4 weeks with Destiny review and miscellaneous thoughts (Destiny)

by General Vagueness , The Vault of Sass, Saturday, October 11, 2014, 17:03 (3938 days ago) @ RC
edited by General Vagueness, Saturday, October 11, 2014, 17:22

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.

Do you mean a party? Fireteams in the Tower are capped at 6, aren't they?

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.

More of that is (almost) always welcome.

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.

I don't like that they shut down a lot of close-range opportunities like that, but I feel like they wouldn't if they didn't have to to keep the challenge up.

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.

I'm still not sure what you mean by Major and Minor.

Wider, weirder monster closets
I guess I have to accept these and that I can't shoot into them

Fuck that, I don't accept it. They should be regular rooms or at least have doors that close them off when not in use. Even failing that, I'd rather they break canon and/or make things too hard or easy than this lazy "they came from a dark room you can't enter" bullshit. They managed this fine in their previous games (not just Halo) and other games have managed it better than this for a long time; I would need an exceptionally good reason to excuse it.

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.

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.

I think that's going against what they want, which is for players to care enough to tell people or ask people where they got stuff.

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.

I was surprised they didn't have a flying vehicle, or a proper tank, or anything with a passenger seat.

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.

I thought that was semi-standard boss behavior.

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),

more missions like that? I don't remember any being like that

or have to clear up enemies and collect some object that was protected by the boss.

eh, it can be tedious to track down the one low-level enemy that's off in a corner somewhere, and it can be (very) frustrating to beat the boss and then still die

A little more gradual come-down from the highs of the boss fights sometimes, rather than the vertical cliff it is currently.

eh, I think that would make it feel less climactic

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

I agree

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.

Does that really have that much of an effect?

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.

I just played... I don't know, close to 10 Crucible matches, in three or four different playlists, and Firebase Delphi came up at least 5 times. Here, I'll check the stats... yep, five times, in a row even. I'd prefer to have some choice in the map, but failing that, yeah, it should make sure the above doesn't happen.

'nuff said hopes:

• Saved Films
  
• Creative screenshot features

or, you know, any screenshot features

[*]In-game clan-members presence info

I'm still nonplussed about this not being in the game-- what was the point?

[*]Firefight
[*]AI friendlies on some missions

I just had an idea: what about some reprogrammed Shanks?

[*]More/deeper interaction with all those characters in the tower
[*]See if our weapons are reloaded without having to switch to them

eh, this only caught me surprise a few times and I always felt it was my fault for not remembering

[*]More feedback on trying to fire an empty weapon

this never caught me by surprise, and in fact I very rarely completely run out of ammo

[*]Titans' Shoulder Charge screen effect not being blinding in dark places
[*]No invisible walls - real walls are best walls

preach it brother

[*]Sparrow racing

mite b cool

[*]Bosses shouldn't be immune on their introduction - see also: Valus Ta'aurc's showboating

I don't know, again, I thought that was kind of standard boss procedure; am I wrong?

[*]Firefight
[/list]

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.