from your hands as opposed  from where he actually is on your surround system...

I don't have any problem using the touch pad.  Granted it's not something you'd want to use in the heat of battle but like I said when you're on a full screen map (selecting which mission to run, etc.) or playing around with your gear (outside of combat) it would be a nice option to have.

As for where the ghost voice comes from "where he actually is" is not clear to me.  Your ghost seems to fly into you when not in use.  I don't see the little ghosts flying around other players in the multiplayer areas.  Except for when you "take him out" by pushing the touch pad on the PS4 or during a cut scene where he flies out or says something I'm not really sure where he is supposed to be.  When he's just a voice in year ear and not flying around it would be pretty cool to have the sound come from the controller.  I thought the speaker in the controller thing was pretty silly until I played Infamous: Second Son and I really liked how it worked.  I think it could be equally cool in Destiny.  Sure during cut scenes when hes flying around the room or whatever it should come from your surround sound but when he's "docked" or wherever he goes when not "out" but is talking to you then I just think it would be cool for that part to use the controller speaker.  Like I said though it's not a big thing either way and of course you are free to disagree.

[spacer]

Someone posted a custom trailer that's Destiny gameplay with a voice-over from Interstellar's trailer. It's really, really well done.

 

[spenser.d]

Destiny preorders are live for Xbox One. You can purchase and preload the digital version. You can also get access to some other stuff if you get the digital guardian edition.

http://majornelson.com/2014/08/28/destiny-xbox-one-now-available-pre-order/

[spenser.d]

Explore the world of 'Destiny' through Google Street View

Whether it's touring an insanely large cruise ship or the Polar Bear capital of the world, Google's Street View has you covered. But the search giant doesn't want to limit that virtual experience to tangible, real-life things, which is why it's teamed up with Bungie to let you experience the magical nature of Destiny by way of Street View. Once inside, explorers can choose to wander around and learn more about places which are key elements to the storyline of Bungie's new franchise. Destiny Planet View, as the map is officially known, offers detailed, 360-degree views of locations inside Mars, Venus and the moon, It gives the break down on various hotspots, more information on characters from a particular territory and allows users to Destiny tips along the way. Bungie points out that this is the first time Google's mapped a video game world, and it's a good one -- sure, it's pretty to look at, but the real goal is to get you even more hyped up ahead of Destiny's launch, next week on September 9th.

http://www.engadget.com/2014/09/02/destiny-planet-view/#continued

[LittleNeutrino Veteran]

http://www.engadget.com/2014/09/02/destiny-planet-view/#continued

 

if you look at all of the objects in each area (Venus, Mars, The Moon) Then you get a code that you can put into the website to get an emblem when the game comes out.

[GotBored]