Poll: Destiny beta impressions.

[thatonedude11]

I've played a bit on the PS3 (level 4, to be specific), and here are my first impressions.

Shooting things feels pretty good, although the two weapon system in this case seems odd. Without the ability to exchange weapons quickly, all of the primary weapons seem to fill the same roll, making the weapon variety pretty terrible. Right now, the class abilities (Warlock, btw) have too long of a cooldown to really be game-changing, but they're alright. I'm not very far into the game though, so things might improve later.

The overworld seems largely pointless. Since you can only do one mission at a time, and each mission takes place in it's own little area, the overworld seems to be mostly filler. Sure, there is the occasional random event, but aside from that there is nothing to do but shoot some mooks and go to your next mission. No sweet loot to discover, no interesting encounters, and no random PvP; just running to the next mission. That is boring.

Probably my biggest take away though is that there is no reason for Destiny to have an always-online requirement. Yes, you can run into people in the overwold and main hub, but with no way to communicate with them they might as well not be there. The only thing that takes advantage of the online nature is the random overworld events, and even that isn't much. If they changed it to a single-player game with drop in co-op, the game would be almost entirely unchanged. I personally refuse to buy any always-online game that doesn't have a good reason for the requirement (like MMOs or multiplayer only shooters), and Destiny fails to meet that criteria.

All in all though, aside from my major gripes with the online requirement, the game seems alright. Nothing terrible, nothing great. Some people will likely dig it, but I doubt it will set the world on fire. I plan to play more of the beta though, so my opinions might end up changing.

 

[Remus]

( I loved the Speaker's Speech though my roommate didn't trust him)

Yea, there's something about the way Bill Nighy speechifies that doesn't make his characters sound entirely trustworthy. That's why hes so good at playing villains - he can pull off evil and menacing so easily.

My opinion of the beta - it's got a compressed-MMO feel to it, like a FPS version of Guild Wars, complete with PVP arenas and group dungeons. I can easily see myself sinking tons of hours in this game for the story and open world alone, even moreso if the community is any good. But shooter players can be notoriously fickle and trollish at times so I suspect group dungeons will very much be a mixed bag while the rest of the game will be just fine.

 

[Bat Vader]

I am highly enjoying the Destiny Beta. It feels like Halo and Borderlands 2 put together and those are the only two first person shooters that I really enjoy. I usually hate PVP/MP in a game but I love the crucible. I did love Halo's MP though and the MP in Destiny feels a lot like Halo.

 

[BaronVH]

I like it quite a bit. I hate MMORPGs with every cell in my body, and I thought I would dislike this, but I don't. I like playing single player, and when a big public event pops up, I think it is fun as hell to attack it with strangers. The gameplay is very fun for me, and I have yet to run into the obnoxious live player. I hope that holds for the final game.

The graphics are great, but nothing mind blowing. I like that it is not a gray/brown shooter. Very colorful. Some enemies have been very smart but some dumber than dirt. The graphics in the hub are occasionally bad, but I have yet to see any latency issues in multiplayer or on missions. It certainly has potential...

 

[StriderShinryu]

Spent a good few hours in it today to end off the Beta and I must say that I'm really enjoying it. I still didn't try the Strike content or the competitive multiplayer but it's just a fun experience all around in the content I did play.

The trip to the Moon was a very fun mission and the story is really grabbing me. Even more interesting with the Moon was that, according to people who explored it outside of just going for the story mission like I did, was that there was some really cool out of the way stuff to find. That sort of thing has always been my favourite part of an MMO; the content that's outside of the lines and may not even exist for any reason but to explore.

Also, I was really impressed by the way the PvE is balanced between gear/level and skill. There definitely is a point at which being too low level and undergeared will get you in some deep trouble, but Bungie seems to have done a very good job of tweaking the balance such that it's not all about that. I was able to complete the Moon mission, which was ranked at level 6 Hard (and contained enemies up to level 8 or 9) at only level 4 with fairly basic gear by playing smart and making good use of my abilities. It's so nice to see an MMO style game that doesn't just go "Sorry, this enemy is two levels above you, you can't beat them."

Honestly, if beta progress wasn't going to be wiped for the official game launch I'd still be playing now instead of posting here.

 

[Brian Tams]

The PvP is some of the absolute worst I've ever experienced. I'm very, very disappointed in Bungie, who used to make some of the best multiplayer shooters around.

The radar is bullshit. I can't tell if crouching actually prevents you from being seen, like in Halo, because everyone zooms right to me like I have a magnet strapped to my face.
Its seriously unbalanced. The class that ground pounds and kills everything in the immediate area is utterly broken, especially for territories. Sure, it has a cool down, but its so goddamn game changing that it only need to occur once to completely turn the tide of the battle. A single guy should not be able to take down half the time with the push of a button. In fact, all the powers are fucking broken for multiplayer, but the ground pound is just the worst offender.
Vehicles are also broken as all fucking hell.

I could go on, but I won't.

That being said, I've really enjoyed the PvE stuff, even if I solo'd most of it. My one gripe is that the final mission in Russia has you fighting not one, but two bullet sponge bosses. Bullet Sponge bosses are my biggest pet peeve in an RPG.

I do owe Bungie an apology, because I cracked a ton of jokes about Destiny being Borderlands without the humor, but I couldn't have been more wrong. It plays absolutely nothing like Borderlands. Its dfinitely way more RPGie than Borderlands, thats for sure. If anything, I'm more reminded of a more polished Warframe, just in first person and without the fuck-off freemium bs.

Once the game releases and I get to see how it runs on last gen consoles, I'll probably pick it up for my PS3. I've really enjoyed it.

EDIT: Also, Bungie, its a goddamn MMO. I realize that MMO carries a negative stigma, but you can't have mounts, a social area that is filled with people, a system where you redeem faction points for powerful gear, clans, be always online, etc. and try and convince me its not an MMO. Its an MMO. Don't insult our intelligence.

Edit2: My connection to Bungie's servers dropped for the first time. I can confirm that it does boot you back to the title screen.

 

[StriderShinryu]

EDIT: Also, Bungie, its a goddamn MMO. I realize that MMO carries a negative stigma, but you can't have mounts, a social area that is filled with people, a system where you redeem faction points for powerful gear, clans, be always online, etc. and try and convince me its not an MMO. Its an MMO. Don't insult our intelligence.

This is very true. Like the game or not, it's definitely way more MMO than anything else. That hopefully won't stop anyone who is interested from at least trying the game, but Bungie was definitely trying to do a pretty poor job of covering this up. The Borderlands comparison gets thrown around a lot, but it's not Borderlands at all. Borderlands was basically at it's core Diablo as an FPS. Destiny is basically at it's core a standard MMO as an FPS.

 

[Diablo2000]

So, I got to play now and I gotta say that I like it somewhat, but the question is "Do I like it enough to pay full price for it?"
FUCK NO.

I really liked the aesthetic of the game... Well actually that's about it, shoot things did not feel as great as it should have been in a game like this and the little of plot we did get wasn't explained very well and at first sounds like the custumization is good, but it really lacks variety (Maybe be fixed in the full game).
Also I feel that the abilities takes to damn long to recharge, and while I know it's for the PVP sake, it's fucking awful the fact I have to wait nearly a minute to use a damn granade, A DAMN FUCKING GRANADE, you know that thing every game just gives you.
Oh, and the skill tree is a mess.

I guess the game just have that additing quality of a MMO.

 

[TheMightyNaan]

Downloaded it on 360 and, whilst it is essentially Halo, its really good fun, doubt I'll rush out to get it on release date.

 

[josemlopes]

The PvP is some of the absolute worst I've ever experienced. I'm very, very disappointed in Bungie, who used to make some of the best multiplayer shooters around.

The radar is bullshit. I can't tell if crouching actually prevents you from being seen, like in Halo, because everyone zooms right to me like I have a magnet strapped to my face.
Its seriously unbalanced. The class that ground pounds and kills everything in the immediate area is utterly broken, especially for territories. Sure, it has a cool down, but its so goddamn game changing that it only need to occur once to completely turn the tide of the battle. A single guy should not be able to take down half the time with the push of a button. In fact, all the powers are fucking broken for multiplayer, but the ground pound is just the worst offender.
Vehicles are also broken as all fucking hell.

I could go on, but I won't.

The Hunter abilitie looks a lot more powerfull as it can instantly kill you even from far away. All the abilities are incredibly OP balancing it out but the pistol is the most annoying one since you just die and only after checking the killfeed I can see what killed me, the others at least I know before hand that I probably wont make it out alive.

 

[electric method]

I played the beta extensively on the X1. Totally fell in love with the story, environment and PvE aspects. The gunplay felt solid and responsive. I especially liked that gear, at the green level and up, had skill trees you unlocked by using the weapons. Heck, even the armor, green rarity and above, had additional bonuses you got. Great thing was I went and looked at the vendors and the level 20 legendary (purple -- and there is a tier above legendary too) had some long skill trees to work with and the final stage was "Increase Damage, but lock in all previous choices." So one had best be sure they have that weapon set up the way one wants them.

The PvP was, well, chaotic and random. At times it was a very empowering experience at others it was an exercise in frustration. It didn't help that one PvP map, the moon, was quite possibly the worst map I've played in a number of years. The Venus map, Shores of Time, was actually pretty good and suited to the Control mode (think Hardpoint Dom from CoD.) While the PvP is hectic and even fun at times, it needs a massive amount of balancing for any longevity.

Strikes. Oh my. I did the Devil's Lair a good 15 times across 2 characters, a Titan and a Warlock. So much fun and far and away the best experience I've had on the new gen of consoles, or for a long time in a fps for that matter. Strikes require the fire team (group of 3) to be coordinating well and taking down priority targets as they appear or risk getting over-run. All the footage shown of The Devil's Lair is from the first 1/3 of the strike. However, it doesn't quite show, or do justice to, the amount of enemies in that room that spawn and how hectic it can be. Very rewarding finishing that first phase.

2nd encounter of the Devil's Lair is a small room with mook mobs, followed by a Devil Walker and a lot of adds. The Devil Walker has 2 attacks that can ruin your day instantly, so it requires the players to have situational awareness, coordinate between the fire team members and be on their toes for incoming attacks from the Walker. The fight does have adds at certain stages and they must be managed. It is a much more challenging encounter for a team of 3 versus the open world Devil Walker Event. After the walker is the actual boss, Sepiks Prime. There are adds in that fight and it's really a tank/dps/manage agro fight that most MMOer's know quite well. There is also a lot of room to move around in the arena with plenty of cover and 3 levels of the arena. All in all If all the strikes and raids are of this level of quality, balance and fun then these encounters will be things one goes back to often. There were also 2 modes for it normal and hard.

All that said, I had a blast being part of an event that is not an actual community event in the overworld. In the middle area between two underground portions of a zone called Skywatch. The Hive and the Fallen are fighting between each other non stop normally and these are a couple of groups of each. Watching this part makes you realize the Fallen and Hive are deadlocked. At noon, or midnight, in game the battle escalates to an all out war where each sides numbers just start growing in an attempt to break the stalemate. What started out as some level 5 and 6 Fallen and Hive turn quickly into level 7 and 8 Fallen and Hive Ultra's and Majors that just go ham on each other for about 5-6 minutes. Of course, this "event" quickly turns into a rather large number of enemies on screen. These higher level, tougher mobs keep spawning infinitely until a specific time then they retreat back to their starting points and the normal mobs take up the fight again. Oh course, the players can get involved and this will make both the Fallen and Hive target you as well as each other. So much fun and definitely one of those "Oh wow, this is awesome!" moments from the beta that everyone should have had.

All in all Destiny is quite good, but can still improve in a number of areas. If you go in expecting Halo 2.0 you are going to be disappointed, especially if you are doing it for PvP.

 

[Erttheking]

It's not blowing me away, but it's still an enjoyable experience. Though it was kind of a buzzkill when I had gotten to level eight and discovered that I had hit the level cap. And that the moon was a tease (Was working for the brief window it was open. ) But still, I enjoyed it, and me getting the retail version is a very good possibility.

 

[The Rogue Wolf]

Like I said, not quite as bad as the latter Halos, but still annoying. You lose so much positional awareness when you have to aim at the sky to get your headshots. And the effect is made worse when the game is locked at a FOV lower than 75 degrees.

Yeah, that's weird, I wonder why the hell Bungie does that.

I remember reading somewhere that they've admitted to doing that because it forces you to look up more and see those pretty skyboxes that they spent hours making.

 

[Jacco]

I had just spent an hour and a half fighting a fucking Ant Tank and then a floating sphere with my friend and kept dying and getting pissed off. We went back to the tower and what do I see the moment I load in? 15-20 people dancing on the roof of the building.

I knew instantly that Destiny was for me.

 

[sXeth]

The Hunter abilitie looks a lot more powerfull as it can instantly kill you even from far away. All the abilities are incredibly OP balancing it out but the pistol is the most annoying one since you just die and only after checking the killfeed I can see what killed me, the others at least I know before hand that I probably wont make it out alive.

You can get one-shotted by almost all the special weapons, rockets, hand cannons, and close enough on auto-rifles (if you get headshotted at full auto you die as fast as a sniper catching you).

Comparatively, the Hunter has to do the little wind up pose, then wanders around glowing bright yellow for anyone nearby to aim at or take cover from. They also have to land their supers accurately, not just in the general area.


The moon mission was some much needed fresh air, showing some more open design and good exploration potential then the relative "circular corridor loop in Old Russia. I didn't get to explore too much as I was trying to finish it with 10 minutes before they closed it. They seem to be tweaking random events a tad, as I've seen more varied public events, and even rareish spawns of different/tougher enemies show up in some areas at random. Particularly some Pike-riding Fallen that were showing up that you could shoot off their bikes and get one to ride about in the Cosmodrome. Also running into a named Archon on one of the explore target quests.

On the bad side, when they unlocked the beta to everyone, man did some terrible lag and glitchiness show up. It was dramatically improved on within a day or so, but I'm hoping they can handle stress better at launch.

 

[CGAdam]

The game itself was pretty solid. It was almost enough to make me want to buy it. The problem I have with it is what it represents as a game.

Remember all the hate for XBone having to be always online? This game is forcing the exact same thing. There's no offline play. For anyone with a bad/no connection, you're never going to be able to play this thing satisfactorily.

Destiny and Titanfall were two of the biggest killer app/first wave titles for the new generation, and neither one can be played offline. If other games follow suit on the 'on-line only' play model, we'll end up with the same problems we would have had if the console(s) were still 'always on required.'

To HELL with that.

 

[Tohuvabohu]

The Hunter abilitie looks a lot more powerfull as it can instantly kill you even from far away. All the abilities are incredibly OP balancing it out but the pistol is the most annoying one since you just die and only after checking the killfeed I can see what killed me, the others at least I know before hand that I probably wont make it out alive.

You can get one-shotted by almost all the special weapons, rockets, hand cannons, and close enough on auto-rifles (if you get headshotted at full auto you die as fast as a sniper catching you).

Hand cannons? I didn't think those could be strong enough to one shot you. Rockets are understandable, since they're rockets and heavy ammo is hard to come by. Snipers and shotguns have their permissible one-shots as well. But I'm not sure about handcannons.

Rifles have never killed me in one shot. But, I have ran across some people using rifles that kill me extremely fast. There's some wonky stuff going on with the weapons in PVP that needs to be looked at.

Comparatively, the Hunter has to do the little wind up pose, then wanders around glowing bright yellow for anyone nearby to aim at or take cover from. They also have to land their supers accurately, not just in the general area.

Well the ability stays active for a good while, so the windup isn't too much of a problem since you can activate it behind cover, or when no one's looking. The Warlock's Nova Bomb and Titan's Fist of Havoc are both powerful, but kindof samey as far as PVP goes, are both best used for clearing out capture points. But the Hunter's solar pistol has so many uses. The only thing that really holds it back, somewhat, is the fact that you have to shoot people yourself with it.

I have a feeling that Hunters might be the most powerful PvP class, but I guess we'll see how this goes when the full game is out. I have more concerns about the balance of weapons though.

The moon mission was some much needed fresh air, showing some more open design and good exploration potential then the relative "circular corridor loop in Old Russia. I didn't get to explore too much as I was trying to finish it with 10 minutes before they closed it.

I agree. It was great to see even a small amount of content outside of Old Russia. After seeing what that mission on the moon had to offer, I'm pretty excited to see the rest of the content.

I was able to finish the mission on hard with some friends (Jesus christ that mission was fucking tough) and went back into that mission after, but we decided to ignore the mission the next time around and explore the moon instead. And it was pretty huge. To my surprise, it seemed like a majority of the moon map is underneath the surface. There's a very elaborate sort of temple down there.

They seem to be tweaking random events a tad, as I've seen more varied public events, and even rareish spawns of different/tougher enemies show up in some areas at random. Particularly some Pike-riding Fallen that were showing up that you could shoot off their bikes and get one to ride about in the Cosmodrome. Also running into a named Archon on one of the explore target quests.

I've ran across some public events. But I still feel like they were way too few and far between. for now, they seem to be making up for the rareness in public events, by making the events themselves difficult to an almost crippling degree. Trying to defend one of those warsats or whatever is great and all, but sooner or later, every single enemy you fight turns into a fucking boss.

EDIT: I just remembered seeing an interview not that long ago about class abilities in PvP. Bungie said that they were going to balance class abilities for PvP to make sure that every ability doesn't result in instant kills... Which is obviously not what happened.

 

[Maeshone]

The game itself was pretty solid. It was almost enough to make me want to buy it. The problem I have with it is what it represents as a game.

Remember all the hate for XBone having to be always online? This game is forcing the exact same thing. There's no offline play. For anyone with a bad/no connection, you're never going to be able to play this thing satisfactorily.

Destiny and Titanfall were two of the biggest killer app/first wave titles for the new generation, and neither one can be played offline. If other games follow suit on the 'on-line only' play model, we'll end up with the same problems we would have had if the console(s) were still 'always on required.'

To HELL with that.

I think the main difference between the two is that one is a console, while the other is a game. MMOs have always required an internet connection, and Destiny is an MMO. Same thing with Titanfall. Titanfall is a multiplayer only game, it's kinda like complaining that you need internet to play Team Fortress 2.

 

[Batou667]

The friend who gave me a beta code described the gameplay as "Halo 4's Spartan Ops meets Phantasy Star Online". He was right on the money, and I found the game unappealing as a result.

I don't like retreading the same environments time and again in "different" missions. I don't like grinding, or loot-whoring. The Bungie influence was there, but after seven or so Halo games it feels stale and uninspired: Oh look, there's Guilty Spark. Here come the Active Camo Elites. Nice skyboxes. Perfectly serviceable gun mechanics. The story is silly Cataclysm / Chosen One / It's Dangerous To Go Alone Take This / Space Wizards / Party Bromance fluff that ticks all the rule-of-cool boxes that have existed since Star Wars.

I'm sure plenty of people will have a blast with Destiny, but it struck me as something of a highly-polished turd. It sets its sights low and delivers very well on a few key points - nothing wrong with that, but the pre-launch hype promised excitement, exploration, freedom; a genre-breaking and genre-redefining experience with the same kind of gravitas that Halo CE had. Playing the game, the initial optimism fades, the sense of wonder dissipates, and you readjust your expectations as you realise it's a good game, possibly even a great game, but not a fantastic game. You realise that a lot of level geometry is copy-pasted. Airwalled sections put the kibosh on exploration. You don't actually fly the ships, they're essentially just colour-coded keys to unlock higher-level missions, and their appearance acts as a loading screen. Tenuous smoke, tarnished mirrors.

It's familiar territory, and in jaded old gamers like myself, familiarity breeds contempt. I'll pass.

 

[sXeth]

Hand cannons? I didn't think those could be strong enough to one shot you. Rockets are understandable, since they're rockets and heavy ammo is hard to come by. Snipers and shotguns have their permissible one-shots as well. But I'm not sure about handcannons.

Rifles have never killed me in one shot. But, I have ran across some people using rifles that kill me extremely fast. There's some wonky stuff going on with the weapons in PVP that needs to be looked at.

If they start on your head with the auto-rifle, its effectively instantaneous how fast you drop, was what I was getting at.

Hand cannons are trickier. First off, there seems to be two varieties of headshot. One where the auto-aim pulls it in, and a "true" headshot. The latter does 2-3x damage. There's also range penalties that come into play on weapons. The short of it being, that if you get into the hand cannons range and they catch you properly, it will one hit kill.

Or Iron Banner, where you can hypothetically run into any one hit kill. The Golden Gun also can work for group clears in Iron Banner, since you can use the penetration level upgrade, which I'll concede starts giving it a versatility edge for sure.