"It's the best co-op game we've played so far by a longshot" (Destiny)

by Kahzgul, Tuesday, December 20, 2016, 06:37 (3139 days ago) @ Robot Chickens

Remember that he's getting the new, somewhat more coherent story, as well as the revamped missions as he plays through. There have been LOTS of changes.

As for the actual game of destiny, it has three basic stages. The first is where your friend is: Campaign and strikes as you level up. This stage is fun, you feel like you're progressing at a good clip. Little repetition because the pacing is such that there's really no need to go back and do anything over again. The mechanics aren't exactly deep, but the focus is on the things that Destiny does BEST which is shooting and getting new guns. What's more, as you reach the xpac missions, the game and story begin to get better and better and better, making you feel like the whole game improves as you go along.

The second stage is the early endgame. Nightfalls (WOW these are suddenly hard! SO COOL!!!) and raids (actually, legitimately awesome). You could say PvP is part of this, but it falls more into the next category, especially because noobs to pvp are very, very likely to just get smasht these days. More of a mechanics focus than before, and the weapon meta begins to show itself to the players. "Oh, man, I really need a high impact sniper for this. How do I farm one?" Hahahahaha. Seriously though, the game really starts to steer you towards specific weapons and perks on those weapons once you reach the early endgame. Something that didn't exist in the leveling up game.

The last stage is where most of us live. Late endgame. This stage is 100% repetition and grind. Weekly raids, weekly nightfalls, gotta do that weekly pvp bounty, now the weekly zavala bounties, trials for four straight days with no sleep trying to get a perfect card and go the lighthouse (damn it, DDOSed again). All to try and get a gun that is maybe one perk better than the one you're using. It's good, but it's not a "God" roll. Gotta keep grinding. Or man, you need that full set of heroic armor from the raid. NEED IT. But the dang helmet just won't drop. Let's make a same-class alt and run it again. Okay a third one. UGH THIS GAME IS SO UNFAIR!!! SCREW YOU RNGESUS!!!

Destiny doesn't handle the grind of the late endgame well. There's not enough variation in strikes run to run to make them fun. The game has a terrible habit of making you play the same strike several times in a row, or 3 out of 5 runs, despite the large number available to you. The loot drops are unpredictable and the rolls required for top tier play are so specific that even if you do get a drop you want it's probably not a roll worth using. The sense of progression goes to crap at the endgame and you don't ever get to feel like you finished developing your character (there's always one more thing to get) nor do you feel like you had any real impact on the game world (your actions are meaningless as far as the behavior of the game goes). Most gear progression is RNG based rather than investment based, which further cheapens the experience. Don't even get me started on pvp. The fidelity just isn't there. Bungie can claim a 30 tick all they want, the fact of the matter is that Destiny's pvp is a frustrating mess of laggy connections and trades which should clearly not have been. All made more frustrating by how fun the shooting is. It's awesome to shoot things in this game, but it sucks when you shoot a guy right in the back of the head and he still gets to turn around and shotgun you before he dies, taking you with him. No bueno.

So yeah, it's a pretty good game. I think all of the reviewers were spot on with their original assessments of 7/10. It's no halo, and to me it actually feels like the game a studio would make before making Halo, rather than one that would come, what, ten years down the line? All that being said, your friends got to miss all of the pre-launch hype and false advertising that really embittered me to the experience of this game. Coming in with no preconceptions and seeing the incredible artwork, as well as realizing that there's still a big community of players for a game this old, that's really got to be impressive for someone new.

Anyway, point your pals towards Borderlands 2.