Why Destiny Will be the Biggest Disappointment of 2014
Like many others, I was fortunate enough to get into the Destiny beta test last week. I have been hyped on Destiny for a very long time and have followed all of the development but after the public beta however, I was extremely disappointed. Destiny was not the “game of the future” like the hype would have suggested. In this case, hype got players hopes way too high. There are a few fundamental issues with Destiny that are too big to fix this late in the development process. Issues so big, they could definitely be a turn off. Here’s why I didn’t enjoy Destiny.
First things first, we need to declare that Destiny is, and forever will be, an MMO. Although Bungie wants to avoid that term when it comes to Destiny due to the seemingly negative connotation for the casual gamer, the game had every characteristic of an MMO. I mean come on – it was Massive, Multiplayer and Online. It’s important to make this distinction so that we know exactly what to compare it to. Wildstar, World of Warcraft and Guild Wars 2 all did “MMO” better than Destiny. An MMO needs to be fundamentally spectacular to succeed for the masses and Destiny failed to do that.
My first and probably my largest complaint with Destiny was the boss fight mechanics. I was so excited to engage the giant spider for the first time, but quickly learned there was absolutely nothing to it. It was essentially a bunch of people sitting around for 30 minutes shooting at a giant metal spider, occasionally dodging attacks. Even worse, the next boss (a giant floating orb) was exactly the same mechanic – aim, shoot, dodge, repeat. So many things could make these fights more exciting. Utilizing the environment more, having the boss change as the fight goes on, doing something to stop the repetitive action of shooting for 30 minutes straight. Boss fights are essential in MMOs, they’re what keep people playing the game.
Aside from the boss fights, there are a few other mechanics that were poorly utilized. The classes played almost exactly the same way, except for their special abilities (and the hunter flaming gun ability was lame). There was absolutely no incentive to play another class when I felt I had already played it. To be clear, the beta was only the first 8 levels and I can see the classes changing as you progress further in the game, but the beginning of the game needs some serious work. As a final note, the story was hectic and nowhere near compelling and the PvP felt exactly like Halo, which is a 10 year old game.
So was Destiny “good?” Sure, but it definitely wasn’t and won’t be a game changer. Take a trip down memory lane with me – in elementary school, when teachers would assign a project there would be a certain amount of points allowed for something called a “wow factor”. Destiny would get absolutely nothing as it’s “wow factor”. Borderlands 2 did looting and story better, World of Warcraft and Wildstar have much better boss fights and so many games have more interesting PvP. Anyone who has played an MMO know that the first levels are never all that fun, but Destiny was far behind some of the worst. I’d rather play through the first 10 levels of Aion. Bungie needs to sell almost 8.5 million copies of Destiny just to break even on the $500 million budget and I just don’t think that’s feasable with such a mediocre game. Don’t get me wrong, I was extremely hyped for Destiny but chances are I won’t be buying it in September.
Another watchdogs, too much hype for nothing =D
Halo and Borderlands > Destiny
Daniel & Sousa > Ignorance
I found it funny that you are coming down so hard on an unreleased game, but then again.. a journalist who has no idea what he is talking about, should definitely write an article. For example; IT has been well known, for quite some time that the $500 Million quote, is an estimate for a 10 year development cycle, that includes campaign and all. This could very well include a Destiny 2 & 3 and all the DLC for all of them. Since you’re the journalist… I figured at least now you can know this bit of info and maybe use it to your advantage, of writing a more sound article.
Bungie has even made an official post, on their weekly updates responding to this misinformation and cleared it up.
Regardless of what the journalist thinks, Destiny seems mediocre as it felt like playing WoW but in a FPS which is weird. FPS should be fast and fun with lots of killing. Gamers don’t want to be sitting around for hours trying to kill bosses or grinding. MMOs are dedicated for more the hardcore audience where as a console game like Destiny fits in the casual market and doesn’t make much sense for its style of gameplay its offering. PC gamers would like Destiny (LOL funny its not on PC) as the console market I can see Destiny being 1 of the biggest trade ins this year as Gamers will get bored and will most likely trade it in for CoD or Halo etc.
In other words Destiny is a good game but is focusing on the wrong audience.
I was someone that was really down on Destiny from the beginning as I thought it was a bad idea. I traditionally don’t care about multiplayer experiences and MMO’s are at the top of the list for games that I could care less about. At first when I played the beta I felt like this when I got to the hub and saw all of the people running around but you can play the game on your own without joining a group. When i got into one of the large fights I was able to join it simply by shooting the boss without doing anything else but the other players were already there helping me. By the time I was done playing the beta I was sold on the game and is a definite purchase for me.
I don’t think they are focusing on the wrong audience at all. I think they are going to end up converting people like myself who couldn’t stand MMO’s by merging it with fps gameplay that feels satisfying.
I felt a lot like you did. I preordered to get in on the beta, to see what the hype was, thinking I would just cancel afterwards and apply my money to something else. To my surprise, the game won me over. I will agree that it has a few issues, but I enjoyed the beta enough to take a chance on purchasing the full game. Hoping in the long run that will pay off for me.
are you trying to say its focusing on MMO players?? it wasnt even in the same ball park as playing WOW… it isnt doing that at all…how long did you play the beta? 30 minuets? the one strike they had, that had 2 bosses, didnt even take me and the two i teamed up with, 20 minuets to beat that strike..how is that “sitting around for hours trying to kill bosses”?? and in that strike i had almost 200 kills…almost 200 kills in 20 minuets, i would definitely call that “fast and fun with lots of killing”..wouldn’t you? no, this game is targeting the right people, FPS players..not MMO players..not in the least bit
From the info i had read and having played wow for a number of years i took a guess what the beta would be like.
I was spot on.
Destiny’s framework is almost identical to wow but in the shape of an fps.
I know exactly where this game is headed and how the end game will be before i even play it.
Very easy to predict.
lol, you should play the lottery. Destiny and WoW are worlds apart.
Is it just me…or is Destiny the biggest disappointment of 2014? Possibly of the decade?
The only way Destiny will be a disappointment to gamers if they believe into the hype. Samething happen with alot of games. Titanfall people believe this game was going to be a Call of Duty killer even when the developer comes out and say it won’t. Now people are disappointed same with watchdogs and Call of duty. Especially Call of Duty every year multiplayer reveal the have these pro gamer hyping the game to the max like the game is going to be different. More action pack, no camping or no scope and ends up just like the last one
After learning about the one explorable area per planet I canceled my ghost editon and down graded to a standard. I have nodoubt Destiny will be a good game but it is nowhere near the game changer bungie and activison has been hyping it up to be and you can see bungie starting to change due to the money hungry activison firing marty was a hugh sign. You can tell they are holding areas back for dlc to milk consumers for every penny …
” bungie and activison has been hyping it up to be and you can see bungie starting to change due to the money hungry activison firing marty was a hugh sign.” > Blatant ignorance
so the whole game will fail because of a bossfight that you played way to long(30min? wtf where you doing lmfao)
jenniferlawrenceOK.jpg
Once you know what you’re doing the thing could be taken out in about 5 minutes, if you got decent ammo drops. No idea what the author is talking about with that one. This is an extremely poorly written article, but he is right in many respects. Above all else the game lacks depth – almost everywhere – from story, characters, environments, progression, customisation and variation in weapons and armour. However the game excels in things like it’s shooting mechanics, movement and PvP (other than that overpowered tank, but they’ve already addressed that issue) which keep it fun to play. As much as it’s obvious that the game is severely lacking in some areas, it was still extremely fun. But unlike other MMOs, I think this will wear off quickly once you’ve discovered everything and the cracks start to show through.
Totally agree for me it was like going back in time and playing a 10year old halo game
Ignorance, have you even played Halo CE multiplayer, Destiny multiplayer feels more like a Mix of COD & Halo
Its ok cause no matter how much excitement or hype it gets we’ll always have people like you Matt to temper expectations and ruin it for everyone else. So Destiny will “disappoint” but I’m sure you’re one of those individuals with your head so far up your a** you think the Halo remaster will be the most amazing game ever made.
lol, like your comment. Well done.
I can’t imagine trying to write an article with my head up my a**, it would be so dark 🙂
I wasn’t trying to ruin the hype or excitement for anyone else, I was just simply stating that, in my own opinion, Destiny didn’t live up to what I thought a generation defining game should be.
The beta did me the great service of saving me sixty dollars this September.
I’ve already played enough Halo, Borderlands, and Phantasy Star Online in my time. I don’t need to play an underwhelming blender of other better titles. Quite possibly one of the most soulless affairs I’ve ever seen. The music was great though. Classic Marty O’Donnell. Too bad Bungie kicked him to the curb.
Sorry you feel that way, but how many other games coming in the beginning of September are worth the time? Destiny’s one play through and a few rounds of multiplayer, might be enough for you to get some time passed until Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor
The only other game this year coming out I have any interest in is Alien Isolation. Other than that, absolutely every other title I was going to buy got delayed into 2015 and beyond.
Worst first year of any generation ever. Nothing but delays and last-gen rehashes that don’t get delayed.
LOL What? This is widely considered one of the largest AAA Fall Lineups in the last few years, let alone this early in a consoles lifespan. How can you not be excited for Dragon Age: Inquisition / Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor / Far Cry 4 / Sunset Overdrive / Forza Horizon 2 / Driveclub / Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare / Assassins Creed: Unity / Evolve / The Evil Within / Lords of the Fallen.. So many games you are missing out on.. If Alien Isolation interests you, I don’t see why the other ones don’t tickle your fancy. Middle Earth is actually looking pretty innovative.
What games got delayed you really wanted? Batman? The Order? Witcher 3 (Even though it wasn’t delayed, it never had an official release date)? or Battlefield: Hardline?
I am a avid video gamer.. and I am literally drooling at the content that is slated for this fall.. so much gameplay.. 100+ hrs of Dragon Age, 100 hrs of Far Cry 4, 100+ hrs of Witcher 3 in Spring, add to it Batman: Arkham Knight, Bloodbourne.. and many more.. The lineups are looking enticing to me, Sorry that they don’t look good for you. I do understand your point of view in some ways, and also do respect your opinion.
Well, as uninteresting as that entire list you spouted off is, it just got a little lighter.
Evolve was delayed into 2015.
Makes me wonder why I even bought this console. Could have waited until next year for everything.
Are you old enough to remember prior system launches? When was the last time a system launched to a plethora of new games? I can’t even remember one, besides the PS2.. which was just a outlier in the rest. Not to mention they don’t take full advantage of the system until a couple years in..
Yes, Evolve was delayed today, and that was really a big disappointment for me, BUT Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor is a BIG game coming out. You really should check it out, I think it’s going to surprise a lot of people.
I hope so.. because what used to look like a somewhat packed October, is looking more and more bleak as we speak, Literally. LOL
I’ve seen much better first years. The Xbox 360 in particular.
The first year of the Xbox 360 wasn’t comprised of game delays and redux cash grabs of original Xbox titles.
By this time in 2006, I was still enjoying Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter, Call of Duty 2 (back when 60fps was still eye catching) and Oblivion (the reason I owned a 360 from the start). The summer, normally a down period) gave me Dead Rising, the first Saints Row, and the eternally underrated Chromehounds. By November I’d gotten Rainbow Six: Vegas, F.E.A.R., and Gears of War. Those didn’t get delayed, nor were they overhyped HD remasters. Hell, most of those weren’t even annualized sequels or sequels at all. What a great time to game.
Also that entire year for me was still intermingled with Halo 2 multiplayer. Backwards compatibility. Remember that novel concept? Not a rehash I had to pay for again to play on my new console at that time.
Pretty good first year I’d say.
Meh, That was a rough year for me. I kinda dropped off the planet. I didn’t get a 360 when it launched, jumped onto a ps3 at launch the next year when I fell back to the ground.. and I missed out on a lot of the games from that first year.. so to be honest, I didn’t experience it, and wouldn’t have been able to recall it. PS2 my life consisted of SOCOM, and actually.. I am sure my life still consisted of SOCOM 2 when the Xbox 360 was launched… I was so addicted to that game… lol
It has the trinity MMO classes, it has the “grind” and I wasn’t impressed by the beta….it wasn’t crap, but there was nothing that drew me in and I hated seeing groups of people running around the same areas picking off enemies.
This will never break even.
I agree completely. It wasn’t terrible at all, but it just wasn’t amazing.
He try’s to say Destiny is an MMO,, and then when he compares it to other MMos it is apparently terrible. I have played many MMos in my time, and Destiny is not an MMO, and the Multiplayer is definitly not like Halo, it is a Balanced Mix of COD & Halo , which is eh, I don’t really like COD MP that much & can only play it for a couple of hours, and I’m getting that feel here,
Game was ok. Another Halo feeling game. I found the 30fps to be slow and sluggish. Played like a last gen game. EA did the right thing by having BF4 at 60fps for the next gen consoles. Bungie should do the same here with this. Slap in the face for us next gen users that it’s 30fps with the PS3 and 360 versions. TitanFall is still the King for the smoothest, fastest feeling precise shooter imo.
Titanfall got boring after a week.
You need a clan/friends to play with sounds like.
I’ll add that I like you didn’t have a point against what I said. Even though boring for you, it still plays smoother and faster than Destiny. Bungie stuck with that old Halo feel still.
I’ve just seen this! TitanFall did get boring very quickly even with friends. TitanFall feels like CoD, Destiny feels like marginally looser Halo. This is the way the games are deliberately designed. If you noticed in destiny when strafing the game does not allow you to change direction instantly there is a slow down, I wouldn’t say this isn’t smooth It’s just how the developers wanted it.
Perhaps TitanFall 2 will be better when I can play with the majority of my friends who only have a PS4.
Do you like horde modes by any chance?
I do, yes! Why?
I disagree with the article on almost every level.
I was VERY impressed with the beta. I don’t normally by FPS games, but I’m going to buy Destiny. IT’S THE MMO POTENTIAL THAT SOLD ME ON THE GAME. Having Multiplayer AND MMO potential is going to allow Destiny to appeal to different types of gamers. That varying appeal means it has a larger pool of potential buyers than a normal shooter has which, in turn, translates to more sales, not fewer.
All the stuff the writer was complaining about are not valid because he is speaking from a position of ignorance. He has no idea what kind of boss characters will be in the final game. He has no idea what kind of powers/abilities/weapons will be available in the final game. He has no idea how many planets will be available. He has no idea what different kind of ships will be available nor does he know what difference your ship makes. He has no idea what multiplayer games types will be available. He doesn’t know how many multiplayer maps will be available. He doesn’t know if the game will have a mechanism to allow multiplayer with the leveled characters. He has no idea what size parties we will be able to form. He has no idea whether the game will support a guild system. Simply put he doesn’t know.
He also seems to think that being like Halo is a bad thing, so he must not have that good a of memory of video game history. It has always been my view that Halo made the Xbox platform, AND COD as we know. Halo 1 & 2 basically drew in 10 – 15 million avid FPS shooter fans on the Xbox platform. When MS decided to put space in between the Halo game, Modern Warfare (which is the true turning point in COD) filled in the gap took it’s place as the go to twitch shooter.
Destiny is on 4 platforms, It’s definitely going to sell 2.5 million or more on 3 of them (PS3, PS4, 360). It’ll probably get that much on the Xbone, but by that time there will only be about 5 million Xbones out there. So 2.5M is to high of an attach rate to guarantee. But, forced to bet I would say it gets there because Xbox people are shooters and next-gen gamers are waiting for something new.
Completely agreed.
I can answer some of those quite easily from my experience and research. The easiest are the final three.
Iron Banner allows level advantages in PvP.
3 man fireteams for Story and Strikes, 6 man fireteams for Raids.
Guilds are called Clans and are formed on Bungie’s website. Apparently once you have 4 members you are eligible to start earning rewards. How and what, I am unsure of. As far as in-game integration other than a clan tag, I don’t know. Probably only leaderboards to compare clan against clan but even that is speculation.
I’m sick of people complaining about there being only one destination per planet or moon. Do you realize how massive these locations are? We’ve only experienced the beta and what was available was still immense. In addition, these singular locations aren’t the only aspect of Destiny, there is still multiplayer, Strikes, Raids, and so on. I wish more people would think rationally, logically, and optimistically. Thank you GotNews4Ya and Darrius for having common sense.
One thing the article writer complete missed out: BETA. Bungie has iterated over and over that this is just a small slice of the game. You think they would be the meatiest part of the game into a Beta?
Sounds like Matt Trovalli is an XBone fan and is butt hurt over the fact that Playstation has a 1 year exclusivity deal with Bungie.
I’m seeing these types of garbage articles with no merit trying to sink Bungie’s new offering.
Pretty nefarious if you ask me.
To be quite honest, I don’t even own a “XBone”. I own and played the Destiny Beta on a PlayStation 4.
That being said – I doubt they would put a bad part of the game into Beta either. Not that it was a bad game, just so much more could have been done to make it a better game, in my opinion.
What the fuck are you talking about matt. Its a fucking beta. That being said you should shut the fuck up and wait untill the actually game launches. How do u critize a beta so harshly when most ppl that did play the beta said that it was better than most FULL game shooters last gen. To the ppl saying watchdogs was a fail or a bust are morons. The games story/plot was great and the gameplay speaks for itself, it was an all around great game. Dont know why there was so much hate towards it.
This game is awesome for one reason. Co-op. I thought it was going to be boring but playing the beta changed my mind. For me the co-op is why I like this game.
I suppose it’s unfair to judge a game before you’ve played it, but there’s way too many crap to average games out there. And delaying games just adds to the hype, even down to downgrading the graphics hypes up a game. Too many games have fallen short over the years, the last one being Watch Dogs. Destiny, I don’t see what why there’s all this fuss over it. If I was to put money on it, it’ll fall short of AAA status. But people who’re into shooters will never learn.
Well hats off for having the balls to write an article like this, for starters. Like you say, the game might not be a masterpiece or a game changer, but it will be at least good. I’m surprised you’re considering not to buy it in September if you thought it was good, though. To be fair, if you’ve played only the beta and thought it was good, aren’t you going to think the finished product will be even better and worth purchasing?
I won’t be buying it at release. I’ll wait and see what the final thoughts are on it before I buy into it.
Fair enough!
Yep I feel the same. Atm, I will not be buying it. Felt so disappointed by that Beta… not a day one purchase for me now. I’ll wait for some key reviewers to give their verdict and then hear what my friends have to say about it.
I agree, I played the Beta and came away feeling very so-so about it. The game has no soul, it’s polished but soulless. Music is indistinct and forgettable(can anyone hum a Destiny theme? Nope, didn’t think so). Character models are an homogenized characterless jumble… no one stands out. AI for NPC is the same, it’s either something I’ve played many times over(ans usually it’s been better in other games) or they are jumping out in a pose that’s begging me to pop the enemies head off. The AI was another uninspired element to the game.All missions felt like I’ve played the before in other games… ‘get to this position and pick something up’… ‘defend the hovering robot AI whilst it hacks something to turn it on’… ‘get in the dungeon and kill the boss’ .. boring boring boring. Multiplayer was lame, no real way of telling if someone is running towards you with an instantkill ability or if you are going to get into a firefight… it’s just pot luck. Characters(as above) all look the same so instead of me looking at the character model I’m looking at a text box above the opponents head then I’m watching numbers when I hit them!!!
I feel like I’m the kid that’s shouting… ‘ The Emperor has no cloths… ‘ but no one get’s it yet, but people will, there’s just been so much hype and bad previews written about this game atm, it’s drowning out all the reasonable comments about this over-hyped misfire from Bungie.
Destiny:Combat Devolved
The first M in MMO doesn’t stand for massive, as in size of the game/world. It stands for massively, massively multi-player…. As in a massive amount of people playing together.
Destiny is not that.
Over 4.6 million people played the Destiny beta, I would consider that massive, or “massively”
That’s not the point either. Otherwise every online game would be considered massively multiplayer.
Destiny uses servers for your game sessions when you go to a world and there is a limited amount of people that can be on the same server, I think it it 16.
MMOs like WoW, etc. There are thousands of players on the same server at the same time. They could all meet up at the same place if they wanted to.
I like to bring the South Park 10 hours of gameplay debate into this, partially. SP was great and I’m not saying Destiny is going to be anywhere near as good as that, BUT 10 hours of solid gameplay was constantly compared to typical RPG gameplay of 40 hours. 40 hours of go here do this, collect this, quest complete! LEVEL UP! Which MMO’s milk the cow till it’s dead with this kind of BS filler. I mean Destiny must be REALLY REALLY bad if you think that WoW or Wildstar is a step above it….. It’s Borderlands: Halo Edition by the people who (Can’t believe I’m saying this but) did Halo right.
This is brand new IP, it’s a major project. It’s Version 1.0. It’s a start and hopefully will build into something better. Do you remember what WoW was like when it first started out? How about early Diablo? It’s not going to be perfect right out of the gates and comparing as if it’s a long running polish machine is as silly as expecting it to be perfect when you first start playing it.
Games today have to cover many bases, they have to be good enough for the gamers, open enough to the filthy casuals, all while maintaining a sense of connection. Which in today’s world is very hard to do. We have the CoD generation that has been ruined. They want a “hardcore” game, but when they get that they bitch about how they can’t roll on people. It’s all about instant gratification, I point this out because this is the same generation of people that CONSTANTLY nit pick every detail, they broadcast predictions, act as if they know everything when in reality this article just like the ones saying Destiny is going to be the best thing since wonder bread is not about Destiny at all….it’s about the writer getting click counts.
Wow, I hope I don’t run into this guy while playing. In fact, i hope this author doesn’t even buy this game. But I bet he will, just to bag on it and complain some more..
I don’t intend on buying so no worries 🙂
For this article to make sense.
Destiny beta = final destiny build.
It’s ok to give a review of the Beta and say ‘we’ll wait and see for the final product’. The mechanics will not be changed for single player or multiplayer, obviously they will be extended with the full game though, but we can still judge what we were given.
Here you go.. Beta review…
Environments – well made assets laid out in typical Bungie fashion by the designers(just like Halo:Reach) that fall short of being truly next gen(ps3/360 do not look too different to ps4/Xbox One)
Player Characters – well made individual assets that produce indistinct silhouettes with close to zero variation from class to class and player to player
AI – uninspired, predictable, bringing absolutely nothing new to the fps genre but overall serviceable
Music – forgettable and non-offensive
Design – Mission structures have all been done before, and usually better. Skirmishes are bite sized nuggets of Firefight mode from Halo. I feel I see straight through the way this has been designed and built. It’s like the designers were sleep walking through this game. Dialogue was so super earnest and dry at every turn. I could not relate to characters.
NPC’s – Why don’t they animate the faces when you are in the ‘shop’ screens? It’s almost like the NPCs just can’t be bothered with this llifeless game.
Multiplayer – there’s nto enough info on who the enemy is and what ability or weapon they are currently using. Am I going to be instakilled or slug it out with someone? How can I make an informed strategic choice if I have no idea about what the the player is capable of? Just did not enjoy this on any level 🙁
Overall – Highly polished but mediocre and lifeless in every department, brings absolutely nothing new to the fps or mmo genres.
Fair review of the beta but keep in mind it was an old build and not entirely representative of the final version.
For instance, the shop NPCs could very well show some form of facial animation.
As for multiplayer, the class items and armour will define their abilities. At least whether or not they are a Hunter, Titan or Warlock. Can’t tell visually between subclasses. Your strategic choice should be whatever your play-style. Keeping your distance, running and gunning or whatever. If you run around a corner and see somebody, there is no choice between ‘insta-kill’ or ‘slugging it out’. You simply do your best and deal with the result because they were in the same situation. If you tend to die a lot, switch up your tactics and try different weapons and grenade abilities.
I don’t know how Destiny will turn out, all I saw was the beta. I’m sure there will be a ton of compelling content once it releases… Problem is, I don’t want to play an MMO. The constant respawning of the exact same guys in the exact same place, as well as all the people doing the exact same mission I just finished completely killed the immersion.
Speaking of the multiplayer, I just couldn’t get in to it. I love the BF style of MP, so that probably made hard to switch to a more twitch style of play. Altogether it came across as bland and repetitive.
I’m expecting Destiny to do well when it releases, the number of downvotes of negative comments about the game show that, but I can’t see where it intends to excel compared to the competition. It’s like a big mashup of different games, without mastering any one field.
Matt, you have it all wrong and I completely disagree with your entire article.
First of all – Destiny is not an MMO. By your standards, then Call of Duty and even more so, Battlefield are MMOs. They are both massively multi-player AND online. Sure, it has a lot of RPG elements, but it isn’t even massively multiplayer. Missions and Strikes are limited to 3 man fireteams, Raids are 6 man and the Tower, the social hub only allows between 12 and 16 players concurrently.
Destiny is surely a blend of a FPS and RPG but an MMO? Definitely not. Huxley was a FPS-MMO. Destiny should not be compared to the likes of World of Warcraft. The only true comparison that comes to mind is Borderlands.
Which brings me to the loot system differences. Borderlands had much more, no argument here. However I wouldn’t call it better. The simply had manufacturers who created various parts with slight changes to stats between them. The game then randomly generated a weapon out of those parts. There were millions of combinations, but I wouldn’t call them individual enough to be separate weapons entirely. Most of the loot was absolute junk.
Destiny on the other hand, has streamlined it’s process. Plenty of different guns and armour but the stats are all relative to the same type, adding abilities for individuality and modifiers to overall damage and defence. This means if you enjoy a particular gun, you can find an improved version with the same stats that is level appropriate as you progress. It also stops players who’ve reached the level cap from one-shotting enemies in starter areas and screwing over newer players. In this regard, Destiny’s loot system is better than Borderlands.
Second – I don’t think you should have written that each class is essentially the same. Of course they are early on. Unique abilities tend to come a little later than the very beginning where everything is at it’s most basic. It is a ‘starting point’ after all. We also only got to play the first of three available subclasses, further broadening the differences between them all.
Third – I don’t know how you can accurately form an opinion of the story from only 5 missions in the very beginning. Six if you count the story mission on the moon for a limited time. Destiny’s possible length of gameplay compared to a movie, you only saw the first 2-3 minutes at best. This is not enough to adequately form an opinion and label it was 2014’s biggest disappointment.
Fourth – PvP wasn’t all that great, but we only saw 2 game modes and it was still very early game where each character was pretty much a copy of the next. Again, you only saw a small snippet of what it will really be so you can’t really form a proper opinion.
Fifth – Finally I get to the boss fights. If you actually played Destiny for very long or more than once per mission you should know the “giant spider” is called a Devil Walker and that it is apparently only a mini-boss. They will be somewhat common. You also say it takes 30 minutes of shooting it? Yeah, if you don’t shoot the legs, it’s critical spot long enough to destroy the armour plating, revealing it’s core for further enhanced damage. The time frame is much closer to 10 minutes to defeat it. Less with a skilled fireteam. Which further leads me to believe you only played through once.
You do realise that was a level 6 strike mission though, right? You understand there will be more challenging missions such as Nightfall missions and Raids that will take hours for a team of 6 to complete after level 20?
Honestly, if you truly have been hyped for Destiny and followed the development for as long as you claim you have then I am truly disappointed in you. I am glad this article is nothing more than your undeserving opinion. Your article has only served to turn people away because you haven’t presented any positives and your experience is clearly rushed. If you truly were hyped and had any idea what you were talking about, you would have ended on a semi-positive note stating that you hope Destiny can reach the potential it is aiming for and that the potential is high rather than signing off with “Chances are I won’t be buying it in September”
In future, please let the readers know that you rushed your experience and enlighten them of not only the negatives but also the positives in a fair way. You’re entitled to your opinion but please give the full picture to your readers.
LOL Destiny is NOT on MMO…its an MO..while in game, how many guardians did you see playing in the game space as you? 5? 8? when at the tower, how many did you see walking around the tower? 10? 16? now compare that to any traditional MMO like wildstar, WOW, ESO and on and on..you can see hundreds taking up the same game space as you, especially in a major town. 4.6 million people played the beta and at most you saw 16 guardians at any one time, and that was mostly in the tower. so that was your first mistake, comparing Destiny to other MMO’s and the main reason you didnt like the game. once you made that huge mistake, it was a given the rest of the game would not be to your liking.
For everything else you complained about i just have 3 words..IT WAS BETA!!!! there is no way you can say anything about the story yet when we only had access to 1/5 of the story. plus we have no clue if they will tweak it some after the beta. Boss fights? how is button mashing 1-9 on a keyboard, wait for cool down boss fights in wow, wildstar, or any other game better than Destiny? i personally had no problem with the boss fights in destiny, and again, it was in beta, have no clue if those will be tweaked before launch either.
Bottom line, no one can judge the entire game of Destiny or have an informed opinion, till everyone has access to the entire game, Just basing an opinion on a beta that #1 had accelerated leveling, and #2 was only about 10% of the entire game, is a very idiotic thing to do.
500 million dollars is for 4 games, all expansions and dlc’s for the series, and for marketing over 10+ years. Some journalist.
$100 says he buys the game, creates a secret new gamertag, and pours 100+ hours into it.
If you thought 10% of a game was good, it is illogical to not play the full game. See you in September, bro.
So let me get this right, you think a game which concurrently can only have 12 players on at one time…is massive multiplayer?? destiny is NOT a mmo, it has mmo like elements sure, but it is NOT a mmo, they’ve already described how destiny groups work, it actually is a shared world game, with a matchmaking system that runs in the background.
in terms of classes, congratulations, you got to experience the first 8 lvls of a single subclass for each individual class, i’m sure, in the beta you saw that second subclass that unlocked at lvl 15, which completely changes the way the class plays. no, oh well.
in terms of boss fights, we saw a single devil walker, and servitor boss, the devil walker ISN’T a boss, it’s actually a uber tough normal monster, bosses are named, devil walkers aren’t.
the 500 million dollar budget. thats Activision’s commitment to destiny, which include 3 games, and 9 expansions…it’s not the budget for only destiny 1. that is the full 10 year cycle of destiny.
so much misinformation and wrong data in this “review” it shoudl be scrpped.
My friends and I definitely never had to spend 30 minutes taking down a devil walker. Also, those were the firs boss fights in the game. Obviously they are going to be the easiest and most lackluster. Second, Destiny is not an MMO. There are no more than 20 people in an area at any given time. Now I’m no expert, but that’s not massive by any means. The reason it’s like this is so you don’t miss out on killing enemies and grabbing loot chests. It truly is a shared world shooter and Bungie did it very well in my opinion. If there were 300 people running around in Old Russia at any given time nobody would feel like they were contributing to killing anything. I think everything you mentioned about the game was actually fine. You missed some of the actual problems though.
Looks like the author of the article was right. And everyone dissing him here kinda looks silly.
I felt like I was playing Halo 5 ahah! You know how Halo games started to have cutomization options? (Armor) I feel like they decided to go all out on the idea and create a different game from that. You’re basically using your own player in the Halo universe. I loved the idea of traveling through the whole solar system. But there’s like 5 planets so far so I’ll most likely buy it like 2 years from now, when I have the option to travel to 5 planets more.