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originally posted in: The Dark Below
10/30/2014 12:56:27 AM
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Dear Bungie, Destiny simply isn't what I expected. I've had great respect for the work you guys do from the first time I played Halo with my friends, and I followed the Destiny buildup until its release with edge-of-my-seat anticipation. To me, there's no story more compelling than that of humanity's very survival, and no pursuit more noble than fighting for the preservation of our species. It's what drew me to Halo, and what drew me to Destiny. It's teams of artists such as yourselves, who recognize the inherent nobleness of this concept and seek to bring it to millions, that inspire me, that give me something to look forward to after a long day at the office, that offer me the chance to escape a reality where the difference I make is marginal at best, and enter a reality where I have the chance to make a difference that feels like it matters, if only for a couple of hours every night. You brought me that sense of purpose and inspiration with Halo. But I don't feel this anymore. In Destiny, with a full loadout of legendary and exotic gear and having played through the full story, experiencing what the Crucible has to offer, battling my way through countless strike missions, finishing every bounty 100 times over, and exploring the complete extent of every map, I'm...bored. But it's worse than being bored. I don't feel anything. I've stuck with the game all these hours, whole days, desperately seeking to feel what I expected to when I first read about Destiny so many months ago. It isn't there. Although I initially thought that the lack of story was the problem, I've come to realize that the lack of story is only the tip of the iceberg. It's the part that's visible, that every Guardian who's also searching for that sense of purpose and fulfillment in Destiny can readily point to and say "That must be it". And it's a very valid concern. But the core problem with Destiny runs much deeper. The core problem, as far as I see it, is that you're utterly alone in the game. I'll attempt to expand as best I can. The reason the raid works so well (and is arguably the most successful part of the entire Destiny endeavor) is that it requires massive amounts of teamwork. It provides, upon beating Atheon, a sense of reward and togetherness that no other part of the game currently gives you as a player. I feel as though the team at Bungie would like to bring this experience to the wider majority of the game, but is confused as to how to do so, or is otherwise very conflicted as to how to go about doing so. I want to assure you that doing this would be exceptionally easy, and would make Destiny the game you want it to be and the game that we, the players, want it to be. My suggestions operate on the assumption that most Destiny players care about the notion of fighting for humanity. It is the premise of the entire game, the reason anyone who enjoys PvE wanted to become a Guardian in the first place. With that in mind, Bungie needs to begin addressing the issue of feeling alone in the game by giving players a shared experience outside of the raid. Sure, if you have enough friends with the game, you can link up a fireteam and do some of the same 4 strikes (now a staggering 5 strikes for only $19.99 on Xbox) you've done 5,000 times over, but the only emotional appeal to this is that you're doing something with your friends for a while, until you get bored, and let me assure you, killing the Archon Priest for the zillionth time is boring - boring enough that the friends I used to play with have quit the game. I feel that many can relate to this situation. In order to make your players feel something deeper and continue to invest in Destiny, we need to be able to actually fight for the very survival of humanity. Other people have left comments regarding this, and I'm mirroring their ideas and sentiments and not claiming them as my own, though I've had the very same thoughts as them for some time now. Bungie needs to actually put humanity on the brink. As Guardians, we need to be able to get an alert from The Tower while we're out collecting Spinmetal that The City is under a massive attack by The Fallen. We need to be able to see all the players around us disappear, heading to orbit just like we are, mashing our controllers to take us all back to defend The City. Upon arriving, we need to see droves upon droves of enemies marching to the walls, and have a way to get out in front of the walls to fight them in the plains before they reach the gates (troop transport ships on a loop that fly you over the city and drop you into battle, anyone?). We need to see dozens of other Guardians fighting tooth and nail to defend the last bastion of humanity alongside us, and we need this on at least a weekly basis. These kind of encounters can play out all over the solar system, and last a day at a time, giving many players the chance to enter the fight. Ground must be gained and lost, territories threatened, The City seen teetering on a precipice before you and your fellow Guardians prevail (or don't, which leads to many other, ridiculously interesting options for the game, and opportunities to fight for what is lost). Again, I don't claim such ideas and sentiments as my own, but I wanted to articulate them here in the hopes that someone with a voice inside Bungie HQ might raise these ideas that I very much believe thousands of players yearn for. If ideas like this were baked into the game, this crippling sense of solitude that one often feels while playing would effectively disappear, because we'd all be fighting for something together - something tangible, that we could see and feel and believe in. While you, Bungie, continue to release patches nerfing hard-earned exotic weapons, killing loot caves, restructuring the raid to prevent players from beating it with human ingenuity, and announcing DLC content that is quite honestly very lackluster and addresses none of the deep, even psychological ineptitudes within the Destiny universe, I assure you that even if the current numbers say otherwise, you are not building a 10 year franchise. Or a 5 year franchise. I'll be curious to know what those numbers reveal once other games are released through the holiday season. Somehow, I don't think they'll be very promising. Not considering what you gave us at launch, and how little you continue to give us. Destiny was a promise of something incredible that never was and still isn't. It could still become that, but my hope is waning, and that's a real shame, because this world you made for us, this repetitive, empty world - it's very pretty. Thanks for your time. I hope I get the chance to thank you for your efforts in the future.
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  • "many things an MMO does" like what ?

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  • I always read to assume so , my mistake. What's it's fall under then?

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  • Its a FPS with some RPG element + Coop. There is no any 'Massive" here :)

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  • Ah right I hear you man , I just always read comments saying it was one brother!! Again my mistake. Can't justify spending £20/20 dollar on the expansion though!! However good it may be!

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  • Bungie I'm Telling you right now if implement that massive wave of an attack on the last city you will save Destiny! That's the coolest idea I've read so far lol it sounds like fire-strike from halo

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  • Wow, that is about all I can say after reading that speech, just wow. I agree with everything you said and would love to see this incorporated into the game. Just brilliant.

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  • Every planet should have at least 3 strikes and 2 raids. Some special events should only be open when certain conditions are met. Like defending stuff in your short story. The reef could house the queens wrath instead of the tower. The reef could even have astride clusters to farm a new material for new exotics and so forth.

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  • Keep it up, Bump

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  • "Bungie needs to actually put humanity on the brink" Every video game I've ever played since I was 5, I've always though "how awesome would it be if the enemy actually advanced when I lose this level" It's never happened, maybe it's too much to ask. Then again I thought "what if the good guys actually lost here?" About books, movies and TV and then Game of Thrones happened. So maybe someday. It's true also that as simplistic as the halo story is, setting foot on a new Halo ring, or going back to the streets of earth to beat back the covenant had a urgency or thrill to it that doesn't really happen in destiny, don't get me wrong, the game is fun, the bosses are cool and the strikes and raid are enjoyable even a few times over - the raid has a sense of thrill due to the mystery I guess but it other than that destiny doesn't quite hit thrilling does it? The lack of story is just one aspect of the lack of 'engagement' required to make this game the best ever. Repetitive strikes is another - especially so, what says 'your actions are worthless' more than - hey phogorth is magically alive again, can you kill him again?' I've always thought the strikes shouldn't be on random but be on rotation like bf4 multiplayer maps. You get the strikes in order and a sense of continuity and don't have to do the same strike 4 times in a row due to randomness sucking ass (at least make it more like. apples ITunes shuffle which solved this problem. Bungie should've learned from Apple. - if you don't know this story : shuffle is not random, people hated random and didn't believe random was random, heavily critiscizing apple, so they made it non-random - if the songs are on repeat less chance of getting the same one twice - and for music to distinguish shuffle from non-shuffle - less chance of getting your songs in album order - here though, in Destiny, I want them in order tbh). Maybe add in some motivation to re-do strikes with some kind of mini story tying it all together. Just a basic little thing emphasising the players pivotal role even though we know it isn't really. Might just give us that "yeah let's do it" tingle in the spine every now and then. Being able to talk to others, matchmaking these are all aspects of delivering that engagement with the game too. I pass straight through non playable and non fire team tower people, I can't hijack a pike, I get turn back countdowns - less interaction = less engaging. When a mini archon priest that I'd never seen before turned up on earth as a VIP mission in some back room on patrol = exciting and engaging. The shank targets, not so much. The strikes and levels themselves (not crucible) are beautiful, fun and well designed, the music is cool, Tyrion is a great choice but the oomph never truly hits the bullseye, at least not after first play through. Returning to the quote at the top of this rant - Destiny never tells us in any convincing way wtf a traveller is, how and why we come back from the dead or if we are even the good guys. If it engaged us a little the created a mystery that would be great. If it drew us in the put a cliff hanger at the end to question whether we are the good guys or whether we are winning, that would be great, if it gave us some idea who the hell the stranger is, enough of there story to want more - then threw the stranger into danger - we'd be engaged enough to want to spend £20 for the 3 chapters that tell us what happened to them. In GoT you end one chapter and think "I should be sleeping an hour ago, I know I have to read 7 more chapters to find out and then it'll be 5am but I have to find out...is Tyrion dead?" We don't get that here. Destiny needs a 'red wedding', a Ned's or Tyrion's trial or at least a "hey, recognise this crumbling city from real earth?" Moment. Yeah it needed it to lure people into caring about the dlc but also to get them excited and engaged - at a higher level - with the game in hand. That's what I'd want anyway. Crucible on the other hand lacks the layers and centre battles if haven or line of sight if pretty much any Halo map. Why is everything so boxed off? The large moon and mars maps suck so hard, they are ragnorok with no centre open space but instead corridors making the already lame vehicles useless. Crucible is fun in small doses, the small mars and earth maps are alright despite so much boxing, Venus might be the best designed and most fun actually. Maybe throw in some capture the flag or oddball? I'm brainstorming. Crucible is going to be so hard to fix.

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  • Great thoughts, man! Really enjoyed reading.

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  • Thanks, you too.

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  • Spot on.

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  • Nice post. Hope Bungie is listening.

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  • Doubt it.

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  • While I agree wholeheartedly with your sentiment, I believe this would be better held off until Destiny 2 (if they go there) I like a lot of the ideas presented in these forums, as I'm sure Bungie does, but don't see making them a reality through dlc or patches feasible. After all, if we take all the good ideas and put them in the first game, everything else (sequels) won't be able to hold a candle.

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  • My only contention with your suggestion is that if some idea such as the one I posed isn't implemented pretty much immediately, Bungie won't have enough players left to so much as fill the cosmodrome in Destiny 2. And I genuinely want the franchise to succeed and make it to Destiny 2.

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  • Again, I wholeheartedly agree with you, and if they did it, I wouldn't complain. But I feel it would be adverse to a 10yr game plan.

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  • As do i. The difficulty lays in ensuring not to much content is added, again, so that it's hard to top your previous(because people will complain about how the game doesn't have new stuff). I think small changes, such as the ammo synthesis to d pad suggestion, or, just in general, increasing the public event difficulties so that on a lvl 26 I can't solo it. To things such as making a in game library where the grimore cards can be read to you (access to the story) Major public events, like you described, or horde mode, as have been talked about, are great ideas. For next game. What we need now, better accessibility to the expanded story in the grimoire cards, upped difficulty on current public events (actually challenging) more character spots (three is not enough) and the aforementioned, to start.

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  • I hear you, and any and all of both of our suggestions constitutes a step in the right direction, but we need to see it, and we need to see real change that causes real, widespread investment in the game for the long-term, and those need to start trickling through the pipeline pretty much yesterday. Bungie is losing ground, and maybe faster than they think. Makes me sad.

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  • Lol, I literally could not agree more. Unfortunately, I fear there are too few that understand these things take time. From when they are first noticed in forums, to group discussions at Bungie, to planning, coding, testing, and implementing. Sigh. I wish we could just skip that and get right to the awesome new updates :) but I, amongst the very few it feels, will wait patiently.

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  • Well -blam!-ing said. You are certainly right about the Destiny's current direction. This game is a first of it's kind; I get that. But it needs something epic to keep us invested in fighting the opposing armies. TwoBeers, you're definitely onto something. Bungie please take this guy's, as well as like minded people's thoughts into consideration; together we can really make the Destiny experience worthwhile.

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  • Perfect!... Bump

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  • Edited by Bag n Gra: 10/30/2014 7:07:20 AM
    Nice post, too bad Bungivision can only read 3 letters "P" "V" "P" Bunch of fu🎃ktarded greedy deceivers that they are.

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  • Bump it up.

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  • Wow perfectly spoken, I wish a game like that existed I'd never want to leave the gaming reality.

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