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Destiny

  • June 28, 2015 2:53 PM EDT

    Anybody else here play Destiny? I picked up the demo on PS4, and really enjoyed it - enough to get the full game and the first two expansions. After my usual song and dance where I get a character to mid-low level and decide I hate their face and have to reroll or go insane, I'm now level 8 and having a lot of fun.

    It's really interesting to see the intersection between FPS and MMO, and where Bungie has made compromises to both sides. As a veteran MMO-gamer, it's definitely stripped down from what I'm used to. There's no general chat, no multiple towns with quest-givers waiting for you and, from what I can tell, no trading or anything. (I'm pretty sure there's some sort of crafting, but I haven't figured out how to do that yet) There seems to be almost no sense of social space at all, despite the Tower having other Guardians running around. It's weird.

    I'm playing a Hunter; I chose them because I like the way they look, and I liked the idea of being a mid-long range damage-dealer. I could probably also go for Warlock, but Titan sounds way too melee-heavy for me to enjoy. Scout rifles seem like the best weapon; it's very easy to get headshots and you can spam the trigger quickly enough to take out whole groups. I like hand cannons as well, but they're really hard to use effectively in a big scrum.

    I've mostly played solo, but I did convince a friend of mine to give the demo a try as well, and it was a total blast to play co-op. It hurt the atmosphere a little -- something I think the game does very well is build atmosphere -- but it was still probably the best way to play. We even queued for a strike, which is basically a dungeon, and that was tough but fun. We had a balanced team -- my Hunter plus his Titan and a random Warlock, and I'm proud to say we never wiped. Had a lot of close calls, but the last Guardian standing always managed to hang on long enough for us to pull through.

    There's a story here, but it's definitely not spoon-fed to you. I'm having fun picking up the little pieces of it, and I really like the sort of mythic feel to the whole thing. It's sci-fi, but it also has that Star Wars-esque feel of really being a fantasy story with space ships and laser guns. I'm trying to avoid spoilers, because the best part of any mysterious sci-fi stuff (my favorite kind of sci-fi stuff) is the slow discovery. We'll see if it continues to hold up as I level.

    • 1913 posts
    June 28, 2015 3:19 PM EDT

    I wrote all of my experiences with destiny... then my finger slipped and deleted everything... To sum up everything... It's fun for a week, then you realize the grind and how it really isn't worth it. Multiplayer isn't challenging or fun... Just teleport shotgun... No answer to it. The RNG is evil. And the story, what's left of it, has so much ripped from it because 1. The original creator left when it was rumored that they were going to rip out chunks of the game just to repackage it as $20 DLC that's already in game and he wanted no part in it. 2.. the repackage DLC thing (seriously, every DLC area in the game if you glitch through the areas had the ghosts to collect, ammo drops, chests, you could explore. The only thing they didn't have were enemy spawns. And this was found out on day one... And what we have left of the story is so stupid and nothing is explained to you, which is a flaw of story telling. The characters even tell you how they won't explain anything to you "I could tell you of the traveler.... I could tell you of the Great Battle..." Never does.... "I don't have time to explain how I don't have time to explain." cutscene goes on for almost 3 and a half minutes... You just go from dead to savior in the span of 25 seconds. Nothing makes sense.

    • 1913 posts
    June 28, 2015 3:27 PM EDT

    And before anyone argues about the game not explaining anything, two things:

    1. "It's on Bungie's site." That is using an outside source just to understand the game's basic knowledge. If you have to take notes and research on your own time just to understand basic essentials on what is happening, it doesn't count. You need to have some explanation on the game itself.

    2. "Dark Souls doesn't explain either but no one complains about that." That's cause the lore there is purposefully left to interpretation. Plus, the game has bits and pieces of lore in everything, even the items. When you pick one up and read it's description you get a sense of how it got there and can come up with your own theory. And you get a clear objective and are explained why you should do it, despite not getting all the information at first and learning stuff as you go along. In Dark Souls 1 you know you have to defeat Lord Gwinn and rekindle the bonfires cause the age of fire is ending and you don't want the world to be in chaos... Or is it, and do you not? In Dark souls 2 you know you have to defeat the great lords, take their souls, defeat the King and become the next monarch... You then learn more as you go. In Destiny you're just told this is Earth's last city, you have to defend it and beat the bad guys...

  • June 28, 2015 6:43 PM EDT
    It'll be interesting to see how long it holds my interest. Is at least like to set foot on all the major planets before setting off.

    I honestly don't care about the DLC thing. It's become this big, totemic issue for a lot of gamers, but it's just not something that bothers me. I'll leave the holy war to the fanatics.
    • 75 posts
    June 28, 2015 7:03 PM EDT

    So, while there is all this funny business going on with the new expansion coming out and the pricing, that doesn't make Destiny overall a bad game. Every MMO style game gets to a grinding point eventually, just look at WoW where you have max level people who still play every day and still enjoy the game. And again, your two points that aren't about the crap story are about the repackaging and prices of the game. Everyone hates that, you should go look at the Destiny subreddit. But since it's been released, up until now, they've been improving more than failing. There was the auto-rifle nerfs and pulse rifle buffs and all that and while it's driven auto rifles out of existence, and while there are only 2 really good guns that can be used in PvP nowadays, people still enjoy the game. What I've seen and believed since the game started is that it's not about honing the game to perfection, it's literally all about the interactions with other players and working together (cliche and shit, I know). But the 3 biggest attractions for Destiny are the 2 raids, which require 6 man teams that you need to find yourself, and Trials of Osiris/Prison of Elders, which are 3 man gamemodes that both require teamwork and communication. Personally I've met a ton of people through destinylfg (site for finding fireteams for those that don't know) and I regularly play with a few of them every week.

    As for the story, everyone agrees it was shit at first, but they also agree that as the game has progressed with the latest 2 expansions there's been more revealed, especially in House of Wolves which tells a lot about the Fallen and their motives/ways of operating etc. The Taken King promises way more, even at the absurd price tag, and will most likely tell people about every one of the enemy races considering the way they're all converted into the Taken to serve Oryx and whatnot.

    RNG isn't evil at all though, there's a reason it's called Random Number Generation, emphasis on Random. Just today I got one of the rarest items in the game from a purple engram, which for anyone that doesn't know is an engram less rare than this item meaning the chances are virtually impossible to get that kind of luck. RNG may be considered annoying and frustrating in many cases but think about this, isn't it more satisfying when you get what you want?

    • 75 posts
    June 28, 2015 7:08 PM EDT

    I didn't mean in terms of that specific item  Just in terms of it's rarity class being exotic, exotics are still rare u3u It's also proving a point 

    • 558 posts
    June 28, 2015 7:30 PM EDT

    You'll get over it.

    • 1483 posts
    June 28, 2015 7:38 PM EDT

    Haven't seen the expansions and have no interest to do that. Watched the vanilla walkthrough on YouTube. It was dumb and I felt like I've wasted my time. Storywise Destiny is like a collection of glorified misc quests in Skyrim.