Destiny 2 - MMOFPS-ARPG - PC/PS4/XB1 - Oct 24th/Sept 6th. - by EvaUnit02
Malf on 3/9/2018 at 12:32
Yeah, I had a go at a 40-man raid back in the day. It was less about coordinating people's actions and more about making sure they all turned up :laff:
In Destiny 2, when things go smoothly, the individual phases of a raid shouldn't take more than 5-10 minutes each. But that's reliant on everyone knowing what to do and at what time.
Don't get me wrong, raids in traditional MMOs like WoW can be really complicated too, but at least there are usually hints about what to do.
Destiny 2 doesn't have any of that. Seriously, in some of the phases, if you didn't know what to do because someone else had told you, you'd struggle to even start the encounter.
For example, in the final Leviathan phase, you get to Calus, who's sat on a pedestal drinking from a goblet. Shooting him doesn't start it. Shooting his goblet however? Yeah, that pisses him off.
There's no indication as to that being the way to start things off whatsoever, and that's one of the more obvious things.
It's hard to describe without you playing, but these things have been turned into almost ARGs with communities poring over them to eke out all of the secrets and then share the information.
There is one mission outside of raids that is end game content that also contains a bunch of really obscure stuff, and that's the recently discovered secret mission to get the exotic sniper rifle "Whisper of the Worm".
Getting the rifle itself is fairly straightforward, if bastard-hard, but there's also a blueprint for a ship hidden away in the level. And to get that involves a convoluted jumping puzzle ending in the player shooting a series of lights in a specific order that is a sequence of numbers relating to something called The Vault of Glass in the first game.
Again, no indication as to what the solution might be, or even that you're supposed to shoot the lights at all (they sit there doing a fairly convincing Close Encounters impersonation if left unmolested), just a locked chest and a confused player.
I don't think I've ever seen something like this in this kind of game before that dictates that you go outside of the game to find a solution.
A large part of me thinks it's lazy game design, extending the time people are playing purely through being ridiculously obscure, but there's a smaller, begrudging side of me that sees how this kind of thing can also pull the game's community together.
EvaUnit02 on 4/9/2018 at 19:15
You guys know how proper MMOs on PC typically get the smaller regular new content offerings for free? You need to buy 2nd season pass for (
https://www.amazon.com/Destiny-Forsaken-Annual-Pass-Digital/dp/B07DKVWNX9) $35 USD to access industry-wide standardised shit during Year 2 of Destiny 2. These offerings will have (
https://archive.fo/R2xef) ZERO new story content and (
https://archive.fo/MdL14) ZERO new worlds.
The Division had a shit launch, the game was reportedly a broken mess upon release. Ubisoft fix the game and address player criticisms, they give players heap of new content for free as an incentive to return. 2 years later and the game is fairly decent. Reportedly the same story for No Man's Sky, they gave players a lot of new content for free too to win them back. Also Ubisoft announces that all Year 1 expansion content for The Division 2 will be free.
Bungie's reaction to a bad launch of their MMOs:- charge a high premium of $40 for the big Year 2 expansion which is supposed to "fix everything" and require players to own all of the shitty year 1 expansions. Also this time they're doubling-down:- you have buy a 2nd season pass in addition to the big Year 2 expansion to keep up with the Jones'.
Sulphur on 5/9/2018 at 06:01
I'd say that's more Activision's style of dealing with things than Bungie. Because they're Activision, and deserve a deeper sub-level of hell than whatever the people with the pitchforks outside EA's studios are threatening them with.
Anyway, I'm glad I got Destiny 2 for 3 quid. I'd feel bad for Bungie, but they knew what they were getting into with the retarded capitalistic half of Actard.
Malf on 5/9/2018 at 08:15
I'd also argue that the game wasn't broken and that this was just Internet hyperbole, but then I would realise I'm trying to debate with EvaUnit02, whose posts consist 99% of bitching about games he's never played and 1% posting torture porn screengrabs.
Thirith on 6/9/2018 at 06:22
On a completely different note: I'm not sure what the jump is like for other classes, but I absolutely love the feel of the Warlock's jump&glide moves. There's something so enjoyable about having more vertical movement options in a game like this. It may sound like a small thing, but it's one of the main reasons why I enjoyed Destiny and why I'm enjoying the sequel (apart from getting it for free on PS4, that is): it's fun to traverse the locations thanks to perfectly tuned movement.
Sulphur on 6/9/2018 at 06:32
The Warlock's got a couple ways to change that movement too, and the subclass unlock has a fairly... unintuitive teleport option that I switched out of in a jiffy. It's definitely a well-tuned game, I just can't shake the feeling of its levels being like these compressed dioramas instead of actual breathing environments. But I can get over that when the mechanics of popping heads are pretty satisfying anyway (I see shades of Halo's original '30 seconds of fun' principle in the combat).
Thirith on 6/9/2018 at 06:37
Oh, absolutely. The game feels like a bunch of sci-fi sets, not like a world. Those sets are gorgeous, though.
Errant Signal did a video on the first Destiny a few years ago, and I think he absolutely nailed the appeal of the game. For the most part Destiny is immensely shallow, but by and large it knows what it is, it knows what its strengths are and it knows how to play to them.
EvaUnit02 on 9/9/2018 at 22:07
Quote Posted by Malf
I'd also argue that the game wasn't broken and that this was just Internet hyperbole, but then I would realise I'm trying to debate with EvaUnit02, whose posts consist 99% of bitching about games he's never played and 1% posting torture porn screengrabs.
Hence me putting "fix everything" in quotes, you fucking muppet. The game wasn't broken in a technical sense, correct. The key problem was its game design at launch was that it was heavily geared towards casuals and neglected the desires of more hardcore gamers. There was a lack of a grind; they didn't gatekept high level loot (i.e. not have have drops exclusive to end game modes like Raids and Nightfall Strikes); had fixed loot attribute rolls; etc.
This had a huge impact on player retention. Being that Destiny 2 is ARPG, a genre all about getting loot, there's little incentive to keep playing long-term once you've gotten the best swag. There were shit loads of articles in late 2017/early 2018 about the game's huge player drop off. Here's some examples:-
(
https://www.gamewatcher.com/news/2017-19-10-destiny-2-playerbase-has-dropped-by-over-2-million-users-since-launch#)
(
https://dotesports.com/the-op/news/destiny-2-chart-playerbase-decline-reddit-19936)
Malf on 9/9/2018 at 23:37
Yes, but if you'd played as part of the PC community, you would understand that retention there was a lot better, because expectations were different due to the vast majority of players never having played Destiny 1.
Destiny 2 was fine prior to Forsaken. A little bit vacuous, sure, but some of the best shooting out there. And certainly not broken unless you go by the obnoxious demands of stay-at-home, 24/7 MMO players who are obsessed with power-gating games so only a tiny minority can enjoy them.
Now Forsaken's dropped? It's fantastic.
And did you really just refer to yourself in the third person?
Malf on 10/9/2018 at 15:11
Anyway, ignoring all that, let's get back to talk about the game itself.
So Forsaken has dropped, and I really didn't know what to expect. I thought maybe an explorable area, some new activities, gear and some strikes and a raid.
And yeah, all that stuff is there.
What I
wasn't expecting is one of the most intriguing maps I've played in a long time.
So the expansion starts with a bombastic, if formulaic, mission ending in
the death of Cayde6.
This sets the tone for a series of story missions focussed on taking out each of the "Barons" associated with the event blocked out above on a wild frontier zone called The Tangled Shore. There's plenty of places to poke your nose in to, events to get involved in and bad guys to shoot. There's even an alien disco party to crash. It's a fun time, and the main story all takes place here. So far, so Destiny 2.
Then the story "ends".
And cue the Dreaming City.
And damn, if Bungie haven't gone all out on this area. While there are still a few recognisable cues on the map screen, this area almost completely does away with any hand-holding. You're given a vague outline of a task to do, with no direction on how to accomplish it whatsoever (aside from the occasional very cryptic text note), then told to explore.
It's bastard-hard at first thanks to enemy power levels being significantly higher than yours. And yeah, this is Bungie implementing yet another power level grind, for sure.
But once you've got a few new pieces of gear, things start to open up. You start collecting trinkets that have only vague instructions on their use. Holographic bonsai trees; mysterious dark tinctures; shards of dark crystal. And through experimentation, exploration and communication, you gradually start to peel back the layers of mystery. You find uses for each of those items and more. Secrets are revealed where there were apparently none before. You'll gain chances to improve your character by enduring a gruelling yet rewarding horde mode with your clan mates. You'll slowly gain the ability to explore previously lethal areas, and find even more mysteries contained within. Exploring the map to its limits will reveal cunningly hidden lore and the occasional cat statue promising rewards if you only have the right offering.
And all of this will serve to make you
really examine every detail carefully. Sure, maybe you'll read meaning in to things that ultimately have no meaning, but maybe,
just maybe you'll discover something really cool.
It's utterly superb world building, and encourages you to grab a friend or two and simply
explore.
On top of this, you've got the new 4v4 PvEvP mode, Gambit, which is my favourite competitive multiplayer mode in a long time.
It's brilliantly executed. It allows players to enjoy competition and feel like they're contributing, even if they're not great at shooting other players.
The idea is that each team has their own map where they kill monsters and gather the "motes" that they drop. These motes can then be deposited in a central bank. You can deposit any number of motes, but can only carry up to 15 at a time. If you deposit 5, you spawn a small but tough monster on the enemy team's side, and while it's alive, they can't deposit any motes. At 10, you send a larger monster. And at 15 you send a really huge pain in the ass over. What's more, you can send more than one at a time if you coordinate your deposits.
Once you've deposited 75 motes, your bank disappears and a huge monster spawns in called a "Primeval". The aim now is to kill it before the other team can summon and kill theirs.
However, throughout the round, every now and again one of your players will be able to go through a portal to the other team's map for 20 second bursts to try and kill them, and vice versa.
If a player dies, their motes are lost. Evil enough to start with. But once the Primeval's up, any deaths that occur while the invader is present heal the Primeval. And the invasion portal pops up more and more frequently. So it's a frantic dash to pour as much damage in to the boss as quickly as possible without dying, while your invader frantically tries to kill as many of the opposition as possible in order to stymie their progress.
It. Is.
Superb.
Every now and again, Penny Arcade manage to nail the zeitgeist in gaming, and (
https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2018/09/07) this strip sums up Gambit.
Of course, I write all of this in the full knowledge that buying in to Destiny 2 and getting Forsaken seems a huge ask thanks to the pricing and negative feedback from more strident corners of the internet.
I'm also fully aware that a substantial part of the game involves submitting to the Skinner Box and all the seedy dopamine triggers associated with it.
But dammit, it's sooooo moreish.