It felt pretty cool to say in a chat, "Hey check out this neat gun I just got" and have my friends be able to look me up and ooh and awe.

Except when one of them kept seeing old gear. Silly Beorn.

Anyway, I kind of agree with Cody. While I think Destiny is a tad too visually busy on old-gen to allow for split-screen, I think Destiny absolutely requires nothing more than some form of co-op, if only to make the Respawn Disabled zones less frustrating for casual players.

If I'm by myself too long, I get the willies. I definitely feel more comfortable inside buildings with some company. I'm a scaredy-cat, though.

I immediately got thrown into a Public Event and danced away with 4 other guardians.

I was just wandering around in explore mode and did a public event by myself and DAMN is the game that much more amazing with the magic of guardians coming over the hill.

I don't think it'd be Destiny if it was missing that magic.

I completely agree. That Devil Walker event at the Cosmodrome really showed me how much Destiny relies on cooperative play and how much better this game is because of it. When I first encountered it, I was totally alone and going up against that tank and a dozen infantry. That isn't fun when you're only a level two Hunter without any heavy ammo. The next day, I was with my friend and her and I had been chilling in that one area with the Devil Walker for an hour just having a ton of fun killing the same enemies over and over again. When that Devil Walker showed up, her and I were in a better position to kill it with our abilities, but so were the two other Guardians who came running over the hills to join us.

You can't get that feeling in a solo campaign game. NPC allies can only help you out so much. Playing from the start with fellow Guardians in accomplishing daunting tasks is so fulfilling. Being pinned down with only your Ghost to keep you company makes you feel isolated from the world. Seeing a bunch of Guardians rush into the battlefield on their Sparrows to help you advance in on the enemy lets you know that you will never be in this game alone.

I immediately got thrown into a Public Event and danced away with 4 other guardians.

I was just wandering around in explore mode and did a public event by myself and DAMN is the game that much more amazing with the magic of guardians coming over the hill.

I don't think it'd be Destiny if it was missing that magic.

I had my own magic moment just having Nomis drop in while I was in the middle defending that last objecting during the Skywatch mission.

I was soloing it, and while things started off alright, they were rapidly deteriorating. I had the wrong weapon equipped, so I had to do a fast swap, and then I had to find ammo, and oh, hey, now you're getting overwhelmed.

In the middle of all that chaos, I see "Nomis78 has signed in" Great. Then I see "Nomis78 has started playing Destiny Beta" Awesome, we'll have to play later. Then, right as I'm about to meet my doom at the hands of a Fallen Captain because I'm right in the middle of a reload, he drops dead. I spin around, and there's Nomis, running off to kill something else.

I completely missed any message saying he'd joined my Fireteam. Rarely have I ever been that happy to see backup.

I don't think it'd be Destiny if it was missing that magic.

This would be one hell of a boring single-player game. It's the co-op aspects that sells it, for me.

I immediately got thrown into a Public Event and danced away with 4 other guardians.

I was just wandering around in explore mode and did a public event by myself and DAMN is the game that much more amazing with the magic of guardians coming over the hill.

I don't think it'd be Destiny if it was missing that magic.

Totally with you on this.

Was doing a Warsat public event by myself, definitely underpowered for the Knights and Wizards that were showing up to take it away from me. Thought I was a goner (and so was the Warsat) when two Guardians showed up and saved my bacon. For something so seemingly trivial when I talk about it, that sort of thing is AWESOME.

But back to the "always connected" shared world. Before the Alpha and Beta, I was probably thinking of Fallout 3 / New Vegas as approximately what Exploration in Destiny would be like. A large world with a sparse population, lots of hidden things to discover and interact with, and enough of a simulation of NPCs with different behaviors and agendas to make it feel like a living world. Instead, Destiny Exploration feels liks a sub-par mission with mobs kind of clinging to their spawn area.

Yeah. I feel as if Bungie had made Destiny like Deus ex in terms of story, character progression, side quests, and secrets, then added their matchmaking and public event system, then the game would be significantly stronger, to the point where it would be considered the best FPS ever made.

Phoenix_9286 talks about how magic it is to have your friends just drop straight into your fireteam. That could already be done in a vanilla FPS (don't know why they typically want people to be in the lobby for new members to join). I see this as nice "polish", but after the novelty wears off, it's going to be a minor thing.

Wait what? That's definitely not something you get in a Vanilla FPS. It may be crudely implemented in a few others where this one is really slickly implemented.

Also the running around in a massive environment and running randomly into other players has never been done in an FPS that is this mechanically rich.

As an aside, I lost internet connection last night (for the first time in months, honestly), and got kicked out of the Beta. Now sure, it's a Beta and pretty much would have needed online regardless. The fact is, though, that if this had occurred in the actual game, I would have been screwed out of any story mode progress or anything else I was doing. And I agree, stats and public events are cool, but for something that is so minor in this game (referring to public events), it's really not worth making this game required to be connected at all times.

I got disconnected during a story mission in the Beta. When I reconnected and selected that story mission again, it loaded the checkpoint where I was right before I got disconnected. I lost very little progress, and absolutely didn't have to restart the whole mission.

- No text -