Relics in VoG and CE had a similar effect, though in all but a single encounter that is one of six fireteam members. Add in one for adds and you have four doing DPS. I'm fine with that sort of spread, personally, but do think more encounters should require roles. Court of Oryx brings a little of that in, but not much because it's expected to have to deal with randoms. The number of times I've watched someone sword the mechanic shield knights away from each other (while the shields are up) is disappointing. But with communicating people that fight is easy.

That is not to say I think Destiny wouldn't benefit from more Raid-lite encounters and more involved Vehicle play, I just don't think at its core that Destiny in Year 1 was focused on recreating Halo. But Year 2 has started to bring broader gameplay in, even if just in small frying pand like Court of Oryx, or with the Taken Special abilities. I would imagine they'll continue to grow more things that can be done solo, but are easier with a fireteam, and even easier with a communicating, role-oriented fireteam.

Really, though, a mission or area that is "hostile to foot traffic" that lets you access some heavier, team-vehicles would be nice. And either vehicles only (like rocket race) or Combined arms with Trickle for Supers/no Supers might be a nice diversion.

I play on easy, but as of mission 10, this is by far the easiest of the Halo games.

I haven't tried easy, but Heroic felt roughly on par with the previous games, Legendary is really tough. It feels close to Halo 2 in terms of how punishing it is.

By your third encounter with him I figured out that you could just blast him in the face until he became frozen/staggered, then quickly run around behind him and blast his back until he was dead. Took forever for me to figure that out though. I think he remains "staggered" as long as you keep pumping him full of lead in the back.

Now I feel dumb. I didn't realize that. I knew once you did enough damage he entered that state, but I was usually way too far away to get close enough and around behind him.

in WoW, really good tanks were hard to come by. Same with really good healers. Good DPS is what everyone always wants to be -- they want to be doing the damage, not healing their buddies or (often, but not always) tanking.

The golgoroth fight is a good example of this. People lean towards the one pool method because it's "easier". But i think it's also because it's more fun.

Would you rather be holding the gaze or DPSing him down in the pit?

Would you rather be cleaning up cursed thralls, keeping other people alive, or DPSing the boss?

DPS is fun. Healing and tanking is fun in it's own way, but DPSing is what most people really enjoy. So I can understand why they are approaching it that way. It would make certain classes, and builds, mandatory, especially at the end game.

Bungie is trying really hard to avoid 2 things.
1- the MMO holy trinity of tanks, healers and DPSers.
2- the mess that is guild wars 2 where anyone can do anything, but you still (sort of) have the holy trinity anyway.

That's what makes bosses bullet sponges and bosses that don't directly pay attention to you. And why it's a raid mechanic to "taunt" golgoroth.

I haven't really played any MMOs or Guild Wars 2, but it seems like Bungie is avoiding those things without presenting a good alternative. It seems to me that in an MMO those roles exist to make the simplicity of dealing damage more interesting. But by avoiding those roles without changing the simplicity of combat Destiny feels like it's missing something that Halo used to have.

I also have tried sending my team to a point way in the back, then once they're back there, having them focus fire on him, but that doesn't actually seem to work very well, as they usually just end up dying on the way to the back.

Heh - or they die when you get hurt and they come back to revive you. :)

I'm up to the first Warden fight on my solo legendary playthrough; the "order teammates to revive me" mechanic has become a total joke. They ALWAYS get killed by whatever it was that killed me moments earlier.

We all took off work yesterday for it specifically so it worked out nicely. Not looking forward to getting my bruising as I rock solo legendary.

I'm not sure I'll ever bother with this game solo legendary. The "shoot it in the back" encounters seem really janky without at least one other human player. With just AI buddies there's a rather broken situation that you have to just sort of wait around, where the friendly AI is programmed to do anything except the thing that would help you out in a big way, and the enemy AI is programmed to nigh-constantly stare at human players.

That's what makes bosses bullet sponges and bosses that don't directly pay attention to you. And why it's a raid mechanic to "taunt" golgoroth.

It would be much more fun if someone, Like a Titan who I felt was supposed to have the role from day one, would be the one drawing an enemy's attention away from the DPSers.

But Bungie says that all classes are DPS classes. They don't want Titans to be tanks.

Of course then they describe Titans as if they are all about close-range melee. I think this is why a lot of people get annoyed by the fact that the warlock has greater melee range and can kill a Titan first if it's just about the melee attack.

Yeah, I'm one of those people who are annoyed at how Bungie hypes Titans up in lore as the enemy line breaks and brawlers and then make them the worst at it in anything other than FoH.

Combat on the first mission felt like chaos.

A lot of the game felt like this to me, in a very good way. I think the level and encounter design in Halo 5 is maybe the best the series has seen so far (excluding the relatively mediocre vehicle segments). They did such a great job of making the play space dense, and they really packed it full of enemies! It felt authentic, in a way that some of the other Halos haven't. Like, we're in a war, and sent one Elite a few Grunts out there to defend this area? Halo 5 fixed that for sure.

I realize that I've been bashing Halo 5 pretty hard. On to the good things. The weapons.

The weapons in Halo are so great, I agree. I love the Forerunner weapons this time around, and I thought they were just terrible and boring in Halo 4.

Mobility. It could be because I'm a Titan, but I loved the simple mobility in Halo 5. My favorite encounter so far has been with a Hunter (Halo) and dodging plasma but quick bursts of movement. I remember I have mentioned several times about Destiny is that I miss engaging bigger enemies, like Hunters, toe to toe with a dodging aspect. Halo 5 reminded me of that, getting in the face of a Hunter with a sub machine gun while dodging flying plasma. Destiny needs more of this.

I actually played through most of Halo 5 forgetting about the dodge ability. But the movement in Halo 5 is top-notch. It just feels right. The new stuff they've added in this regard feels like it could have always been in Halo, it fits so well and feels so natural.

All of this makes it sound like I hate Halo 5. But in fact I am really enjoying it. It's just so different from Destiny. And sometimes that sucks, but I'm finding that it's also a very good thing. I would highly suggest people play Halo 5 to appreciate it for what it is and at the same time better appreciate Destiny as well.

I love Destiny very much, but I am so glad that Halo 5 is basically nothing like. It was so refreshing to jump into a classic Halo campaign and play through it without worrying about any leveling up or upgrades or drops . . . I loved every second of it, and will definitely be not playing as much Destiny for the foreseeable future.

A thousand times, this.

I CANNOT get him to look at anyone else on the team. :(

If you have enough ammo, you can just pump shots into his face and he'll eventually die, but it's what amounts to Destiny-style cheesing your way through.

Alternatively, if you get in close, his sword attack isn't impossible to dodge, and he'll stay in his animation long enough for you to get some good shots into his back. But you're screwed if you're out in the open and he shoots that orb thing at you.

I also have tried sending my team to a point way in the back, then once they're back there, having them focus fire on him, but that doesn't actually seem to work very well, as they usually just end up dying on the way to the back.

Heh - or they die when you get hurt and they come back to revive you. :)