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#feedback

Edited by MrJDR: 7/21/2015 8:00:16 PM
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MrJDR

3 Ways Destiny could be 10x better Today

Let me start by saying Destiny is a great game built by a group of incredibly talented people. Unfortunately, in an attempt to do something new, they frustrated or completely neglected some core aspects that make people want to play a game. My hopes is for this to reach a Dev that can consider these as ways to improve Destiny greatly, without really having to re-balance weapons or come up with new economies. This is by all means isn’t a trolling or a sob story, but a fan wanting to improve the game. The 3 ways Destiny could be 10x better today are addressing [b]The Endgame, Immersion and Ownership, and the Risk:Reward Balance[/b]. [b]Rebuilding The Endgame: The End of the Beginning, not the Beginning of the End[/b] [i]Use the same stones, build a different castle.[/i] [b]Currently Destiny:[/b] Has an unresolved Story that feels piecemeal and leaves us with more questions than answers. Updates roughly every 3 months with a few hours of content leave Destiny feeling stale and repetitive instead of living and growing. Initial content was small, DLC adds small chunks of story content. Requires a lot of repetitive and predictable play. Has activities that are repetitive with a low chance of worthy rewards. [b]My suggested solutions:[/b] Make the endgame our graduation to the frontlines of the fight Bioware (I hate to bring another developer up as an example, but its a good point), does an amazing job immersing you into a world and teaching you how to play the game. Do you remember the Spectre Induction scene in Mass Effect? Or even, after waking up in the village and becoming the Herald of Andraste in Dragon Age Inquisition? Each time, you were thrown into action at the infancy of the game, shown the basics, and then recognized as a bad ass before being given license to be a force to be reckoned with. In Destiny, the game ended when it seemed like you were finally going to get that recognition and license. The world should give players feedback. Recognize that our Endgame efforts are in fact progressing the fight against the Darkness. Maybe a weekly/monthly community goal or some other kind of measurement of narrative-related progress. We love when our effort matter. Show us beating Crota's end 5 times on Hard matters. Progressive Meta. The world and the way you interact with it should progress with you in definitive ways. Not just regarding enemies in an area, but also in its challenges and the solutions to meet those challenges. This is where Destiny’s metagame comes in. Many people don’t even know that enemy shields are vulnerable to the burn it matches. Make us creatively have to use meta in new ways. This also will discourage cheesing. If you give us creative ways to meet challenges we won’t depend on shortcuts, Thorns, and Gallies. More narrative-related events, more frequently (not repeats). Maybe a calendar of events that fit into the narrative other than Iron Banner and Queen's Wrath (obsolete now that you can trevel to The Reef), that happens every few weeks. i.e. “This week the fallen siege the city!” and it could be a open map horde mode (Similar to the war in Sky Watch). Then the second week, the fighting intensifies to Hard mode. This might work similar to ESO’s Cyrodil campaigns. Just an idea that will keep the world fresh every week and immerse us in the world. PoE does this well. If there were more bosses to cycle and not given to us all at once to beat in one pass (not as microtransactions), PoE would have been perfect for this. [b]Immersion and Ownership: Increase our equity the world[/b] [i]Keep it fresh and keep it coming.[/i] Some of the greatest games of our time, Halo, Mass Effect, Gears of War, The Elder Scrolls, have all mastered a key element of game design…and that’s Immersion. Bungie may not want to call Destiny an MMO, but there is no reason why I can’t be immersed in a "Shared-World Shooter". Balancing and re-balancing a game isn’t the key to solving people’s gripes with Destiny. There is always going to be people who aren’t happy with the damage of a gun (especially when at the wrong end of one). I'm not saying balance isn’t important, it certainly is, but when someone is immersed into a world, a multitude of errors will be forgiven. Why? Because players will be invested, not just with time, or money, but with their minds. Players want to dedicate themselves to the characters, to the lore, and to the world. [b] Currently Destiny:[/b] Has distracting Mobile Elements. I'm required to stop playing the game (remove myself from the world) to meet the games challenges and answer questions. (i.e. find fireteam members and find out about the world in an app that isn’t apart of the world.) Makes finding public events a chore unless you have a 3rd party app. Doesn’t make you feel as if the only thing standing in between humans and total annihilation is you (and your friends/fireteam). Puts players in Big tower and city, but I’m stuck on the roof Has no evidence of life felt/seen outside of the tower. The filler humans in the tower are basically invisible to players, we ignore them, so what are we guarding? You never really feel like you're guarding anything. You feel more like a hermit who likes to shoot stuff and fight monsters. Doesn’t feel like you're a legend or even on your way to becoming one. The closing cut scene had potential, but even though the Speaker said it was a day for ceremony, we never saw it, nor have evidence that we were being celebrated. A player should definitively believe they are a Guardian living on a post-human dominated world who is a (Human, Awoken, Exo/Hunter, Titan, Warlock) through everything they do. Make me feel as if I am fighting to take back worlds while facing extinction, instead of casually completing task given by characters whom I know so little about. At times, missions and bounties in Destiny feel as if they are items the quest giver forgot to pick up at grocery store. [b]My suggested solutions:[/b] Recognize players as a legend/or the start of one through the world and through self image (being addressed as "Guardian" is not enough). Jie’s Law (a personal life discovery of mine) - Humans want to be acknowledged and then understood first and foremost. Have class-themed social spaces/activities (i.e. Hunter - precision and stealth, Titan - heavy weapons and defense, Warlock - energies of the void). I should feel like apart of my character class. Each class is unique and should be proud in their own way. I know the Taken King has class-specific emotes, but at the end of the day, you'll have to pay for it and just simply aren't enough. See more humans living life, getting news/evidence of life in the big city below (possible Social Media Integration opportunity). Use that huge globe in the back of the tower to ping Public Events! Its just begging to be used for that purpose! Add a Fast in-game partying system. I thought up a "high five” system. Player raises a signal (raised hand/Ghost etc) that they want to party. Player acknowledges signal (slaps hand/Ghost-to-Ghost translation etc) and then the game does the busy work. Minimize menus and non-immersive busy work. Allow us to be functionally social with useful in-game actions that are...social. It just works. Make the Ghost useful. Why isn’t my smartphone a ghost/my ghost like my smartphone? It is a technical assistant. Why doesn’t my ghost use the key’s ether signal to track the chest? (more on that later) Why isn’t Twitter/Facebook/messaging integrated into the game? Its been done before (have you tried GTA V’s iFruit app, or even the in-game mobile phone?). Allow me to be social with more than emotes and a 30-second jukebox song. Enable showing off "my legend"/place for trophies/weapons owned before. Maybe Fable-style or something people can page to when inspecting my character. More unique weapons, less re-skins. Players want to show off something unique, not just a recoloring of a base model weapon. Exotics have this right, but there are many more weapons that are worthy of display as well. [b]Risk:Reward Balance - Risk = Reward, not Risk might get you a Reward[/b] [i]Its Game Design 101.[/i] Destiny is a game all about loot. Even after you beat the top challenges in the game, unless repeatedly played a high number of times, it is by chance you will be justly rewarded for your effort. After a 5-hour PoE Session other than E.Light and a core, I got a weapon I had already. Did a House of Wolves bounty, defeated it, 1.5 minute to run around looking for a chest you might miss even though you took the challenge and bested it. Did VoG on hard….only got ascendant Materials and Chatterwhite. I’m not trying to whine, but the biggest opportunity Destiny has is not so much in what drops, or how strong/weak it is, but that we get a reward worthy of our fight. There should never be a moment where you have fought hard, won, and got meager loot. Limit Cap reached. Please see [url=http://https://www.reddit.com/r/DestinyTheGame/comments/3dwc63/3_ways_destiny_could_be_10x_better_today/]link[/url] for final points.

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