Very disappointed in Destiny. *long* *TL;DR included* (Destiny)

by Ragashingo , Official DBO Cryptarch, Thursday, August 07, 2014, 22:18 (3764 days ago) @ Joe Duplessie (SNIPE 316)

Interestingly, I found snipers in The Crucible to be far far less problematic than in any Halo. Both on the giving and receiving side!

I don't see how.

In Halo, especially on the bigger maps, a good sniper could easily ruin your day

The same could be said for Destiny. Except that in Destiny there could potentially be 6 good snipers ruining your day.

Oddly, nobody ever did that. Maybe I would have a different opinion if an entire team stood in a good sniping spot like that...

because there was no good defense.

That's just wrong. You could get in close by staying out of the sniper's sightlines. Or suppress their sniper so that yours can take him out. Load up a warthog with a hit squad and take him down. There's plenty of ways to end their reign of terror in Halo or Destiny. The difference is that you have to earn the gun in Halo, meaning you'll have to deal with enemy snipers or shotgunners far less often. The sniper you work so hard to eliminate in Destiny will just respawn five seconds later and get back to work.

I still think there was something... different. One of my least favorite game types in Halo was Team Snipers. Spawn, maybe get a kill, mostly get killed, respawn. That's how it went for me. Destiny never went like that for me. I think it helped a lot that most of the control points made you consider close range and some pretty much eliminated long range from the equation. That meant people often chose a good mid range gun and something for close up work. I thought the map design plus the losing special ammo when switching weapon types did a decent job of preventing Destiny from turning into team snipers. If Destiny had turned into Team Snipers I'd be in here hating on it too!

In Destiny, any sniper was highlighted by a red targeting light before he fired, which helped me evade,

So you have to see them first? Good luck. That sure didn't help my victims. All you're ever going to see is the top of my head, and if I see you, you're done.

Let's assume that's true the first time. It's not true the second because now I know where you are and I won't put myself in the same position. Besides, in the actual game I did not experience that kind of thing too often. Some? Sure. But not enough to discourage me. Now maybe you're a sniper god and all the players I played against were crap, but you're not buying the game so what do I have to worry about. :) (That's my one dig, by the way!)

and if he got me I wasn't stuck with a short or medium range weapon and no vehicle at spawn.

So there was no penalty for death? All men should be created, and respawned, equal. Keeps things fair.

I'm not quite sure what you mean here. The penalty was my team got a bit closer to losing. If you're talking about what weapons you spawn with... well... before Reach I would have agreed with you. After Reach, with its various loadouts and Halo 4 with even more variability I guess I've come around a good deal to the point that I was comfortable with people having sniper rifles in Destiny.

Maybe another part of it was in Halo you could get complacent, or hope nobody has a sniper rifle. In Destiny you had to factor a sniper in to everything... but for me that made it ok. I felt as long as I wasn't stupid (and I was stupid a few times) I had enough cover and options that a sniper wasn't too big a problem... or at the very least was far less of an aggravation than a sniper was in Halo.

I could ALWAYS switch to my high zoom Scout Rifle or Sniper Rifle if I needed to.

Without having to earn it. And so could everyone else. This floods the map with power weapons, instant death at every turn! If Halo was Chess, Destiny is whack-a-mole.

I don't entirely disagree, but I disagree. :p

Again, in Halo I partly resigned myself to the "fact" that I might get taken out by a sniper instantly from a place I could not defend againt. Technically it wasn't true but I played as if it was. In Destiny it was true, but my play style already compensated for it.

A large part of my frustration with Halo snipers was they had an almost absolute advantage unless I caught the one weapon respawn on the one side of the map I was safe on. Destiny's bring your own weapon, spawn your own vehicle setup really empowered me to fight back against snipers. I very much enjoyed it.

Exactly, the game allows you to beat your opponent even if you aren't as good as them. That's extremely frustrating when you should be beating someone, but the game lets them win anyway. The better player will win any even fight, but there rarely is one.

So here's where we really, very sharply disagree. You seem to see absolute player skill, without any modifiers of any type, as the correct and only factor that should decide a battle. I think that's wrong. I typed up and deleted a few (decent and fair) examples, but ultimately I think examples aren't necessary. I think this is a fundamental disagreement.

Not to be rude (really, I mean that here) but I think anybody who takes the point of view that it's the game that beat them and not the player playing the game who is beating them, especially when talking about camping with a long range one shot kill rifle vs someone fairly using other systems the game provides, should go find a nice game of team snipers or SWAT and stay there. You can have your reduced rule set and skill only action. Leave me to my full featured game.

Are there times where a game beats you? Are there badly designed games where the game beats you or a game allows cheaters to beat you? Sure! Remember the times people figured out how to get out of the map in Reach? That was the game beating you, not the player. But, I think in general having a "the game beat me" attitude is wrong and hugely discredits players who are good at the game.

A guy stayed up on the spawn point between B and C on the Venus map which allowed him to fire into part of the B control point.

A spot I'm very familiar with.

He took me down a couple of times before I realized what he was doing, but I had the tools I needed to fight him. I probably died another couple of time but it never felt unfair in that "oh there's a sniper up on the ridge on Blood Gulch who I simply cannot touch" way that Halo sometimes did.

You could touch him though. If you're smart, and work with your team.

But see, that doesn't make ME feel better about dying from all the way across the map with no options. Princess Leia once said, "I am NOT a committee." In similar fashion, I am NOT a team. Add in the fact that the sniper was not a team either... why do I need a team and he doesn't? (Yes, weapon control, etc... but my question still stands... even if shakily)

That said, there is a flip side, I think. Destiny probably does discourage team work a bit. In Destiny, coordinating fire isn't as important as in Halo, for instance, because of the faster kill times. I think this is offset somewhat by team play now meaning standing off and guarding a flank, but it seems almost certain that as Destiny gives more power to individual players it does remove some power from team play.

And on the offensive side, having a few rounds of sniper ammo per respawn got me to use a sniper rifle more.

That's just strategy though. Whoever is best on your team with any weapon or vehicle should take control of it. That'll help the team more.

In Halo I'd always leave it for someone else because chances were SOMEBODY was a better sniper than me and there was only one rifle to go around.

Stategy.

Yes, but again I am not a team. I, personally, like success. I, personally, do not like needing a team to take down one enemy. I enjoy having more power, and more control over engagements.

In Destiny I did my fair share of sniping because the game empowered me to do so. I still prefer a midrange primary / close range secondary setup, but sniping was an option for me in Destiny where it usually wasn't in Halo.

Stick with what you know. Practice other disciplines in campaign. Master them. Bring them to multiplayer. As a great man once said, "Bip, Bap, Bam!"

Sure. I more or less agree. But, in Destiny I got more enjoyment. All in all I did better as a sniper and against snipers than I did in Halo. I liked that and that may not trump everything, but it trumps a lot...

As for the rest, I largely disagree. :)

Care to elaborate?

Yes, tomorrow. Just this post on the fairly limited idea of sniping took quite a while! :)