[Destiny] My thoughts on the Alpha

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#1 Wed, 06/25/2014 - 16:12
Tactica's picture
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[Destiny] My thoughts on the Alpha

Warning: Kind of a repeat post if you read the bottom of Doodi's review comments. I decided to expand my thoughts and share the thoughts here as well, so apologies...

Been awhile since I've posted here <waves>, hello all.

I had to check-in and see what folks were sayin about Destiny here. I've been following it religiously for a year and played in the Alpha as well. Seen this:

http://www.2old2play.com/news/e3-2013/bungie-invites-2o2p-private-gameplay-session-destiny

Nice job Doodi, glad you got to attend. Sounds like quite the party.

Did you meet Alan aka MoreConsole, the Guardian Radio guys (Mark, Craig, Byf, Watts) or Datto by chance? Each are Destiny community fans / freaks in their own right. All have youtube / twitch feeds on the topic and should have been in attendance. Alan and Byf should have stood out like a sore thumb with the UK accents...

If Icould add a bit to what you mentioned above, Destiny has a rich story filld with quests and side quests which when explored fill the fiction and lore. From the alpha, you unlock items you can further delve into on what will become the new bungie.net to track a great many things, including, the grimiore cards, which create an encyclopedia of information, story and background on each fragment you futher unlock and uncover from Humanities past. As we uncovered in the Alpha...

Spoiler:
[spoiler]... you were warned:

Guardians are dead - reanimated corpses through the Light of the Traveller!

As the story goes, ages ago, man on Earth was visited by a Traveller (floating orb thing above city now). That started a Golden Age for humanity. We spread all acros the solar system, enhabiting planets and moons. Eventually, the Traveller's arch enemy, The Darkness followed / tracked it and assaulted our Solar System, all but wiping out humanity. The Traveller cacooned itself and used its power to banish the Darkness and protect the last city of man, now a floating orb over city. It used The Light to create Ghosts to go out and find hosts to reanimate and infuse with the Traveller's power.

To that end, your companion "Ghost" and your power as well as your ability to respawn all comes from the power bestowed to you by the Traveller, and the fact that you are already dead. As a Guardian, it's now your duty, as a guardian, to go location to location, planet, moon, reef and space debris alike, and reclaim what you can from Humanities fall, awaken the Traveller and prepare for the return of the Darkness![/spoiler]

The story and side missions though expansive, are only one element of the game. However in these missions, you'll get the cut scenes, the companion ghost integration / help, lots of dialgue, backstory, NPCs in the wild, etc...

Strikes are yet another way to play and are set to a specific level. You chose a difficulty and can be accomplished from 1-3 players. We got one Strike in the alpha. It's a series of small objectives and bosses which lead to a main boss. You'll go through both public and private spaces as you reach a climatic battle and end reward if you accomplish the final boss goal. You can play this on Brave (bronze), Legend (silver) or ... presumably... ? (gold) difficulties. We could only choose the first two in the alpha. Note, Legend was noticably more difficult, but doable. When you chose the higher difficulty, the rewards did seem better at the end, but the work required to accomplish the goal seemed noticably harder and AI was tougher as was their gear.

Raid is yet another type of game play which will be available in the final game. Think of these as more end-game. These are accomplishe with 3-6 Guardians. We did nothave access to these in the Alpha. These will require highly kitted Guardians and well organized teams of players working at peak level. It will include complex puzzles and may require HOURS of work before you figure out how to even approach one component of the mission. Be warned, these are meant to be increadibly challenging in some cases.

Patrol / Free roam. We got a small glimpse of this in the alpha. You Elect to go into Patrol mode and select a planet / location. When launched, you have various nav points all over a location. Each icon indicates the kind of quest it is... a kill quest...a gather / salvage quest... an explore or scout quest... etc. During this time, you'll pick up random dropped loot as well as stumble upon chests in the world and may even pick up a random public event or three. It's a care free, I'm just going to explore the region kind of mode. You'll also get a feel for the planet's various locations and sub-areas over the course of doing these missions, and you may stumble upon some enemy that is WAY over your level. In the alpha, we encoutered level 12 and level 16 guys when we were level 8... we eve encountered some ?? level guys, that w could only do a single point of damage to per hit... and that one-shotted us... clearly outmatched!

Back at the Tower, I found that you could level up the NPCs that you worked with. The Shipwright, the Engram chap, the crucible armor and Weapon smiths... as well as each faction representative and your Vanguard rep... all had a level attainmet tracker. As you completed missions for them, that circle and number would increase over time. I only ever leveled up the Engram guy beyond level 0 in the alpha, I got him to level 2. What I found is that he started paying me for any Engrams I found in the field that were from humanities past... he would pay me several hundred glimmer each before telling me what they were. In addition, he started offering me much better gear as I leveled up with him. The bounty guy had 3 bounties I completed and he rewarded me with CRUCIBLE points for the crucible guys. I turned into some materials I found to the shipwright, and he awarded me FWC faction points which increased my rank with them. The FWC guy told me that when I increased in rank, he had something for me to do.... so you can see how the Tower becomes a HUB of information / jobs / quests and economy over time.

Finally, there was the Crucible which Doodi hit on nicely. In the Alpha, you picked a planet (we could only pick Earth) then there were multiple icons i.e. game types when you went into Crucible However, they only let us play Control. Next you were randomly selected to go onto only one of two maps they gave us access too - the Moon and Earth. I noticed on the Earth map we had no vehicles and could not spawn our Sparrow personal Ghost gen vehicle. On the Moon map, we had Turrets flanking the map, two respawnable vehicles and we could spawn our own Ghost-made sparrow on that map. I'm not sure if it was just me, but it seemed like the Moon had low gravity and we could jump MUCH further / higher as well. I found the "Control" game type to be far more entertaining that what I find to be a very old and redone capture the flag / deathmatch style of game type. Though I'm hopeful for a PvP game mode where there are multiple ways to win not just "get more objectives" and maybe even a "no respawn" game type (sniff... shadowrun / Chromehounds), the Control game type was enjoyable. Kills and the alike helped your personal experience, but really didn't matter to the game type win/loss. What really mattered is controlling and holding MORE A, B, C objectives longer than the opponnent. Either side could retreive then capture a given objective however as long as your side held more of them your team's bar ticked up. Whoever's bar reached max first won. The killing was tertiary. Respawning meant you lost your Heavy ammo if you had any. That was noticably more painful as the game went on and you leveled up more. With a levl cap of 8, we only started to get into the power / impact of the heavy weapons, but if you had one and you had ammo for it, when dieing, you missed it

We've been told that even before the alpha launched, it was a much out dated and very old build. It will be interesting to see how the beta differs. Those of us that played the alpha and had access to the alpha forums provided a great deal of feedback. We are told that a significant amount of info was learned from the Alpha and already impacted the Beta and launch builds. We'll see what suggestions, if any they incorporate.

I can tell you this much, I found the Destiny Alpha to be a better launch than TitanFall production launch. I found the Destiny Apha to be more engaging than any other game I've played in a very long time... and at 40 this year, I've played a great deal of games.

Note: Bungie has commited to supporting this game DAILY with new content. They will staff a command center 24x7 at launch for 10 years. There will be new content in the online, living world, EVERY DAY. Some of it will disappear if missed, never to return. Others will make periodic returns. The 10-year experience will go through 3 major game releases with at least a couple significant minor updates per major release over the cycle. I want to make sure I'm on the right system to get the most bang for my buck...

I'm signed up for the Beta on both Xbone and PS4. I picked up a PS4 just for this game. Honestly, I got both next gen systems for this game. There is very little that holds my interest anymore as most games are been there, done that new polish on old concepts. You can only put new paint and explosioins on capture the flag and domination so many times before you say... I've done that - whether running or in a robot, a jet or a jeep - I've done that.

From what I've read, the Xbone has been off to a rough start. Now with an SDK to get it to run Destiny at 1080p and 30fps. Bummer that it needed it, but glad MS is solving the problem. On the other hand, Destiny runs at 1080p and 30fps natively on the PS4 without any software to help it.

Next, per Osborne at Bungie in an E3 2014 interview, they have been workng with Sony from the start before either PS4 or Destiny were a reality. The Pillars for development aligned with both. Bungie even had a creative influence in the design of the PS4. That says a LOT about how Destiny hould run and it explains a lot to me about why it runs so well in the alpha on the PSN.

Moreover, Destiny makes use of the SHARE button on the PS4 controller, it uses the illumination light on the controller when you pick up different colored ammo to indicate what ammo color you just picked up, and when your super bar is charged the light glows yellow on the controller to indicate you are good to go. The xbox can't controller can't do that. I've used both controllers now for some time. The PS4 is very accurate, its very tight... I hated the PS3 tiny controller but they have really done some work to improve the feel and size of the PS4 controller. It also has a controller speaker in it. I don't know if they will make use of it, but one of the common feedbacks from the Alpha was to pipe your ghosts voice through the controller speaker. I also forgot to mention that the PS4 has a touch pad on it. You can slide your finger across it for a mouse and push it in to signal your ghost... MS has other buttons, but doesn't have a touchpad. So, not sure what they will use for that.

Finally, Sony gets exclusve (Limited?) content that MS doesn't ge for awhile... or not at all, depending.

  • - alpha (PS4 only)
  • - beta (Sony on 7/17... then MS... sometime later... rumored for 7/21, nothing official)
  • - Exclusive launch Crucible Map, Strike Mission, guns and gear... Amazon originally posted that Activision confirmed and quoted that MS wouldn't get it for 1-year... that has since been retracted, with no exact clarification for when MS would get it...

 

I'll be playing the beta on both, but if I were a betting man, I'd say Sony got to this party on time and MS like all things 2013 E3 related dropped the ball. It's a shame, because I owned no less than 4 xbox 360s and have been on that network for over 10 years. However, I'm not tied to any console or network. I want to play Destiny where I will get the best experience - period.

Game: 
Thu, 06/26/2014 - 09:51
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Good stuff, Thx Tactica.

I'll be on 360 for the Beta, if it doesn't suck compared to the other platforms, I may delay my "investment" to next-gen.

Thu, 06/26/2014 - 10:51 (Reply to #2)
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Kenjamin,

NP, hope there is something there you found of interest.

I'm sure there will be tons of Beta coverage on youtube / twitch. Be sure to compare your experience with that of others on the next gen platforms. Though I'm a long time Xbox live member, I have a feeling Sony got the upper hand on this next gen title in more ways than one. Bungie, Activision and Sony seem to have a tight relationship and developed the title ground up for PS4. The rest of the platforms seems like they took a me too approach.

Something tells me there will be a host of side-by-side video coverage on these experiences with the folks to capture the data. That will make a heck of a video. If I can figure out how to do it, I plan to myself since I'll have a setup for both through the same network and TV.

GL to you with the beta on 360.

One final caution, though they have said game 1 of 3 in the Destiny line will be developed for 'last gen' systems, the next 2 will not. That said, your character and gear will be forward compatible / upgraded with you / saved on Bungie when you upgrade *if* you stay on the same companies system... so 360 to X1... and PS3 to PS4... there is no word yet whether cross platform save / upgrade will be supported.

Thus, I encourage anyone to determine which network / system they want their experience on - and stick with that branding. If you don't , you are rolling the dice if you decide to change platforms and network mid cycle.

Cheers,

Thu, 06/26/2014 - 10:26
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I'll add this bit too on the loot / leveling:

Now, across all aspects of the game is a level, loot & Upgrade system which is wide and varied. They clearly took the slot machine and borderlands hook influence here in my opinion, but they layered and refined it so much. There are also influences from Skyrim and other games you’ve played which all seem to work at how this system was employed (in the alpha). You really have to play it to appreciate the depth of the leveling, loot acquisition & upgrading system. However, I’ll give a brief breakdown:

 

Loot

  • Comes from chests randomly placed in the world
  • Randomly drops from bad guys
  • Quests, patrol missions, bounties, NPC missions, story missions, strikes, raids, crucible awards, etc
  • Even if you miss a loot drop, NPC in Tower called POSTMASTER will find it for you and notifiy you of it
  • Separate loot streams by player, nobody sees or can steal your loot!
  • No trading / bartering / auction house system between players
  • There is a VAULT in game allowing you to trade between your OWN characters though

 

Character level

  • 1-20, speculation they could raise this level cap down the future,
  • level has moderate effect on toon power
  • opens up top end gear

Abilities level & subclasses upgrading

  • Abilities level up as they are used. Each has a tree of benefits.
  • It reminds you of Diablo III in a sense, with an ability then sub / modifier abilities you can apply to it
  • You have a primary ability to ‘unlock’ and then several modifier ‘sub classes’ for it to ‘unlock’
  • You can apply one sub-class modifier to the primary ability in a given class or tree of abilities
  • Eventually you unlock a ‘class lock’ ability. When invoked, you “lock” changes for your toon’s abilities
  • The ‘class lock’ is like finalization, but in exchange, you get several stat bonuses / specialization

Gear / Weapon Rarity, level & Upgrading

  • Every piece of gear you wear has a level and rarity, must meet the level before you can use
  • Head, Arms, body, legs and class specific piece (cloak for rogue, brace for warlock, cloth for Titan)
  • Rarity is white (common), green (uncommon), blue (rare), purple (Legendary) and gold (exotic)
  • Items which are not Common, may be upgraded as they are used
  • A skill tree may branch on the item allow specializations
  • Once a weapon’s items are fully unlocked, you can even change its focus
  • There’s a gauge to tell you how effect a current weapon/gear is  based upon current upgrades
  • We were not allowed to use all upgrading options in Alpha, we had limited skill trees only
  • We could only wear some Greens and seen some Blues in the alpha but couldn’t equip them…

Gear Bonuses

  • In addition to being upgraded with better abilities, uncommon or better gear would give stat bonuses like
    • Intellect – made your super power cool down faster
    • Strength – made your melee ability cool down faster
    • Discipline – made your grenade ability cool down faster
  • Uncommon or better gear also came with bonuses like
    • increased ammo for a category of gun
    • increased reload speed for a category of gun
    • increased super damage / area
    • increased melee damage / area
    • increased grenade damage / area

Weapon Types & Ammo

  • Each weapon will fit into a Primary, Alternate and Heavy category by default and cannot be changed
  • you can hold a host of guns for each category, but switching guns in the field for a given cateogory makes you lose your ammo for it unless its primary.
  • In the field, you’ll see White (primary), Yellow (alternate) and purple (heavy) ammo as you kill stuff
  • Heavy ammo is fairly uncommon, but not rare.
  • Many weapons first arrive as “Engrams” and must be ‘cyphered’ by a special NPC in the Tower
  • This special NPC is called a Cryptographer (more later)

Bounty mission / Assignments

  • These are optional by NPC and grant special rewards… experience, gear as well as glimmer or Engrams

NPC favor leveling

  • Several NPCs offered gear / guns / emblems / new vehicles (Sparrow or Ships)
  • Most required enough favor with them
  • Some would sell components or even require special components as well as favor and glimmer
  • Some would exchange special components you found and award you favor points with a particular NPC

Faction NPC favor leveling

  • Each Faction NPC offers quests and special gear / gun engrams
  • after you earn enough favor with them
  • We couldn’t really earn enough in the alpha

Cryptographer

  • One of many special NPCs in the tower, he sells and unlocks Weapon / Gear Engrams
  • If you find an Engram, he will reveal it
  • If you use him enough, you win favor with him, which is tracked in levels
  • Eventually, he pays you for finding good Engrams from the past
  • His stock also improves as your favor with him does

 

There is a economy system in the game, which we received very little access to. However, you could see how it was unfolding.

 

Glimmer – the main source of $ used for common purchases, and initial gear / gun purchases, you learn that’s not enough later

Crucible Points  -      you can trade components to one of the NPCs (a shipwright) for these points                           

  • you can also earn them in the Crucible PvP game type
  • You spend them along with glimmer to buy from two specific crucible vendors for special gear/guns

Vanguard Points – you trade components to one of the NPCs for these points

  • You can also do certain quests in the story and strike missions as well as bounties to earn points
  • You spend them along with glimmer (and other components?) at a Vanguard leader for special gear / guns

 

There is also some degree of a crafting system, but in large part, it was disabled for us. We could gather the components, and we could see that certain NPCs requested some component names, but we could do very little with them in the alpha.. but you got a feel for which components could be hunted for, what items could be broken down to gather components, and where / how they might be used:

 

Host of components – to many to describe

  • Some you find in the world and pick off the ground
  • Some are earned from fallen enemy types
  • Some come from breaking down particular types or rarities of gear / guns
  • Others only have a drop chance from bosses in strikes / missions it appears
  • Speculation: some may only come from Crucible and yet to be determined sources…

 

Thu, 06/26/2014 - 14:11
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Thanks for all the info. 

One of the things I didn't know was about the Postmaster getting loot if you happen to miss a pick-up. That's pretty cool. 

I was somewhat curious about how leveling and weapons impact gameplay in The Crucible. Bungie mentioned the weapons will be scaled appropriately for PvP and then ramped back up for PvE. However, your ability unlocks will remain. Can you verify if this seemed to be true? How balanced did the game feel with mixed ranks? 

As a Diablo 3 player, I really enjoy the aspect of experimenting with various skills and builds. I can't wait to start experimenting with stuff. 

Oh and Ken, I'm planning on playing in the 360 Beta too, but then I expect to have my XB1 in time for the game's launch on September 9th.

Fri, 06/27/2014 - 02:03
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Darth,

The postmaster was quite a surprise. After finishing a mission, I had a green indicator hovering over Earth with an exclamation point in it. Had no idea what it was for, so went back to earth, then tower via the Director (various in game maps) then loaded the Tower. Same green icon hovered over the Postmaster NPC where I learned of the service / feature in game. Was pretty cool. Not sure what else that cat is good for, or if he gives quests or anything over time, but that feature alone was pretty sweet.

+ + +

Your question is a fair one, but not terribly easy to answer. Mainly because I didn't do any crucible until I was level 8. So, I can only tell you what I observed from the other players who joined at lower levels and by inspecting their toons when, they sucked... along with some other observations made alone the way... for whatever that's worth to you... :)

+ + +

In the alpha, we had access to White and Green gear. Though we seen / picked up blues from time to time, it was a higher level requirement that we could obtain. However, we did get Primary, Alternate and Heavy weapons.

We also had our Super (which charges up), our Grenade and our melee - all three of which are skill / abilities... yeah, I know the grenade you want to think of as a physical thing, but it's not. It's an ability and in game you'll see why. Each does far more than a traditional frag. Even the Warlocks melee was by default a life steel of sort which cooled down the grenade ability by default. Each of those abilities could be further enhanced / modified by your sub classes or your gear... We also couldn't take our abilities up past the second teir...  but I digress.

We were also capped at level 8. Worth noting as once you allow level 20s... perhaps things could get more skewed? There was a podcast where Deej noted that even if you find yourself getting owned, they have a system set up where you get amply rewarded not just because you only got one kill, but because you did kill that level 20 guy, or didn't, and you stuck it out and took your lumps like a newby... though I don't know exactly what that means... (and I paraphrased)

So, that said... things did not seem out of balance. I died to level 2 guys. I also tended to finish in the upper middle of the pack. I'm not the best twitch reflex type of shooter player, but I found that I could play destiny a bit different than say a halo type of game which from what I recall, was a lot of bunny hopping and speed killing. I could sit back, and think, and find a position, and set up some traps at capture points and pounce on unsuspecting victims with grenades, supers, snipers and nova bombs. It worked quite well on one map for one area. On another map, I crouched over a passage with a shotty and guarded the heavy ammo, when it spawned, i grabbed it and went hunting as soon as my guarded capture point was being taken... and I had a great route set up with my leveled rocket launcher... oh that thing was fun. I had a back up shotty (alternate) I would use on that map as well... really didn't need or go to my primary weapon on that map.  Since both shotguns, snipers (both alternates) and rocket launchers are 1 hit kills when used appropriately, your level will be irrelevant for those types of weapons... maintaining their ammo is another trick entirely though.

You started with Primary ammo, even when you respawned. There was uncommon ammo crates pretty plentiful on the maps... the heavy ammo was not readily available and there were audible announcements about when it would spawn in and predetermined - you could learn it locations. it came in multiple times, like on a timer in the game. Also if you killed someone with unused heavy ammo, then you could pick it up.

I can say there was a noticable difference in the junk guns vs. the good guns in Crucible... as mine seemed to do more than the level 2 or 3 guys... but I was definitely on par with all the level 6-8 guys. I got my arse handed to me many of times by them. You had to try to take crap into the PvP though... honestly, its hard to not have an Okay gun if you have leveled up... even if you just play crucible, you will be generating mad crucible points, and there are dedicated crucible vendors that require those points to buy anything from... and they ahve really nice gear.

If you just fired the game up and jumped right into PvP, yeah, you were probably going to find yourself in a bad way for awhile, but I hear in the full launch, they aren not going to allow that anyway... however, it really didn't take long to 1) level up to level 8 with a toon... maybe 4 hours in the alpha... and 2) along the way you found plenty of green (our max level) guns you could use... then it was a personal option as to whether you used those guns or not to further level up their sub class abilities... most of which were small bumps in stability, rate of fire, scope improvements, small damage bumps, etc...

Where I noticed say the biggest difference was whether someone had good leveled up gear or not. Some folks were noticably harder to kill than others. Upon inspection, their gear was just far better than mine when I initially went into PvP. I encountered a guy who had some really nice stuff whom I finally started setting up traps for, and found rockets, nova bombs and sniper head shots took him down just fine... but running my primary vs whatever the heck he was using mono v mono like I did others, was a losing proposition.

There's also no question that if used properly, the heavy ammo on the right gun can really swing tides... far more than somones scout rifle having better stats.

I'll also say this is Bungie, when match making, it seemed to generally throw me in with folks of or close to my level. It was relatively rare to see a level 2 or 3 in the room... but it did happen. When it did, it seemed like both sides had the same amount of lower level guys.

Keep in mind though, we had no Rare or better stuff and level capped... so, it was hard for us to really see a full potential of skewed battles.

Anyway, not sure if that helps,

Fri, 06/27/2014 - 07:34
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Thanks for the info, that is most appreciated. 

So, it sounds like the Heavy Ammo is basically like a power weapon spawn. In your above example, ammo for your rocket launcher. Does this heavy ammo spawn at kind of a central location for teams to fight over or multiple locations around the map? 

Tue, 07/08/2014 - 11:16 (Reply to #7)
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DarthTabasco wrote:

Thanks for the info, that is most appreciated. 

So, it sounds like the Heavy Ammo is basically like a power weapon spawn. In your above example, ammo for your rocket launcher. Does this heavy ammo spawn at kind of a central location for teams to fight over or multiple locations around the map? 

You gotta be careful with the heavy ammo. If someone gets it for an LMG it's no big deal, those really aren't much stronger than an assault rifle or anything. But if it's ammo for a rocket launcher, that could cause some trouble. I had a fire element one with some big splash on it, I was able to use that to clear groups off the objective a few times. And your RPG is really the only way to deal with the vehicles on the map. It's not like Halo where concentrated effort with some stickies and a plasma pistol or two can drop a scorpion. You either need some rocket ammo, or your special but those can be super tricky.

I don't think Tac talked about em, so I will. Every class gets a unique special attack. The warlock gets basically a giant grenade. It moves kinda slow and has a very steep arc on it so you really want to jump up high first before you throw it. The titan has a ground punch shockwave. He doesn't jump out very far when he uses it so you really have to be up close and personal, but during the animation you're invincible so that helps. The hunter gets a golden laser pistol. It takes about 5 seconds from the time you activate your special before you can fire a shot which leaves you vulnerable, but it has 3 shots and it's a one hit kill from any range. But you're on a timer with it, you get about 20 seconds to fire off your shots or it disappears. These specials take around 4 minutes to charge up again. You can help that with getting kills and such, but it still takes a while. This means whichever team wins the initial vehicle battle and keeps their tank has a HUGE advantage since there really isn't a way to take them out unless someone hits it with a special.

 

And just my 2 cents on the subject of weapon balance, there isn't much. They tone down the raw damage a gun does to make them "balanced" but that's it. So if you have an assault rifle with 90 damage and mine only has 30, they'll do the same damage. But if mine has 900rpm and a fire element and yours only has 450 and no element I have a huge advantage. I played quite a bit in the crucible because I know that's what my friends were mostly interested in so I wanted to collect some data on it. I really didn't feel like one weapon had a big advantage over the other in terms of DMR or AR or whatever. It's not like Halo where 3 shots pops the shield and one for the headshot. The titan gets more shield than the warlock so it takes more shots to kill a titan player. But once I got that AR with the super high 900rpm, I was melting shields. Even the SMGs I found didn't shoot that fast. I was averaging about a 1.5k/d before, but once I found that gun I was gettin nearly double that. There's no real spread, no damage drop off at range, and with the fire element it basically means I'm doing double damage on top of the doubly fast fire rate.

Fri, 06/27/2014 - 16:35
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Your SUPER is your power weapon. Everyone generates that over time. It is the ultimate equalizer... like no other weapon you'll find... when that super is charged, it just wrecks things.

The heavy ammo is a close second.... if you have a decent gun. Many did not have decent heavies because there's plenty of heavies that are not worth a crud... well, at level 8 anyway... some are tricky to make useful... and some are no good until you level them up and get some accuracy or stability to control them... so, without some investment, you won't just run out buy a rocket launcher and be a blast master super hero... that said, yeah, they can be a force to be reckoned with... but its a very limited time / short lived advantage.

An announcer warned you when heavy ammo was about to spawn in, then when it was actually spawning.

Then, you got a heads up way point when /where it was available. It was pretty hard to miss.

On the two maps we got to play on, there were 2 locations the heavy ammo spawned in at on each.

These locatoins were both off center so to speak, but neutral in location relative to capture points for the Control mission type. I found them to be very well placed. In both cases, there were at least 2 if not 3 visible accesses to move into / out of the location where the ammo would spawn. and several vantage points if you wanted to watch from afar for folks moving to camp the ammo. In each case, there was also at least one nook / cranny spot where if you were fast / good you could get to which someone would have to dig you out with close range if you were really set to camp the spot... but in so doing, you would set yourself up for so much shotty, grenade, special, heavy... splash damage or vheicle death it wasn't funny. It really wasn't wise to try and camp the heavy ammo locations... though some tried.

Depending upon your heavy weapon... I had a few different machine guns and rocket launchers on my toon, you could get some bad arse gear. However, with my machine gun, the ammo pick up might get you a couple mags.... and the machine gun I liked that was accurate enough... 'might' be good for 3 kills per mag. It fired crazy fast and emptied super quick but was nasty accurate with some kind of energy effect on it that just wrecked people... but it didn't have a high capacity and was HORRENDOUSLY slow to reload.

The rocket laucher that I liked the most only had a moderate splash but had the fastest flight time and second largest damage. It also had a secondary damage effect on it and was quick aiming. However, it only held 2 shells and it too was the absolutely slowest of all of my rocket launchers to reload (had 4 of them, all green). I had it fully leveled up.

With my machine gun, a single heavy ammo pick up would give me two mags... if I was lucky and didn't die, I was good for about 5 kills with it... lets face it, you miss some... realistically, it was more like 3 or 4 kills for me.

My fav rocket laucher got me some good ones. Each shell could get 3 kills pretty easily *if* you camped a capture point and the morons moved in en masse, like this one group kept doing over and over. It seemed like they were gluttons for punishment. One game, between my nova bomb, rockets, vortex grenade and sniping... and this little 3 man fireteam that decided they wanted to have a pissing contest with me, I got into some decent kill numbers, and I kept getting the "recaptured' bonus for objective... nobody else was going taking the purple ammo on our side, so it was easy for me to set up, watch the ammo, watch the way point from afar... grab ammo, go camp off in distance, wait for morons to come back and start looking for me... I'd jump to air, bomb them... waste all three, rinse and repeat and just set up in a different vantage point... did that whole game. All they had to do is NOT go up together one time and watch where the shot came from... then the other 2 could have taken me out... they never got it... LOL

Your SUPER does recharge faster from others getting kills by you and teamwork things, as well as your own kills, etc... so, when groups of enemys are dieing as you are capturing points, and the opponents are playing to your favor, things do start getting more and more easy... especially when they are dropping heavy ammo for you on your capture point you are guarding... but not a very good test case for what will be norm.

I honestly don't consider msyelf a good FPS pvp player. Average if not below average probably. I more enjoy the campaign, team work, scavange, RPG sides of Destiny... so, gague accordingly. However, the fact that Bungie could find a way to entertain somebody like me still in the FPS PvP arena, I applaud them. The game has legs, on many fronts.

Fri, 06/27/2014 - 16:46 (Reply to #9)
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I don't want to send the wrong message either....

I never once felt like I was out matched because I didn't have heavy ammo. I never felt like I didn't have an answer because I didn't have a decent heavy gun... quite the contrary.

Your SUPER is easily the go to for most situations. However, that has to charge up and be earned through performance or time.

I found the Alternate guns to be as if not more effective in some games. Same goes for my primary. I had primaries that I loved using, but quit just so I could level up my other guns a bit by putting them to use. I'm not quite sure, but it seemed like the gun you either had equipped... or... the gun you were getting kills with for sure, went up in level for its sub-categories. So, I would switch out my guns regularly and make sure I had things equipped that I wanted to work on. Even when running things I just earned and had no levels on, I didn't feel out classed... maybe had to move it a bit closer or didn't like my reticle as much... but overall, managed just fine.

The missions are also built, at least for the control game type, that 'killing folks' really is not your primary objective, it just compliments your ultimate goal to maintain control of the most objectives at any given time. So, how you go about working with your team to maintain control is the real key... diversion, kills, trapping, capturing and holding, hit and runs, overwatch from vantage point... etc, lot of valid approaches, depending upone what you brought.

For me, the heavy ammo never felt the only tool or even the best tool... it just felt like another tool in the bag that might be fun or helpful to play with.

Hope that helps,

Fri, 06/27/2014 - 21:00
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Bungie posted several good morsels today:

Weekly update:

http://www.bungie.net/7_Bungie-Weekly-Update---06272014/en/News/News?aid...

 

How long will the beta last, more details about xbox beta, and what will 'we' get for playing the beta:

- will find out on bungie day 7/7/14

 

Is voice acting final from Alpha, nope... beta was updated, final product was updated further...

 

Achievement / Trophie list fully published as well

 

Really good update all...

 

Sat, 06/28/2014 - 15:28
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Thanks for your time and effort.  Lots and lots of great info!!!!

Sat, 06/28/2014 - 15:33 (Reply to #12)
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DedJeloC wrote:

Thanks for your time and effort.  Lots and lots of great info!!!!

What do you think Ded? Is it going to be your cup of tea?

I'm still a bit ambivalent. Buying it the moment it is available as a digital download, so I guess I'll miss the XBox Beta.

Fri, 07/04/2014 - 16:53 (Reply to #13)
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DEEP_NNN wrote:

DedJeloC wrote:

Thanks for your time and effort.  Lots and lots of great info!!!!

What do you think Ded? Is it going to be your cup of tea?

I'm still a bit ambivalent. Buying it the moment it is available as a digital download, so I guess I'll miss the XBox Beta.

i think it will be a bucket of tea for mewink this  game will probably take up most of my time for a while.  Hopefully  by 11/11 I will need a break.

 

Thu, 07/03/2014 - 14:04
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I preordered Destiny yesterday from Amazon - for the One (don't have the One yet...). Today I got an access code that says the Beta begins on 7/17. 

I'm a Halo fan through and through. Daughter loves Bungie... We'll see.  MIN

 

Mon, 07/14/2014 - 09:21
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I enjoyed  playing the Destiny Alpha. I found the world to be quite interesting and was amazed at how diverse the game was. It has something for everyone-PVP, Co-op, exploration, mini-raids, campaign missions, etc.

Will there be a 2old2play Destiny thread that we can exchange gamertags and maybe run as a clan?

I'll be playing the BETA & release on both, Xbox One & PS4, but mostly on PS4.

Thu, 07/17/2014 - 13:36
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I'll be on ps4 as well.  I missed the alpha, so really looking forward to the beta.

 

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