Reimagining "competitive" Destiny (Destiny)

by CruelLEGACEY , Toronto, Tuesday, August 13, 2019, 07:19 (1938 days ago) @ Ragashingo
edited by CruelLEGACEY, Tuesday, August 13, 2019, 07:23

That's all well and good, but it becomes irrelevant when a Striker Titan can run around and clear the map three times before their super is done. It's completely broken.

Even if it is broken, it doesn't make what I say irrelevant. Heck, it might make doing things like not rushing to engage or things like leading the enemy away from your team for as long as you can more relevant. Every second you buy against that roaming Super chasing you is another kill and another recharge you might be denying them. And that's a very important part of Destiny.

It's also not all that relevant when over half the Supers can be panic-activated to kill whoever is shooting at you instantly.

You talk like the panic kill is some evil thing that should never exist. I strongly disagree. The player getting a panic kill has to have saved their Super for that moment. They have to forgo kills before then or use it on you and forgo later kills that may be more important than not dying to you. Using a Super to get out of a losing battle is rarely the correct / best time to use it. Most of the time dying to a panic Super is really a victory for you because now that person can't use their Super at a more key moment. Forcing people into wasting their Supers is a minor but important part of Destiny.

You can be aware of enemy Supers all you want, but when there are six of them, there's only so much you can do.

Ok... what is the alternative? Yes, all your enemies have Supers. So do all your teammates. You have one too! Each player will have opportunities to surprise the other, and opportunities to totally turn a game around, and opportunities to screw up and use their Super at that exact, perfectly wrong moment where they get exactly zero kills and feel dumb. That choice of when to use your Super is a huge part of Destiny and the Crucible.

I think you’re going to some great lengths to defend a mechanic by painting it as somehow more deep or strategic than it is. There’s no strategy at play when you spawn 10 feet away from a Titan who is already in mid-air, bringing his fist of panic down on your head. It’s bullshit, plain and simple. The fact that I can turn around and do the same thing doesn’t negate the bullshit. You keep saying “it’s a part of Destiny”, which is obviously true. We’re arguing that it being part of Destiny makes the game worse for us.

If Bungie really wanted Supers to operate on a strategic level, there should be mechanics in play to allow for that. Players who have a super charge available should have some kind of visual tell so I can decide before I engage them whether or not it’s safe to get close. There should be more abilities that can counter, evade, or shut down enemy supers. You talk about things like avoiding enemies who have supers, or leading them away from your teammates, and sometimes that’s a good move. But you also have no control over where you spawn, no control over where your teammates spawn, and no control over where the enemy spawns. Every single crucible match that I play goes through several waves of “just mash the respawn button for the next 30 seconds, because the enemy is spawn camping while chaining supers”.

If you or anyone enjoys how supers play, that’s great! But this discussion is slipping into “don't pee on my leg and tell me it’s raining” territory. Supers in Destiny are like a basketball player who throws a bad shot, then presses a button while the ball is still in mid air that makes the net triple in size. Or a defender who lets their opponent blow past them, so they hit a button which throws a plexiglass wall in front of their own net.
They are abilities that allow ALL players to get more kills with less skillful play than they otherwise could. By definition, they flatten the skill gap.
Yes, good players can use supers more effectively. And yes it is possible to screw up with your super. They don’t remove all skill requirement from the game. But the gap is still made narrower. That is unquestionable. Whether or not that is a good thing is entirely debatable, and largely comes down to personal preference. And as I tried to explain in my original post, for players who approach the game with the sort of competitive mindset that I described, the current prevalence of supers and heavy ammo (and spawn camping, and over-crowded maps, and a laundry list of other minor things) are ruining the crucible.

I’ve approached this whole thing from the perspective that the competitive players are a niche within the community, and what we enjoy is in many ways at odds with the core design of Destiny, and Destiny’s core design should NOT be sacrificed to cater to the noisy competitive minority... but despite all that, I think there is a way to make a game mode and/or playlist that would cater to those players without screwing things up for everyone else :)