Destiny & Destiny 2 Discussion

[Kong Wen]

Yesterday it was reported that Destiny sold-through $500M on its first day, making it the biggest launch of a new IP in video game history. Some are saying it could reach Call of Duty levels of 20M units.

I played the beta and I actually quite liked the game. The aesthetic is awesome, although the writing is kind of corny (but I guess that's to be expected). The character upgrade mechanics seemed promising and the squad-based play was engaging. I could be very easily tempted to buy the game if I thought there'd be a few people from here with whom I could play.

[VictorViper]

You can expect me to be joining in as soon as I get a PS4. They apparently support a free upgrade to next gen if you but it for PS3, but I don't want to risk tiring of it on the inferior version.

[Kong Wen]

You can expect me to be joining in as soon as I get a PS4. They apparently support a free upgrade to next gen if you but it for PS3, but I don't want to risk tiring of it on the inferior version.

Good plan. This is definitely a game where the visuals have a big impact.

[Kong Wen]

Update a couple of months later: I bought this game. I got the Digital Guardian Edition, which contains the expansion pass The first expansion, "The Dark Below", is coming out next week. It sounds like it adds a lot of new content, which I look forward to exploring for the first time as I fumble up the ranks.

Maybe when more people join, we'll be able to put a 4-person fireteam together.

[The Shoemaker]

Apparently they just updated the game and balance some of the weapons. Upcoming DLC sounds big, but I kind of feel like they should have just waited till now the release the game and have all of this included.

[VictorViper]

I'll be #2 in Kong's crew before the year is out. It would be great if we had a foursome going for this one though, for sure. Guess I HAVE to buy the season pass now though. Bastard.

[Kong Wen]

OK, here's my update after spending a couple of hours with this.

Intro/Tutorial/Story

The character creation is intentionally sparse, to get you into the game more quickly. The only time you ever get to see your character is at the Tower (social hub) anyway, so it doesn't really matter. The tutorials are also seamlessly integrated into the first couple of missions. It's really quite non-intrusive, and allows you to pick up the gameplay fundamentals with ease while you play.

The story's really cool so far, although like most shooters, I expect it to be quite short and really just a means of introducing the various weapons and maps/settings. One thing I really like is that you'll occasionally see other people going about their own business. You can play through the story multiplayer, too. I couldn't really tell if it scales up the difficulty to compensate.

Multiplayer

The competitive multiplayer is fairly standard for this kind of game. Character level doesn't matter. All stats are leveled out, and even the weapons are leveled out, so a normal shotgun will do the same damage as a legendary shotgun. The only bonuses that are retained are character and weapon perks. For example, if you're high enough level to have a bonus effect on your super move, you get to keep that in PvP. If you have a weapon that has a little "bonus ammo" or "improved aim" slot, you'll get to benefit from that. So park of the game becomes about managing which weapons will work well in PvP (valuing perk slots over sheer stats).

There are some really nice user experience features that I noticed. I'm not a big shooter player so I don't know how much of this is standard / incorporated by other games, but one thing I really liked was that the game has separate voice channels for your fireteam (your friends who have joined you in a room and follow you from game to game) and for the rest of your team. So if you're paired up with someone you know, and together you enter a 6v6 match, you can toggle between talking just to your friend, or to your whole team. The game also incorporates a clan/tag system directly within the game, to make it easy to group up (this is probably more standard by now, but I've played games where you had to do all that stuff offline).

On the UX front, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention Bungie's site. They have a comprehensive Destiny companion on the site that makes it totally worth signing up for. As a bonus, you don't need to worry about managing a whole separate account—you can sign in directly with your Microsoft or PSN accounts. This site gives you all the current information about all your characters (gear, current bounties, missions completed, comprehensive stats & history), lets you know when you have messages, etc. This is my basic profile.

Loot & Progress Hooks

Progress curves up nicely, at least in the early game (I've heard there are some major walls later in the game, but I'm not there yet). You have the typical incentives like common, uncommon, rare, and legendary gear. There are also crafting materials that I think you need for creating legendary gear.

In addition to story missions, there are also side-quests that you can fulfill in the open-world "patrol" maps, specific bounties that you get rewards for completing (e.g. kill 30 enemies with melee attacks)—you can carry ten of these at a time—, daily & weekly strike/raid/community events that trigger on certain maps at certain times and usually require a team to complete for certain rewards, and big game-wide macro-bonuses that you can strive for which mainly just promote long-term play (e.g. kill 5000 of a certain type of enemy to unlock a permanent bonus to the $ they'll drop).

This stuff can all be tracked in the Destiny companion on the site. (I believe they have an app, too.)

I'm looking forward to sinking some more time into this. It doesn't feel like an MMO, and it doesn't even really feel like Borderlands. The story mode feels more like an adventure game, but the rest of the gameplay definitely feels like a familiar FPS, especially if you've played Halo. I think it'll be really fun to play when we can put a clan together and start doing missions with a few people.

[kitroplious]

Great to hear about that, Kong... and the $500+ Millon that the game has made!

[Kong Wen]

I didn't have much of a chance to play last night, although I did get a few Crucible (PvP) matches in, and I started to do really well. I was even leading my team on two maps, despite playing with a bunch of level 25+ guys.

I do see a lot of complaints about the level of content in the game, but I think a big part of that stems from Bungie & Activision's ambition in trying to promote a revolutionary kind of game. People had high expectations.

• Even though it has MMO elements, it's definitely not an MMO. There are some nice online interactivity pieces, and some daily/weekly community events, but the level of content isn't going to match a full-scale MMO, nor should it be expected to (notably, Activision isn't charging a monthly fee).
• Even though it has a great setting and a great visual aesthetic, it's also not a grand-scale adventure game. The campaign isn't overly long and much of the backstory is folded in behind the narrative (something Dark Souls did better than any other game).

Once you get to the endgame, the PvP is the main thing that will keep people coming back, and the success of a game like that depends on design and the community (how long people keep playing). There's also a loot cycle element that drives continued participation in the PvE events, but loot can be obtained from PvP as well.

On the PvP point, I do have to note that the game feels perfectly tuned, very skill-based. It doesn't feel like there's a huge element of randomness, and it also doesn't feel like it hinges too much on character level and gear (grinding). The usual game modes are represented, with 6v6 team deathmatch, capture (3 control points), and a free-for-all mode. There's also a fourth mode I haven't unlocked yet, but it sounds like a 1-point capture match where the control point appears in random places around the map once the previous one is captured.

[The Shoemaker]

Have you tried out the raid mode yet Kong? Apparenlt that can take a couple hours to beat your first time around :p