This new article on Kotaku (http://tay.kotaku.com/world-of-destiny-more-than-a-shared-world-shooter-1609578918) pretty much mirrors my sentiments about how they've designed the quest/loot system in Destiny, these paragraphs in particular borrows my Deckard Cain analogy and I think is very pertinent:

"...Here's where things get a bit away from Warcraft. You get new items for completing quests, sure, as well as missions, and you can use your class vanguard like a WOW Battleground vendor, allowing for special items purchased through Honor Points, I mean "Glimmer" and "Vanguard Marks," but Destiny likens much more to Diablo than Borderlands in the loot aspect.

For example, I sincerely hope they introduce a tome of identify in Destiny so I don't have to keep talking to Deckard Cain to get my unknown items identified...

For all the things Destiny is doing right (awesome visuals, interesting sci-fi world, awesome music, cool social features) it is pretty disappointing that they so patently lifted gameplay systems pretty much wholesale from Diablo and WoW. Dress it up in different names if you like, but that shit is just honor grinding and Deckard Cain.

...if the Chryptarch looked like, and was voiced by, Harrison Ford.

(I'm still not convinced that the system has a reason to exist in Destiny, though.)

For all the things Destiny is doing right (awesome visuals, interesting sci-fi world, awesome music, cool social features) it is pretty disappointing that they so patently lifted gameplay systems pretty much wholesale from Diablo and WoW.

And it lifts the WORST ASPECTS of those systems.

My biggest problem with Destiny is that it is overly loot focused to the detriment of the missions themselves. I feel like the beacons should be giving you missions like the story missions are now, and the story missions should be as substantial as a level in Halo for example. They are they way they are because they want you to grind for faction points, and to replay the story missions in the hopes of getting cool drops or end rewards.

As a result, instead of using missions and bounties to expand the world like all the side quests in the original Deus Ex, they are busy work that are not fun in and of themselves. Likewise the story missions are just barely connected to each other, and no weight is given to your actions. If I'm going to "Become Legend", then why isn't the story advancing because of my actions? Every mission after the first begins with something like "Reports say that…" or "Our Scouts say that…". Each mission should begin because of something we do in the last one! It doesn't feel like you are shaping the story, but are just a guardian for hire.

There is definitely a critical mass to narrative, and a bunch of little story missions do not equal fewer larger ones. Just look at Spartan Ops in Halo 4, and to a limited extent episodic adventure games.

There is so much potential here, but it really is being ruined by stupid systems that in the long run nobody even likes. I have this nagging feeling I'm going to enjoy the game for a while, until the inevitable 'sideways' progression appears and has me grind. Again, the systems I am talking about are the PLAYER INVESTMENT SYSTEMS. They suck. Just make your game deep and enjoyable, and have everything be its own reward.

And it lifts the WORST ASPECTS of those systems.

Stand by for hell freezing over; I agree with Cody on this.

Well; somewhat.

The missions are pretty repetitive and get quite dull after a while. There's no real sense of any of them mattering or having any causality. In fact, I have to say the story is mostly lost on me right now. I know there's a ‘darkness’ coming, but does that refer to a specific race, or just all the enemies such as the Hive and Fallen? From the opening sequence it appears that my ghost brought me back to life, but that raises a TON of questions which aren't even remotely touched on. If you were brought back to life centuries later and dropped into a post-apocalyptic Earth defending it from aliens, wouldn't you have a few questions?

I get the impression the various factions are meant to have some sort of distinct personality (at least based on the voice acting) but we're given little else to go on. Why do they exist? What are their purposes? I'm mystified.

When it comes to borrowing mechanics from Diablo and WoW, this is where some of the problems start. I feel a bit as though Bungie have borrowed mechanics from old versions of these games, and haven't learned any of the lessons of them (it's as if they played WoW back in 2008 and based their designs on that). As Fuertisimo says, the returning home to identify items is a completely ass-backwards way of doing things; Blizzard realised this and hence you can identify items from your inventory in Diablo 3. Requiring a trip home just to unwrap your loot is completely absurd (particularly considering the daft ‘return to orbit’ intermediary step).

The grinding issue is one that I feel will be more or less of an issue depending on the individual. On the one hand, you don't want a system whereby it's possible to acquire all of the goodies too quickly (because if you do, you'll burn out and stop playing, which will damage the MMO experience), but on the other you don't want things taking so long you don't feel like you're progressing. The key is to ensure that whilst you're grinding, you're still enjoying the minute-by-minute gunplay. So far this feels like the most polished, triple-A part of the game (unsurprising given it's from Bungie); it's the lack of anything else gluing the experience together that undermines it.

Finally I want to talk about exploration. The world is beautiful, the scenery and environment stunning to behold. But all the same, it feels oddly constricted and artificial. I don't feel like I'm exploring a wide open area so much as travelling on (admittedly quite broad) conduits between hubs which have a very linear feel. I never really minded Bungie putting invisible walls and killzones into the Halo games, but here it feels particularly egregious. If you're selling us an open world, why can't I climb the mountains? And on that subject, why is the land so…flat? For all the bumpiness the world has, it's more or less all of a consistent elevation — it doesn't feel like you're ever travelling up into the hills so much as just cresting a rise, after which the land falls again. Maybe the other zones will amend this, but it feels a bit as though in an attempt to prevent players ‘skipping ahead’ they've put a straightjacket on what could have otherwise been a compelling, immersive world.

We're capped at level 8 right now, which means not only are we not able to experience a lot of the game systems (crafting items? upgrading them with materials?) but we're also limited in where we can go. It may be that travelling to other worlds, and other parts of this world will help sculpt the immersive experience, but I think Bungie could do a lot more to sell us with the smaller scale things; missions that engage and involve more than just Collect X things/Kill Y enemies/Travel to point Z.

I've just been reminding myself that this is a Beta. It's unfinished, incomplete. Maybe the finished game, when it ships, will rectify some of these issues. I, too, worry a bit about repetition becoming stale. It hasn't been (much) of an issue for me so far, but I could see it becoming one in the long-run, especially once I max out all my Guardian's attributes. I'm expecting to see a lot more of the glue that holds everything together become more apparent in September. I'm suspicious (and hopeful) that what we're seeing here is just scratching the dust on the surface of Destiny. I don't have an opinion one way or another on whether Bungie is using the Beta as a marketing ploy; I was sold on the game ages ago when they first announced it. Marketing is sure to be part of it, but Bungie also has a history of preferring to stress-test their systems before launch. I'm just happy to be able to sample the game this early on. :)

I've just been reminding myself that this is a Beta. It's unfinished, incomplete. Maybe the finished game, when it ships, will rectify some of these issues. I, too, worry a bit about repetition becoming stale. It hasn't been (much) of an issue for me so far, but I could see it becoming one in the long-run, especially once I max out all my Guardian's attributes. I'm expecting to see a lot more of the glue that holds everything together become more apparent in September. I'm suspicious (and hopeful) that what we're seeing here is just scratching the dust on the surface of Destiny. I don't have an opinion one way or another on whether Bungie is using the Beta as a marketing ploy; I was sold on the game ages ago when they first announced it. Marketing is sure to be part of it, but Bungie also has a history of preferring to stress-test their systems before launch. I'm just happy to be able to sample the game this early on. :)

You said a lot of what I was thinking of saying in reply, and kapowaz also suggested that the full game will fix some of these issues. In particular, I hope the side missions mean more than they seem to now, but even if they don't perhaps the connectivity would allow for more variation and content to be added over time, and by that I mean invisibly--not the expansion packs.

The story is very important to me. The beta doesn't give me enough to form a solid opinion about any of it, but I also don't want more. I want many surprises in September.

The grinding issue is one that I feel will be more or less of an issue depending on the individual. On the one hand, you don't want a system whereby it's possible to acquire all of the goodies too quickly (because if you do, you'll burn out and stop playing, which will damage the MMO experience)

But this is what's so baffling. There's no MMO experience to ruin, because at most you are playing with TWO OTHER PEOPLE, most likely your friends, and meeting and communicating with people is basically impossible. Trying to keep players around is ludicrous when it doesn't matter in the slightest if 100,000 people are playing, or if 100 people are playing.

I've just been reminding myself that this is a Beta. It's unfinished, incomplete.

And it's coming out in less than 7 weeks. They'll definitely be fixing bugs and tweaking things here and there, but the issues I've mentioned above aren't going to be addressed between now and then…

Likewise the story missions are just barely connected to each other, and no weight is given to your actions. If I'm going to "Become Legend", then why isn't the story advancing because of my actions? Every mission after the first begins with something like "Reports say that…" or "Our Scouts say that…". Each mission should begin because of something we do in the last one! It doesn't feel like you are shaping the story, but are just a guardian for hire.

Besides being a thoroughly ridiculous thing to proclaim in itself, Destiny's Story mode is not entirely linear.

e.g. After completing Restoration, you can play either Dark Within or Warmind straight away.

The sum of the things you do, acquire and learn in Old Russia leads you to go to...

...dun, dun, dun...

The Moon!

Likewise the story missions are just barely connected to each other, and no weight is given to your actions. If I'm going to "Become Legend", then why isn't the story advancing because of my actions? Every mission after the first begins with something like "Reports say that…" or "Our Scouts say that…". Each mission should begin because of something we do in the last one! It doesn't feel like you are shaping the story, but are just a guardian for hire.

Besides being a thoroughly ridiculous thing to proclaim in itself, Destiny's Story mode is not entirely linear.

e.g. After completing Restoration, you can play either Dark Within or Warmind straight away.

The sum of the things you do, acquire and learn in Old Russia leads you to go to...

...dun, dun, dun...

The Moon!

But then you end up with Starcraft 2 syndrome, in that the narrative is disjointed and none of the story missions feel substantial, because no single one propels anything forward. Nor do they really effect each other since they can be done in any order.

But this is what's so baffling. There's no MMO experience to ruin, because at most you are playing with TWO OTHER PEOPLE

Aren't raids meant to be even bigger than strikes? And what about PvP teams of 6?

But then you end up with Starcraft 2 syndrome, in that the narrative is disjointed and none of the story missions feel substantial, because no single one propels anything forward. Nor do they really effect each other since they can be done in any order.

Why you've suddenly jumped to thinking Destiny will be like that I don't even...

But then you end up with Starcraft 2 syndrome, in that the narrative is disjointed and none of the story missions feel substantial, because no single one propels anything forward. Nor do they really effect each other since they can be done in any order.

Why you've suddenly jumped to thinking Destiny will be like that I don't even...

Let's bookmark this thread come 9/9 then.

But this is what's so baffling. There's no MMO experience to ruin, because at most you are playing with TWO OTHER PEOPLE

Aren't raids meant to be even bigger than strikes?

DeeJ is pretty clear in the Gamertag Radio interview that Raids will not have a matchmaking component. You go in with friends or you don't go in.

But this is what's so baffling. There's no MMO experience to ruin, because at most you are playing with TWO OTHER PEOPLE

Aren't raids meant to be even bigger than strikes?

DeeJ is pretty clear in the Gamertag Radio interview that Raids will not have a matchmaking component. You go in with friends or you don't go in.

The prospect of this is actually intriguing, given then you would be guaranteed chat with your fellow raiders. I'm imagining tons of planning and communication will be a must.

For all the things Destiny is doing right (awesome visuals, interesting sci-fi world, awesome music, cool social features) it is pretty disappointing that they so patently lifted gameplay systems pretty much wholesale from Diablo and WoW.

And it lifts the WORST ASPECTS of those systems.

My biggest problem with Destiny is that it is overly loot focused to the detriment of the missions themselves. I feel like the beacons should be giving you missions like the story missions are now, and the story missions should be as substantial as a level in Halo for example. They are they way they are because they want you to grind for faction points, and to replay the story missions in the hopes of getting cool drops or end rewards.

I think the more valid comparison given what we're seeing is that a Destiny story mission is equivalent not to a Halo level, but perhaps to a Halo encounter or series of related encounters. The experience of playing one can approximate that of a short Halo level, but only when you add in the travel from the spawn point through the public area, which might include a public event or as much search-and-destroy as you have patience for at the time-- all optional, of course.

That said, I'd expect far more story missions in Destiny than levels in Halo. After all, if these were even supposed to be equivalent, we'd have already seen half the game, as Halo games usually have about 10 levels or so. I really don't think that is the case.

The missions are pretty repetitive and get quite dull after a while. There's no real sense of any of them mattering or having any causality. In fact, I have to say the story is mostly lost on me right now. I know there's a ‘darkness’ coming, but does that refer to a specific race, or just all the enemies such as the Hive and Fallen?

I'm guessing neither, but rather some mysterious force behind all of those that are directing or inducing these races to antagonize humanity and the Traveler.

From the opening sequence it appears that my ghost brought me back to life, but that raises a TON of questions which aren't even remotely touched on. If you were brought back to life centuries later and dropped into a post-apocalyptic Earth defending it from aliens, wouldn't you have a few questions?

Perhaps, but I'm not sure which would be relevant to the tasks at hand in the game world. I suppose you could just imagine that you, yourself, went to bed one day and this is how you woke up. You'd have the usual questions about your friends and your family and what happened to them, and the answer would basically be, "yeah, they're all long gone". Or we could imagine the Destiny player is Fry from Futurama.

This isn't that unusual for Bungie; the protagonist in Marathon is also given little to no background before the action, but also apparently started the story as being a dead soldier.

We're capped at level 8 right now, which means not only are we not able to experience a lot of the game systems (crafting items? upgrading them with materials?) but we're also limited in where we can go. It may be that travelling to other worlds, and other parts of this world will help sculpt the immersive experience, but I think Bungie could do a lot more to sell us with the smaller scale things; missions that engage and involve more than just Collect X things/Kill Y enemies/Travel to point Z.

Yes I'm also feeling that the explore missions are a little more shallow than I'd want. I can see how this allows them to create many, many "different" missions but in reality they're all the same.

That said, I'd expect far more story missions in Destiny than levels in Halo. After all, if these were even supposed to be equivalent, we'd have already seen half the game, as Halo games usually have about 10 levels or so. I really don't think that is the case.

See argument about critical mass with regards to single player missions. Lots of little ones do not equal fewer big ones.

[...] and meeting and communicating with people is basically impossible.

I met two randoms during an Explore, danced with them, directed them to the ?? Hallowed Knight (via pointing) and we pushed it off the edge with Sparrows. They then invited me to their Fireteam and Party and I told them about the Beta becoming public and the Iron Banner opening, and then we messed around a bit. I'm looking forward to more silly interactions like that in the game proper.

The prospect of this is actually intriguing, given then you would be guaranteed chat with your fellow raiders. I'm imagining tons of planning and communication will be a must.

This is what raids in WoW are generally like*, requiring a coordinated group of raiders, each with specialist roles, geared up appropriately and with the necessary communication tools (not to mention organisation and discipline; there's no guarantee you'll win each encounter on your first go, so part of a raid leader's role is to ensure people stay focused and don't lose it when they don't succeed). Based on what we've seen it would seem likely Bungie will be doing something similar for Raids in Destiny, although the team size is probably smaller (6 or 8 I'm guessing?).

*They have, in recent years, added a matchmaking mode for raiding called ‘LFR, as in Looking For Raid’ where you can be thrown into a group of randoms. The lack of guaranteed communication (other than text) means that the difficulty level has to be quite substantially reduced compared to the normal difficulty of the raid, and the rewards are also reduced in quality; nonetheless it still lets players experience the content.

If it's a good system, it's a good system.

I'm not familiar enough with WoW or Diablo to know if their loot systems are any good, but I'm not going to fault Bungie for using good ideas.

The wheel does not need to be reinvented a dozen times.

The prospect of this is actually intriguing, given then you would be guaranteed chat with your fellow raiders. I'm imagining tons of planning and communication will be a must.

This is what raids in WoW are generally like*, requiring a coordinated group of raiders, each with specialist roles, geared up appropriately and with the necessary communication tools (not to mention organisation and discipline; there's no guarantee you'll win each encounter on your first go, so part of a raid leader's role is to ensure people stay focused and don't lose it when they don't succeed). Based on what we've seen it would seem likely Bungie will be doing something similar for Raids in Destiny, although the team size is probably smaller (6 or 8 I'm guessing?).

This is why I am ultimately disappointed, since WoW is terrible and Destiny seems to be borrowing a lot from it. It's only saving are the great FPS elements underneath, but I can almost guarantee I will see that not making up for the worst aspects of the game. Many of the design decisions actually fight or actively undermine the FPS aspect of the game.

I'm not familiar enough with WoW or Diablo to know if their loot systems are any good, but I'm not going to fault Bungie for using good ideas.

If gear is of importance, random loot is not good for your game. It creates repetition, grinding, and frustration. It strings everything out and makes you waste more of your time.

Random loot systems are no good.

This is true. As an example of how this is true within Destiny, I embarked on a journey last night to try and kill a bunch of stronger Fallen during the Strike to try and get some allegedly amazing auto rifle that my group said exists and that we should get. None of us ever were "rewarded" with it. So we kept trying. And never got it. And then I said screw this and we played something else in Destiny because trying to get random loot/items is such a freaking waste of time.