Bungie's Destiny

[AcidCat]

Yeah I was really expecting a new planet and maybe a new enemy type with the DLC but no such thing seems in store in the immediate future. For a game with so much repetition it really desperately needs some new environments and enemies. Twenty dollars for what, three new missions, a strike, and a raid on the moon? Blah.

[01101010]

Yeah I was really expecting a new planet and maybe a new enemy type with the DLC but no such thing seems in store in the immediate future. For a game with so much repetition it really desperately needs some new environments and enemies. Twenty dollars for what, three new missions, a strike, and a raid on the moon? Blah.

I know this is the way it goes these days, but this game is not even a full two months old yet so expecting an entire planet a month later sounds like a bit of an overreach.

I am just assuming these next two DLCs were in the actual game itself before greed set in and they decided to chop out bits and wrap them up in a pretty package that can be yours for $20 and another planet or two will be more of an expansion pack rather than a little DLC.

[Hawkbit]

Remember when we used to spend $30-$40 for an expansion that often doubled the base game content?

[01101010]

Remember when we used to spend $30-$40 for an expansion that often doubled the base game content?

 

[Maven]

Simpler times.

[Surlyboi]

Remember when we used to spend $30-$40 for an expansion that often doubled the base game content?

That was when the base game cost that much.

[Malakili]

Remember when we used to spend $30-$40 for an expansion that often doubled the base game content?

That was when the base game cost that much.

That was also when new engines were coming out all the time so an expansion was like "Awesome, another game in this engine."

[Strazos]

Is it just me, or does this game just have no soul whatsoever? It's a solid engine, but it just feels empty and bereft of content.

I couldn't even tell you a whole lot about what's happening in the game - even for a shooter, I think that's pretty galling.

Tell me again how much this game cost to make and what that money was actually spent on?

[Trippy]

Yes almost the entire game is half-assed except for the actual shooty bits which Bungie can do in their sleep. And it's not clear where they spent all that money. It certainly wasn't on the story or the single player campaign or the cinematics or the item design or the voice over work or the UI. Sound design is top-notch, though.

[Fabricated]

The story is fucking nonsense and rumors have swirled since release that due to some personnel changeover in the writing/direction department that major parts of the story were gutted or retrofitted to fit the cut-down amount of content and to make it more consumer friendly.

Supposedly the whole traveler/guardians being good thing was a lot more vague, and that Guardians aren't allowed to mix with the regular population. Background NPC dialog in the game kinda confers that people are uneasy with weird undead people reconstructed from light by floating robot things called "ghosts" just walking around. All of the factions were supposed to have more concrete stories that were involved in the actual game; like Dead Orbit I think advocates literally just building a bunch of colony ships and fucking off out of our solar system and letting the darkness have it. Stuff like that.

Instead we just have Dinklage-Bot opening doors and setting off every alarm system he can find so we can shoot a bunch of aliens from 4 different races.

[Bunk]

I love playing this game. I've got a character up to 25 almost entirely solo and I haven't done a single minute of PVP. This game totally scratches the Diablo 2-esq itch of reward grinding with really solid shooter mechanics that provide adrenaline rush gameplay when you want it. The planets look great and the sound/music is amazing. They even seem to have solved my network connection issues (so long as I'm not torrenting)

That all said, I'll agree that the game is completely soulless. The story is non-sense, most of the voice acting is totally phoned in sounding, and there is absolutely nothing that makes my character not feel like Guardian Drone # 791. The base single player story is "adequate" though miserably not filled in. There might be more too it on the cards you unlock on the website, but fuck that shit. The story around the pvp factions is well - there isn't one as far as I can tell. "Um, we need you all to fight each other so you get better and represent one of these three factions while you do it so that, um, stuff."

This game feels like a really strong engine and potential setting for a deep RPG. Too bad they didn't bother going that route. This game was made to target a mix of Diablo and Halo players as best I can tell. RPG nerds need not apply, sigh.

[01101010]

While I agree with the phoned-in voiceovers... Nathan Fillion is always a treat to hear, providing beacon missions and strikes - he at least gives some personality to his character. The rest of the criticisms are also on point and can agree with it. However, I still play the shit out of the game and am just starting on the Vault with my buddies - it shouldn't have the legs it does, but that's how Bungie do.

And there are rumors that there will be a 'darkness' faction. That female Exo that pops up during the Hive and Vex stages of the story and at the very end eludes to her not being forged in light along with other hints about choosing a side, right or wrong, yadda. That would make PvP matter more to me, and to that end, open up the possibility of an open world PvP planet. I might actually play PvP more if that was the case.

[Yegolev]

I'm not doing any sort of good job in getting on board a raid group and so am dicking around at lv28 with little hope of reaching 29.  While we are trying to imagine a world in which we magically fall in with a raid crew, we are also wondering what sort of bullshit will be perpetrated during future expansions.

[01101010]

I'm not doing any sort of good job in getting on board a raid group and so am dicking around at lv28 with little hope of reaching 29.  While we are trying to imagine a world in which we magically fall in with a raid crew, we are also wondering what sort of bullshit will be perpetrated during future expansions.

My buddies consist of my best friend from undergrad and a guy in Chicago he met at a Browns Backer's bar who also went to CWRU for undergrad, albeit way later than we did. We got bored running strikes last week and decided to explore doing VoG. My buddy organizes it and jumped online to find a few guides/sherpas to run with. After an hour of looking, I crashed out, but they got in with a group and are setting it up each weekend now. I'll find out what he uses to find other groups and let you know. Seems there is someplace on the net that has a thread for people to state their group looking for other groups.

That said, that is a huge beef I have with Destiny. Not having some ingame system for group finding for things (nightfall, weekly, VoG) is horrible. Goes with the stupid grimoire thing in having to use other resources to make your game run.

[Fabricated]

I'm at level 28, approaching 29. I just can't be arsed to block out time to raid anything anymore. I just don't feel like it. I'd like to see the content but the instant we really started wiping over and over and over learning shit I'd just want to quit.

I don't run nightfall strikes for that same reason: they're not fun.

[Yegolev]

That said, that is a huge beef I have with Destiny. Not having some ingame system for group finding for things (nightfall, weekly, VoG) is horrible.

There is a lot of complaining about Destiny, but I think this is the greatest miss by the design team.  Especially since we have to pay for what matchmaking does exist via PS+ anyway.

The thing that two of us are complaining about is that our third has fallen in with a raid group but left us out of it.  I've been sick and offline for a couple weeks, so maybe we can get him to let us tag along on something.

[Surlyboi]

Reddit's got a fire teams subreddit that people use to find sherpas, etc.

I tend to play with a squad of my monkeys, though last week I ran the nightfall with complete strangers that ended up getting added to my friends list because we absolutely crushed it together. You can get to 29 without ever having even set foot in the Vault. You just need to max out a full set of legendaries and throw in an exotic.

[Rendakor]

When did sherpa become a word we use about gaming?

[01101010]

When did sherpa become a word we use about gaming?

New dawn is upon us.

[veredus]

For finding groups this site also works well. But ya the no group finder for the harder stuff is fuck stupid.

http://destinylfg.net/

[Yegolev]

Maybe... MAYBE... maybe I would like the raid to work like the random strike rotation.  Maybe I want that because 68% of the time, the strike matchmaking works every time.  More likely I want that because it's super streamlined and I don't have to go to reddit instead of playing the game.  The rando-knobs that I get matched with are usually good/better than enough and my "I fucking hate internet people" nerve isn't hit.

Not having to listen to them talk is an amazing feature.

It's already implemented for strikes, just turn it on for raids.  WHY NOT?

[Azazel]

So how "hard" is this thing? My wife's interested in playing, but she's not a hardcore gamer by any means. She just wants to have fun and play together, and is pretty much what "girlfriend mode" was created for. (internet shitstorm wankery aside). Since she's a filthy casual, it looks like the raids will be forever off-limits to her - which is no huge turn-off for me since they look like arse and no fun anyway. (3-4 hour blocks? fuck that noise!) but is the rest of the game (general play, instances, quests, etc) interesting and fun enough to bother with? It's on sale locally for the cheapest I've seen it so far, but I'd rather get some meaningful feedback from here before buying the 2 copies.

[K9]

Mostly it's pretty easy; there are challenging sections, but you can adjust the difficulty. Usually I'd end up dying due to being incautious and trying to melee some 20ft tall alien in the face rather than take a more rational approach 

Having said that, 37 deaths and countless swearwords later I can happily report that heroic missions with pairs of stealthed melee mobs and the 'mobs do far more melee damage than normal' modifier is some supreme bullshit.  I could handle the lone melee mobs, but a pair would always spawn with the final boss, and invariably jump me while I was carefully engaging him. 

[Fabricated]

So how "hard" is this thing? My wife's interested in playing, but she's not a hardcore gamer by any means. She just wants to have fun and play together, and is pretty much what "girlfriend mode" was created for. (internet shitstorm wankery aside). Since she's a filthy casual, it looks like the raids will be forever off-limits to her - which is no huge turn-off for me since they look like arse and no fun anyway. (3-4 hour blocks? fuck that noise!) but is the rest of the game (general play, instances, quests, etc) interesting and fun enough to bother with? It's on sale locally for the cheapest I've seen it so far, but I'd rather get some meaningful feedback from here before buying the 2 copies.

Everything but heroics is pretty okay if your GF can play any console FPS with pretty average skill.

Heroic modifiers can be really really mean and make shit hard depending on what quest/strike. Nightfall strikes are out of the question, but aren't fun so you aren't missing much.

[01101010]

So how "hard" is this thing? My wife's interested in playing, but she's not a hardcore gamer by any means. She just wants to have fun and play together, and is pretty much what "girlfriend mode" was created for. (internet shitstorm wankery aside). Since she's a filthy casual, it looks like the raids will be forever off-limits to her - which is no huge turn-off for me since they look like arse and no fun anyway. (3-4 hour blocks? fuck that noise!) but is the rest of the game (general play, instances, quests, etc) interesting and fun enough to bother with? It's on sale locally for the cheapest I've seen it so far, but I'd rather get some meaningful feedback from here before buying the 2 copies.

Everything but heroics is pretty okay if your GF can play any console FPS with pretty average skill.

Heroic modifiers can be really really mean and make shit hard depending on what quest/strike. Nightfall strikes are out of the question, but aren't fun so you aren't missing much.

Nightfall strikes aren't so much unfun as they are ballbusting and much longer than regular. We did the weekly one last night and it ended up being me solo while my two buddies were laying dead on the field. Two lucky headshots with my arc sniper rifle and we win. It was the most intense FPS situation I have been in since the old Planetside I days of saving a hacked base with seconds to spare under fire from both enemy squads. Heroics are just strikes/missions with different buffs for the mobs. Lightswitch is easy enough to deal with by not letting the mobs get into melee range, angry is a non-starter save for the god damn Phalanxes on Mars, and the burns work both ways so equip the corresponding weapon and rip thru the enemy. Juggler is the only fuckstupid modifier that needs to be revised or eliminated.

IMHO, the game is worth the box cost. The story is cereal box reading, voice-overs are shit for the most part (save Nathan's stuff) and you have a ton of loading screens, but like has been said, the shooty bits are polished and the enemies are at least somewhat interesting. Basically, if your GF can handle Halo, this will be fine.

[Yegolev]

if your GF can handle Halo, this will be fine.

[Fabricated]

So how "hard" is this thing? My wife's interested in playing, but she's not a hardcore gamer by any means. She just wants to have fun and play together, and is pretty much what "girlfriend mode" was created for. (internet shitstorm wankery aside). Since she's a filthy casual, it looks like the raids will be forever off-limits to her - which is no huge turn-off for me since they look like arse and no fun anyway. (3-4 hour blocks? fuck that noise!) but is the rest of the game (general play, instances, quests, etc) interesting and fun enough to bother with? It's on sale locally for the cheapest I've seen it so far, but I'd rather get some meaningful feedback from here before buying the 2 copies.

Everything but heroics is pretty okay if your GF can play any console FPS with pretty average skill.

Heroic modifiers can be really really mean and make shit hard depending on what quest/strike. Nightfall strikes are out of the question, but aren't fun so you aren't missing much.

Nightfall strikes aren't so much unfun as they are ballbusting and much longer than regular. We did the weekly one last night and it ended up being me solo while my two buddies were laying dead on the field. Two lucky headshots with my arc sniper rifle and we win. It was the most intense FPS situation I have been in since the old Planetside I days of saving a hacked base with seconds to spare under fire from both enemy squads. Heroics are just strikes/missions with different buffs for the mobs. Lightswitch is easy enough to deal with by not letting the mobs get into melee range, angry is a non-starter save for the god damn Phalanxes on Mars, and the burns work both ways so equip the corresponding weapon and rip thru the enemy. Juggler is the only fuckstupid modifier that needs to be revised or eliminated.

IMHO, the game is worth the box cost. The story is cereal box reading, voice-overs are shit for the most part (save Nathan's stuff) and you have a ton of loading screens, but like has been said, the shooty bits are polished and the enemies are at least somewhat interesting. Basically, if your GF can handle Halo, this will be fine.

That's what I meant about heroic mods potentially making things really really hard. Angry can make any Mars mission/strike a goddamn nightmare. The burn modifiers work both ways yeah, but getting burn mods that match the typically used damage types of the majority (or specific) enemies on a strike use basically means you pretty much get one-shot if hit. Like go try to do the spawning pits with Arc Burn. It's not fun.

[Azazel]

Thanks guys. She doesn't play solo, but has played through Halo, Halo 3, Halo:ODST, CoD:WaW, Borderlands 1 (and most of 2), L4D 1 & 2 etc in co-op. She tends to be the weakest link in out 4-player LAN games, but she's far from useless. Might give it a go then - thanks!

[Fabricated]

You can also get rather geared even without nightfall strikes/raiding. At least for now; I dunno if they'll put a real loot treadmill in where you're required to run Vault of Glass to run the next raid, then that raid to run the one in the DLC after that, etc.

Just running strikes, doing bounties, etc, can net you good shit in every slot. Strange Coins/Motes of Light aren't super-rare to the point where after you hit level cap it wouldn't be unusual to have enough of them to buy an Exotic every week or two and if Xur is kind, you can get some of the very best shit in the game that way.

[Trippy]

So how "hard" is this thing? My wife's interested in playing, but she's not a hardcore gamer by any means. She just wants to have fun and play together, and is pretty much what "girlfriend mode" was created for. (internet shitstorm wankery aside). Since she's a filthy casual, it looks like the raids will be forever off-limits to her - which is no huge turn-off for me since they look like arse and no fun anyway. (3-4 hour blocks? fuck that noise!) but is the rest of the game (general play, instances, quests, etc) interesting and fun enough to bother with? It's on sale locally for the cheapest I've seen it so far, but I'd rather get some meaningful feedback from here before buying the 2 copies.

For the story missions there are a few challenging missions to play solo, at least until you learn the spawn triggers and patterns and map layout. If you are playing together, though, it'll be fine.

[Azazel]

Cool. She picked up 2 copies on her way home tonight. Now we just need a second PS4.    Basically, we have the cash aside. Just waiting for a good local bundle to pop up, which should be pretty much guaranteed inside the next 4 weeks or so. (The sale price we got it for won't last long - probably).

[Surlyboi]

Half my crew and three randoms did the raid yesterday in 90 minutes. 15 minutes of that was spent finding replacements when two dropped because of a power outage.

[Nija]

I've yet to try any of the raids. It's amazing how terrible of a multiplayer game this is UNLESS you have an existing crew to play with.

I don't think they considered people who are playing the game and trying to find friends within the game. You just can't do it.

Hell, I grouped with a guy randomly to knock out a few quests, talking on voice and stuff, and when we finally parted ways I couldn't even find a 'recent players' list to add him as a friend.

It's just a pathetic effort for an AAA game.

[01101010]

I've yet to try any of the raids. It's amazing how terrible of a multiplayer game this is UNLESS you have an existing crew to play with.

I don't think they considered people who are playing the game and trying to find friends within the game. You just can't do it.

Hell, I grouped with a guy randomly to knock out a few quests, talking on voice and stuff, and when we finally parted ways I couldn't even find a 'recent players' list to add him as a friend.

It's just a pathetic effort for an AAA game.

I gotta think this is because of the multiplatform of the game. PSN is so god damn goofy the way it works with this game - if my buddy joins me in game or I join him, it is fine and dandy. But if he sends me an invite to join, it bounces out to the PSN interface and I have to jump out of the game, into the PS interface, find the invite, accept it, then click back into the game. It is rather fuckstupid not to be able to send an ingame invite. I can only assume it is similar on XBONE.

[Yegolev]

Just jumping into fireteams works for in-game.  If you want to remain in chat outside Destiny (it happens) then a PSN party is the answer.  I suppose it seems wonky but the added function is the "just join that fireteam" part.  This somehow doesn't stop my friends from sending me several game invitations for no reason.

I don't know what happens on the 360 but we have spent many, many minutes fighting the party-joining interface of XBL in quite a number of games.  It would have been super-awesome if we had the same "just jump in" function for Borderlands, but considering the nature of the two games I can see it would have been technically/financially onerous.

I actually think the state of the MP is by design because I have a hard time believing that a group that has made (or played!) any games in the past could accidentally fuck it like this.