O) Menu Systems: 1) So maps… Just let us bring it up both in orbit and on the ground. Actually, the one I saw during Restoration, that map was actually useful, if visually bland. Could you combine the two? The functionality of that map with the visual aesthetic of the orbital map. 2) Can you make the main game menu pause the game? I don’t like being killed while I’m trying to look at my gear or change the look sensitivity… 3) The game should also pause when your controller dies. P) Game Options: 1) The screen size controls don’t make a difference; the screen was still too wide. Q) Controls: 1) Maybe press a button while the ghost is out to bring the map up? 2) Weapon switch idea: When heavy is out, press Y to pull out primary, hold Y to pull out special. That way you can switch between any two weapons. 3) The overall controls/movement feels very “floaty.” Not sure if this is a bad thing… 4) You should be able to hold A and use your special jump when jumping off a vehicle. 5) Aiming your weapon while in mid-air is really hard and terribly inaccurate. This might be on purpose but if so it’s over done. R) Bungie.net 1) Can we have a map? Please! Also, we should be able to access it from Bungie.net. 2) My character Avatar wasn’t working on Bungie.net. It may be due to an older OS/browser… 3) From Bungie.net you should be able to not only to equip weapons but also change their abilities, move things from/to your vault, etc. S) Technical Difficulties: 1) Between areas of the map (like in the winding riverbed between Forgotten Shores and the Mothyards, I encountered dead-stop loading screens (with the spinning “C”s icon in the corner). I hope these are a bug! Rather annoying/flow breaking… 2) Character Avatar not working on Bungie.net. May be due to older OS/browser. 3) Vendors (the shipwright and cryptarch in my case) sometimes didn’t display their entire inventory, or showed a blank screen when I went to talk to them. 4) I switched ships in orbit, but no ship displayed when entering atmosphere. 5) It seems that (at least in Crucible) there is a noticeable damage delay, that is, between when a shot seems to hit and when the damage from that shot is applied. Often I found myself dodging behind a corner thinking myself safe from incoming fire only to drop dead a second after I was clearly in cover. I found this to be very annoying. T) Other/MISC: 1) Why is the base movement speed so slow?! Sometimes it feels like I’m walking through jelly… 2) Could there be a manual flashlight control? Maybe whenever your pull out your ghost? And thank goodness you made the flashlight stay on permanently. 300+ years in the future and we’ve finally managed to make flashlights that stay on. Go technology! U) General/Questions/Far Future Content: 1) Will there be any missions into the Last City itself? Walk the streets, see the people, keep the peace, that kind of thing? Early screenshots showed the streets of the City, the everyday life of the common citizenry, but recently all we’ve seen is the Guardians and the Tower. As the hub of gameplay, a place to meet, hang out, buy gear, and turn in items for prizes, the Tower is perfect. Just what I’d imagined. But I’d like for the City itself to be more than just window dressing; a few missions into the City proper, a journey to the Wall to defend it from enemies that are assailing it, that’s be really nice to see. 2) So you do have plans to do ship-to-ship combat sometime in the future? Right Bungie?? I feel like Reach was the test run for a lot of the features in Destiny, so naturally when you say we can fly our own space ships I have to ask, “how high?” Using Long Night of Solace as a model (the Anchor 9 section and the Corvette section), I figure there are three places where spaceship flying would fit into Destiny. a. The Reef/Orbit. You’ve shown us an area where player-controlled flight would be a blast, namely the Reef. Fly around, taking out enemy ships or static defenses, then come in for a landing to explore the interior spaces. This could also work for various space stations in orbit around planets, e.g. on the Gas Giants? b. Capital ship takedowns. Like in Reach, this would be a mission (story, strike, public event etc.) to attack an enemy ship (e.g. a Fallen Ketch?). Take out the supporting fighters etc., board the vessel, fight your way to the objective, and get the heck out of there! c. Crucible; starship edition. This wasn’t in Reach, but it would be awesome nonetheless. Give us a space map with lot of cover etc. and let the fireworks fly. So naturally, this would make ship upgrades, shields, weapons, speed, etc. yet another way to specialize and customize our characters. Maybe in the next installment? 3) Wildlife. The spaces you’ve created are populated by many enemies, but all are ascribed to some faction, some greater force. In a true open-world game however, there are also creatures of the land itself, strange herbivores that munch on strange alien plants, strange predators that prey on these creatures. When I first saw the Gúta in Reach, it made my heart leap! (In more ways than one…) This is what Destiny needs; creatures like the moa or the Gúta, native to their planet/moon, some friendly and apt to flee, some frightful and fierce. Some could even be guarding loot chests… 4) So, puzzles. It’s been said that Raids will have gameplay “unlike what we’ve come to expect from an FPS”, and I certainly hope that’s true. Whether these come as puzzle-platforming exercises for the insanely coordinated or more typical puzzles in the RPG sense I don’t know, but both would be nice to see. As for other games modes though, I feel like simpler, shorter puzzles might go long way to making these modes more enjoyable. I’m not necessarily asking for minigames à la Bioshock’s hacking (though that’s one way to go), but something to do while on a story mission or strike that’s more involved in what’s going on with the story, rather than having the ghost take care of the actual story part and leave the player to mop up some more alien combatants. 5) The most apparent thing I got from the Beta was that you guys weren’t kidding when you said Destiny was about shooting aliens in the face. But I wonder, is that all Density is? As the core gameplay mechanic, it’s fine. It’s great in fact. Rarely has bombarding alien craniums with various forms of bullets been so instantly fun. But after awhile even the most enjoyable thing gets old, and I fear that Destiny, exciting as it certainly will be at first, won’t age well if all we have to do is headshot another few thousand Fallen Dregs. So my question stands, can Destiny rise above just “shoot the alien in the face?” 6) So at some point we’ll be able to visit the moons of the gas giants, but not actually land on the planets themselves, right? Because no amount of terraforming (even by a magical, all-powerful alien deity, the game writers, ahem!) could make the gas giants habitable… Suspension of disbelief only goes so far and you’re already pushing mine by saying Mercury became a “garden world.” Perhaps underground gardens, maybe… 7) So far, Destiny looks like a good open-world game. But a great one, it’s kind of hard to say… I think someone mentioned Destiny would be a “living, breathing world.” Here’s how I interpreted that: a. World. A world is big. Bigger than a level, bigger than a single place, or a single local. A world has multiple locations in it, each varied in terms of aesthetics, foes, and adventures to be had. Destiny seems to have this part down, even if the actual locations seem a bit small. b. Breathing. A breathing world is one that moves in circles, that has cycles in it that change how the game looks and plays. A day/night cycle is a good place to start, and I like its incorporation into Crucible. But it’s not enough. A truly breathing world has many cycles; creature that rove around and run from the player, other beasts/foes that prey on these creatures, or might attack the player, events that occur every now and again. And these cycles have to overlap, that is, certain events happen at certain times or on certain days, some creatures/enemies appear in different places or do different things depending on the time of day. Cycles. Not scripted event, but patterns of chance, that occur when two cycles overlap. c. Living. A living, world is one that changes over time. I don’t mean like above, things that change in a circle, different now but eventually returning to the same state as before. I mean linear change, without repetition. If an outpost falls to an enemy attack, then it might stay that way until it is retaken, and the enemy is driven from it. A character might die, never to return again, though his/her legacy might indeed live on. This is the hardest part, to make a world where things change permanently, but this is also the most ambitious part, the part that, to my knowledge, has never truly been done before. This is how I imagine a “Living, Breathing World,” and I think that of any game developer, Bungie has to best chance of making this a reality one day. 8) And finally, my most important question. Will there be “Dragons” in Destiny? Here’s why I ask: Destiny’s genre is “mythic sci-fi,” that is, one part sci-fi shooter to one part fantasy RPG, right? To me that means, for every bold space explorer or brave space marine there’s a gallivanting sell-sword or a noble knight of the realm. For every futuristic city in the shadow of an alien artifact, there’s a castle with soring walls and hallowed halls. For every pack of time-traveling robots there’s a mob of sneaky, greedy goblins. For every alien overlord controlling a swarm of mindless drones, there’s an ancient necromancer raising an army of the dead and flinging bolts of magic! My point is; destiny is as much a fantasy game as it is a sci-fi one. And what fantasy game would be complete without a few areas of the map marked, “here there be dragons”?