Planning and forethought (Destiny)

by RC , UK, Tuesday, July 22, 2014, 15:51 (3788 days ago) @ kapowaz
edited by RC, Tuesday, July 22, 2014, 15:57

If you're carrying a sniper rifle as your special roaming around outside, then get a mission that takes you indoors it's natural you'd want to swap for a shotgun. At this point you can choose to either swap whilst outdoors and scavenge for ammo (not ideal) or you can wait for drops indoors (risky). Or, third choice: you just stick with the sniper and hope you don't end up really needing the shotgun inside.

Option 4: buy ammo packs and use them if you really need to swap weapons.
Option 5: play differently. e.g. know your exits and keep your distance.
Option 6: Customise and keep your gear options open.

If you want to 100% optimise your efficiency for every encounter on the fly, from day 1, then Destiny simply isn't that game, sorry. Halo wasn't either - 2 weapon limit?

Though with a combination of:

• Ammo packs,
  
• Swapping between weapons of same type with no penalty,
  
• Weapon customisation &
  
• Class cusomisation/subclass switching.

You'll still have a ton of options. If you prepare for it.

In The Devil's Lair Strike I sometimes had my special as a Fusion Rifle and brought ones with alternate damage types in reserve. Solar Fusion Rifle ripped through the Hive Wizards and Arc ripped through the Fallen Captains. Left my Void one back at the tower.

Weapon customisation wise, I have an uncommon Jigoku Scout Rifle with 2 different scopes: one mid-range (acog-like) and one short range (red dot-like). I switch between them depending on the range of encounter I'm dealing with. Usually by mission or map.

I also have an uncommon Sniper Rifle that has one long-range scope and one mid-range scope. Haven't really used that ability yet but it's there. I'm pretty sure the higher level stuff will have even more ways to customise it.

With the Hunter Class, I often use the 'explode and burn' grenade (forget what it's called) for most of the Strike, then switch to the 'split and seek' for Sepiks. Since that one will explode on impact, split, and then all the pieces will deal damage. Whereas the first type bounces on first impact and then usually wouldn't do any damage to Sepiks at all.

The 'seal subclass' option looks like you'll be able to gain a bit more overall power in exchange for losing some on-the-fly customisation but, that's a trade-off decision you'll have to make.

It also looks like you'll be able to switch out the sub-classes on the fly. Even if you do lose your grenade/melee/super charges, that won't be a big deal since they're time*kill based. The Hunter's Blade Dancer sub-class looks focused on close-range melee (certainly it's super is). So instead of the Golden Gun you could save your Blade-Dancer Super for those 'oh shit' up-close moments when you're inside.

So, I'm not exactly saying you're wrong; I'm saying I don't think you quite understand the type of game Destiny is. That's OK: I definitely didn't before I got stuck into the Alpha and I'm only starting to see more of the interesting wrinkles and depth after playing the Beta.

A LOT of the complaints I see (e.g. MP announcer voice) are simply because Destiny isn't quite what people where expecting (e.g. Halo) rather than because it's bad in itself.

Destiny still has flaws, but I don't think this is one of them :)

My preference would be for you to lose maybe 2/3 of your special ammo when swapping, that way you're not changing to a completely useless weapon (until you pick up some ammo) and you're not entirely disincentivised from swapping weapon type. I think I may even have seen a weapon that had something like this as a special feature…

I have both a Fusion Rifle and a Heavy Machine Gun with a perk that says 'Expect to find more ammo for this weapon.' I'm not exactly sure whether it increases the drop rate or lets you pick up more ammo from each drop. The Fusion Rifle is definitely harder to run out of ammo with than other ones. Sound familiar?