The shared world of Destiny would become a frustrating, paranoid place if random griefers were allowed to intrude on your adventure and fire at will.

Now, imagine a world where Destiny was developed by From Software.

I personally agree with you. In a co-operative world where team work matters, and randoms have a huge influence on your gameplay I find friendly fire to be a nuisance and a way for someone to ruin the story mission I'm on. In competitive play however I think not having it on takes away a lot of the skill involved in great multiplayer matches. No one worries about throwing a grenade if it'll only hurt enemies, and nothing is quite as funny in a friendly game as pulling the trigger on your shotgun, just to see your ally run around the corner and take a face full of lead shot. Oops. Hopefully those experiences don't go away altogether.

By the way, I'd love to see topics like this discussed on dboTV with your guests. As long as you guys don't get heated and start throwing insults.

Yet despite being a seasoned victim of ill-timed sniper shots, poorly placed grenades, and overeager (under-steering) Warthog chauffeurs, I prefer Halo with friendly fire on. Consistent weapon/damage feedback is important to me in the physics-driven sandbox of Halo, and disabling friendly fire creates an "unrealistic" experience where the rules don't apply to everyone equally. It feels like a glitch in the simulation, just like that Keanu Reeves movie where he flagrantly breaks the laws of physics. (Point Break)

You said it better than I would have, but I'll try to add my thoughts to the mix, redundant as they will be.

I've also feel that disabling friendly fire in multiplayer environments makes the experience feel disjointed. If supply a certain input (rocket!), then I expect a certain output (carnage!), but disabling FF breaks those rules and the immersion that comes with them. Case in point, when Halo 4 launched with friendly fire disabled, it completely changed the Halo experience for me and made multiplayer much less enjoyable despite the fact that I didn't have to worry about being team-killed.

In multiplayer (especially), territory control is often the deciding factor in a skirmish. I believe there should be strategies and consequences around the idea of controlling a territory and coordinating with your teammates while avoiding friendly fire. You shouldn't be able to stick the guy with a shotgun on the staircase killzone while the rest of the team spams grenades from 50 feet away. Disabling friendly fire undermines some specific pillars of balance and generally leaves the competitive experience lacking for me.

Now, that's all true for competitive multiplayer, but I think cooperative mode is a slightly different beast. I still think that errant grenades should cause friendly splash damage (for the same reasons given above about territory control and coordinated teamwork), but I also believe that it's 100% Grade-AA-Okay to prevent some jerk hunter from being able to snipe you through the brainpan just as you're about to land the finishing shot on a boss during a Public Event just because he/she* wanted to wreck your gameplay experience. I don't understand them, but we all know those people are out there.

<sidestory>Back in the Vanilla WoW days I started my original character on a PvP realm, and there was absolutely nothing worse than being ganked and having to corpse-run my ass through Stranglethorn Vale because a bunch of level-capped griefers decided they were bored and wanted to screw with other players. It got to be so bad that sometimes I would have to leave my character dead on the ground and either switch to a different character for a while, or just forego that game session altogether and do homework (boo!). And this was in the days when there could be an hour+ wait to even get onto the server in the first place, so logging-off hurt extra bad. (It's worth noting that I consider this behavior to be different from legitimate PvP combat between similarly-leveled players, which could actually be—and was—a ton of fun.)</sidestory>

It's late and I'm rambling, but my point is that I completely see where Bungie is coming from by disallowing Guardian-on-Guardian combat in the cooperative world of Destiny. My ideal balance would be enabling accidental friendly fire on splash damage and stray shots, but disabling it on deliberate jackassery. In the "real world", though, that sounds like an incredibly complex system that's rife with opportunity for exploitation once people find the edge-cases, so I think a blanket no-friendly-fire policy in the cooperative modes is probably the best we can hope for. Who knows, maybe friendly fire will exist in areas where you're just with your Fireteam (such as inside the Wall in Old Russia), but then it gets disabled during Public Events or when other Fireteams are nearby? Something like that might work, but I also trust Bungie to do the Right Thing. They haven't let me down yet.

*Seriously, though, I have yet to meet a female griefer, but I'm sure there are one or two out there. Maybe it's a guy thing… I wouldn't put it past us.

I don't have a hard position in this discussion - just wanted to put together a few random points. These are tied together with nothing more than a relationship to the topic 'friendly fire'.

I argued against turning friendly fire off in many, many discussions, because I feel (as Beorn described) that map control is a big part of strategy, and if you can simply hide behind a crate and fire rockets at your flag while a teammate stays close in to mop up any survivors, it takes away a lot of the challenge of defense. I still feel this way - and I'm glad that 343 has drawn a distinction between Slayer and Objective games, and allowed friendly fire on objectives at least.

I found the words "I LOVE the fact that friendly fire is off" coming out of my mouth a couple of nights ago, when 4 enemies surrounded one friend, and I was able to kill all four (and leave the friend unhurt) with a pair of rockets. I guess in the heat of battle, I'm okay with the immersion-breaking. (At least when it's in MY favor. ;) )

I find that with friendly fire off, I become MORE angry at teammates that find devious ways to teamkill me (on purpose) than I did in, say, Reach. In a game with FF on, a teammate that runs me over is an annoyance. With FF off, the same teammate triggers rage, not annoyance. I'm not sure why.

... if just for the hi-jinks it create. It's probably at the heart of most of my unique memories when playing with friends. I'm ready to deal with random online dooshbags if it allows for crazy sandbox moments. That's how I always knew Halo was a special game. Even when you died, it could be hilarious fun.

For example, I remember shooting a rocket at a Scorpion from the other side of Blood Gulch. It moves away, my rocket's still moseying along, my teammates come running out of the base with the flag, they hop into a Warthog and start heading back, and I'm riveted to the pixel ground, going "No, there's no way that's going to happen... No... Noo... Nooo! Shit!"

... You know, I can't actually recall if I ever told them I was responsible for that explosion. What will be really funny is when somebody posts a strong anti-friendly-fire with the exact same example.

I realise your question Duncan is aimed at the competitive multiplayer portion, but I think there's a tantalising wild west wasteland to coming across another fireteam in trouble and entertaining the consideration of robbing them blind, RUST style.

It's not at all what Bungie are going for, but it does kind of rustle my gimmies.
Maybe a 7/7 server level setting ;-).

I'm generally in the "friendly fire on" camp on the competitive side, it forces players to be tighter with what they shoot and when they shoot.
There's an extra sense of blasé about the whole arena if a teammate can run up with a rocket launcher and blow away the guy next to you because friendly fire is off.
It lowers the skill barrier.

However ["this boy be back and forth like a yo-yo"], if friendly fire is off in one arena and on in another, it leads to an inconsistent learning and play experience, where bad or rather lazy habits are picked up in "Campaign" are brought into competitive arena where things are potentially different.

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Friendly fire on for sure.

I'm all for friendly fire being on, and rarely enjoy playing with it off. I'm referring to multiplayer, since Bungie will clearly not be allowing it on in campaign/co-op/whatever. It really makes you time your shots and make things work, especially if you have some buddies around. It also leads to some absolutely hilarious moments when you utterly destroy your friends, or get destroyed by your friends. For example:

This video

You really gotta be careful when pulling that trigger. In Halo 4 I can just jam the trigger with a SAW or blast all the things with a rocket no matter what teammates are around because it won't matter in most of the gametypes. It really mixes things up when you have to make sure you land your shots, or potentially keep from firing that rocket or boosting that Ghost in a crucial and close game where you might end up losing due to a betrayal or two.