Reimagining "competitive" Destiny (Destiny)

by Ragashingo , Official DBO Cryptarch, Monday, August 12, 2019, 19:43 (1939 days ago) @ CruelLEGACEY

So, normally I don’t like to take Cody’s side in a discussion. It just feels off. However, while the perspective of focusing on the individual moment may make sense, it is also a very easy way to lose sight of everything else. The whole point of building in your muscle memory and your instinctual actions is so that you free yourself up to play 2-3 minutes out. From an “honestly competitive eSports” perspective, I would say that what wins games in a Quake 1v1 has nothing to do with your moment to moment. It’s all map control and timers. If you are not playing 1 minute ahead of where you are you have already lost.

What I'm getting at is that, at high levels, playing 1 minute ahead is trained into you to the point where you're not thinking about it, per say. You're aware of it, you know you're doing it, but it's wrapped up into your moment to moment focus. To be clear, when I say "thinking", I mean actively puzzling something out. It is in your mind, you are aware of it, but it's not something that you're putting much energy towards figuring out. It's more like "I know 300 different ways to secure heavy ammo on this map, which of those methods is best suited to this exact situation?". You pick one and then go.

Now, I'm nowhere near a top-level player, but that is mostly due to the fact that I haven't put in enough time to learn all the variables as well as the top level players (plus I suspect my reflexes wouldn't be quite fast enough to keep up with them).

In the context you provided, though, if you are super in tune with everything going on and focused on the moment and that is how you win, how are you letting yourself get out of position to be panic smashed?

A player who is literally perfectly in tune with everything rarely would be out of position, but I am certainly not that player. And even if I was more that player than I am, Destiny puts you into situations you just can't anticipate your way out of. If you spawn right in front of an enemy super (which happens all the time), there is almost nothing you can do unless you happen to have your own super ready. If you see an enemy on the radar, and you successfully get the drop on them, you often don't have enough time to register important facts like "Hey, its one of their Titans... I already know that one of their titans has their super available, but is it this Titan? I don't know, because the HUD doesn't tell me which Titan has a super, so I guess I just need to hope that it isn't this--- crap."

I, too, agree with Cody. Part of playing Destiny is having a sense of when Supers are becoming ready and not being close enough to a Titan to get smashed. No, you can't always prevent it because you're playing with Humans nearly as good as you are... but your examples make it sound like you're just helpless and completely information starved when neither is true.

And that all plays into this perception that losing to a Super is a significant problem in Destiny. Losing to Supers is part of the game. Your job as a player when you see a Super coming is to either stop it with heavy, or a Super of your own, or through sheer skill... or to taunt, evade, and survive as long as possible to limit that supering player's ability to harm your teammates. Your job when you see that Titan that you're nearly outfought is to not be lured in to an easy death. Or... maybe it is to rush in if you think that he has a Super and that the two of you are far from others so that he'll waste that Super on panic attacking you and be unable to find anyone else.

I think the point the Cody and I are agreeing on here is that Supers are a fundamental part of Destiny's gameplay. They are something to be managed, and saved, and pulled out at the perfect moment, and avoided long enough to save your team from what could be a game ending wipe, and so on. They aren't something that need to be swept under the rug. And that their entire point is to force players to do more than just be good at moment to moment skills like accurately hitting head shots.