As betas go you can’t argue with Destiny’s success. I’ve heard more than a few people saying it’s the most they have played on their PS4 since launch for example, while it seems to be basically the only thing that happened over the weekend.
Now we’ve all had a good long play is there anything you want changed? Here’s a few things I’d loved to see addressed.
1. Better shooting feedback in the multiplayer
Whatever you think of games like COD or Titanfall, noise and vibration let you know when you’ve hit someone. It’s an instant response you react to instinctively. In Destiny all the feedback seems to be purely visual – some numbers and a crosshair change. Instead of reacting to a more physical and wider spread of stimulus that inhabits a real world this feels more visual, simply matching pictures on screen and less instinctive as a result.
2. Secondary weapons
In the campaign, ammo isn’t so much of an issue as there’s usually plenty. In multiplayer though I really felt the constraints of the alternate weapon system. I’m habitually a long range/sniper player online so having to chase allowances of secondary ammo really cramped my style. I like having two weapons to switch between freely as the situation dictates, not look out for boxes on the map.
3. Clarify the mission structure in the campaign
Obviously the beta was only a taster and not representative of the final thing (there were only a couple of actual story mission after all) but I really hope the story gets a far clearer set up. There were times when I just wanted to know what/where the next thing was. Chasing sticks in the ground and seeing what you get is all good if you want a few random missions but sometimes I just want to advance.
That’s my wish list. What’s yours?
Comments
62 responses to “What We Want Changed After Destiny’s Beta”
The date to be changed, so I can have my PS4 and Destiny now.
You never ran out of secondary ? I had to regularly stop using them to save ammo.
What they need to do is put health into the game. Then you might have a reason to explore the world for health items instead of nothing. Or have a class that can heal teammates.
and grenades shouldn’t be a cooldown ability either, should be able to pick them up or even explore the areas to find more.
Oh yeah, one more thing. The radar suuuucks. It does what most games to do today with a red curve appearing around your reticle when taking damage from that direction, except it’s a radar that gives the vague direction of an enemy. So if you’re ducking behind to let your shields recover, you have no idea if an enemy is moving up to finish you. Maybe I’m missing something because that screenshot shows a slightly better version.
As a Titan my shotgun only had 20-25 shells before I ran out so yeah I ran out fairly often.
I found myself not using anything but my assault rifle after a while unless I got in too close and had to establish some distance from the group.
Once I had the Titan smash ability I didn’t bother too much since I could kill 90% of the enemies in close range with that.
My first Sniper could only hold about 10-15 bullets, so long range didn’t last long. I switched to shotguns but I always ran out, even when I only used it to quickly defend myself while reloading my standard rifle.
I eventually got too frustrated when I was defending off waves of Necron (I think they were a new faction) and after blowing up a group with a grenade and backpeddling with my shotgun, I eventually ran out of shotgun ammo and was still swarmed by 20 melee guys with only a rifle. I died and restarted at the checkpoint with my abilities still in cooldown and no secondary ammo. That’s when I quit the beta.
The mini-map is more detailed when you’re doing campaign missions and I believe strike-teams however the multi-player mini-map is left without much detail on purpose so as not to make it too easy to spot enemy combatants. I imagine Bungie only wants it to act as a kind of radar but truth be told once you become familiar with the maps and pay attention to your radar even knowing which general direction the enemies are at you should be able to figure out exactly where they are.
Example on the Venus map for Point C if enemies can only approach you from 3 possible entrances, so if you see the radar flashing in the direction of either you’ll know exactly where to position yourself to take advantage of the onslaught. Another reason I think the radar might’ve been designed to be so vague is to prevent people from camping, this way even players who resort to long range combat can only get a gist of where an enemy might be and will have to scout him out by looking around giving both players the opportunity to make the kill or the enemy player to seek cover as opposed to becoming a case who ever noticed the blip on the radar first get the kill (something I hate in CoD team deathmatches personally).
In regards to secondary ammo as mentioned below I think they did it to counteract snipers and then in order to balance out the other weapon types probably boosted the damage output in order to make them viable secondary options. Fusion rifles pretty much kill in one hit so if they made it too easy to get secondary ammo all you’d get for a level like Venus and half of the Mars map is people running around with fusion rifles!
For grenades I agree its a bit of a pain that it’s a cooldown based ability however I’m guessing at higher levels you’ll get armor that reduces cooldown time for grenades per melee hit, ability use or getting a kill with a particular gun which should reduce the cooldown time considerably.
I don’t think it would feasible to introduce a health based system into the game now, that would’ve needed to be a decision Bungie made very early on in the games development. Health based systems completely through a regenerative shield system out the window and given that Bungie have a lot more experience with shield systems off their Halo games I can understand why the opted for one over the other =]
(Sorry about the long reply >.< just making possible explanations for some of the issues you’ve raised!)
More variety in mission structure.
All the story missions seems to be a repeat of each other.
Get to Point A, Defend point A from waves of enemies.
Goto Point B, Defend point B from waves of enemies.
Goto Point C… etc
then reach last point, Boss fight.
I truly hope Bungie don’t think they can get away with an entire game based on this type of mission structure. They strike me as a much more creative team than that…right….RIGHT!?
Have you played Halo? Remember the flood at the end. Ugh.
Yep…I recall. I remember it more as an intense, relentless challenge? Haha…no, they were just plain annoying tbh.
But Halo had kick-ass multiplayer, from what I played in Destiny the multiplayer was uninspired and dull. Definitely going to wait for the reviews on this one…
You know… you could simplify every single shooting game out there as getting from Point A to Point B?I’ve played most of the Halos, CoD’s and a few BF’s and that’s basically how all their campaigns work.
You can’t really compare Destiny to Far Cry’s/Crysis’s given those are open world games. So unless they reworked Destiny to a similar concept the best they can do is to make sure getting from Point A to Point B is as much fun as possible!
I’m confused by that last point, as the mission structure was pretty straightforward. You pick the mission with a green exclamation mark to advance the story.
Sounds like the author was choosing the free roam level and wondering why there was no story events (although from his other two points, it sounds like he spent most of his time in PVP).
In regards to the secondary weapons I think Bungie meant for it to be like that to avoid massive sniper battles on maps like the Moon (imo is just annoying when there’s even a few snipers!). Also a few minutes into any match you should be able to grab some secondary ammo which should last you for the whole match.
Worth noting both secondary and tertiary weapons hit a whole lot harder than your normal weapons so unless they reworked the numbers for how much damage secondary weapons do in multi-player I don’t imagine they would change that!
If you really love sniping and I think you need to for the Moon map I recommend a Scout Rifle as primary until you score some secondary ammo and then swap to your sniper based on the situation! Really for the moon map you should only be using a Scout Rifle or Pulse Rifle anyways…. anything else is obsolete.
Edit: Only thing I would really like is to see either a kill cam in multiplayer or a way to see the scoreboard during deaths. Also a more detailed scoreboard would be nice instead of just Kills/Assists and K/D.
Agreed on the secondary ammo point. If they change it I can see endless shotgun rounds happening. Can’t remember how many times I got one shot from the 2 varieties of them.
Agreed, nothing could hurt the pvp more than letting people snipe an entire match
It destroyed Battlefield for a lot of people, where entire teams sit back trying to only bump up their K/D ratio.
It hurts pretty much all FPS competitive modes that have sniping, hard to think of one that doesn’t have issues with sniper balancing.
Team Fortress 2.
Halo 1, 2, 3, reach, 4?
One or two sniper rifles on the map only. Done.
I only have experience with 1 and limiting their spawn didn’t make them balanced, they were still way OP and people scrambling for them to the detriment of the rest of the game was still not fun
There are three major things that really disappointed/annoyed me about the game that I’d like to see changed:
1) More interesting enemies and better strategical requirements. Borderlands had this problem too a bit. All the enemies are a basic shoot until dead affair with none of the variation you get in something like the Left 4 Dead special infecteds or even the more exotic Borderlands enemies (Like Spider ants that you had to stun and then shoot their abdomen, or armoured enemies). Fire fights got really tedious very quickly.
2) Better/varied voice actors. There were two voice actors droning on in very similar voices. For all I knew, it was just the same guy doing a slightly different voice. I want at least one person in the voice cast who sounds passionate and has even a modicum of personality.
3) Make the free missions more localised. It was so annoying to pick up a mission in a level 8 area, only to find that the target was back in the level 1 area all the time. Having speeders doesn’t help when you have to travel through several no-fly zones.
Agreed on points 2 and 3. Voice actors were really poorly chosen and the explore missions become ridiculously tedious when you’re basically just driving back and forth across a massive map.
On point 1 I agree but I’m reserving judgement till the final game because I get the feeling there’s a lot more to come. However I do hope they make enemies that have different weak points as opposed to just headshots!
Yeah. In the co-op ‘dungeon’ level the final two bosses were more than just shooting it until it died. If you’re not attacking the legs of the tank to shatter the armour and reveal the weak point it’ll take an hour. If you’re not aiming for critical hits on the center of the eye you probably won’t make it. If you don’t learn their attack patterns you’ll die pretty quickly.
I get the impression we’ll see more things like that later in the game.
I think the biggest problem on that front is that it’s rather free-form. They don’t box you in, so once you’ve found what works for you you’ll be able to take on most encounters with the same basic strategy.
Yeah the boss fights bring some variety but I’d like to see varied enemies of the weaker sort! I don’t want to be spending 10-15min on a boss fight when I want some variety on mechanics! But I have a feeling there a few more enemy species left to encounter aside from just The Fallen and the Hive.
I get what you mean. There were some enemies that had slightly more complicated mechanics. The guys with shields were pretty ordinary for a FPS, but there were also those orbs that buffed nearby units adding a kill priority. If they run with that they could make more interesting enemies.
The stuff I played had that MMORPG disconnect where you don’t really leave a lasting impression on anything you do. The mission is to kill 5 guys, but they keep spawning forever so rather than kill a house full of guys you kill 5 guys and then walk away while there are still enemies in the house. I’m hoping the instanced content becomes a little more cinematic. When I take out an enemy base I want it to be a smouldering crater rather than an empty base, even if it’s just for the remainder of the instance.
Point 3. Although I did manage to use the speeders inside some of the buildings, and it was a bit quicker that way.
I found that although you couldn’t summon the speeder indoors, as long as you stayed on it, it never kicked you off during those areas.
Yes, thank goodness there were no invisible walls you couldn’t ram your speeder through.
The missions to make you change zones were so it led you around instead of you finishing the 4-5 in that area then saying “well now you gotta walk all the way out of here to find more” or stand around for like 20mins for them to respawn. They are pretty important for structure, what they needed was much clearer identification that it was that type of mission so you knew to pick it up last.
PVP trading is one thing missing. You pick up weapons, want to discard them and sell(dismantle) them for 10 glimmer each and then a teammate if he’s unlucky not to pick up a decent weapon has to pay well over that assuming the gunshop has what they want or however much it was to try their hand at an engram and see if they get lucky with what comes out of it
I’m a fan of the ammo scarcity for secondary weapons myself. Makes it a little less mindless when you have to consider ammo.
I only wish Secondary Ammo didn’t reset to 0 when you changed Secondary Weapon types.
Other than that I like the idea of only carrying a few rounds of your secondary weapon.
Argh yes. I was quite disappointed to lose all my precious heavy ammo after a weapon change 🙁
Also how secondary and heavy weapon ammo went to zero after deaths in pvp I can understand it with heavy ammo makes holding the ammo important but not with secondary ammo
One thing that annoyed me slightly was the fact that if you were carrying 2 secondary weapons and swapped them, you lost all your secondary ammo. I kind of get why they did it so you couldn’t just carry one of everything and swap to whatever suits the situation and force you to manage your ammunition but there must be a better way to do it. Even if you can only keep the weapon loaded and no spare mags so you can have a loaded sniper rifle ready to use but still have very limited ammo
Maybe if you did your weapon-switching in the Tower or while in orbit. That would get around the issue of on-the-fly weapon-switching but avoid the frustration of, “Yay, cool new gun! I wanna try it out! …After I go grind up some ammo for it.”
EDIT: Ohhhhhhhhhh. Urrrrrgh. You know you can buy a consumable that gives you ammo, right? So that’s what that fucking thing is for. Yaaaay, F2P mechanics emerge.
What’s the point of it though when it doesn’t cost real money? It’s just an irritant.
Ooh there’s an idea! Make the ‘keep one mag’ thing an armour upgrade so you can choose to keep it but have to balance it against other abilities
Just wait. *steeples fingers sinisterly*
Boo-urns!
I suspect there’d have been some evidence of microtransactions if there was going to be some. If we get ripped off I reckon it’ll be by ‘a bit too small and a bit too expensive’ DLC
Honestly, the idea of microtransactions for the ammo boxes is way too tinfoil hat even for me. I do think that it’s part of the economy, though. MMOs have gold-sinks. It’s required to draw out the grind and keep people playing longer, with the understanding that people playing = content or other people.
And a map would be nice.
Yeah. I kept hitting the back button out of instinct whenever I wanted to see a map.
Agreed.A transparent mini map instead of the round circle in the beta that displays everything from hitmarkers,enemies and teammates.Hitmarkers should show onscreen around your character; that way you have a better sense of where the shots are from.
To be honest, I like the lack of it for once. Navigation by sight is a fun skill to learn.
I really just want them to randomise the spawnpoints for enemies in the exploration mode. Otherwise it just becomes a grinding scenario like WoW.
I would like to see the AI be a bit smarter it was easy to outplay them by back into a area they don’t move into or hiding behind cover.
Please for the love of god give us a ping counter (not a bar, actual numbers) so I know how much people are lagging when play crucible games. Nothing more frustrating to see people rubber band around the screen.
A proper map… that fills in as you explore it.
Beards.
More facial customisation options really, and a plastic surgeon at the tower so you can change it if you aren’t happy.
I’d like the flashlight to show a wider area too.
Probably too late for the changes I want to see, but I wouldn’t mind seeing some actual CHARACTERS in the story. As it is, it’s just Deadpan Dinklage who is wasted on some pretty uninspiring writing, and the ‘Speaker’ who we’ve seen for roughly one minute, and who was nothing special.
This story looks like a non-starter. You would think that in showing off 10% of the game, they would have had time to show us something to get excited about. There is nothing gripping here, and if you read any positive review of the game, you can bet your ass they’ll be talking about solid shooting mechanics or pretty skyboxes.
With the disclaimer that these things are probably not representative of the final product?
I really hope the beta is NOT a good reflection of the release.
Because the loot-hunt is uninspiring/unpredictable/overly-grindy, the lobby is boring and doesn’t help hide the fact that you’re hopping between heavily-instanced ‘matches’ disconnected from any notion of an open world, there’s no compelling characters, no story to speak of, there’s a depressing lack of depth or personality to class advancement and weapon types, the enemies are dumb, the objectives repetitive, exploring is unrewarding and limited (hell, the lore/grimoire is kept out of game on a separate site you have to look up!), customization is heavily-limited (no wardrobe function to speak of, so don’t bother finding something you like – you’re going to look identical to everyone else who’s wearing best-in-slot max-level gear, which if the currently-planned level cap is anything to go by, you’ll probably reach inside the first week, maybe two), and it looks like gaps in content for end-gamers will be shored up with a PVP focus.
I play games for a narrative, I play them to experience something new. Repetition doesn’t work for me, which is why I don’t play ‘gamey’ games, like DOTA, LOL, TF2, CS:GO, etc. I play interactive stories, or explore them with friends, with longevity provided in hunting lore and secrets, with learning and mastering a mechanic simply part of that journey. So Dark Souls really scratches my gaming itch.
From the potentially unrepresentative impressions the beta provides, it looks like a lobby shooter with solid mechanics, nice graphics, and a very pretty world which will serve as a training zone for the ‘real’ game which will be competitive PVP/PVE, leaderboards and all that other epeen bullshit I don’t care about.
What I want to Destiny to change about itself before it launches? God. By the looks of that early glimpse? Practically fucking everything.
You forgot to mention to change the title. Just play something else. I haven’t played it but from the looks I thought what it would be like and now reading your opinion of it makes me think its worse than borderlands 2 with pretty graphics (what I thought destiny would be). At least borderlands had funny characters and a story for the rails if you know what I’m trying to say. Story wasn’t the greatest but it was a solid ride and characters were there to get you through.
From what you said there Destiny doesn’t even have that.
Preeeeeeetty much. I was considering it to be a system seller, getting the PS4 bundle with it and everything, but after the beta? I can wait. Definitely no preorder, I’ll wait for reviews to see if the beta was simply a poor representation or if it’s basically a completely different game to what I thought it would be/want it to be and have to accept it as being a non-MMO lobby shooter with weaksauce loot-collecting elements. ie: A prettier PVP-focused Borderlands without the heart.
To be honest I can see where you’re coming from, I’m a tad concerned about the lack of story particularly since Halo had such a strong narrative focus. I’m hoping they’ve got a lot more up their sleeve than a few references and try to pass it off as “it’s like dark souls, you have to discover the story through inference”.
At least the lore stuff is something that could be patched to be accessible within the game easily since it’s basically just a database access thing, just a new UI element hooked to the DB tables and you’re done.
My hope with the levels is that they start to get exponentially more difficult the closer you get to 20, kind of like the old epic level gold box D&D games where you had to take high level characters through the entire game to get enough XP to go up one level. Say level 11 is twice as hard to get as level 10, 12 is twice as hard as level 11 & 4 times as hard as 10 etc. Realistically I have no illusions this will happen because it’ll turn off the instant gratification turds and have them screaming like the spoiled toddlers they basically are.
Oddly enough the beta was enough to convince me to get the game since I had enough fun playing it with @Longjocks and it’ll occupy a few weekends and that’s enough but I’ll enjoy it a lot more if there’s a decent story in it and it’s not just all rehearsal for PvP.
I’m probably going to play the shit out of it, too. When I finished downloading it, I spent the next 8 straight hours playing.
…But then I was pretty much done. MMOs keep you on the hook and sometimes it’s manipulative, and sure… there was a limited amount to do, maybe that’ll change. But I don’t see the ’10 yrs longevity’ thing here unless you’re into ‘raiding’ or PVP.
I’d have to disagree on two fronts. Halo wasn’t particularly narrative focused. At least the first one wasn’t. But what was delivered was done so at a slow pace. That brings me to front number two where I don’t share a concern for the lack of story as I’d wager they’ll likely go for a slow burn like with Halo. To the extent the first story in this franchise pays off… well, let’s just hope we’re not played like a certain Ubisoft hood-wearing assassin franchise.
That aside, this is simply an MMO. When you chase that formula story and character development always gets thrown aside, particularly any for your avatar (unless you’re into personal role-play and fantasizing). So, since I surprisingly found this game fun for what it is, I don’t really care if it doesn’t have a great story. I seem to enjoy the Trials games and they have a distinct lack of deep narrative.
Some sound or visual effect when you run out of ammo would be nice.
Less loading screens that load loading screens and quicker access to areas. Maybe some fast travel on the open world or selectable drop points.
Maps
That mouse mode selection doesn’t make sense. At least make the controllers motion control it or something.
I’m glad the beta ended though. I was losing so much sleep because of how addictive and fun it was.
I can’t wait for September
Loading Times!
I’d like it if we actually spent more time talking and getting to know the characters in The Tower. Like you meet the Speaker (?) once, and then when I randomly walked around the Tower once I found him and was like “who is this guy? Ooooh wait he’s from that cutscene”. I heard the Ghost once say “oooh (persons name here) would be interested in this!” when out in a mission, but I’ve got no idea who he’s talking about. Unfortunately the characters who SHOULD be important are just static shops to get phat loot from. Really disappointed by that considering how rich the world is in lore…. THAT YOU NEED TO GO TO THE WEBSITE TO READ AAAAARGH. Dammit Bungie. Give me the lore IN THE GAME. 🙁 I just don’t understand the obsession companies have with companion apps etc now. Seems such a wank.
Also I would’ve liked it if they didn’t devote the whole D-pad to emotes, and instead put on some pre-made commands eg “wait” “come back” “come here” etc. Would’ve been handy during the Devil’s Lair strike… (though I still used Dance all the time)
Still super keen for the game and preordered it on PSN, willing to pay extra to get it asap.
I was super chuffed when I heard Bill Nighy. I really hope we see more of him in the final game.
I’d like an option similar to the last of us,
*the choice drop a few graphics options and pump up the framerate a bit.
I want to play destiny, but a controller takes away the immersion for me. Get this thing on PC already damn it.
I loathe the idea of putting words in someone else’s mouth, but is “immersion” the word you were after? I’ve never associated keyboard/mouse vs controller with the notion of immersion. I guess if one feels so comfortable to you that you don’t realise you’re using it then maybe that’s the best case for it. If so then I’m usually that way with a controller.
When I hold a controller i’m always in the same position which can make me uncomfortable after a while and it kind of breaks me away from the game and i end up being conscious of my physical surroundings. I might be a bit fidgety for controllers..
The one thing I’d change – that freaking stupid dance gesture. Salute/wave – fine. Pointing – useful. Sitting – good indicator one may be AFK. Dancing – uh… well… you like… dance… …stupidly.
Proximity Voice Chat in the Tower and in free-roam raiding.
Voice Chat enabled for the whole team in PvP matches.
Better matchmaking system. I don’t want to be owned by someone who has Overpowered weapons because he had the time to comb through all the worlds for loot. Match me up against opponents with similar offensive and defensive ratings.