Poll: Destiny beta impressions.

[krazykidd]

I don't know if it's because there are no ps4 users here,or if no one preordered the game but i was waiting for a Destiny thread to appear and it didn't so i'm going to make one.

So for those who didn't know, Destiny's beta came out yesterday. While i didn't preorder it i did manage to key a beta key from a friend of mine. So i decided to give it a try. And i was pleasantly surprised. I like it . I can see what they were going for , and i think for the most part they succeed. Think Halo meets borderlands meet warframe and a little sprinkle of mmo goodness.

The game looks good . No complaints here from me. I'm not a graphic whore, so i'm not too difficult to please in that department.The gun plays is great. Coming from the guys who made halo , i'm not suprised. The animations are fluid and the action is face paced. Your character gains experience borderlands style. Enemies drop loot, so the loot whores will be happy. While they don't have billions of guns like borderlands, the different kinds of guns and stats is sure to satisfy any style of play. I personally ran with a handcannon and a sniper rifle and a rocket launcher , because i like head shots . The environments look good and are varied enough to not feel samey.

The co-op is seemless. I don't know how they do it but i was impresses. People were coming in and leaving my game( or was i joining and leaving theirs?) without and loading screens or any noticable transition. However, the downside was that , at least in the beta, there was no way to communicate wth other players. If you aren't in a playstation chat party , you can't talk to anyone. You can interact or join their squads, but you cannot talk to them.

All in all i found the game to be very fun. And this beta has convinced me to buy this game on launch ( although i'm not pre-ordering it).

EDIT: The xbone beta is now live, i know that i was talking about the ps4 when i made the thread, but xbone users feel free to give your impressions.

 

[StriderShinryu]

I haven't spent a lot of time with it yet (just did the introductory section and ran around in the tower exploring), but I'm really enjoying it so far. It definitely feels a little more MMO than I was expecting though that's not a bad thing at all. Above all else, I just really like how it feels. Halo has always been my favourite FPS because of it's feel in the hand and Destiny is no different. It just feels good to play.

 

[Tohuvabohu]

All in all i found the game to be very fun. And this beta has convinced me to buy this game on launch ( although i'm not pre-ordering it).

I just began playing the beta last night. I tried it for a few hours with a friend, here are my general thoughts so far.

It's pretty good. I can see myself enjoying this with friends, and I'm looking forward to getting it now.

-The open world segments seem... underwhelming to me though. It's odd that even though we were picking to do missions, the game still plops you down in the open world segment and has you find the mission zone on your own. That's fine and all, but it makes me question what the point of the "Explore" mode is if you are sent to the open world anyway.

I feel like the open world zones is kindof like a typical Borderlands zone, except without the quests, and populated by very weak enemies. Me and my friend were questioning what the point of all this was. I'd feel like the open world would be a lot more engaging if the dynamic events happened more often. But after playing for about 2 hours and running all around the zone several times, we did not encounter a single dynamic world event.

-The actual missions, however, were a lot of fun. We picked the hard difficulty option every time, and the difficulty kicks in as soon as we enter the Darkness. I agree with you how seamless the world is, because these zones sort of just engulf you immediately without any noticeable transition.

Hard mode, was actually hard as well. One thing I always liked about Bungie is that they make pretty smart AI for their enemies. The Fallen were a thrill to fight, with many different kind of unit types all fighting together made for a stiff challenge. Soldiers and snipers attacking us from afar while invisible melee enemies rushed at us. They'd hide while we attacked, split up and try to flank us, and their captains would vanish and reappear with their shields charged.

At one point, I was attacked by 4 invisible assassins. I managed to take out 3 before the last one killed me. While I was dead, I used my POV to look around. And I noticed the last invisible assassin that killed me was now hiding behind a nearby box. He was actually waiting for my friend to come back to me to revive me so he attack him. What an asshole.

The Hive were pretty cool as well. They fight very differently from Fallen. Instead of using technical abilities to support each other and squad tactics like the Fallen. They attack with sheer numbers and high aggression. Also, their Wizards are very very dangerous. One mission involved fighting Fallen at the start, and Hive at the end. It was very noticeable how different each of the fights felt. With me and my friend needing to rush at the Fallen to attack their entrenched positions and stop them from regenerating shields. Then us having to run the hell away from the Hive forces who were flying at us with no restraint at all.

-Class abilities are fun, but start off at a slow burn. The same problem Borderlands had, you earn your ability early and not much else. Having grenades presented as actual powers with cooldowns is interesting though, and I like that each class has very different grenade types. I'm looking forward to leveling up more and seeing what the abilities have to offer. But, the beta level cap is sadly level 8.

All in all, my impressions are mostly positive. I haven't tried the Crucible yet. And I think the open world can be improved on. The game really shines when playing missions with friends. I'm really curious about the Strike content now and more curious about the raids.

Destiny is shaping up to be a fun coop shooter. And I love coop shooters.

 

[krazykidd]

@tohuvabohu ( my quotes aren't working):

I saw two dynamic event's when i was playing and failed both. It was pretty cool , the first one i was just in exploration mode , chilling doing some an scout quest, noticed 2 other players that were doing their own thing, the suddenly an event warning appeared. I was looking to see if somethig spawned but nothing did. The Event boss game through a dropship! It that was a nice addition , because usually in games something like that would just spawn from thin air, but not here, it makes a lot of sense contextually that this thing was brought in by a giant ship ( and the ship was firing as us to make room for the boss. The boss was basically a giant 8 legged spider robot with additional grintenemies they kept spawning to protect it and we had 4 minutes to take it down. Me and the 2 guys who were all doing their own thing suddenly started working together to kill this giant spider robot.

Unfortunately we didn't succeed , and the mission was a failure, but i still though it was pretty cool.

 

[Arina Love]

Best FPS i played in YEARS. Had a lot of fun doing co-op, killing bosses and just roaming around. Yeah story feels very segmented but it didn't bother me at all.

 

[Sean Hollyman]

I'm staying the hell away from all things Destiny due to it's community pissing me off.

 

[NiPah]

I'm staying the hell away from all things Destiny due to it's community pissing me off.

The community is pissing you off? Or a few idiots in a forum are pissing you off?

 

[Sean Hollyman]

I'm staying the hell away from all things Destiny due to it's community pissing me off.

The community is pissing you off? Or a few idiots in a forum are pissing you off?

The entire Destiny community on Bungie.net

It sickened me to a point of no return

 

[Spartan448]

It's Halo with a new coat of paint. Quite frankly, I'm not surprised.

 

[CrazyCapnMorgan]

I'm staying the hell away from all things Destiny due to it's community pissing me off.

The community is pissing you off? Or a few idiots in a forum are pissing you off?

The entire Destiny community on Bungie.net

It sickened me to a point of no return

Huh, good thing I haven't ventured there, then. Since my uncle got me a beta code for my PS4, I'll give my thoughts on it:

I liked it. The world events caught me off guard, as it during my first mission after traveling to "home base", shall we say. I was undergeared and underleveled, and being a Warlock it didn't help I had low armor and speed, but it really struck me how dynamic the world was. Not to mention it is graphically beautiful and straight from the minds of those who created Halo, which is not a bad thing. The abilities and RPG elements are a nice addition and seem well implemented. It also seems you have the ability to make your own armor or weapons, or at least be able to trade parts to make your own armor and weapons. There were also other collectibles in the world that you could get to trade for weapons, armor and decorations of different kinds. It also seems to have the PvP aspect in place with the Crucible, though I never checked that out because I do not enjoy PvP, with rewards in regards to how you perform in the Crucible. Also, you get your own vehicle for both planetary missions and for traversing to planets, moons, etc. That's always a plus in my mind. That being said...

The only gripes about I have are the lack of classes and an issue outside of primary ammunition. Though each class seems to undergo, or has the ability to undergo, a transformation of abilities at 15, the beta level was capped at 8; though, I understand this restriction. What I hope is that level 20 is NOT the maximum, as attaining level 8 was a relatively simple feat. In regards to your ammunition, while primary ammunition stays plentiful when you switch weapons in your equipment menu, your special weapon ammo and heavy weapon ammo get reset to zero should you switch them; a gripe that's extremely frustrating when you have a weapon for the situation that arises, but no ammo for it when you go to switch for it. And while the only two Heavy Weapons I saw were a Machine Gun and Rocket Launcher, the Special Weapons range from Pulse Rifles to Sniper Rifles and Shotguns and not having the ammo for those when differing situations arise in frequence is highly annoying. Hopefully, that gets rectified when the real game gets launched.

My verdict - if you like FPSs and like a good story, I'd recommend it. Even with as little of the story revealed in Beta, it was enough to draw me into the world of Destiny. The combat is smooth and intuitive, and the abilities for each class has its own style, meaning there'll be something for anyone who wishes to play. Destiny shows its potential for being one of the most outstanding games for 2014, and hopefully, after it launches, that destiny may turn out to be a reality.

 

[Tohuvabohu]

The only gripes about I have are the lack of classes and an issue outside of primary ammunition. Though each class seems to undergo, or has the ability to undergo, a transformation of abilities at 15, the beta level was capped at 8; though, I understand this restriction. What I hope is that level 20 is NOT the maximum, as attaining level 8 was a relatively simple feat.

According to Bungie, we can expect to hit max level "in a few hours."

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/apr/28/destiny-hands-on-bungie-xbox-playstationshared-world-shooter

From the article:

The social intent of the game cannot be overstated. Indeed, levelling up each character to max takes only a few hours ? Bungie doesn't want you to start the game then realise you have weeks of grind to put in before you can play against friends on a higher level. "You level cap quickly, but once you're there the game is more about equipping the gear that lets you go deeper into the game," says Green. "There are more strikes, there are raids, there are higher levels of PvP if you equip better weapons and armour.

But according to what I've seen, 20 isn't the max level. I'm.. a bit confused, and I may be wrong on this, but here's what I gathered.

When you reach 20, you stop receiving experience from killing enemies.

At this point on, you can still gain levels, but this is done by finding better gear. So either the images we've seen of characters past level 20 show that level cap is higher, or that they continue to gain levels by getting better gear. I read something about high level armors having a specific stat that artificially increases your level.

Spoiler

[/spoiler]

Either way, it seems like gear progression is going to be far more important than the levels themselves. I still need to look into this more, as I've probably got some of this information wrong...

[QUOTE=krazykidd]@tohuvabohu ( my quotes aren't working):

I saw two dynamic event's when i was playing and failed both. It was pretty cool , the first one i was just in exploration mode , chilling doing some an scout quest, noticed 2 other players that were doing their own thing, the suddenly an event warning appeared. I was looking to see if somethig spawned but nothing did. The Event boss game through a dropship! It that was a nice addition , because usually in games something like that would just spawn from thin air, but not here, it makes a lot of sense contextually that this thing was brought in by a giant ship ( and the ship was firing as us to make room for the boss. The boss was basically a giant 8 legged spider robot with additional grintenemies they kept spawning to protect it and we had 4 minutes to take it down. Me and the 2 guys who were all doing their own thing suddenly started working together to kill this giant spider robot.

Unfortunately we didn't succeed , and the mission was a failure, but i still though it was pretty cool.[/QUOTE]

That sounds really cool. I wish my friend and I experienced something like this but it just never happened. Maybe it'll happen to us sometime soon, but it does seem like these events are a bit too rare.

I tried out the Devil's Lair strike last night with me and my friend. On hard difficulty, it took us over an hour and a half to complete the whole thing. To put it simply; Fuck! That was really hard!

I'm glad that the strike was legitimately challenging and was a real ordeal to overcome. Still haven't tried the PvP yet. But as far as the PVE content goes, I think it's damn good.

 

[laggyteabag]

I haven't played it, but what I have played of it looks a lot like Halo crossed with Borderlands, which isn't surprising, but I was expecting something a little more from a game of that budget. What does irritate me somewhat is how much the game looks like it would fit in right at home with the PC audience, but Bungie decided not to prioritise the platform for launch. It boggles my mind, but if the game ever does come out for the PC platform, I will probably insta-buy it (depending on whether or not the reviews are actually any good.)

 

[Nieroshai]

I'm having a lot of fun so far. The biggest hangup, though, is that enemies will refuse to pursue you past a certain point even though there is an artificial cutoff to how far you can backpedal. This will seem like tactical repositioning if you're dealing with the Fallen, but with the Hive it feels like they're going "Oh shit, we can't slash at him five feet from a locked door, that would be cheating! Go back! Go back!" I've beaten missions way over my difficulty using this exploit.

 

[Sir Thomas Sean Connery]

I for one am loving the hell out of it.

Though there are certainly similarities, it feels fresh and doesn't seem to take too much from Halo or Borderlands. The guns feel great, just as I expect from Bungie, the powers are much more fun than I had thought they would be, the environments have a fantastic aesthetic and the universe is exactly the kind of ultra-complex and vague stuff I loved in Halo.

I was also very pleasantly surprised by the way other players are integrated. When I first heard of the always online aspect, I was fully expecting the other people to feel shoehorned and invasive, but somehow they feel like just a part of the world. Like there really are lots of Guardians all doing their missions, assisting each other occasionally.
In addition, the PvP is excellent. It's surprisingly well balanced and it feels very fresh to me.

So yeah, I'm in love. It (almost) has me wanting a next gen console.

 

[lnin0]

I've watched some of the hands on but haven't played myself. It doesn't look so much like an MMO placed in a FPS world which I was hoping for. I get the feeling it is more a FPS where the modes, perks and weapons have been yanked from a menu screen and wrapped up in a convoluted MMO skin. So instead of clicking on a menu, I am walking through a hub world customizing my perks, weapons and modes?

Don't get me wrong, the combat mechanics look solid. Hell, they look and sound like Halo which is a good thing, and knowing Bungie, I would expect the PvP is mint. I know there is a lot more to see, but right now I am just trying to see how it is really different from a COD, Halo or Battlefield. Does it bring anything new to the FPS genre or does it just change the method used to access the standard fare of persistent features.

 

[Phoenixmgs_v1legacy]

Has anything major changed from the alpha to the beta (besides I presume more content)? I played the alpha and I thought it was horrible. It's like Bungie wants the game to be everything to everyone while being nothing for no one. The MMO aspect is gimped because the characters have to be balanced for PvP so you can't level up your character to be awesome. I looked over the whole skill tree and there was nothing there that I just couldn't wait to get (even though I couldn't due to the level cap). I'd get a triple jump later vs my double jump (Whoopie Doo!!!). There wasn't even a skill to allow me to reload while sprinting. FarCry3's skills make you into a more powerful character than Destiny. From a character build standpoint, it just seems like you're building your character to use your power more. The powers are underwhelming plus they function exactly as killsteaks so that they can be implemented seamlessly into PvP. Destiny is an MMO with health regen, even Borderlands is smart enough not to have health regen. Plus, there's freaking grenade regen too, just ridiculous. If this whole grenade regen becomes a trend (like health regen), the shooter genre is going to be set back at least another 5 years; I'm tired of shooters devolving instead of evolving.

 

[Dominic Crossman]

Explore mode does nothing for me and the missions become repetitive quickly. Also needs to b easier to make a fireteam with randoms.
It seems that when I stop progressing by getting more skills/maps I become bored quickly.
The dynamic events need to occur way more often imo, they r the only time when my skills where maxed out that I felt some enjoyment out the game, but I'll only see 1 in something like a 2-3 hour stint of playing. Even though I've ended up doing 2 of them completely alone, low level players bailing quarter way through.

Also, fuck spider tanks and their 1-hit kill shock greandes

 

[Vigormortis]

Felt pretty standard to me, in most regards. And in others it felt mediocre.

Gunplay was awkward and slow; and I still can't stand Bungie's tendency to shove the reticule into the bottom half of the screen. The "powers" felt a little stale and the tech-tree didn't really impress. There just weren't many powers that I felt I was excited to get. The story felt a little sparse, even for a limited beta. And overall it felt a little too much like Halo-meets-Borderlands, but not really in a good or inspired way.

Final build might be more appealing to me, but damned if Bungie won't have to improve on the experience a LOT before then. As it stands, there've been far better FPS titles this year.

 

[Phoenixmgs_v1legacy]

Gunplay was awkward and slow; and I still can't stand Bungie's tendency to shove the reticule into the bottom half of the screen.

I didn't notice the reticule thing. But the camera sensitivity at max was so damn slow that playing PvP wouldn't be much fun for me. That's something easily fixed but it should never be an issue to begin with.