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Destiny

Discuss all things Destiny.
Edited by NegativeZone856: 3/9/2015 5:33:29 PM
7

Class Differentiation

One thing that I feel could use some work in Destiny is how similar the player classes are to each other in terms of how they play. Whatever class you pick, well, your character's super and one or two of their other abilities will stand out, but otherwise you mostly just grab whatever primary weapon you like, pick special weapon and heavy weapon types that suit you (that the game will give you, anyway, why do you do this to me RNGesus) and.... Shoot dudes, clinging to a piece of cover. Occasionally throwing grenades at them, occasionally punching/stabbing/glowy blasting at them… I had some ideas for giving each class a more defined role. One of them would be making the Armor/Agility/Recovery stats matter more: having a lot of Armor doesn't make you suddenly able to tank abuse, you still have to rush behind cover the moment a sniper has shot you once; having maxed Agility doesn't do much more than making you eventually outdistance your friends if you all sprint for a minute, or jump marginally higher and farther so that you can screw around on pieces of level geometry in the Vault of Glass or at the Tower more easily; and more Recovery doesn't change anything noticeably- your shields generally recharge extremely fast once they do eventually start recharging, and making that part marginally faster is too little, too late. There isn’t really a noticeable difference from fiddling around with the various stat modifying abilities on your skill tree. Going from 1/3 of the Armor bar to 2/3 should really allow you something like sponging another sniper hit than you already could, or an extra burst of projectiles from a normal weapon; increased Agility should make you annoyingly speedy and difficult to hit, and give you more opportunities to attack from unexpected angles with much improved jumping; and better Recovery should make it so that ducking behind cover long enough to break up an opponent’s attempt to kill you should get you some of your shield back, due to a faster recharge which started sooner. With that change in place, each class’s primary attribute would have more meaning, making Titans pieces of mobile cover, Warlocks cockroach like in their ability to bounce back from abuse if not finished off, and Hunters much more difficult to pin down, getting to places other classes can’t or at least not as quickly. I have some other ideas, but they have some problems; namely, they need some work, and I feel like they might be changes only I think would be good things. Making those sliding bars on the level up screen actually mean something would be a significant step toward making classes more than an aesthetic decision in areas other than what super ability you get to occasionally use.

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  • Edited by NegativeZone856: 3/10/2015 6:32:10 PM
    I guess I might as well put my other ideas here, shaky as they are, since no one is ever going to look at this anyway. The big thing, in my mind, would be giving each subclass a role that their abilities strongly push the user toward: Striker Titans already have skills (Shoulder Charge, Headstrong, Unstoppable, Overload, Fist of Havoc itself even) that strongly suggest that you rush toward the enemy and smash them with melee attacks. You could make it so the Striker subclass secondarily focuses on Agility (though not as much as Armor) and make it so sprinting Strikers build up momentum, slowly gaining speed and making it harder for explosions to push them off course; this would then transfer into more damage on melee impact, possibly doing such things as making the Discharge modifier for Storm Fist have a larger blast radius the longer you were sprinting, shoving targets into walls with damaging force with Shoulder Charge, things like that. Maybe you could make it so that having more momentum cuts incoming damage by a percentage, so that using Fist of Havoc on bosses wasn’t suicidal, or even make Fist of Havoc backwash and push you away from bosses so you don’t get murdered by their instant kill melee attacks. You could add to all this a ramp up in close range damage, like the damage fall off over range but in reverse, so that the place you want to be as a Striker is definitely in the enemy’s face. Defenders, as things are in the game as is, can essentially do as well at rushing toward the enemy and punching them as Strikers, focusing on being more durable instead of doing more damage. The Armor of Light version of Ward of Dawn, (which no one uses, it seems) is actually exceptionally good for killing such durable targets as the Public Event assassination targets- you lure them into the purple bubble of doom and then punch them to death, laughing at their pitiful attempts to punch you back. I kind of feel like this isn’t what a “Defender” should do, maybe it could be made so that if you stay in the same area for a while, just up to five seconds, your Armor attribute (in a world where Armor meant something) would, at maximum, do 50% more than it would if you were sprinting around, and Recovery 25% more. That would be for actually standing in one spot and not moving, so that holding an objective area and running around it fighting enemies would give you something more like 30% more Armor and 15% more Recovery. Just so that you do your job better if that job is defending an area. You could also reduce the Agility Defenders get, and emphasize Recovery (again, in a world where these stats meant something) I’ve mostly played as the Titan, so my suggestions for the other classes are shakier. It seems to me, though, that the Warlock classes have some considerable overlap in what they do- they’re both about hurling bombs at people, Voidwalkers big ones and Sunsingers lots of small ones. You could make it so that Sunsingers have more of a medic role, seeing as the ability to self-resurrect is the ultimate medic ability anyway, and give them the ability to heal allies (Radiance super would give healing and build up overshield over time in a radius, grenades would heal allies in the blast radius). Then, as the Voidwalker’s version of team support, you could emphasize their area denial abilities- make vortexes left by grenades and Nova Bomb last longer and grow in size and power as they deal damage. My suggestions for Hunters are the most sparse. The only things I could think of were making it so that Gunslingers ignore damage fall off over distance when getting precision damage, maybe even do more damage the further away an enemy is for the throwing knife, and Bladedancers doing boosted damage when attacking a foe from behind, with a higher boost for melee attacks, and the radius that counts as "behind" increasing while you are invisible. Other than this, all I can come up with was something I mentioned earlier in passing- giving subclasses emphasis on one of the attributes other than what their overarching main class emphasizes. Titans get Armor, Warlocks Recovery, and Hunters Agility, primarily, and then you could make Striker Titans get more Agility as well as Bladedancers getting more Armor, Defenders getting some Recovery as well as Voidwalkers getting some Armor, Gunslingers getting Recovery and Sunsingers getting some Agility. Then each element would have an affinity, also- Void would be defense focused, giving Armor and Recovery, Arc would be focused on pummeling enemies in close quarters, providing Agility and Armor, and Solar would be focused on striking from afar or indirectly and otherwise leveraging advantages of mobility, with Recovery and Agility.

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