Destiny Review - World of Chorecraft

keideki

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Sep 10, 2008
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I've already hit max level and I have done all the strikes. Gotten to light level 23. The PVP content is very strong for Destiny but I really feel like the PVE content can only shine when you are playing with friends. The way the supers feed each other can make even the more mundane aspects of the story content really awesome.
 

Airon

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Jan 8, 2012
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Thanks Jim.
Looks like I'll be giving this a miss entirely. I already have Borderlands 2 to occasionally slog through and TF2 for FPS multiplayer duties. Or I can fight a nice solid war in Planetside or Battlefield with some friends.

With no solid story, I'd rather wait for the next Dragon Age epic, where the story and characters are sure to be more worth my while. Or perhaps finally make the leap in to Mass Effect 2 after having no time to indulge when it came out or went on sale so many times.

Hope they don't split the community with DLC that fixes the games shortcomings.
 

RA92

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Jan 1, 2011
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$500 million into development and the best thing they could come up with was The Darkness? Why not just call it The Big Bad?
 

Neurotic Void Melody

Bound to escape
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Jul 15, 2013
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Alleged_Alec said:
The White Hunter said:
Xsjadoblayde said:
Us console owners...when will we have a decent MMO??
FFXIV: ARR is on PS4 now and that's a damn good MMO. Though it is subscription based and that may turn some off.
Dead Century said:
Xsjadoblayde said:
Us console owners...when will we have a decent MMO??
Final Fantasy XIV A Realm Reborn. You're welcome.
Blegh, it was like every aspect of that game was made particularly to piss me off. The story was insultingly stupid, with your character forced to join up with a group of colossal morons and having to be saved by this white-haired douche all the time, the villains were so laughably evil that once I died because I couldn't stop laughing about the cutscene I just watched. Some gameplay elements are downright stupid (why do mobs not give some decent amount of exp?), dungeons were mostly laughably easy and the entire fucking world was littered with people named "Naruto Kenpachi" or some other horrible animu-composite name. But the worst thing, the thing that drove me slowly insane, was that is was nigh impossible to kick the retards from dungeon crawls. There was a kick system which you could potentially abuse by just saying they were doing something against the game's rules and that could potentially kick them, but then you'd need to convince half of the team to do so as well, and most of them were only slightly less retarded than the wall-paper licker you were trying to kick. And this wasn't helped by the fact that dungeon queueing was cross-realm, so you could be as big of an asshole as possible and suffer no consequences whatsoever, since you'd most likely never see those people again.

I think the day I stopped playing my blood pressure dropped by at least a quarter.



As for Destiny: meh. I may have bought it if they hadn't done the following: not release it on pc. Seriously man? No PC release again? It's like you don't want the money, Bungie. And most importantly: the review embargo. Everyone who does this should go nail their balls to a fucking space hopper. This practice is more toxic to the industry than any transphobic misogynist you can find out there and I think it's a black mark on the journalistic industry that so many people actually adhere to this kind of bullshit.



EDIT:
Oh, totally forgot: and the worst thing about the vote to kick system is that you can't initiate it if you're in battle, so if the mongoloid asshole you're trying to kick keeps pulling, you can't even get rid of him at all.
That does sound believable to me. Although i should've mentioned that until i get that PS4 of mine, i am stuck with a 360 console. I have never really been convinced by the shallow spectacle of final fantasy games, but my increasing loneliness and desire to socialise with others could have easily pushed me to buying that game.

Oh and Jim...Destiny is on the 360 and PS3 too, remember? No one needs too fork out hundreds of currency points to play the damn thing.

Sigh. when the hell is Defiance going to be F2P on the 360? It is on the PS3! Im not spending money on that shit..
 

Fasckira

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Oct 22, 2009
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I actually really like it, but in the way that when Shadows of Mordor comes out next month I may forget about it.

However I find the story to be ... amusing. Its pretty cliché but, but things like having the emos live out on the edge of the system where "light meets darkness" is pretty funny for a start! I see the story however as being nothing more than a vehicle to set up numerous types of missions in different settings, rather than an attempt to tell a gripping tale of heroic deeds.
 

Alleged_Alec

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Xsjadoblayde said:
Alleged_Alec said:
That does sound believable to me. Although i should've mentioned that until i get that PS4 of mine, i am stuck with a 360 console. I have never really been convinced by the shallow spectacle of final fantasy games, but my increasing loneliness and desire to socialise with others could have easily pushed me to buying that game.
Same here. The reason I bought it was because all of my friends started playing it and I got immensely frustrated that I was unable to do anything with them. My experience with the game:

I made a monk, which was the only class they didn't play yet. I thought the system was very interesting, since monk attacks basically build on each other: you have a couple of tier 1,2, and 3 attacks, and you can only do a higher tier move after you've done the tier before it. Furthermore, they had this stack of cool buffs which you had to keep up, since it increased your attack speed by over 15% and gave something like 10/15% damage increase as well. It was a really fresh take and I enjoyed it for a while. However, I quickly found that most attacks in solo play were useless, since they relied on positioning yourself behind the target, which was practically impossible with mobs instantly auto-turning towards you.
I figured this would be better in instances, since they just focus on the tank. However, many tanks did not really understand the notion of threat and positioning the back of the mob towards the party (two things that every tank ever should be learned at level 1). Furthermore, many bosses/minibosses teleported frequently, making me drop my stacks of buffs and dropped my dps by 40% or so. Even still, I noticed that often tanks were still bad enough that I had to move out of auto-attack range or I would gain aggro.
My first instinct was to just not group with randoms, but I quickly found that was not an option: there are quite a few quests which force you to group with randoms to progress the story, and since mobs do not give enough exp to level on, I was forced to do so anyway. It was made worse by the daily dungeons, which give at least 3/4 of a level and require you to do a RANDOM DUNGEON from the entire pool you're eligible for, which also includes the lowest level dungeons, in which you are autoscaled to the level of the dungeon. This meant that often in dungeons, you could not play with your entire ability set. The phrase 'frustrating design choices' soon failed to be an adequate descriptor.
This was made worse by many of the quests, which are a main source of exp on your first job, to just send you from one place to another and talk with people. For some quests you may have to fight a few mobs, but the ones where you had to grind were far in between. This caused many of the people to not really know their class all that well, since combat was almost optional. But the most insulting bit was the story of those quests. You had a core cast of NPC dickwads which were supposed to be quite strong and important, but came off as bumbling morons every time they did something, and the worst thing was the amount of times you had to do stupid stuff yourself to continue the plot. I remember this quest where you were 'ambushed' (though if you didn't see it far in advance you may want to check your IQ). Since, as I said, the game was insultingly easy, I had no difficulty killing all the ambushing mobs and tank the infinitely spawning waves until the game told me that I had been captured, after which I was put in a prison. I decided I had enough of the story by then, walked out of the prison and went on my way. Or how every time you want to a new area, you got the 'prove your worth' bullshit over and over. Hell, there was MANDATORY STORY QUEST chain in which you asked a guy for information about a big bad, he said you weren't worthy until you got his five friends to say you were good. Each of those five had additional quests to prove your worth to them.

And to be honest: I found PS-users in the game to be highly frustrating to party with. They often couldn't communicate with others (since many didn't have keyboards) and had issues with positioning. Especially the second was frustrating, since the devs equated difficulty with red circles on the ground. Even if it hadn't any of the many other flaws it has, I would still advice against buying this on the PS, since it's so much inferior to the PC version due to bad controls.


Crafting system was somewhat interesting though, albeit insanely time consuming.
 

VinLAURiA

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Dec 25, 2008
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It sounds - and judging by the video review, looks - like a shinier but less interesting Firefall. And at least with Firefall I don't have to drop sixty bucks on top of the price of a console I have very little other reason to buy (and I don't already have a 360 or PS3, thank you.)

Not exactly regretting how this isn't coming to Wii U anymore.
 

Th37thTrump3t

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Nov 12, 2009
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Shamanic Rhythm said:
myke66 said:
The game is designed with "end game" in mind. You arent meant to spend most of your time on the campaign, you get through the campaign to begin gearing up your character for the challenges setup to be done at max level.
In that case I agree, it's definitely not worth 6/10. If you have to play it for twenty hours before it gets good, then it's more like a 4/10.
Isn't that like pretty much every MMO to date though? I can't think of a single MMO (or pseudo-MMO as far as Destiny is concerned) where the beginning isn't a complete slog and the game is open to you from the beginning.

Now, I'm not gonna say that Destiny is the gaming equivalent to the Mona Lisa, because it's not. But at the same time, it's still a good game. It just suffers from what every other major release this year has been suffering from, and that's just way too much hype.
 

WhiteFangofWhoa

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Jan 11, 2008
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So the Crackdown 2 naming guy (henceforth referred to as 'The Namer') strikes again!

Why for you put MMO grind questing in a shooter? Don't they know that's commonly the worst part of those games?
 

Britisheagle

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May 21, 2009
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Daaaah Whoosh said:
I think the whole point of the blandness of Destiny is that it's not trying too hard to force you into its world. It gives you a beautiful canvas upon which you're supposed to write your story. That's why their motto is "Become Legend"; it's not about running through the three acts of someone else's life, it's about building friendships and having experiences that are meaningful to you. The universe doesn't feel lived in because we haven't been there long enough, it feels clean because we haven't had a chance to dirty it up.
And that is wherein lies the problem: What we do in the game world doesn't matter. You could form a party and fight through the camapign only for nothing to have changed. You are one of several thousand who walked them exact steps and achieved nothing as a result, in terms of the game world that is. Enemies, bosses, allies they will all still be there the next time you play the game and put quite simply, you cannot "Become Legend" when everyone else is too. The legend has already been written and you simply exist.

My biggest issue, funnily enough, is the unforgivable load times. Not only are they long but they are also frequent. Call me spoilt but games like Watchdogs, Last of Us, Diablo etc have made me think that a long load time at the start of the game means a seemless experience once the game gets going was becoming a staple for next-gen gaming. I understand that Destiny looks far better but I feel it ruins the immersion further and can make each level feel like the next part of a game rather than a flowing story. What makes games, especially open world and MMO games so good is that feeling of being part of a huge world where as Destiny makes you feel as though you are going from one soul less instance to another.
 

sumanoskae

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Dec 7, 2007
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Wasn't interested in it anyway; I find FPS's tolerable at best and I loathe MMO's.

Is anyone really surprised? There was never anything about Destiny or it's hype machine to suggest innovation or substance; it looks like a typical FPS with a little bit of MMO mixed in.

I was expecting Destiny to be utterly pedestrian from day one, so this is no skin off my back. What does bother me, is that the industry is becoming increasingly cocksure with it's flagship products.

Both Destiny and the recent Watch_Dogs were so hyped up that it seemed like the industry had already decided they were going to be hits before they even came out; I almost want this game to tank just to subvert the negative assumptions that game developers and publishers make about their audience.
 

weirdee

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Apr 11, 2011
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Yeah, the "it gets better" argument only works for games that get REALLY better. If they can't lead in strong (and we're not talking about relying on 'in media res' crap, I mean actual good writing/design), then there's plenty of F2P games that try just as hard as they do. Relying solely on mechanics in this type of game won't work because it's not just a multiplayer FPS, and even then, Halo was at least trying to do more than that.

Anyway, it's sort of indicative of another trend, where developers start heavily developing the endgame because they expect all of their customers to be there, but leave everything at the beginning in utter shambles in the process, which creates this big ol' fence, or wall, where even as you've just paid for the game, now you have to pay this additional cost of the most pointless slog ever because somebody didn't know how to design a learning phase without making it actually fun. Cue high level players that complain that newbies haven't earned the right to have fun and they should pay like everybody else.
 

Poetic Nova

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Jan 24, 2012
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Good thing the hype only made me turn off from this game, actually makes me want to give Warframe a shot if I knew for sure that my laptop could handle it. I'll wait untill halfway October and get myself Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel. Coming from a game-series that doesn't rely on constantly being online and knows how a loot-driven game should work.
 

Fsyco

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Th37thTrump3t said:
Shamanic Rhythm said:
myke66 said:
The game is designed with "end game" in mind. You arent meant to spend most of your time on the campaign, you get through the campaign to begin gearing up your character for the challenges setup to be done at max level.
In that case I agree, it's definitely not worth 6/10. If you have to play it for twenty hours before it gets good, then it's more like a 4/10.
Isn't that like pretty much every MMO to date though? I can't think of a single MMO (or pseudo-MMO as far as Destiny is concerned) where the beginning isn't a complete slog and the game is open to you from the beginning.
There's some that have a really good 'hook' in the beginning. I played WoW many, many years ago, and I remember being absolutely enthralled when I first started playing. I played an Undead, and their starting zone is probably one of the most awesomely atmospheric things I've ever experienced. I also remember the slogginess not kicking in for a few levels (this was back in vanilla), so it gave the initial impression of things going relatively quickly to sucker you in.

WoW (and a few other MMOs) has heavily streamlined and quickened the early levels recently, so that you can get to the 'interesting', late-game bits faster. You do eventually reach a slower-paced part of the game (which last I checked was Pandaland, but they have that new expansion coming out soon so that will probably change), which depending on who you ask is either a dreadful, grindy slog or an appropriately lengthy and epic adventure that makes reaching the level cap feel like an achievement.
 

2HF

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May 24, 2011
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Right Hook said:
myke66 said:
Pretty piss poor review in my opinion. Harps on the story and downplays the best parts of the game to push the "edgey" bad review out of Destiny. Author even admits he's still hooked and enjoying it.
You have 2 posts. You joined today. This community totally values your input.
That's how you welcome new users to a forum to make them want to post more and have their opinions valued! Way to go!
 

LifelessArt

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Jun 6, 2013
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Destiny really does look like a fun game, to an extent, but there are some glaring issues that take the game down a couple of notches, which is sad when you consider Bungie's extensive history. I have a few thoughts on the matter that I went into greater detail about, but since I don't want to post a wall of text in here, I'll just put a link to the forum I posted in.

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/9.860342-Destiny-First-Impressions-watered-down-Borderlands?page=2

And I'm sorry. I really do want to enjoy Destiny more, but boy does the story not make any sense. It really doesn't. Just read my last post and you'll see what I mean. A lot of the bad voice acting is a bit of a turn off as well. All in all, I can wait for a price drop, which will be easy seeing as I don't have a console to play on right now :p.

P.S. Thank God for Jim :D!
 

Right Hook

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2HF said:
Right Hook said:
myke66 said:
Pretty piss poor review in my opinion. Harps on the story and downplays the best parts of the game to push the "edgey" bad review out of Destiny. Author even admits he's still hooked and enjoying it.
You have 2 posts. You joined today. This community totally values your input.
That's how you welcome new users to a forum to make them want to post more and have their opinions valued! Way to go!
Thanks dude, I try my best, it's not like he created the profile for the express purpose of bitching about a review he didn't enjoy for twenty minutes.
 

mezorin

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Jan 9, 2007
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The game has fairly solid shooting mechanics and a good PVP portion, and runs well. Just its kind of bland when it comes to stories and locales. Also 30 FPS doesn't cut it on Play Station 4/XBox One. Planetside 2 is the mother of all computer melters and SOE is committed to 60 FPS on Play Station 4, and its not as if Blizzard Activision is a scrappy little indie dev on a shoe string budget.

As Jim put it, the story has no real interesting characters, no heart, and its like everyone else is in on the joke other than your main character. It'd be one thing if the game was at a level of Guild Wars 2 where you had all these awesome characters doing awesome things and you're just kind of there, but shit is BORING and no real memorable characters exist in this world. The writing here makes Phantasy Star Online Universe look like MacBeth, you know your plot sucks when a glorified excuse to have anime moe maid bots shoot monsters is more exciting to read about than what ever is going on. I feel bad for the guy playing your Ghost, as he is just a "glorified plot monkey" that may as well be a Saturday chore to do list for FPS players.

If anything, the game feels like it is an engine test/balance test. Fantastic shooter mechanics and I have only seen one DC so far, the game does justice to its Halo pedigree for coop mayham and multiplayer, but the world/story is bland. Hopefully the DLCs and sequels are far better written and interesting, like what they did with Saint's Row 2 compared to 1 now that they've nailed the shooting mechanics. Like a computer synthesizer reading Bach, the game technically paints by the numbers mechanically as a shooter, but has no real personality.