Time to THRILL (Destiny)

by Malagate , Sea of Tranquility, Wednesday, June 11, 2014, 16:02 (3828 days ago) @ Schooly D

I have to admit I'm not super excited about lots of short lives in PvP.

I guess my real problem here is that I'm not hearing why this design philosophy itself is bad.

It's bad because it's not fun. For someone like myself who takes pride and enjoyment in performing and performing well, it gets in the way of that.

Okay, I understand you here; but I think there's a difference between a legitimate objective Bad, and something you're not having fun with.

All else being equal (important caveat) a shorter time-to-kill requires less technical skill than a longer time-to-kill. The reasoning is simple: with a longer TTK, you need to land more of your shots over a longer period of time.

Well, yes and no. I don't want to go off on a tangent too quickly, but I think there are a ton of factors to take into account. "All things being equal" is dangerously reductionist when we're talking about things like gameplay being "broken" or not. We're all familiar with the tendency some have to boil gameplay down to a few preferred elements and vaunt that reduced formula as objectively "better". In any case...

The counterpoint is: a shorter TTK requires less technical skill, but places more importance on things like positioning and map control. An example of this would be Counter-Strike. If you run out into the open on de_dust, you're going to get killed before you can see who's shooting you.

The reason this counterpoint doesn't apply in Destiny and similar games is that Counter-Strike is a much more controlled environment: everyone starts in one particular place that is known to everyone else. When you die, you don't respawn until the next round starts. The limited set of possibilities makes it feasible to account for them in your gameplay.

Destiny, Halo, and their ilk on the other hand are frenzied. People can die and respawn whenever and wherever. Trying to account for every possibility of enemy positioning/armament/etc becomes impossible. Eventually you're going to have a couple of enemies randomly run into your back and kill you.

In games with shorter TTK, this emphasizes the randomness. In Halo or Quake, you could conceivably get surprised by someone worse than you, end up winning the fight by landing more of your shots. In Destiny and COD this is more difficult -- by the time you know you're being shot, you're 3/4 dead.

So how does the motion tracker(assuming it functions like Halo's) not mitigate this? Unless they're deliberately sneaking to avoid it, you're going to see them coming. Sure, cross-map weapons (and based on the OP, the Golden Gun) are going to be a hassle, but so is the random grenade. If you're armed with a little positional information, you can at least reposition, make yourself scarce, or take your chances and post up somewhere, hoping your opponent isn't aware of you.

This is a double-edged sword for people who suck. The upshot: if you suck, as long as you run around the map, you're eventually going to catch SOMEONE off guard and land enough shots to kill them. They won't have much of a chance to fight back. The downside: if luck isn't on your side, you could have a very very bad, very very un-fun game. Half the time you'd get ambushed, and the other half you'd get headshotted by the TTL guys on the other end.

And here begins to form a significant point that I think we're going to have to absorb to really get the most out of Destiny PvP. And it seems like it will apply to the whole game, really: Mobility rules all. At the very least, it appears to be a much more crucial element to the gameplay formula than in Halo. If you remain in motion, and make the most of the jump abilities, my guess is that's really going to be the only way to mitigate some of this frustration.

Besides, it's not that they didn't tell us this was coming. I remember an interview with Urk a while back that emphasized these elements that are causing you such grief. And to be fair, I think he did at one point mention the quick kills if you catch someone with their pants down. So, fair warning, I guess?

Guaranteed-kill(s) supers (and, to a lesser extent, spawning with rockets/snipers) are Bungie's buffer against the downsides of a shorter TTK. Essentially what they're saying is "hopefully you, as an unskilled norb, will randomly run into enough peoples' backs to get enough kills to keep you happy. However, if the fates conspire against you, we've got these supers you can use to get some kills no matter what."

Well, all things being as equal as possible, noobs would play against pros and still eke out a few kills. If this is the way, I can't really complain. Not feeling any huge arguments against the Noob Cushion just yet.

It's a noble philosophy. But it can go terribly, hair-pullingly wrong for someone like me who's heavily invested in playing and being given a fair shake.

You DO realize this is like a pro basketball player complaining he can't dunk on the kids in the kiddie pool...

If I'm on a team that's donging on the bad guys, and one of them manages to surprise me with a super before we win 16000-7000, whatever. No big deal. That's the ideal scenario.

If it's a close game and I'm guarding a critical objective, have correctly predicted the enemy's movement and expected point of entry, and am waiting to reap the fruits of my labor, it sucks hard to be killed because the guy coming around the corner managed to activate the super (or rocket -- they're plentiful) I didn't/couldn't know he had, killed me, took the objective, and won the game, that sucks. It sucks sucks sucks in the worst way.

Why? Aren't those just the breaks? Yeah, losing sucks. Losing sucks when you've fought hard, or performed well, and you still lose. Our philosophies differ with regard to what constitutes good fun, and over the years I've gotten the impression you probably take a hard scrap and a loss a lot harder than I do. Regardless, if there's a fluke play and someone's Super cooldown finishes at a crucial moment because earlier you blew his face off and his Super timer reset, which factor is at fault? Your prowess? Chance? The game being "broken"? I honestly don't think this would be something you could really be mad about, unless it happens on a consistent basis. Besides, you're talking about having a fighting chance, what about people that really suck? Is the Noob Cushion a game-breaker? Doubtful. Watch there be a PvP playlist just for people that want to play without Supers.

The moon level in particular has an issue with teams dominating in the worst ways. When you've gotten donged on by snipers on the outside, rockets on the inside, and two Interceptors patrolling the level, you will know pain. This is somewhat the inverse of the above complaints (good players donging vs. bad players getting free kills), but it's related to the sheer amount of power available to players and I felt like mentioning it.

Well, I'm glad you did. Because what sucks worse than having a good scrap and losing? Getting your teeth blown out the back of your head over and over and over and never getting the satisfaction of a couple random kills to brighten things up.

It sucks that you're not having as much fun as you want to, and I'd really like to provide some comparative feedback from my own experiences, but that will have to wait a bit. I understand your argument, and it's well made, but I'm guessing we're probably not going reach a consensus.

~m