That only levels the playing field for weapon damage and armor defense. Stuff like your weapon's stats/perks, armor perks, that stuff still matters. All acquired randomly, giving an advantage to whoever is luckier.

Yes random loot is bad.

But luck in general for a competitive game is not always bad.

Brood War is a great competitive game, but it had elements of luck. The biggest being in the form of high ground advantage and cover. If you had the high ground or were in cover, your chance to be hit from an attack was reduced to either 75% or 50%. This has created cases where single hero units against all odds, were unable to be hit and took out large amounts of an opposing army.

That's fun to see and watch. It all evens out though, and those situations are outliers. So over the long term, the effects of high ground and cover are predictable.

That's a tricky issue. There are a lot of ways of handling effectiveness-mitigating effects that eliminate the randomness. For instance, high ground could have been handled with mostly similar results by decreasing damage random that rolling dice, and mitigating weapon effectiveness over distance in Halo can be handled by damage reduction or projectiles or other non-random approaches rather than bloom, but every choice has a lot of its own benefits and oddities.

In the case of Brood War, I'm not sure I'd agree the randomness is good in its own right, so much as that implementation has some benefits. In its own right, the performance noise could still be considered an unhealthy side effect, but a worthy tradeoff.

That's likely just semantics, though.

*shrug*

That only levels the playing field for weapon damage and armor defense. Stuff like your weapon's stats/perks, armor perks, that stuff still matters. All acquired randomly, giving an advantage to whoever is luckier.

Yes random loot is bad.

But luck in general for a competitive game is not always bad.

Brood War is a great competitive game, but it had elements of luck. The biggest being in the form of high ground advantage and cover. If you had the high ground or were in cover, your chance to be hit from an attack was reduced to either 75% or 50%. This has created cases where single hero units against all odds, were unable to be hit and took out large amounts of an opposing army.

That's fun to see and watch. It all evens out though, and those situations are outliers. So over the long term, the effects of high ground and cover are predictable.

That only levels the playing field for weapon damage and armor defense. Stuff like your weapon's stats/perks, armor perks, that stuff still matters. All acquired randomly, giving an advantage to whoever is luckier.

Luck has always played a part. It's not uncommon to die, and then spawn next to a power weapon as it comes onto the map in Halo. Totally random, gives me an advantage.

Not really. If the other team is holding that weapon's spawn area, you won't spawn there. Their mistake is your reward. The punishment for them making that mistake of not holding that weapon's spawn is that the enemy team gets that power weapon.

A good team can prevent that by learning the spawn system, and how to manipulate it. That's something you can do in Destiny, but it's not as important since no weapons spawn on the map.

That only levels the playing field for weapon damage and armor defense. Stuff like your weapon's stats/perks, armor perks, that stuff still matters. All acquired randomly, giving an advantage to whoever is luckier.

Luck has always played a part. It's not uncommon to die, and then spawn next to a power weapon as it comes onto the map in Halo. Totally random, gives me an advantage.

And for the record, although Halo 3 would "max out" people at a certain point, the ranks portrayed were usually quite accurate. Halo 2's were unbelievably frustrating and flawed, which Bungie acknowledged and fixed. Granted, this isn't to say that Halo 3's ranking system didn't also have its share of problems (along with Reach's failed attempt at "ranked" in Arena).

I get the feeling you all are right about a matchmaking component being in play to try and match up based on skill, but I'm having a very hard time believing it will be in there or that it will work well considering that half of this doesn't take skill. It's all based on gear, how many friends you went in with to coordinate with, and who saw whom first. More luck and timing than anything, really. Or is the skill in being better at seeing someone before they see you, and potentially having better gear? lol

All of this assumes that matchmaking is evaluating skill in the first place. It isn't. It's really evaluating your success rate. True, in Halo that basically equated to skill, but matchmaking was never observing how you played and making a value judgement of whether you were a "good" player or not. Only a human could do that, and only a human would bother. It was just keeping track of your wins and losses, and matching you against people who tended to get similar results.

The point being that even if some (or all) of your success rate in Destiny PvP comes from gear, matchmaking could still match you against other people with similar success rates. People who play a ton and acquire great gear, and set up their skills in an advantageous way, would still get matched against others in the same category. People who maybe don't play as much and spend less time acquiring gear would tend to get matched with the same. You might even find that some players who have a lot of good gear but aren't that good at PvP get matched against people who are better at PvP but aren't as geared up, because they both end up being similarly effective. And all of those matches are valid as long as they tend to produce close games.

It isn't incomplete information with supers, though. It's none.

Hardly. It doesn't come back randomly between 0 and infinity seconds. There is a maximum time it will take, and a minimum even with armour stat bonuses.

Of course, if they kill and pick up Orbs of light it'll be quicker, but you have information on their kills and I'm sure someone will figure out the numbers (if they haven't already)

Finally, if you spot them first and get your reticle on them, their level box will have a golden glow around it to let you know their super is charged.

That's a lot more information to integrate, sure.

Doubt this one very much. Four years later, and there still aren't any other console games to match Reach's featureset.

Which is a shame but, what Claude said.

Yes, the clue is in the names: in one you fight AI, one you fight other people.

I can't tell if you're trying to be a smartass here...

100% smartass.

Many, but not all. There are things that work in campaign that are broken in multi. I don't think small changes like what I suggested are going to throw anyone off, and nobody would feel cheated.

Super as a pickup? People would definitely feel cheated that'd they'd integrated it well into their playstyle, optimised their gear to get a quick recharge, and now suddenly it doesn't apply to PvP!

The goal should always be to provide the best experience in either mode. They work so differently, that you can't give them all of the same mechanics without one suffering. Nobody will mind if both modes are excellent, yet a little different. Having them tailored to work for themselves just makes sense.

Best overall experience. Destiny clearly isn't designed for you to go into PvP at level 1 (you're not allowed to on your first character, even)

Getting and keeping a lot of people into PvP is very important to the quality of matches. If people are turned off because some of the fundamentals of your own character's abilities are not what they're familiar with then Bungie risk jeopardising that. Plenty still changes between the modes: enclosed, tighter maps, time-limited gametypes, points and scoring, etc.

It's up to random fate what loot you get, is the point. That'll lead to a lot of unfairness and imbalance. This one is pretty much inarguable.

The degree to which it'll be unfair, in non-Iron Banner playlists? Pretty minimal in my experience in the Beta.

'Balance' is overrated.

Make it so that you do not respawn automatically. The only way is if someone revives you. You could have unlimited respawns that way, and the tension would be in finding a way to safely revive your team mates without yourself dying.

I've kind of assumed that the Raid is going to tweak respawn mechanics in this way. I don't think they've said anything about it, but it's my hunch.

Monaco has this system, and it's pretty great!

In my defense, I knew they would revive automatically--that was a factor. There was also the laziness factor and the proximity to a Devil Walker function, along with the Why Were You Standing There qualifier.

Right. I was running it with one other person who kept dying from playing with the walker out in the open, and several times I died trying to revive him. It eventually occurred to me that we had a much higher chance of success if I ignored him and kept myself alive, because then we wouldn't both get reset. Once he respawned on his own, I could go back to taking more risks (until he died again). Maybe not the most chivalrous thing to do, but then getting myself killed and having us both reset didn't actually help him either.

"A lot" is pretty hard for you to prove as well isn't it? And with most game types seemingly normalized, how imbalanced can it really be?

Do you mean normalized like level advantages disabled (Control in the Beta), versus enabled (Iron Banner)?

That only levels the playing field for weapon damage and armor defense. Stuff like your weapon's stats/perks, armor perks, that stuff still matters. All acquired randomly, giving an advantage to whoever is luckier.

Wait, what? You argued that when Halo multiplayer had fair starts, it was that feature that drew people to it. RC countered with a comment about how its matchmaking features went from top-flight to middle-of-the-pack... and you come back with theater mode? What does that have to do with fair starts (or matchmaking at all)?

Hmm, yeah. You're totally right. I guess the word "features" made my mind automatically jump to featureset. Should have spent more time with that one.

Oops. :/

Largely because it was a good game with matchmaking features that were head and shoulders above the competition. Halo 2 and 3 were absolutely stand-out for their time. By the time Reach came, other games had caught up and began exploring other elements as well.

Doubt this one very much. Four years later, and there still aren't any other console games to match Reach's featureset. I've seen theater mode in a few places, but nothing compares to Reach.

Wait, what? You argued that when Halo multiplayer had fair starts, it was that feature that drew people to it. RC countered with a comment about how its matchmaking features went from top-flight to middle-of-the-pack... and you come back with theater mode? What does that have to do with fair starts (or matchmaking at all)?

(For what it's worth, on this point I think he's 100% right; Halo 2 was the phenomenon it was in part because there was nothing else out there that did what it did. I'm a pretty good example of someone who continued to play it in SPITE of how unfriendly it was to people of my skill level... because nothing else was even close. By the time Reach (and Halo 4) came around, there were plenty of alternatives.)

It's up to random fate what loot you get, is the point. That'll lead to a lot of unfairness and imbalance. This one is pretty much inarguable.

"A lot" is pretty hard for you to prove as well isn't it? And with most game types seemingly normalized, how imbalanced can it really be?

Reasoning and responding with incomplete information is a common element to games. E.g. you can't see the location of all the players at all times either but, you make a best guess and act anyway.

It isn't incomplete information with supers, though. It's none.

With your example, players can master reading the radar to very accurately predict where a foe will be (I guess this only half applies to Destiny, what with the weird innacurate radar it has). A good player can know the exact location of all players near them.

If supers were more predictable and consistent, a good player could learn to accurately predict when his opponent's super had charged.

Largely because it was a good game with matchmaking features that were head and shoulders above the competition. Halo 2 and 3 were absolutely stand-out for their time. By the time Reach came, other games had caught up and began exploring other elements as well.

Doubt this one very much. Four years later, and there still aren't any other console games to match Reach's featureset. I've seen theater mode in a few places, but nothing compares to Reach.

Yes, the clue is in the names: in one you fight AI, one you fight other people.

I can't tell if you're trying to be a smartass here...

Once you start saying it's OK to change mechanics from one mode to another, then you essentially start building 2 different (closely related) games. I can tell you from personal experience it's incredibly frustrating to get good at campaign, then feel like you have to start over from zero in multiplayer. One of the things I liked about Halo was that many of the skills I learned in campaign were applicable to MP.

Many, but not all. There are things that work in campaign that are broken in multi. I don't think small changes like what I suggested are going to throw anyone off, and nobody would feel cheated.

The goal should always be to provide the best experience in either mode. They work so differently, that you can't give them all of the same mechanics without one suffering. Nobody will mind if both modes are excellent, yet a little different. Having them tailored to work for themselves just makes sense.

You will be tripping over dozens of pieces that are roughly equivalent as you play PvE, and having them shoved into your pockets as end-of-level rewards in all modes.

It's up to random fate what loot you get, is the point. That'll lead to a lot of unfairness and imbalance. This one is pretty much inarguable.

They're not lying. This is an area where Destiny gameplay is so far different from Halo gameplay that I'm having a hard time picturing how this is really going to work. Ranked in Halo worked a hell of a lot better than in Social, but they also experienced many problems in Ranked. Social playlists seem to have no real coherent matchmaking system in any of the Halo games when it comes to matching for skill.

In Halo 3, the two differences between Ranked and Social playlists were:
1. Visible skill ranks in Ranked
2. Looser skill-matching requirements in Social.

Skill matching was ALWAYS a consideration, but it was compromised more for the sake of getting games quicker, with people that had good connections to you.

If you had much higher skill than the average of the population, the Bayesian theory behind TrueSkill would mean there were much fewer good skill matches available for you. This would be compounded with the fact many high-skill players would gravitate to the Ranked playlists.

It became most evident to me that social playlists still had skill matching every time a new one would come out and it was a total crapshoot.

They're not lying. This is an area where Destiny gameplay is so far different from Halo gameplay that I'm having a hard time picturing how this is really going to work. Ranked in Halo worked a hell of a lot better than in Social, but they also experienced many problems in Ranked. Social playlists seem to have no real coherent matchmaking system in any of the Halo games when it comes to matching for skill.

Then there's my argument that Destiny seems to throw skill and balance largely out the window. This game is absolutely not Halo in that respect. I'm very, very skeptical at the thought of a system that will actually find some meaningful way to balance teams or individual players in Destiny. I'd be more than happy to be proven wrong come launch, though.

I don't know. I tended to have decent Halo games with the occasional time where my team won decisively and the times where we got stomped. If Destiny can deliver that much... well that's enough for me. It will be interesting to see what it does with remaking new Guardians and how loot and gear will affect things. I guess I don't see what's so hard with getting a good match. A lot of the same stats that applied in Halo apply in Destiny. Yeah, the game plays a little quicker but it's not like we're moving and reacting so fast that the behind the scenes systems can't keep up. If anything Destiny has more data points it can use to help it match.

Aiming. Maybe you see me first and my teammates first. You get those shots off first. Unlike Halo or many other shooters, there's no real hopes for escape and no way to strafe you. This falls into Call of Duty territory now. I'm dead. You win. Your Super is powering up faster.

It doesn't play that fast. Were there some times I got shot at and could not escape? Sure. But you can die very quickly in Halo as well. I miss the long AR battles of Reach, but disengaging and running away to fight another day seemed a lot more valid to me than you're making it out to be. I got some fun kills by retreating then hiding around a corner, or catching an enemy off guard while he was sprinting after me (since it takes time to reready your weapon after sprinting) or with a knowingly placed grenade.

I may be unintentionally downplaying the kill times slightly, but to me it felt like Halo tactics still worked, except maybe strafing. With most guns in Destiny having good sights and more guns having a decently tight shot spread I would imagine trying to absorb incoming fire is not as valid an option in Destiny as it was in Halo.

Positioning and map control I'll call the same thing. We'll pretend this is the Beta still and we're talking about the Moon and Venus. You have B and C. That's all you need to spawn camp and control the tunnels/center depending on which map. Trust me. I and my team did it PLENTY. We may be completely even, but you have us pretty screwed for the rest fo the game barring a really heroic and lucky effort. Camping applies to this as well. Camp C with a sniper rifle on Venus, bye bye people who come in. Camp center tunnels on Venus with a shotgun, bye bye people who come in. I could go on, but nah. The same applied to the Earth map, btw. The Mars map was the only one that seemed to really fluctuate.

On the larger issue I see positioning as the more personal issue of which way you are facing and where you are standing to best control your next engagement. Map control is more about which points you control. If your team positions people away from the control points to slow and disrupt and flank the enemy. And grabbing or defending the heavy ammo spawns. For the specifics:

How much of the above is actually a problem though? If you can successfully take and defend B and C isn't your reward having an advantage over the other team? I get what you're saying. But at this point I'm just unsure whether this is a map problem, game type problem, or an expected situation of one team not doing as well as the other.

As for the camping on Venus... I'm not so sure I see the problems there. A sniper standing at C is a tough problem sometimes when coming from A, but the solution is approach cautiously and not use the long end of the tunnel if someone has a good position down there. The map gave you two more ways to engage them, the entrance to that section further down near the marsh, or loping around behind them using that circular room. I had a lot of fun nervously watching my motion tracker wondering just where the enemy was going to come from.

Campers in the tunnels? Well, use your motion tracker and be careful in the tunnels. Or don't go in them. People camping is not a new issue. Heck, in Reach a lot of the time people could camp AND be cloaked!

Now as for gear and weapon usage, you just threw in something arbitrary and unrelated to skill. If we're implying that my gear or weapon is better than yours, that has nothing to do with me. But you're saying I have to aim it, right? That's true in all shooters. It's a shooter. Destiny doesn't work like a lot of shooters or even Halo in that you really gotta get that BR up and land those headshots if you want to win. In lots of shooters, you can get the jump on me, start shooting and hitting me, and I can turn around, get my exquisite strafe going, and still end up the victor. I don't think I ever pulled that off in Destiny (and people DEFINITELY weren't pulling it off against me).

I guess I never practiced "exquisite strafing" before. :p Destiny is certainly more about pointing in the correct direction or retreating if you aren't. I also suspect it doesn't support exquisite strafing as well as Halo because of the faster kill times. But, it tells you which way the enemy is coming from so pointing the wrong way is often going to be your fault, barring someone spawning in behind you...

Gear is a bit mixed. Gear usage isn't "skill" in the same sense that aiming is, but finding and equipping the best gear and gun you can is a part of what will make you successful in Destiny. You can have the best aim and response time of anyone ever, but you won't do well if you stay with the default gun and armor. If you were playing other games then sure, you don't have to worry about gear. But you do if you are playing Destiny.

Double jumps definitely can take skill and be used in skillful ways. Too bad shooting can seriously turn to shit if you're the one doing the double jump. I use it more as survival or quick movement to places or for my Super. Maybe I just lack skill in shooting while doing it?

Nah. I can't recall any significant kills I got while in the air. Double jumping for me was all about getting to a good place to shoot, getting from point to point, or part of evasion and retreating. The Warlock, at least, does have one neat perk that suspends them in midair when they aim down the sight which might put an interesting and useful twist on shooting and jumping, but nobody had it in the beta.

Getting the most points out of a Super is largely luck. There's no skill in pressing the "Murder Everyone Now" button to either kill the one person who's there, or in pressing it when you were lucky enough to run across a cluster of people standing in a zone trying to capture it. If I hold onto that Super forever hoping for the latter to come true, I may never be presented with that. Absolutely zero skill. Yeah, that's a risk/reward thing, but that risk/reward is based on luck and random timing, not your own skill or actions (I suppose beyond actually landing the super if you find the cluster when in Titan or Warlock. If you miss with that Golden Gun, well yeah, that's on you because you don't even need a direct hit to get the kills with that thing lol).

First. There was never a "Murder Everyone Now" button. Yes, Supers are powerful, but they miss, they can be used at the wrong time, and you can be killed while trying to use them. Several people now have inflated them to this instant kill, always kill status which is just wrong. The actual kill range of Supers in the beta was ZERO to SIX. Ignoring the zero end is being disingenuous.

Second. Getting more than one kill out of is not so much luck as it is your enemy not playing well. I often stayed off and away from control points while a teammate captured them so I could both provide some forward cover and so I could avoid giving the enemy a double or triple kill. If you were the attacker and could only find one person to super around that control point that's me playing smart, not you being unlucky.

You're treating the lack of a mutikill with a super as some reflection on your ability when really it's much more largely associated with the way the other team plays. I suspect as Destiny goes on people will increasingly do what I did and purposely try and limit the damage a Super, or even just a plain old grenade can do. Further, that's not so different from Halo. In Halo I'd often try and position myself outside of likely grenade miss radius of my teammates so I could move in and respond to an enemy that was expecting damaged opponents. Really, a Super is a kinda like a big grenade...

I play at a very high level in not just Halo or Destiny, but in many, many shooters. Destiny is by far just about the only shooter where I don't feel like I'm doing super well based on my own skill and ability. If anything, the most skill I'll attribute to my kills are my knowledge of the maps and my ability to anticipate how other people will play them (so that I can see them first and be guaranteed my kills). This carries over into map control (hold B and C, who cares about A, and murder them as they come down the narrow directions to try and get to B and C. They're sheep to the slaughter). I rarely used Supers and found myself largely forgetting that I even had them. None of what I'm describing feels truly earned. It's all too easy.

I can't argue with this, but I also can't relate to it. I had fun moment to moment in Destiny's multiplayer except for my first 20 games where I sucked. It was like Halo but faster but with more options for me to use against an enemy. That the self-proclaimed high level players seem to feel this way... well I'm not sure what that means either.

I think I just covered a ton of this, but yeah. Seeing someone first isn't skill. It's luck. Good thing I happened to be looking in that particular direction (on a map as big as the Moon), or that we have them spawning at A so that really they can only ever come from one of two (maybe three) directions on Venus. Gear is arbitrary and has nothing to do with skill. You got what you got based on what the game randomly provided you. I may or may not have better.

Motion tracker and map knowledge largely tell you which way to point. If you own B and and are capturing C on Venus it's probably best to point towards A. Especially if you're tracking motion from that direction. I think seeing someone can be luck, but it's not only and not always luck.

Gear is more complex, yes, but you're going to have to make the case that the game hates you specifically for gear distribution to be much of an issue. The most likely thing is people on the opposing team will have gear similar to yours.

Supers are cheap, you can earn them by literally just standing around doing nothing all game, and they're also tied to incredibly dumb luck as far as getting kills. I personally don't care about them, and if I get killed by one, oh well. It's just a really lame way to die that, again, really doesn't take any skill in my opinion.

Supers take roughly the skill of a rocket launcher. I don't recall rocket launchers being this controversial. That everyone gets a Super means more people get to have fun creating havoc instead of just the people who know the maps and have respawn timers counting down off to the side. Personally, I'd advise you to stop ignoring features of the game you're playing. Supers are a lot of fun to use and I think if you used them instead of ignoring them you'd be a lot more accepting of them.

Destiny gives so many gun and armor options. Even in Iron Banner, I just about only used an auto rifle, shotgun, and LMG. I used a sniper rifle on a few occasions to see if I liked it. I didn't. Same with Scout Rifle. I didn't use the AR that everyone told me to use with endless rate of fire and awesomeness. I largely stuck with an AR that I obtained prior to becoming level 8 that happened to have a slightly higher impact rating. I don't think I ever really paid attention to or cared about armor. I just threw on whatever had a high number. I still won the majority of my battles and games. I don't attribute this to my type of guns or armor (nearly unlimited ammo for ARs and shotguns lol), ability to aim, Supers, or ability to out-shoot someone (since all that comes down to is if I saw you first, and beyond that I'm dead).

Again. I don't know. Maybe you're just too good? You experience seems so different from mine that I really have no way to explain it. :(

Why is it not fair? Everyone gets one. They get a kill on you, you get 3 kills on them - congrats, you're winning!

It doesn't feel fair because they didn't earn it. Things that instantly kill should come with some risk/reward factor. It was given to them, or myself, without doing anything.

I must not be explaining this well. All I can think of saying in response is just repeating myself.

They could earn it faster through killing, but that actually makes it worse, since there's no way to predict when they might have it again.

Reasoning and responding with incomplete information is a common element to games. E.g. you can't see the location of all the players at all times either but, you make a best guess and act anyway.

Yet back when Halo had fair starts for all, it was the king. Wonder why that was?

Largely because it was a good game with matchmaking features that were head and shoulders above the competition. Halo 2 and 3 were absolutely stand-out for their time. By the time Reach came, other games had caught up and began exploring other elements as well.

There are other, valid, approaches to creating games. Ones that can maintain continuity between PvP and other areas of the game.

Why is that necessary? PvP and PvE are supposed to be different.

Yes, the clue is in the names: in one you fight AI, one you fight other people.

Once you start saying it's OK to change mechanics from one mode to another, then you essentially start building 2 different (closely related) games. I can tell you from personal experience it's incredibly frustrating to get good at campaign, then feel like you have to start over from zero in multiplayer. One of the things I liked about Halo was that many of the skills I learned in campaign were applicable to MP.

So you'll have an advantage in multiplayer, because the random loot generator decided you needed a chest peice that let's you get grenades faster, but I didn't.

You will be tripping over dozens of pieces that are roughly equivalent as you play PvE, and having them shoved into your pockets as end-of-level rewards in all modes.

While I do understand the difference (and we kind of manage to imply the two different meanings by verbal conjugation, though not always successfully), I agree that it must (heh) be swaying me a tad harder than it should (hehe).

Heh, nicely done. I must say, out of all the Brasileiros I have communicated with over the years (both orally and in writing), your English is probably the best.