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Destiny: Only one area per planet

ShinMaruku

Member
I bet it'll end up with "The Darkness" Actually being the force for good in the galaxy while the "Traveller" (Or the light) is the thing that brings misery and destruction and the ghosts are it's little helpers that give out super powers and convince people that the big bad darkness is coming and has to be stopped.
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I feel you.
 

Karl Hawk

Banned
I bet it'll end up with "The Darkness" Actually being the force for good in the galaxy while the "Traveller" (Or the light) is the thing that brings misery and destruction and the ghosts are it's little helpers that give out super powers and convince people that the big bad darkness is coming and has to be stopped.

Dear god, Those fucking ''The bad guy is actually a good guy and the good guy is actually bad''. Can't we have a simple story of soldiers against armies of evil?
 

SegaShack

Member
Public confidence is at an all time high. But it's mainly due to the Alpha. If Bungie is smart they won't say anything and make the game speak for itself. Because they are not capable at this point to talk for the game. Their PR has missed the mark. They need to rethink it.
Public confidence WAS at an all time high. At the moment we have people like myself who loved the beta wanting to cancel their preorders due to lack of content. The worst thing they could do is ignore these concerns.
 

VanWinkle

Member
Well lets compare it to Diablo 3 and Borderlands for a second since those are two recent games with this concept.

Diablo 3 has about a 20 hour campaign that is meant to be replayed via Normal, Nightmare, Hell and Inferno. Reaper of Souls adds another 7 hours or so to the campaign but also a bunch of endgame content.

Borderlands 2 is about a 30 hour campaign meant to be replayed yet again in True Vault Hunter mode.

Both games have loot whoring and grinds, but appear on their face to provide more straight up PVE content, more replayability, or both.

Destiny will launch with one raid (as far as I've seen) an uncertain number of strike missions which are meant to be replayed, and a fully developed Bungie PVP. So all of this reads to me as this: if you're into the PVP and PVE, this game has a ton of content. If you're into Destiny for one or the other it can look slim compared to the other big games in the genre.

Would you say it's a fully developed Bungie PVP, though? We don't know about the number of maps, but there's just six modes, and that's the extent of it. No doubles playlists, no MP ranking system, and no custom games.
 
Is the release schedule of Destiny 1 game per year? Because then this low amount of (highly repetitive) content makes a lot of sense to me.

Dear god, Those fucking ''The bad guy is actually a good guy and the good guy is actually bad''. Can't we have a simple story of soldiers against armies of evil?

It's hard to make infinite sequels with a merely straightforward story.
 

DNAbro

Member
Is the release schedule of Destiny 1 game per year? Because then this low amount of (highly repetitive) content makes a lot of sense to me.



It's hard to make infinite sequels with a merely straightforward story.

1 game every two years. Expansions/DLC inbetween.

Wow, I really missed that one :(((((

How was it?

Mission itself was short but entertaining. The real fun was from exploring the moon. Some crazy shit down there.
 
I dunno, normally MMO's, diablo's, and ect are pretty good at communicating amount of content in a game. Bungie has been pretty bad at this... The lack of definitive statements on content and ect is concerning to me.

Maybe what they have laid out for you doesn't seem like $60 worth of value. I can understand that.

Destiny will launch with one raid (as far as I've seen) an uncertain number of strike missions which are meant to be replayed, and a fully developed Bungie PVP. So all of this reads to me as if you're into the PVP and PVE, this game has a ton of content. If you're into Destiny for one or the other it can look slim compared to the other big games in the genre.

Yup. The part I bolded is why I'm just as excited today as I was yesterday, but that paragraph is pretty much Destiny's story.

Other games will handle parts of what Destiny does better than Destiny. But there are some of us that think the game offers enough of multiple parts to be a great package.
 

Karl Hawk

Banned
Is the release schedule of Destiny 1 game per year? Because then this low amount of (highly repetitive) content makes a lot of sense to me.



It's hard to make infinite sequels with a merely straightforward story.

Infinite sequels, my ass. It's 10 year franchise with four games every two years with expansion/DLC in between
 

Zomba13

Member
Dear god, Those fucking ''The bad guy is actually a good guy and the good guy is actually bad''. Can't we have a simple story of soldiers against armies of evil?

Lol, no need to get all up in arms about my theory. It's just what I think will happen. God forbid me having my own thoughts about a video games story where we really don't know much and all we are told in game is how this one thing is super dupe good and the other is super duper bad.
 
I bet it'll end up with "The Darkness" Actually being the force for good in the galaxy while the "Traveller" (Or the light) is the thing that brings misery and destruction and the ghosts are it's little helpers that give out super powers and convince people that the big bad darkness is coming and has to be stopped.

This is most definitely what's going to happen. That was the first thing that came to my mind in the intro.

Although I do question it considering we have other alien species that we can play as who also like the Traveler. But all things considered, and knowing how the Halo rings turned out, I bet this big ball of tech is probably symbiotic in it's actions. Helps what it sees as most likely species to flourish as well as most likely to be influenced in it's powers, in return that species keeps it safe as it's power is spread throughout the galaxy.
 
Would you say it's a fully developed Bungie PVP, though? We don't know about the number of maps, but there's just six modes, and that's the extent of it. No doubles playlists, no MP ranking system, and no custom games.
That's a good point. And do we know for sure now that there are no private games? I was wondering about that.

At the very least even that is miles beyond the PVP offerings in Borderlands 2 and Diablo 3. But I doubt a PVP-only crowd would look to those games for their primary comparisons.
 

Phlebas

Banned
I had fun in the Beta, but the story missions really left a lot to be desired.

Too short and not very creative at all.

Ill wait for release and see if they get better further along in the game, If it doesn't I don't see myself picking this up at all.
 
I really don't care that much. Obviously more (free) content is better, but these days it's unusual if I play a single game for more than 10-15 hours. I stop playing games if they take too long to finish and I don't remember the last time I felt short changed due to a short campaign (in a game I was otherwise happy with).
 

enzo_gt

tagged by Blackace
Agreed. People read "encounter design" and just think AI, but it's more than that. Most of the encounters in Destiny so far have amounted to enemies rushing rooms. The Strike has been the only time you can sort of feel some interesting dynamics at play with stealth melee enemies in the extreme foreground, heavy enemies in the middle, and snipers in the background. Even then there's very little style to the encounters. There has yet to be a mission with a "moment" IMO. The array mission is the closest because you actually feel like you accomplished something and the music is great, but it's still a pretty cut and dry scenario.
The bolded you can construe any way you want to fulfill your argument. Enemies spawn in rooms, you fall into a room with enemies, etc. What matters in an encounter and ultimately what makes it good or bad is that you are placed in an environment with enemies and the gameplay choices that are offered to you are reflective of the strength of that encounter. Similar complaints can be made for certain Halo encounters, from corridors on the Pillar of Autumn to moving through Exodus, but those still comprise some of the best in the genre.

Some of the missions have more diversity than others, but what you've described above happen multiple times before the strike mission. Heavy melee force at the front, snipers at the back, initially with Hive but later with the Vandals. The first time you meet the hive you are absolutely bombarded with Thrall and can handle that situation in multiple ways, either chipping them off while falling back, forcing them to disperse into smaller groups with a grenade, or twisting them around the environment to give yourself time to reposition and pick them off. You also see this when Vandals are dropped off in segregated groups (I forget which mission) and you can either pick them off individually or let them come at you all at once.

The underlying issue with the game here is that the game doesn't go to great lengths to try and get you to know each of these factions so you can say "oh fuck there's a Covenant dropship, time to move." Very similar scenarios, perhaps a lack of window dressing or an increased reliance on story acceptance in the latter. I don't think this changes the encounter design very much though. There are some fairly interesting scenarios, like the one part underground where you are in a hallway perpendicular to a longer hallway with a large opening wall. If you don't pick them off fast enough, they retreat into the far end of the longer hallway and open the wall where more enemies emerge. Alternatively, if you push them back, they're cornered, but the wall doesn't open as quick. 3 different combat scenarios in maybe a <1 minute fight and two hallways. That's a good encounter. That helps diversify gameplay first and foremost. Many games don't have this at all. AI is crucial to encounter design, and is pretty much just as important as the environment.. if not more.
 

Leyasu

Banned
Would you say it's a fully developed Bungie PVP, though? We don't know about the number of maps, but there's just six modes, and that's the extent of it. No doubles playlists, no MP ranking system, and no custom games.

Honestly, I thought that MP was bad...
dualshockers has a list of supposedly everything so far on their crappy site
 

Trickster

Member
Public confidence WAS at an all time high. At the moment we have people like myself who loved the beta wanting to cancel their preorders due to lack of content. The worst thing they could do is ignore these concerns.

Honestly the best thing for them is to just ignore the issue, if they address it in an official manner, every news site across the interwebz are gonna run an article that presents this issue in a negative way.

Here's what they will do. Ignore this, not comment on anything that people are worried about, regardless of whether there's cause for worry or not. Wait for the game to come and sell millions. Then make a big fuss about how big a success the game is.

Wow, I really missed that one :(((((

How was it?

Pretty, but empty like Old Russia. Kept going into the same copy pasted cave and abanded base room that were completely empty and pointless. The mission was structured like the earth ones - go to point a, have ghost scan thingy, defend ghost from waves of enemies. Go to point b, scan thingy, go to point c, kill waves of enemies.

I also really appreciated the ramp right behind you when you initially spawn on the moon, that practically begs you to go down it and explore the lunar surface. Except if you start to walk down it, the screen will get fuzzy and you will get a warning that you are gonna die in x seconds. Basically invisible wall of death that, lovely lovely.
 

ShinMaruku

Member
Public confidence WAS at an all time high. At the moment we have people like myself who loved the beta wanting to cancel their preorders due to lack of content. The worst thing they could do is ignore these concerns.

When you move out of the gaf bubble tell me how you see things. There is something worse than ingore those concerns, it's confirming them. :p
 

Jindrael

Banned
I'm still willing to buy the game BUT I'm no longer willing to buy it Day1. I will need to see how much the full game will offer me before I buy it. Beta was pretty okayish but sadly nothing more.

The story missions are lacking so far in my opinion, most of the time is spent going to the mission point without any interesting narrative. But maybe those concerns will stop with the full-release and missions become longer and more substantial.

Strikes are really fun so far and probably the part of the game that makes me still want to buy the game. I still hope that the bosses get more interesting, in the beta strike they were just bullet spongey, with lots of adds making damaging the boss harder.

Explorable Areas are severely lacking atm, they feel like Bungie just wanted to add big areas to show off that they can. The "missions"(the ones you take at the beacons) in the explorable areas remind me of the most boring and unnecessary quests in MMOs. Go there and kill 20 of "insert enemy type here", because "insert random threat here".

As far as I can tell, there is currently no ingame reason to explore except the players desire to explore. I like finding cool places like everybody else but after I found them and I have seen them, I need a reason to go back there otherwise it becomes something I only do once. I did explore Old Russia pretty thoroughly in the beta but it was somewhat lacking in cool stuff, I hope that this changes with the release.

PvP is fun and will probably be the selling point for most of the playerbase, I like it but it won't hold me for that long. I'm more the Tribes/UT/Quake player.

No comment on Raids.

The now confirmed one area per planet leads me to think that Old Russia really was a substantial part of the game and not just something like a tutorial like I thought it was.
And if it really is roughly 20% of the game like some people here are saying, I feel like the game is really a bit too short if you don't like all aspects of the game.
 

unbias

Member
Maybe what they have laid out for you doesn't seem like $60 worth of value. I can understand that.

They havent laid out much of anything. For a type of game that needs its community, they are particularly mute on a lot of things. Normally you cant get devs to shut-up about their world design. Hell, we know more about Dragon Age 3 content, imo, then we do Destiny.
 
Nice change of palate, but disappointing in mission length, as well as the size of the zone.
did you get to the bottom of the caves? took me and my friends nearly 20 minutes to the bottom-without fighting all the thrall/knights/wizards and
Ogres
. granted the surface is pretty small
 

ShinMaruku

Member
Since i have only 1 strike and no ideas on what raids are I can't say if the content is lacking or shit crap. I just don't know.
 
Between my Warlock and my Hunter I've played the beta about 10 hours for the story missions available so far.

That's longer than the average time to complete the campaign in Halo 1 through Reach. Now, naturally I've replayed the missions, but a game like Destiny encourages replaying to a much larger extent than something like Halo.

I've have NO doubts about getting my money's worth, even if it only is 5 Old Earth-sized maps (though I'm convinced we haven't seen it all yet).
 

Canucked

Member
Well with all these people cancelling pre-orders I guess there could be a few PS4 Ghost Editions available...

...nope, still sold out.
 

PCXB1FTW

Banned
Yeah, now it's "Pay us more than half the price of the original game and we will give you more content that we alluded to actually being in the game in the first place!"

You're not wrong, but shouldn't fool me once shame on you fool me twice shame on me come into play here as well?
 
did you get to the bottom of the caves? took me and my friends nearly 20 minutes to the bottom-without fighting all the thrall/knights/wizards and
Ogres
. granted the surface is pretty small

Yeah, went to the bottom, and even found the back entrance to the temple of croto (sic) - backtracked over several areas to confirm that I indeed has explored all the passageways. Also, I did fight everything I could kill.
 

DNAbro

Member
I find it hard thats theres only 5 locations in the game, even if they're fairly big. Surely Bungie isn't that dumb.


http://thedestinyblog.com/2014/07/27/report-destiny-will-have-22-story-missions-11-crucible-maps-6-strikes-4-exploration-areas-and-1-raid-at-launch/

22 story missions, 6 strikes, 4 explore areas and 1 raid at launch. wow if true.

for the umpteenth time, this is an incomplete list data mined from the beta. They showed off a map of Venus that had more missions that listed here.
 
Public confidence WAS at an all time high. At the moment we have people like myself who loved the beta wanting to cancel their preorders due to lack of content. The worst thing they could do is ignore these concerns.

Gaf is not the public, breh. Far from it.

I'm guessing you were one of the people who were shocked and angry that Watch Dogs did so well week one.
 

unbias

Member
Haha, you're all gonna buy it day one, even the guy who posted his preorder cancellation.

Even if everyone does, the game requires MMO growth if they think a 500 million dollar budget warrants the project. This requires more then 1st day sales. SWTOR was the fastest selling MMO in history, and look how far it fell. For how much money they are putting into this IP, they really are not treating it like one, imo. I was expecting a massive blitz of information for the 2 months prior to launch... So far we have got very little and most of it is in bits and pieces.
 

excowboy

Member
Appreciate there's all sorts of discussion that's happened already here - my two cents is that I played all the story missions in the beta and they clearly felt like simple introductory missions eg you only got all your weapon slots by the end of them. I've just played a bit of the free roam and there's an area you simply can't get past due to infinitely levelled enemies with who knows how large an area beyond. I still feel confident there'll be plenty of content in the basic game - whether it's enjoyable is a different question ;)
 

ElTorro

I wanted to dominate the living room. Then I took an ESRAM in the knee.
I wonder if the size of the areas, especially their fragmentation into mid-sized sub-areas, is partially due to cross-gen compatibility. Other games on PS360 had bigger areas, but AFAIK none of them delivered a comparable amount of detail at stable 30fps.
 

unbias

Member
Gaf is not the public, breh. Far from it.

I'm guessing you were one of the people who were shocked and angry that Watch Dogs did so well week one.

Were that many people actually shocked? Just because people didnt think Watch Dogs was going to live up to the hype doesnt mean a GTA style game wasn't going to sell good.
 
Appreciate there's all sorts of discussion that's happened already here - my two cents is that I played all the story missions in the beta and they clearly felt like simple introductory missions eg you only got all your weapon slots by the end of them. I've just played a bit of the free roam and there's an area you simply can't get past due to infinitely levelled enemies with who knows how large an area beyond. I still feel confident there'll be plenty of content in the basic game - whether it's enjoyable is a different question ;)

You can get past them, and there unfortunately isn't much behind them, just a shortcut which loops back to the other side of the map.
 
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