Destiny Part 3: 160 hours... hope for number 2

I have officially posted my negative post and my slightly more positive post. If people are still reading this is the post where I talk about my hope for Destiny 2. There was a point about 4 weeks ago where I was talking to my coworker Cam and I mentioned 3 or 4 things about the game that really bothered me, but ended the statement with, "The plus is everything wrong is patchable or will be fixed in Destiny 2". Not too much later than that I heard they announced Destiny 2. This actually might be part of the reason I was okay with walking away from the game. As I see it this announcement means they are going to move most of their focus onto completing Destiny 2 and probably fixing all the issues with Destiny in the next iteration. This means less focus on fixing the current iteration of Destiny, I believe there will be some upgrades, patches, and a couple more DLC packs, but overall I think this will be covered by a much smaller team. I think this is an accurate thought train for what is to happen, but I am okay with it as long as they actually put some real thought into some of the major flaws of the current game and fix them in the next.

What a classy move, Bungie...
I think one of my biggest hopes for Destiny 2 would have to be a deeper development of classes, characters, and races. Currently there are 3 classes and 3 races. The classes have little variance between them and this is the primary reason why rolling a second character is mind numbing. Basically you pick a look or a super move and that is it really. I would love to see a deeper character development and deeper subclass development. I feel like there should be a deeper roster of classes as well, but even just making each class unique would be a huge difference maker. The current classes are warlock, titan, and hunter. If you put these into normal tropes you should have:

Titan - tank, higher armor/life, slower movement, powerful melee, and a mid to close range attack
Hunter - stealthy and quick, good mid to long range, better with ranged weapons, weaker armor
Warlock - Either healer or larger area attack, great mid range, terrible and vulnerable close range, weaker armor.

Instead every class does the same thing. I would actually really like a slightly different story for each class as well. Hell and each race. At this point there is no purpose to the races at all. The main story seems focus on the XO race, but nothing else is different.

Let me tell you a story...
The last paragraph leads well into this point. A complete lack of story. By the end of the regular missions I had no idea what was happening. I played every single mission and still to this day I don't really know what was happening and why i should care. If I had played this game solely for the story I would have be extremely disappointed to say the least.

Me and my boys...
As mentioned before the thing that kept me around in this game was the multiplayer component. I put in countless hours with friends jamming through strikes, missions, and a few attempts at raids. I had a blast. And as I further previously mentioned the challenge was when we got more than 3 people playing on a regular basis. There are really only 3 options if you get 6 people:

1. split into 2 groups and hangout in party chat 
2. Do the raid 
3. Play crucible. 

Since we were not great at the raid that wasn't a great option (Raid can only be done once a week). As I mentioned in the previous post I was the only one that enjoyed crucible so that isn't a great option. More often then not our only real option was to split. This became even more of problem when other games started to release and people started to leave destiny. Often we were left with the awkward 4 person team. This lead to either split into 2s or to have one person be the odd man out. Of course this made weekly and nightfall challenges even more frustrating (and raid impossible).

What I would love to see get done here is to have a better scale on how things balance out (this will be better covered in my next point). If there were a sliding scale on how missions, strikes, free roam, and raids worked where a person at level 28 could beat a mission on 28, but it scaled up the more people you added to the group. Really any mission should be beatable by a person who is slightly higher or equal to the level of the mission. It might be a challenge, but in the off chance that you are rocking solo you should feel capable of finishing the game. Now when you bring in 3 of your friends, the level staggers up to facilitate this. Harder bad guys (not unfair), more bad guys, greater challenges, etc. If you go all the way up the 6 person party you get a similar challenging experience, but it still feels fair and fun.

Of course this would require larger fire teams and more stuff for a team of 4-6 to do. Probably larger planets etc. I would love to see a required use of different classes, but of course that would require a difference in the classes.

A balance of Power...
I will say one of the more frustrating aspects of this game was the fact that I never felt powerful. I still have branded into my mind one night when I was doing a low level strike and I got to a captain at level 6 and I had to punch him 3 times before he went down. I also remember a moment when I was cruising through the earth free roam and I hit a group of grunts all below level 4, but I had to check on one of my bounties so I just ignored them as I jumped into the menu. I pulled back just before the death shot was fired. I hated the fact that I never felt powerful around low level grunts.

During the beta I learned that if you see a bad guy with question marks where his level should be that you should run. This is further engrained because if you unload everything you have on him it does literally no damage at all. I actually really enjoyed that mechanic. It forced me to stay on track and wouldn't allow me to go outside of my range. But I always wondered why it didn't go the other way. When I was level 28 a few good shots from a level 2 grunt could take down my shield. I mean I could usually kill those grunts with one shot from my maxed out scout rifle, but why did they even attack me. This lack of power was driven home even more during the nightfall and weekly strikes.

I was doing a weekly strike where the final boss was a robot with a giant rotating shield. Jon and Matt were playing with me as Mike, Cam, and someone was running through the nightfall for the week. I was at level 28, Matt and Jon at 27. So i figured we should be able to jam through the level 22 mission with very little resistance. Man I could not be more wrong. After struggling through the first part of the strike we got to the final boss... and we got our collective asses kicked. Maybe 20 minutes after multiple instant deaths from the minotaurs I was ready to give up. Then Cam came over and sherpa'd us through the map by hiding behind some blocks where the final boss cannot shoot you.

This really bothered me to an extant that I cannot express. I think it might actually have led to me leaving the game completely. I feel that any mission/strike/story/etc should be able to be beat by a single person on that level (exception the raid as this was meant to be played by 6 people) So if the strike is a level 28 a level 28 character should be able to beat it. I dont think it should be a walk in a park, but definitely beatable. I also think that if you are higher than that level it should scale to become slightly easier. I further believe if you are a lower level it should also be scalable. So a level 27 character could beat a level 28 mission, but with some challenge. This should change based on the amount of players. If you have 3 level 28 players going for a level 28 mission. I would love to see it scale to challenge them, but not become cheap, just more challenging.

I think this sentiment goes double for the weekly, nightfall, and raid. I don't feel this as much for the weekly, but it definitely apply at times. I never found the strikes and raid to be that much fun. The only way we beat the nightfall strikes were by finding some glitch or cheesing our way through it. This was actually true for us on the raid as well. We tried once to do it legit and we spent 3 hours wasting our time without finishing it. I like the idea of the challenge being turned up a bit, but when the minotaurs fire countless rockets at you and they kill you with two hits no matter what you start to feel a bit cheated. Plus your primary weapon doesn't have any special bonus damage so you are stuck using your machine gun and/or sniper rifle (because shotguns are worthless) and you don't do nearly the same damage as the minotaurs. I hated this aspect and I hated the raid/nightfall. Challenge is good, but cheapness is not.

Well shit I went on quite the rant there didn't I. I will honestly say I had no intention to go on like that, but clearly I found another vein of gold in my deep level of frustration in this game. So it saddens me to say that I am going to add a small part 4 to break up this mess. Sorry again, but see you next post.