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

by Joe Duplessie (SNIPE 316) , Detroit, Friday, August 08, 2014, 20:38 (3763 days ago) @ Revenant1988

Well that was a lot. Do you feel better now that you got it all out? ;)

A bit. The thought of all the replying I have to do now is a little overwhelming, though.

Interesting points and thoughts in your post. Some I agree with, some I don't, some that didn't apply to me.

I'll cut your multiplayer portion because I largely agree and have nothing to add.

Enemies

You bring up an interesting point about the enemies and personalities. Perhaps I was one of the lucky ones? I can recall SEVERAL times where I was a level 8, and I'd run up on two lone level 2 Dregs in explore mode and they'd run away from me.

Likely taking cover, not fleeing from you.

I also recall a couple of times where I had a Thrall (Flood zombie)cower from me, like it would shake it's head and cower. It's possible that is NOT what it was doing, and I couldn't duplicate it, but I swear it happened once I greased a bunch of his friends or something.

Sounds like a glitch. Not something I experienced.

As for the rest of the enemies... you've got a point. I can't recall any of the other enemies at any other time really doing anything other than staying in their little areas. Sometimes a Knight would pull up a shield when I was donging on him from afar, but he'd just stay there. If I did that shit to a Hunter in Halo, he starts walking towards you to make you regret it.

Plus, you can't one shot a Hunter with your sniper (Halo 3-onward).

The Tank was boring, and just like a scarab but smaller. Shoot leg, fall down, shoot glowy part for extra damage.

Now for the Sphere boss (Sepiks Prime) I had a way different experience, but I was running all over the map too, so maybe that made a difference? Basically, he'd follow me everywhere and turn on his vacuum beam and kill me if he got me in a corner. Lol, there was one time he was with the two randoms, and I was donking on him from afar and he just tele-ported away. I looked for him and could not find him, then I looked up, and then I died. I thought that was pretty fun haha. But other than that, he was no different from the little guys and ultimately just took longer to kill.

Maybe I was too busy to notice, but looking back, I see it now. They were pretty bland. I hope that was just beta being beta.

Something like that isn't going to change from beta. Especially with only a month to release. Look at how much changed from the H3 and Reach betas. Not much, and that was with four months between beta and release.

Weapons

Everything seems the same to me. A rifle is a rifle is a rifle blah blah blah. I had the same feeling of overload that I did the first time I played MW2 where it was like "Oh shit, how do I know what guns are the good guns? There are so many guns...they all look the same and yet are slightly different! What do I use?".

I don't think it's CoD level bad, but yeah. I see the similarity.

I didn't bother looking at names- I won't remember that shit. I found one I liked later on that was basically the DMR from Reach. That was my favorite. Then I found that same gun, but it was named differently for some raisin, but the only thing that was noticeably different was a larger mag. Hooray!

Same thing, different name.

I said the same thing about alien weapons. Hopefully you can use them later, and they were just hiding that for the beta. I noticed that when I got killed by enemies that it would tell me the name of what they used to kill me. That bodes well I think.

Hopefully. Alien weapons always seem to be the most creative. Which makes sense.

Melee pisses me the fuck off and I played as Titan, so I should have loved it right?

Eh, I dunno. Melee felt pretty solid to me. Maybe a little too much lunge, but I'm used to that by now. Doesn't make it okay, I've just stopped noticing it.

Well I play sneaky. Multiple times I would sneak up on a group of Fallen, and I'd melee them in the back and it wouldn't insta kill them. This needs to be a thing. Maybe not for Captains and larger boss type enemies, but I should be able to ninja pretty much any lower type of enemy, regardless of level. Also, why no assassinations? The hunter knife in particular begs for it! It's not like Microsoft and Halo own the term or action- what gives??

Every time I tried to be stealthy, I would always be noticed when I got within five feet of my target. Even if I didn't make a sound, and none of them could possibly see me, they would instantly turn around and start blasting.

I like the type-damage mechanic- very Metroid Prime-ish. I like that certain races are move vulnerable to certain types, but that should apply to more than shields. That mechanic does encourage variety in weapon use, which is a good thing. However, in the beta, with fusion rifles for example it just meant that I used the exact same gun (3 slots) but with a different buff on each one. That's not exactly variety. That's like a peanut butter sandwich with white, wheat, or other. It's still a sandwich.

I didn't know what any of that meant, and it never seemed to matter. Bad guys went down equally fast if it was a fire weapon or a water weapon.

Art Style and world stuff: I must be missing something, but this game does not feel or look like Halo to me. It SOUNDS like Halo, but that is it, to me. Old Russia didn't wow me, but was nice to look at. The Moon however was fan-freakin-tastic and I want to go back. Did you get to do the moon? The hive stuff actually had atmosphere and was very crypt-like. Also, are they called Hive "Tube" or Hive "Tomb" ships? Anywho, that area was cool and exploring it with Paddy and Bones was the highlight of the Beta for me. I've got a good feeling for the rest.

The feel like Halo comment was about gameplay. Not the art.
Yep, I went to the moon. Reminded me a lot of Gears 2. Old Russia reminded me of Jacinto, as well.

I think the characters look stupid as hell. I don't get the obsession with capes and pieces of cloth with clashing colors and emblems on my character. I don't get the tribal face paints yet future everything else. I don't get the Decepticon looking Space ships. Why should I spend money one one? So I can look at it? It doesn't do anything. Why should I care about it?

I agree on human characters. Hated 'em. I liked the alien designs, though. Especially the Captains.

I have to disagree with most of your story complaints because there is much more to see, and hopefully the dead ghost\grimore cards fill in gaps and make you want "more". As long as I don't have to leave the game to go read them.

I didn't have any story complaints, so I don't see how you could disagree with them.

There are no characters I feel close to, or care about. When you are in a fire team with other players and you advance in the story, the cutscene only shows YOU. YOU are the center. YOU are the nexus. YOU are the only thing that matters, and thats fucking stupid. When Paddy + Bones + I play, I didn't see their characters. THEY were the ones who completed the end mission objective, yet I'm the one getting thanked?

May have been too much work to animate the other two players. Idk, but I agree it would have been cooler if your friends were in the cutscene with you.

C'mon. Halo 3 and Reach did this much better. Everybody was included, even if it was minor.

I don't remember anyone but Chief being in H3's cutscenes, with the occasional Arbiter. Those red and blue elites were never there, IIRC.

In Reach, I remember that only one player was in cutscenes. the only thing like that was whoever lasted longest during the last mission was the one in the cutscene (I think).

My Musings.

Destiny IS an MMO. I don't care who says otherwise. It has all the grindy bits that make it one. Your sole motivator outside of the story is a quest for stuff. It's still fun, but I don't know why. I don't like that we can't get more than 3-6 in a group. I was REALLY looking forward to getting 16 of us together and just steam-rolling the countryside, but it is not to be.

Never played an MMO. Can't really comment on that one.

Yet for such a social game, it's the least social thing I've played in a lot of respects.

Doesn't even let people talk to each other.

I'm getting it, but I'm not worried about day 1, pre-orders or any of that stuff. I want to play more campaign with you guys, and that's pretty much it.

See you in November.

I agree wholeheartedly with you that Destiny doesn't want you to fail. Destiny wants everyone to do well, everyone to be a winner. That's why they don't show you deaths, you get supers for just standing and a sure kill if you can just point in someones general direction. It wants you to get multi-kills and to feel like a tank (in MP and solo). There is no penalty for death. The only times that there was any, was the no-respawn campaign zones, and hoping that my random teammates didn't die. Sometimes that was tense. Beyond that, I did get the feeling that something was off. It felt too easy. Even with difficulty bumped up as high as it would let me, all that really did was make things more bullet spongy. The enemies didn't really get smarter.

Again, I hope most of that was beta being beta. We'll see!

This close to ship? Don't count on it.