This is the news I was dreaming of. I didn’t get as much time as I would have liked with the Destiny Alpha thanks to my ‘wife’ and my ‘child’ and my ‘responsibilities’, so news that Bungie is extending it is the best news.
There’s a rumor that the #Destiny Alpha might be extended to allow dangerous experiments. Play beyond the official close at your own risk!
— Bungie (@Bungie) June 16, 2014
So if you were one of the lucky ones with a code, time to keep playing!
Comments
23 responses to “It Looks Like Bungie Has Extended The Destiny Alpha”
I played through to the lvl cap, did a whole heap of exploring and the instance a couple of time. I played one match of PvP and did not enjoy it very much, felt the lag there.
The alpha has pulled me back from the brink. I was growing increasingly worried after seeing videos of gameplay online and not really “getting” it all.
It didn’t seem that fun in the minute to minute gameplay, and it was hardly the next-gen graphical showcase it could have and should have been (goddamn cross-gen).
I didn’t particularly like the whole Borderlands style battle mechanics with the enemies being little more than walking health bars and the damage numbers pouring out of them when you hit them. This approach doesn’t do wonders for your levels of immersion.
However, after playing the Alpha all day I became enthralled with the gameplay, sense of exploration and discovery, and the potential of what the full game or even the beta might offer. Seeing those octagonal weapon drops fly into the air as you kill the enemies still fills me with excitement after at least 20 hours playing this thing.
It removes the thing about MMOs I hate, in that skill is largely discarded for rote learning and mechanical ability toggling, whilst still feeling like an MMO in a big way. Before I knew it, “all day” had turned into three days straight of playing this game with only about 2 hours of content to play through. That’s a really good sign.
Public events are awesome, but almost impossible to complete by yourself. However i had some weird glitch with my account where my world was largely empty compared to everyone else, I rarely saw another player unless specifically choosing the strike/crucible missions from the menu. The tower was consistently empty aside from my character and the NPCs. Oh well, it’s an alpha after all.
Definitely pre-ordering this thing, can’t wait to see the Beta content.
Nice wrap there Ser. I played the alpha for quite a while over the weekend; reached the level cap with a Titan. Overall I really enjoyed the feel of the game. Like many others, my biggest complaint is the speed of respawning enemies. Turn your back and they’re back!
One question I have for you, did you find in your time of exploration that there were stretches of the environment which just didn’t have anything around at all? One example I can recall is slogging through an industrial warehouse (Oo…eerie, atmospheric…but nothing), ending up out in the open with a whole heap of derelict, bombed out cars (cool vibe! Surely there must be something interesting lurking around here?). I wandered around hoping to discover some hidden treasure, loot crates or enemy encampment….nothing. No doubt it’s an alpha scenario or maybe a mission-specific area, but I was still a little disappointed at the lack of cool things to find in my exploration, outside of just killing an enemy. I kept asking myself, in this area and a few other areas, “What’s the point here?”. The question is being asked more so because the developers keep reenforcing this idea of “exploration – go find stuff”. So, hopefully the world is better fleshed out in the final product.
I found the very area you are discussing and yeah I’m guessing there will be something there later, they did give a very completed area for us to play in but have obviously restricted the contents of the area (I’m looking at you Mr ?? Ogre).
Personally I found exploration for even this tiny area quite fun, even going through aforementioned abandoned industrial area and discovering the poor lost Peter Dinklage robots.
Pity about Dinklage’s voice acting though. Some of it was actually cringeworthy. “It’s the Hive!” in the only mission you can play in particular stands out as truly average.
I personally think his voice acting is fine, the contextual stuff he hits the tones perfectly. I think it’s a very poor script that let’s it down in the action moments and such, I don’t think they could of gotten anyone to say a line like “that wizard is from the moon” and have it be taken seriously
Yeah that area was actually utilised for the E3 2013 gameplay demo, they just came from the other direction. Definitely that’s a problem that’ll be fixed for the final release.
That was one of my biggest problems with it as well, certain areas were just clearly left blank or filled with overpowered enemies to make it clear it was outside of the play area. That and getting endless amounts of gear that I needed to be a higher level for. But those two problems are only problems in the context of the Alpha.
Respawning dudes was a major hassle, yeah.
I maxed out all three classes, I started with the Hunter, thought it was rad, went to Warlock, liked it much better, then ended with Titan, who I loved the most. But that may have been due to a very lucky Auto Rifle drop that allowed me to steamroll my way through the game.
I found that place too! It’s the beginning area of a game play mission, and there should be TONS of content throughout that wall in the beta or full game.
They did this with Reach. It was best not to play during that time as they were blowing up the network.
Bleh, I didn’t want one of their dumb codes anyway!
So happy to see this. Any idea how long for? Im still a level 7 and am yet to complete the dungeon in Old Russia. Hopefully finish it tonight!
Us poor old Xbox owners, making Bungie what is it, and then getting ignored.
I think you’ve got it wrong. Bungie made X-Box what it was, not X-Box making Bungie what it is. 😉
I guess that’s how the Mac owners felt when Halo was released 🙂
AWWWW SNAP!!!!
kind of agree… but i’d say sony is making it rain (throwing money at them)
this generation is all about who can throw more money at a dev/publisher to throw in extra content… or earlier access… pathetic when you think about it but its the world we live in
Do we need to discuss Insomniac Games here? Should we discuss that? Because I would like to discuss that.
I can’t even think about Insomniac without sighing. Into the Nexus was good, but it’s been a few years since Insomniac has made a must-have game (their last one was R&C: A Crack in Time imo).’
And I really don’t like this new direction away from PlayStation owners!
I know right, seems they just wanted to run R&C into the ground and run off to their new lover.
Did we not love you enough? We’re sorry for all the people who kept skipping R&C as some kiddie game, we knew you had it in you for a cool new mature IP, you could have just talked to us?
Saw you in there mark. I waved and everything
I had a great time with this over the weekend.
i reached lvl 8 with both a hunter and a warlock
i was hoping to feel a distinct difference between the classes but their either isnt one or level 8 is just not high enough to notice the difference.
i actually really enjoyed exploring and even popping out into a completely desolate world with nothing. some small amount of loot would have been nice but just getting there was fun.
it really was a huge zone to explore
i enjoyed the co-op mission.
i like the fact that there were at least 2 areas with unbeatable enemies (especially liked that the first was pretty much exactly where you start)
some of the heavy weapons were pretty cool.
im not a fan of the interface yet. it doesnt seem to use the screen smartly when you are sorting through inventory and comparing weapons. i think they could definitely improve this.
I also did not enjoy my time in the Crucible
having everyone with completely different weapons of varying strengths doesnt look like fun.
i went straight in as a level 4 and felt like i was at a disadvantage against the level 8s.
were is the balance
overall though i am now incredibly pumped for september. i am not going to play the beta as im now convinced it will be good so i want to wait to experience everything.
my only concern now is what will the xbone version be like. the guys im going to play this with are on xboxes so thats the version i will get
Hm? Of course a level 4 will be weaker than level 8s. The weapon damage difference is huge. Unless they implement something like Guild Wars 2 where everyone is max level in PvP that would solve some problem but those better geared will still have advantage. Just the way mmorpg works
The dancing in this game is top quality, I had a little bit of dance party happening over the weekend with everyone dancing in synch. It was magical.