From the Update | I Feel the NEED... (Destiny)

by CruelLEGACEY , Toronto, Friday, February 02, 2018, 08:03 (2468 days ago) @ Claude Errera

I do get the appeal of supers in PvP. I just think it’s tough to create supers in a game like Destiny that fulfil the PvE Power fantasy without totally disrupting the flow of PvP. Supers in the crucible are basically “win” bottons. It’s almost impossible to screw them up. When a player pops their super, the onus isn’t on them to execute skillfully, it’s on the other team to be coordinated AF to take down the incoming super.

I mentioned Titanfall 2 because I think they hit the nail on the head with their approach to “Supers”. The Titan Core moves are powerful, but they have more specific and strategic uses, can be more easily avoided or countered, and they have inherent risks involved because of how they lock the Titan into specific animations or movements that are predictable. Because the supers take more skill to use effectively, it feels WAY more satisfying when you pull off something cool. Meanwhile in Destiny, if I pop a super and kill fewer than 3 opponents with it, it’s bevause I seriously messed up. There’s nothing rewarding about a successful super because they’re basically automatic kills.

What would be great would be if the class abilities worked in such a way that they were particularly effective at countering supers.

You're playing a different game than I am. I rarely, these days, get 3 kills with a super. (It was much more common in D1.) I rarely see my opponents get 3 kills with a super.

This entire post seems like gross hyperbole to me. (I'm not saying it is - i'm saying you're playing a different game than I am, and with different opponents and teammates.)

The real point I'm trying to make is separate from the actual number of kills that any one of us typically gets with their average super activation...

This is 100% just an issue of personal taste (and I already know and have long accepted that Destiny PvP doesn't lean in my preferred direction, and that's totally fine). I have a fundamental problem with a competitive game that creates situations where a player can be outplayed, outmatched, outmaneuvered, and walk away victorious from an encounter because they hit a single button while vaguely facing the right direction. I don't think those kinds of mechanics make a competitive game enjoyable. I think they cheapen it in the pursuit of "hero moments". But I never feel heroic when I get a bunch of kills with a super because I usually didn't have to do anything particularly skillful.

All of this is just to say that I think supers in D2 PvP are actually in a pretty good place right now, because they're barely present. The majority of the match plays out with teamwork, coordination, and gunplay being the focus. Then the last 90-120 seconds of the match turn into a bit of a clusterf$*& while everyone on both teams starts popping all their supers, which is crazy and silly and can feel like a fun escalation because everyone knows its coming and it doesn't last too long. What I'm concerned about is a return to the D1 days where I'd often play matches where the majority of my deaths were to enemy supers that I had little or no hope of avoiding or stopping.

And again, on the flip side, I think more supers is absolutely a good thing for the PvE side of the game, and I ultimately care more about that side of Destiny.