Destiny

Even though core gameplay was bad in Mass Effect, it was only till Mass Effect 2 when we realized that the first game was sloppy.

But when it was released, it wasn't nearly as bad as we remember. Personally, I never had a problem with the game until I replayed it a year ago. Compared to other games in the series, it's atrocious but at release, I don't remember it being like that.

My problems with Destiny (and most others) is what Backfire described and that's at launch and not 5 years from now. Hell, replay Gears of War and you will see a fair amount of problems with the graphics/framerate. Something I never notice when I first played it.

My other issue is that Newjak is pretending Destiny was made by a first time developer with kick starter money. It's not!.....it's Bungie with Activision backing! Hell, the Dead Space series has more thought into it than the entire Destiny series.

Originally posted by Newjak

I could also do the same thing for the Elder Scrolls series. Does anyone remember Morrowind. Remember how you were talking about NPCs making the world more alive in a richly populated world. Well Morrowind was a fun game but it was anything but richly populated. The NPCS were sparse the landscapes were bland and it too could get repetitive. Of course Oblivion was much better and Skyrim blew both of them out of the water but it definitely a one game iteration that got that project to Skyrim levels. I could also point out that the developers of the Elder Scrolls series didn't have to worry about balancing the game for online play or code for multiple users doing the same missions and interacting with the same places.

Why yes, I do remember Morrowind. I remember playing a highly customizable character who could choose between ten different races (compared to Destiny's three), twenty one different classes (compared to Destiny's three), the ability to customize a class, and with each class having a plethora of different abilities that you can use (but didn't bar you into only them), and a magic system that was highly versatile. I could literally fly across the continent, or brew up potions that let me jump over mountains.

"Anything but richly populated"? There are several cities or settlements and hundreds of NPCs. Not to mention, the enemies were far more varied and interesting than Destiny's.

Landscapes were bland? Au contraire my friend.

http://images.uesp.net/5/51/MW-place-Tel_Naga.jpg

The game may not benefit from fancy modern day graphics, but Morrowind to date has one of the most unique-looking and well-designed worlds in gaming. Oblivion's generic fantasy world was actually a step down, though Shivering Isles made up for the blandness of the base game's world. In fact, your certainty that TES has only progressed is disturbing. Oblivion was in many regards a step backwards, and even Skyim does not tout all of the features of Morrowind, though I believe it makes up for it in other ways.

Could it get repetitive? Maybe, but that didn't stop me from logging hundreds of hours into it. What was so dull to you?

See, I wouldn't just argue that most of the games you've mentioned Destiny as taking inspiration from are better at what they specialize in. They're better overall.

Even the first iterations, like Mass Effect 1. ME1 made up for somewhat lackluster gameplay with a kickass story, characters, setting, mission and enemy variety, and dare I say it variety of gameplay (having more classes and more things you can do right off the bat with those classes, I don't know if combat becomes more varied for the different classes later on, but I shouldn't have to wade through a sea of of mediocrity for a distant hill of greatness when there's mountains of good games I could be playing around me).

Destiny makes up for its dull setting, shallow characters, and repetitive enemies and missions with what is ultimately very polished but ultimately pretty damn standard First Person Shooting gameplay. Oh, and multiplayer, I guess.

Originally posted by BackFire
Interesting comparison between Mass Effect and Destiny. Very opposite problems in each game. Where as Destiny has very good core gameplay mechanics (shooting) and struggles with all the peripheral elements (story, loot mechanics, mission design, characters, world lore communication) Mass Effect had problematic and sloppy core gameplay and really shined with the peripheral elements - outstanding characters, narrative and a deep lore filled world.

Newjack, I don't really agree that the game is trying to do that many new things. It's essentially Phantasy Star Online in First Person mode and guns. The structure is very similar in regards to how you go to planets, and having a central hub, and being an MMO but not really an MMO.

You compare it to the first incarnation of a lot of games that were much more innovative than Destiny, the thing is most of those games came out several years ago, sometimes over a decade, where as Destiny has the benefit of coming out in 2014 with all sorts of other games that the developers could look to that had already done what they wanted to do. Vaguely blending elements that other games already do, and doing them worse than those other games, isn't really innovation. Let's look at WoW. That game was far more innovative upon its release, it immediately evolved the entire MMO genre simply by making it accessible, it basically created the quest structure that all MMO's use now. Destiny in its current form is more convoluted and confusing than WoW was upon its initial release. Also, just objectively speaking, WoW had much much more content than Destiny. There was simply more to do. And for its time the content was better when compared to what else was out at the time.

You mention people have unreasonable expectations, that would be fair if it weren't bungie's own fault for selling this game as some end all be all blend of the best of all these other genres. They said things like they think the story would stand with LotR's and Star Wars as one of the great creative universes, or something like that, which is of course absurd when you look at how little narrative and backstory there actually is in the game itself. It's really their own fault for facilitating such high expectations in the first place. They oversold it and then when it didn't deliver they acted like it's strange that people had these kind of expectations.

And I'm sure you're right, Destiny will get better as time goes on. It will evolve. In a year from now it may be a very very good game with all the stuff people want. That would be fine if people didn't have to spend money on DLC in order for it to get there.

And simply because you see what other games have done doesn't make them easy to duplicate. Also I would like to point Wow didn't have to deal with FPS mechanics or Call of Duty style gaming. In fact when you look at WoWs original combat system it wasn't more than clicking on an object and hitting buttons while you tried to gang bang a boss. WoW specifically focused on creating a big world and spent most of its development time on it.

Like I said I'm not trying to say Destiny is as good as those games are at what those games were specifically designed to do all I'm saying is that all the different game genres and mechanics they tried to blend all together are indeed a full game at launch.

Originally posted by Smasandian
Even though core gameplay was bad in Mass Effect, it was only till Mass Effect 2 when we realized that the first game was sloppy.

But when it was released, it wasn't nearly as bad as we remember. Personally, I never had a problem with the game until I replayed it a year ago. Compared to other games in the series, it's atrocious but at release, I don't remember it being like that.

My problems with Destiny (and most others) is what Backfire described and that's at launch and not 5 years from now. Hell, replay Gears of War and you will see a fair amount of problems with the graphics/framerate. Something I never notice when I first played it.

My other issue is that Newjak is pretending Destiny was made by a first time developer with kick starter money. It's not!.....it's Bungie with Activision backing! Hell, the Dead Space series has more thought into it than the entire Destiny series.

But you guys keep saying all this stuff should be easy yet I doubt any of you actually have any real large scale software develop experience much less game design experience. Bungie was trying to bring in elements from many different games a lot of those elements are things they have not had to deal with before. Speaking from personal experience it is not easy to work on new things while trying to blend a lot of stuff together. You have to make so many design decisions sometimes on the fly. This happens even if you have a veteran team of developers.

Once again I did not say Mass Effect was a bad game(I enjoyed playing it) just that it had many more flaws then people tend to remember. I would also like to point out that many people enjoy playing Destiny as well. I don't care if you like or hate the game. People acting like Destiny's individual game mechanics that they've tried to blend from other genres should be the top notch version of those respective mechanics at launch time is the thing that annoys me.

Originally posted by NemeBro
Why yes, I do remember Morrowind. I remember playing a highly customizable character who could choose between ten different races (compared to Destiny's three), twenty one different classes (compared to Destiny's three), the ability to customize a class, and with each class having a plethora of different abilities that you can use (but didn't bar you into only them), and a magic system that was highly versatile. I could literally fly across the continent, or brew up potions that let me jump over mountains.

"Anything but richly populated"? There are several cities or settlements and hundreds of NPCs. Not to mention, the enemies were far more varied and interesting than Destiny's.

Landscapes were bland? Au contraire my friend.

http://images.uesp.net/5/51/MW-place-Tel_Naga.jpg

The game may not benefit from fancy modern day graphics, but Morrowind to date has one of the most unique-looking and well-designed worlds in gaming. Oblivion's generic fantasy world was actually a step down, though Shivering Isles made up for the blandness of the base game's world. In fact, your certainty that TES has only progressed is disturbing. Oblivion was in many regards a step backwards, and even Skyim does not tout all of the features of Morrowind, though I believe it makes up for it in other ways.

Could it get repetitive? Maybe, but that didn't stop me from logging hundreds of hours into it. What was so dull to you?

See, I wouldn't just argue that most of the games you've mentioned Destiny as taking inspiration from are better at what they specialize in. They're better overall.

Even the first iterations, like Mass Effect 1. ME1 made up for somewhat lackluster gameplay with a kickass story, characters, setting, mission and enemy variety, and dare I say it variety of gameplay (having more classes and more things you can do right off the bat with those classes, I don't know if combat becomes more varied for the different classes later on, but I shouldn't have to wade through a sea of of mediocrity for a distant hill of greatness when there's mountains of good games I could be playing around me).

Destiny makes up for its dull setting, shallow characters, and repetitive enemies and missions with what is ultimately very polished but ultimately pretty damn standard First Person Shooting gameplay. Oh, and multiplayer, I guess.

Half the settlements were tiny and you could explore them almost fully in twenty minutes. The landscapes were bland because most of it was red dessert with some marshes and grasslands dotting the outside. Also I never said the game was dull. I also clocked many hours into it and I did enjoy it more than Oblivion. But Oblivion was larger with much more refined mechanics because you did not like the game setting does not change that.

Also Morrowind can offer more customization because when they were developing the game they had a lot less things they had to worry about unlike Destiny that had to deal with other players and balancing the game.

Originally posted by Newjak
I am not pretending Bungie is a first time developer! You guys need to stop acting like I am. Bungie is a good developer that has put out many quality games out there.

But you guys keep saying all this stuff should be easy yet I doubt any of you actually have any real large scale software develop experience much less game design experience. Bungie was trying to bring in elements from many different games a lot of those elements are things they have not had to deal with before. Speaking from personal experience it is not easy to work on new things while trying to blend a lot of stuff together. You have to make so many design decisions sometimes on the fly. This happens even if you have a veteran team of developers.

Once again I did not say Mass Effect was a bad game(I enjoyed playing it) just that it had many more flaws then people tend to remember. I would also like to point out that many people enjoy playing Destiny as well. I don't care if you like or hate the game. People acting like Destiny's individual game mechanics that they've tried to blend from other genres should be the top notch version of those respective mechanics at launch time is the thing that annoys me.

But Bungie isn't the first to do so. There are countless FPS MMO's out there and the funny thing is that Destiny isn't an MMO!

Hell, look at Borderlands. It has what Destiny offer aside from the hub world.

1. Shooter - both have it.
2. Loot drops - both have it.
3. RPG system - both have it.
4. Grind shit - both have it.
5. Online co-op - both have it.

I would even suggest a game like STALKER accomplished much more than Destiny ever had and it was done on a 10th of the budget in Ukraine.

I'm highly suspect that you have "large scale" development experience. I wonder how other teams can provide amazing, complete experiences from the start while blending other genres together. Destiny isn't the first game to do so.

Originally posted by Newjak
Most of the NPCS were a minute conversation and you could be done with them.

Well see now, Morrowind actually offered more extensive dialogue with NPCs than Oblivion or Skyrim, lol, especially Skyrim. In Morrowind you could influence how just about every NPC thought about you through the speechcraft skill. Not so with Skyrim.

Both games have more extensive NPC dialogue (barring guys like Peter Dinklage who are with you basically the whole game) than Destiny.

Half the settlements were tiny and you could explore them almost fully in twenty minutes.

The same is largely true of Oblivion and Skyrim.

It doesn't take much time to explore Falkreath.

Takes even less time to explore areas in Destiny. What is there to explore, after all?

The landscapes were bland because most of it was red dessert with some marshes and grasslands dotting the outside.

I'm not sure how to respond to this other than with "No", to be honest.

The alien, fungal lay of the land alone goes a long way toward rendering it unique, it also has a collection of islands on the eastern side of the map that you can explore. It even has underwater areas with some enemies, which Skyrim and Oblivion mostly lacked.

Also I never said the game was dull. I also clocked many hours into it and I did enjoy it more than Oblivion. But Oblivion was larger with much more refined mechanics because you did not like the game setting does not change that.

Yep, Oblivion sure was bigger I guess, but if size is really all that important then Daggerfall is bigger than Morrowind, Oblivion, and Skyrim combined.

It was relatively lacking in content though, even more than Oblivion.

"Refined mechanics"? The combat was definitely smoother (if technically lacking depth), but ultimately a lot was lost. The spells were less varied. There were less weapons. There were less armour slots, and equipment slots in general. Less factions as well.

There was just less, lol.

Also Morrowind can offer more customization because when they were developing the game they had a lot less things they had to worry about unlike Destiny that had to deal with other players and balancing the game.

Morrowind is over ten years old dude. With a substantially smaller budget and a smaller company that worked on it.

Originally posted by Newjak
It is doing a lot though. It is trying to be a FPS shooter mutliplayer online game mixed with MMO aspects with mixed RPG elements. Trying to blend them all together is not an easy task you guys acting like it is what annoys me more than anything.

And simply because you see what other games have done doesn't make them easy to duplicate. Also I would like to point Wow didn't have to deal with FPS mechanics or Call of Duty style gaming. In fact when you look at WoWs original combat system it wasn't more than clicking on an object and hitting buttons while you tried to gang bang a boss. WoW specifically focused on creating a big world and spent most of its development time on it.

Like I said I'm not trying to say Destiny is as good as those games are at what those games were specifically designed to do all I'm saying is that all the different game genres and mechanics they tried to blend all together are indeed a full game at launch.

I'm sure it's not easy, but other games have done similar things more effectively. Something being hard doesn't really excuse failure. Borderlands combines FPS and RPG much better than Destiny. I actually kinda reject the notion that Destiny is an MMO, it's not. Outside of the central hub there is never a time when you see more than maybe 6 other players at a time out in the world. Most of the time you are by yourself. Every now and then you encounter someone running by out in the world, but it does little to make the world feel alive. Planetside 2 is a true MMO/FPS hybrid. Destiny is essentially Borderlands but you may occasionally encounter another player out in the world, but without the quality storytelling/loot system/characters/world that Borderlands has.

Yes, WoW didn't have to deal with FPS mechanics. But that is Bungie's strength, that shouldn't be very difficult for them. Also, the counter point there goes to my previous point - Bungie really didn't have to deal with actual MMO aspects like WoW, since it's not an MMO. Destiny also didn't innovate in any way. While WoW did.

You mention that WoW spent most of its development time making a big world - fair enough. But that's what an RPG game should spend time on. It raises the question - what exactly did Bungie spend most of their time on? Building the world? Nope. The world is bare bones and little more than bland levels in which you shoot things. No sense of place, no visual storytelling. There's very little in the world that is interesting or that implies a sense of history. They certainly didn't spend their time on narrative. Did they spend most of their time on making the shooting good? Making the raid that a fraction of the player base will ever see because of their pig headedness of refusing to implement a group finder for the raid? Maybe making the online infrastructure for the game, which would make sense since the game has been impressively stable for the most part. I just wonder what they spent 4-5 years doing. Because besides the gunplay, which shouldn't take that long, nothing in the game really shines.

I guess Destiny is technically a full game. There are missions and it looks nice, and it technically has an ending of some kind. But is it a fun, well made game? Should people have to pay more money in order for the game to be as good as it should have been at launch? That's the crux, I think. They are offering very little additional content without relying on paid DLC. This is problematic for them in particular because of people's negative reaction to this game. They are unhappy with it as it currently is, even though they already paid for it. And so Bungie is essentially saying "Well, we'll make it better, but give us more money first." They should release more content for free. Otherwise it won't matter how good the game is in 2 years, no one will be playing it because for someone to be able to enjoy the higher quality version of the game they will have to pay another 60-100 dollars. There are ways around this, and I'll be interested to see what Bungie does to keep people playing besides releasing a new raid and a couple of new dungeons every 4 months for $20. They could do what WoW recently did, when a new expansion comes out, all the previous content from earlier expansion becomes essentially free if you buy the core game. That way the people who are really into the game can pay to play the new content as soon as it comes out, but those who aren't willing to do that can still at some point experience the new content and keep themselves somewhat interested in the game, and if the new content seems good they can purchase it without feeling like they're too far behind because they haven't bought the last 3 expansions and don't want to spend another $60 to play the new content.

To be honest, if anything Destiny's gameplay model is simpler than World of Warcraft's, and as such is far easier to balance.

The three classes don't have nearly as many intrinsic differences as, say, a priest and a warrior do in WoW.

Originally posted by Smasandian
But Bungie isn't the first to do so. There are countless FPS MMO's out there and the funny thing is that Destiny isn't an MMO!

Hell, look at Borderlands. It has what Destiny offer aside from the hub world.

1. Shooter - both have it.
2. Loot drops - both have it.
3. RPG system - both have it.
4. Grind shit - both have it.
5. Online co-op - both have it.

I would even suggest a game like STALKER accomplished much more than Destiny ever had and it was done on a 10th of the budget in Ukraine.

I'm highly suspect that you have "large scale" development experience. I wonder how other teams can provide amazing, complete experiences from the start while blending other genres together. Destiny isn't the first game to do so.

As for you being suspect of my experience if you have a LinkedIn account message me I will give the link to my profile. You can look me up and we can compare. You'll notice that my experience is working on a development team as a consultant for a fortune 100 company, as well as a business that has multiple government contracts in the educational sector spread among multiple states.

Originally posted by NemeBro
To be honest, if anything Destiny's gameplay model is simpler than World of Warcraft's, and as such is far easier to balance.

The three classes don't have nearly as many intrinsic differences as, say, a priest and a warrior do in WoW.

I mean yeah now after so many years and patches and upgrades and expansions they may have more balance but there are definitely classes that were much more OP then others depending on the version. Why was this? Because initially competitive multiplayer was not a main factor for the developers of WoW and thus balancing the classes has never been a priority for them until there were complaints.

Originally posted by BackFire
I'm sure it's not easy, but other games have done similar things more effectively. Something being hard doesn't really excuse failure. Borderlands combines FPS and RPG much better than Destiny. I actually kinda reject the notion that Destiny is an MMO, it's not. Outside of the central hub there is never a time when you see more than maybe 6 other players at a time out in the world. Most of the time you are by yourself. Every now and then you encounter someone running by out in the world, but it does little to make the world feel alive. Planetside 2 is a true MMO/FPS hybrid. Destiny is essentially Borderlands but you may occasionally encounter another player out in the world, but without the quality storytelling/loot system/characters/world that Borderlands has.

Yes, WoW didn't have to deal with FPS mechanics. But that is Bungie's strength, that shouldn't be very difficult for them. Also, the counter point there goes to my previous point - Bungie really didn't have to deal with actual MMO aspects like WoW, since it's not an MMO. Destiny also didn't innovate in any way. While WoW did.

You mention that WoW spent most of its development time making a big world - fair enough. But that's what an RPG game should spend time on. It raises the question - what exactly did Bungie spend most of their time on? Building the world? Nope. The world is bare bones and little more than bland levels in which you shoot things. No sense of place, no visual storytelling. There's very little in the world that is interesting or that implies a sense of history. They certainly didn't spend their time on narrative. Did they spend most of their time on making the shooting good? Making the raid that a fraction of the player base will ever see because of their pig headedness of refusing to implement a group finder for the raid? Maybe making the online infrastructure for the game, which would make sense since the game has been impressively stable for the most part. I just wonder what they spent 4-5 years doing. Because besides the gunplay, which shouldn't take that long, nothing in the game really shines.

I guess Destiny is technically a full game. There are missions and it looks nice, and it technically has an ending of some kind. But is it a fun, well made game? Should people have to pay more money in order for the game to be as good as it should have been at launch? That's the crux, I think. They are offering very little additional content without relying on paid DLC. This is problematic for them in particular because of people's negative reaction to this game. They are unhappy with it as it currently is, even though they already paid for it. And so Bungie is essentially saying "Well, we'll make it better, but give us more money first." They should release more content for free. Otherwise it won't matter how good the game is in 2 years, no one will be playing it because for someone to be able to enjoy the higher quality version of the game they will have to pay another 60-100 dollars. There are ways around this, and I'll be interested to see what Bungie does to keep people playing besides releasing a new raid and a couple of new dungeons every 4 months for $20. They could do what WoW recently did, when a new expansion comes out, all the previous content from earlier expansion becomes essentially free if you buy the core game. That way the people who are really into the game can pay to play the new content as soon as it comes out, but those who aren't willing to do that can still at some point experience the new content and keep themselves somewhat interested in the game, and if the new content seems good they can purchase it without feeling like they're too far behind because they haven't bought the last 3 expansions and don't want to spend another $60 to play the new content.

Yet one of your arguments is that Bungie should not have a hard time with the FPS portion of this game because they've done it so many times before.

The thing is agree with you. FPS is something that Bungie does really well. And what is one of the great things Destiny does have? Awesome FPS gameplay mechanics. While Destiny may not be a MMO on the scale of WoW Bungie definitely has included many aspects of a MMO in their game. Which is something they are not used to. Nor is the leveling system, or loot drops. All things they have had to do. I would also like to point out that Borderlands the game you keep saying Destiny is a clone of also doesn't have a multiplayer competitive online element.

I keep trying to tell you guys Destiny does pack a lot of different Genres more so than any game mentioned here. Yes even Borderlands, Mass Effect, WoW, or Elder Scrolls

Originally posted by Newjak
A few key points. Borderlands initial RNG system wasn't exactly amazing, Borderlands doesn't have the same online Multiplayer competitive element Destiny has, and Destiny has gotten much better about having to grind for stuff and that is even without the DLC along with loot drops after doing weekly/nightfall strikes. That is just coming from patches and not DLC minus the weekly and nightfall stuff which did come with the DLC.

As for you being suspect of my experience if you have a LinkedIn account message me I will give the link to my profile. You can look me up and we can compare. You'll notice that my experience is working on a development team as a consultant for a fortune 100 company, as well as a business that has multiple government contracts in the educational sector spread among multiple states.

You mean a fortune 500 company right?

You might be a developer but it doesn't ****ing matter. Multiple other games have just as many issues to deal with than Bungie did with Destiny. Look at all the other MMO's out that merge different genres together....

This isn't about fixing the systems that are in place. It's about the shitty story, the lack of quality missions, the lack of quality content, the dead world and everything else that involves anything but the core gameplay.

Games can have broken systems when released (which they shouldn't....)but the idea that it's a "evolutionary" process is ****ing garbage. Why should Destiny get a freebie when other developing firms don't. How would it be if Dead Space was released and you only got one monster in one section in the game and then say "well, other parts will be released for a price!, it's a process..." People would flip.

Originally posted by Smasandian
You mean a fortune 500 company right?

You might be a developer but it doesn't ****ing matter. Multiple other games have just as many issues to deal with than Bungie did with Destiny. Look at all the other MMO's out that merge different genres together....

This isn't about fixing the systems that are in place. It's about the shitty story, the lack of quality missions, the lack of quality content, the dead world and everything else that involves anything but the core gameplay.

Games can have broken systems when released (which they shouldn't....)but the idea that it's a "evolutionary" process is ****ing garbage. Why should Destiny get a freebie when other developing firms don't. How would it be if Dead Space was released and you only got one monster in one section in the game and then say "well, other parts will be released for a price!, it's a process..." People would flip.

As in they are in the top 100 on the fortune 500.

No most other games are not trying to blend as many elements as what Destiny was doing or games like Borderlands, Mass Effect, Call of Duty, GTA, Fallout, Elder Scrolls limit the scope of what they are trying to do. That's why Elder Scrolls has never had a multiplayer element even though it is often cited as the most desired feature for the game. It's also why Borderlands does not have an online competitive multiplayer element. That's why Call of Duty often has a short story mode and not open world environments but the meat of the game is its Multiplayer element so they don't care about those things. GTA has only recently tried to add Multiplayer to its games after refining their core gameplay mechanics for 4-5 games.

Dead Space is a linear FPS story game that doesn't even began to have a lot of the mechanics Bungie had to integrate into Destiny. Same with Bioshock.

I will continue to say Bungie had to deal with more design decisions than other companies yet you guys are continuing to act like it should be easy to build.

I also repeat you guys have legitimate grips with stuff but once again pretending that Bungie did not have a lot on their plate while designing this game shows a lack knowledge in the field of development.

I will give you an example of a design decision Bungie has to deal with that Borderlands/Elder Scrolls doesn't.

For instance when designing a new class for the game Bungie not only has to try and make it varied enough to be different but they also have to balance for online competitive play so that people who want to play other classes competitively don't get destroyed by a new class. So they have to spend excess development hours balancing that class to make it viable in online competitive scenario.

I could also point out that unlike Mass Effect Bungie has had to code this game to handle multiple players across multiplier servers they have to run. Which means they have to run performance tests and write code to handle network connection issues.

They also wanted to add a balanced leveling mechanic something Bungie has never had before. So they had to start from scratch and because it has to balanced unlike Borderlands that only has to make classes playable that leveling has to make sure one class doesn't completely outstrip another at certain levels of gameplay.

Now once again I'm not trying to make excuses for them. They need to serious update some parts of this game. The story, the npcs, filling in the world.

Heck they could have even delayed the game three months and gotten some more content added in but even then everything would still have been pretty crude.

Honestly at some point they needed to get the game released to recup cost, and also get feedback so they could start to improve the game and find out what they did wrong.

Anyone expecting this game to have the story telling of Bioshock, living world of Mass Effect/ Elder Scrolls, and the Multiplayer balance of Call of Duty/Halo needs to understand that is a tall order for any company especially when a lot of the elements are new to the developer designing the game.

Originally posted by Newjak
A few key points. Borderlands initial RNG system wasn't exactly amazing, Borderlands doesn't have the same online Multiplayer competitive element Destiny has, and Destiny has gotten much better about having to grind for stuff and that is even without the DLC along with loot drops after doing weekly/nightfall strikes. That is just coming from patches and not DLC minus the weekly and nightfall stuff which did come with the DLC.

It is really bad when I think the loot system in the Borderlands franchise is much better than any game (because I loathe it). But you know what? The loot system in that game is >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

>>>>>>>>>

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

???

>>>>>>>>>>>>

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>Destiny's loot system.

My tantrums regarding Borderland's loot system can be found in this very subforum. 😄

Originally posted by Newjak
As for you being suspect of my experience if you have a LinkedIn account message me I will give the link to my profile. You can look me up and we can compare. You'll notice that my experience is working on a development team as a consultant for a fortune 100 company, as well as a business that has multiple government contracts in the educational sector spread among multiple states.

It's okay: I partially agree with you about the SD part of the game but still disagree with your overall, fundamental point. Your boss's boss would be one of my employees. Do I win the dick measuring contest? I never win those. 🙁

Originally posted by Newjak
Heck they could have even delayed the game three months and gotten some more content added in but even then everything would still have been pretty crude.

Hmm. Maybe...but that's not really enough time to add much to the game. You'd need closer to 1 year to fix a decent portion of the holes. But some of those holes needed to be fixed long before it made it to any sort of development phase. Even if they were using an agile approach (most big shops use a blended approach), 3 months is not even close to being enough to fixing the fundamental problems with the game.

Originally posted by Newjak
Anyone expecting this game to have the story telling of Bioshock, living world of Mass Effect/ Elder Scrolls, and the Multiplayer balance of Call of Duty/Halo needs to understand that is a tall order for any company especially when a lot of the elements are new to the developer designing the game.

I don't think so. It should be fairly easy since those games already exist. We are not jumping from Pong to Skyrim. Fallout: New Vegas, though flawed, seems to be better in every single one of the places that Destiny is not but it was released in 2010. I was expecting a more polished hybrid between New Vegas and Borderlands 2 with a hint of Mass Effect. That is not an unreasonable expectation considering the budget, timeline, marketing, and legacy of what Bungie has given us, before.

Let's not forget that Bungie already had an amazing online multiplayer solution. They didn't need to do much to churn one out (I don't like it, by the way). They also are part of Activision: Activision, despite what the bitches will say, literally puts out the best overall online FPS experience. The multiplayer stuff is almost inconsequential to our points and irrelevant to yours: it would have happened in a decent manner regardless of who was at the helm. The issues are everything else I mentioned. 🙂

Originally posted by Newjak
You do realize WoW, especially initially ,has never had balanced classes in competitive multiplayer right?

I mean yeah now after so many years and patches and upgrades and expansions they may have more balance but there are definitely classes that were much more OP then others depending on the version. Why was this? Because initially competitive multiplayer was not a main factor for the developers of WoW and thus balancing the classes has never been a priority for them until there were complaints.

Destiny is more balanced, sure, but that owes more to the three classes being frankly not all that different IMHO.

Originally posted by Newjak
So I would just like to point out that you have disagreed with me so many times about evolutionary design in a game developer like Bungie.

Yet one of your arguments is that Bungie should not have a hard time with the FPS portion of this game because they've done it so many times before.

The thing is agree with you. FPS is something that Bungie does really well. And what is one of the great things Destiny does have? Awesome FPS gameplay mechanics. While Destiny may not be a MMO on the scale of WoW Bungie definitely has included many aspects of a MMO in their game. Which is something they are not used to. Nor is the leveling system, or loot drops. All things they have had to do. I would also like to point out that Borderlands the game you keep saying Destiny is a clone of also doesn't have a multiplayer competitive online element.

I keep trying to tell you guys Destiny does pack a lot of different Genres more so than any game mentioned here. Yes even Borderlands, Mass Effect, WoW, or Elder Scrolls

I guess I reject the notion of evolutionary design in this case because it feels like an attempt to excuse their initial failure of making this game as good as it should have been. Doubly so because people have to continue to pay $20 every few months to enjoy that evolutionary design. If this new, better content was free then it would be less of a problem. As it is, it's little more than Bungie putting out a mediocre product with a bunch of issues and saying "Sorry, we'll make it better, just give us more money."

I honestly think though that a lot of this simply stems from Bungie being an extremely overrated studio. And their strength (gunplay, AI, competitive multiplayer) aren't aspects that translate very well to a RPG style game. They've never been good at creating lived in areas to explore. And so it makes sense that Destiny's worlds feel like little more than places where you shoot things, because that's what ALL of Bungie's game worlds have felt like. I think their ambitions with Destiny simply overmatched their talent as a studio.

Originally posted by dadudemon
It is really bad when I think the loot system in the Borderlands franchise is much better than any game (because I loathe it). But you know what? The loot system in that game is >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

>>>>>>>>>

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

???

>>>>>>>>>>>>

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>Destiny's loot system.

My tantrums regarding Borderland's loot system can be found in this very subforum. 😄

It's okay: I partially agree with you about the SD part of the game but still disagree with your overall, fundamental point. Your boss's boss would be one of my employees. Do I win the dick measuring contest? I never win those. 🙁

Hmm. Maybe...but that's not really enough time to add much to the game. You'd need closer to 1 year to fix a decent portion of the holes. But some of those holes needed to be fixed long before it made it to any sort of development phase. Even if they were using an agile approach (most big shops use a blended approach), 3 months is not even close to being enough to fixing the fundamental problems with the game.

I don't think so. It should be fairly easy since those games already exist. We are not jumping from Pong to Skyrim. Fallout: New Vegas, though flawed, seems to be better in every single one of the places that Destiny is not but it was released in 2010. I was expecting a more polished hybrid between New Vegas and Borderlands 2 with a hint of Mass Effect. That is not an unreasonable expectation considering the budget, timeline, marketing, and legacy of what Bungie has given us, before.

Let's not forget that Bungie already had an amazing online multiplayer solution. They didn't need to do much to churn one out (I don't like it, by the way). They also are part of Activision: Activision, despite what the bitches will say, literally puts out the best overall online FPS experience. The multiplayer stuff is almost inconsequential to our points and irrelevant to yours: it would have happened in a decent manner regardless of who was at the helm. The issues are everything else I mentioned. 🙂

Originally posted by BackFire
I guess I reject the notion of evolutionary design in this case because it feels like an attempt to excuse their initial failure of making this game as good as it should have been. Doubly so because people have to continue to pay $20 every few months to enjoy that evolutionary design. If this new, better content was free then it would be less of a problem. As it is, it's little more than Bungie putting out a mediocre product with a bunch of issues and saying "Sorry, we'll make it better, just give us more money."

I honestly think though that a lot of this simply stems from Bungie being an extremely overrated studio. And their strength (gunplay, AI, competitive multiplayer) aren't aspects that translate very well to a RPG style game. They've never been good at creating lived in areas to explore. And so it makes sense that Destiny's worlds feel like little more than places where you shoot things, because that's what ALL of Bungie's game worlds have felt like. I think their ambitions with Destiny simply overmatched their talent as a studio.

I would agree. After replaying the first three Halo's, that's a perfect write up about their talents. They employ some of the worst level design team in the industry....