
4 weeks with Destiny review and miscellaneous thoughts (Destiny)
This game is awesome, dude! But, it badly needs more content - especially for the post-story, pre-raid gap - a few supporting systems need refining and it really needs to explain itself better. I've already bought the Expansion Pass so I'll be getting more content in a couple of months, but there is plenty of geometry already here that could be used in fresh ways.
4/5 Stars - will keep playing. :D
With my extensive and probing review out of the way, we can delve into the #3 and #4 favourite pastimes of netizens: bitching and nitpicking! Here are a few I've prepared earlier:
Soft-cap on player count in Tower / instancing at incoming parties
The Tower is a cool place to hang out: you can actually do stuff there like oggle that weapon you can't afford and... dance. But frequently I've been invited to groups there and can't join because the player count is maxed out at 16. Does it really need to be so hard-and-fast? Perhaps it could it take a few more players but only by invite. Or perhaps it could split tower instances if too many players join one.
More diverse Ultra behaviours
Ultras are usually just enormous, shieldless, slow versions of other enemies, with an AOE ground-stomp attack. It's a little boring. I hope they mix it up more. The Psion Flayers on Dust Palace were good: you had to separate them, get shields down and team up against them. You could even blow them off the edge! More skilled, high-risk stuff you can do to speed it along would be great. I'm slowing finding that a lot of the smaller enemies I used to be afraid of have such high-risk, high-rewards maneouvres you can do: ever run straight at a Cabal Phalanx? I have. Run right past that SOB, spin and shotgun them in the back.
Also, AOE ground-stomps really put a dampener on, say, jumping on their head and unloading a shotgun into it. Valus Ta'aurc sent me splattering against a wall once when I tried. Simultaneously hilarious and depressing.
Visually Distinguish Majors in ways other than health-bar colour
I can't tell what is a Major and what is a Minor just by looking at them from afar - or is that just me? This becomes a problem when you try to go fast, hard, up close with shotguns or far away with snipers. You can line up a shot expecting the enemy to go down instantly and then they barely even flinch because they're a Major.
Visually distinguish over- and under-leveled enemies
In a similar vein to above: it would be nice if there was a quick way to assess, from a distance, without having to scope in on each enemy, their relative level to me.
Wider, weirder monster closets
I guess I have to accept these and that I can't shoot into them but I don't think they really all need to be the same exact doorway shape. Shanks could come out of vents, surely? I noticed some Hive in the Sword of Crota mission coming out of 'pools of darkness' or whatever. That was different. More of that.
Aside: perhaps the 'shroud of darkness' in monster closets would only offer damage reduction, rather than full immunity. If you're playing aggressively they can almost get stuck in there and it's annoying not to be able to do anything to them.
Use lighting and time-of-day more
The lighting system is pretty fantastic. Lovely shadows of enemies on the walls from low-lying spot-lights and gorgeous subtle shadows outside. But aside from a couple of moments, it isn't really used to enhance the story modes much. Time of day always just plays out passively in the background. I think they could break strict continuity with the rest of the world in private instances more and use it to push specific moments better.
Raid enemies showing up in story/strikes in future Expansions/games
Without spoiling anything, there are enemy behaviours and variations that don't show up anywhere else. I hope they use these to spice up later story missions. VoG is the early introduction for those that can get in, but other players don't miss out completely on these interesting variations. Otherwise, weapons with effects that are only useful in certain parts of one mission is immensely silly.
Matchmake directly into high-level strikes of your choice
When selecting a particular Strike from the Director, I wish we had the option to matchmake into high-level versions directly. The low-level ones aren't particularly challenging when 20+ with legendaries and exotics, and going into the Vanguard playlists is a bit pot-luck. It'd be nice to have the challenge we want, on the level we want. If it rewarded less than the Vanguard playlists since you'll know exactly what's coming, that'd be totally fine.
Show how we got our cool stuff
Exotics, Legendary (and maybe even all stuff) should tell you how and when you got them, cus it's really hard to remember on your own. E.g. Praedyth's Revenge - found in the Vault of Glass after defeating REDACTED on 2014/09/XX, along with players Victor, Whiskey, X-Ray, Yankee and Zulu. Legends need to be recorded otherwise everyone forgets.
More vehicles and more vehicle sections
Vehicles are awesome, fun and a nice change of pace. But we didn't really get to use them much. A couple of times in campaign and a couple of times in strikes that always felt confined and cut short. They need to use these more, IMO.
Mixed up beginning and ends of missions
One of the big complaints others have had. Too many missions start in the exact same spot after the exact same loading screen, and have you driving through the exact same spaces as you've literally just played. Then too many missions end with fights against Ultras where when they die, everyone else disappears or drops dead - which is weird. They feel a little cookie-cutter, formulaic, cut-and-paste. Which is a let-down when what comes in the middle is generally excellent.
At the start of missions, we need to be thrown into fights sometimes (e.g. Silent Cartographer). We need more missions where we're just left on the world to do whatever we want (dropping back to a 'patrol'-like state), or have to clear up enemies and collect some object that was protected by the boss. A little more gradual come-down from the highs of the boss fights sometimes, rather than the vertical cliff it is currently.
Moar stats
The PGCR kept on b.net doesn't even replicate the content of the one in game (which aren't even extensive). I hope it's just a work-in-progress thing and the data is there somewhere.
Aside: 'Sparrow Splatters' stat needs to be a thing
A sure way to get the exact Legendary we want
With the exact scopes, upgrades and options from the pool of ones that are already available in the randomised drops. The Legendaries available from the store are nice, but so many of them aren't really exactly what I want. They don't fit how I play or could ever conceive of playing. Armour pieces from the stores don't match the weapon type properly, that sort of thing.
I don't want to reach a point where the only way I can progress in optimisation is to completely rely on RNGesus to drop Legendaries with just the right upgrade options. Even if the road is made long and difficult, a definite way to get there would be nice.
Switching sub-class options should take away some charge
If you're willing to go back-and-forth into your character screen, you can kinda cheese it to minimise cooldown and maximise power. For example, you can armour your Bladedancer to completely shirk Strength, then pick 'Fast Twitch' which gives you a 5 second cooldown on Blink Strike. Then as soon as it's charged, switch to the option that gives you extra-backstab damage or camo after hits. It's weird to even entertain that the idea that the optimal/easiest way to play is to break the flow of combat so much.
Put more weights on RNGesus
Stuff like bias against picking strikes/maps we've played recently in MM. Or, if we got Shards from a Raid chest recently, prioritise armour in the next one. Or, if we already have 3 million Queen's Guard Helmets, a higher chance at the Sniper or the ship in Queens' Wrath missions. Right now it seems totally random and that's just absurd: with so many players, someone, somewhere, is going to have a string of obscenely bad luck on all these dice rolls. Individual player experience needs to be actively managed a little more.
'nuff said hopes:
- Saved Films
- Creative screenshot features
- In-game clan-members presence info
- Firefight
- AI friendlies on some missions
- More/deeper interaction with all those characters in the tower
- See if our weapons are reloaded without having to switch to them
- More feedback on trying to fire an empty weapon
- Titans' Shoulder Charge screen effect not being blinding in dark places
- No invisible walls - real walls are best walls
- Sparrow racing
- Bosses shouldn't be immune on their introduction - see also: Valus Ta'aurc's showboating
- Firefight
TL/DR: Destiny is awesome but could be more awesomer. I am genius; do as I say. Please? You already have my money? Ooh... bollocks. Doesn't matter, had fun anyway.