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12/19/2014 6:59:26 AM
2
ATTN: DeeJ - Please take a few moments to read my feedback. Thank you.
I understand that you are a busy person, but please take the time to read my post(I know it is long). If you could find that quick extra moment to respond so that I know you read it that would be greatly appreciated(even an "OK" would work for me). Thank you.
First, I want to just say that I get a ton of enjoyment out of Destiny; otherwise, I would not have logged over 200 hours into the game already. Mechanically, the game is outstanding. The gun play, physics, graphics, and all of those sorts of things are excellent. Destiny is supported by an excellent core of game play and mechanics that keeps me coming back day after day.
That being said, there are many things about Destiny that have left me disappointed. When one of my friends first told me about Destiny over a year ago I immediately began imagining what an open world, online, multi-player, RPG, shooter from Bungie would mean to me and my friends who all game together. Naturally, my expectations were through the roof, and everything I saw and heard about the game during its development supported these expectations. I can truly say that I thought and hoped that Destiny would become the only game I would play on my Xbox One. I imagined that I would be exploring a massive open world when I was playing alone rending the need for another RPG game unnecessary, and, when my friends were online, we would spend our time raiding or playing PvP matches finally liberating me from the need to buy more Call of Duty games.
Alas, these hopes and dreams did not come to fruition, but I am not here to harp on expectations and things that could have been. I want to try and help make the Destiny we do have into the best game that it can be, but I feel there is quite a bit that needs to be improved. I will list the things that I think should be improved and the ideas I have that may be able to help.
[b]1. PvP and PvE Balance[/b]
I am mainly referring to the balance of weapons between these two very distinct game types. In a strictly PvE world weapon balance is much different than the world of PvP. Bungie has taken on quite the task in combining the two in the way that they have. There have been a few examples of weapons being better balanced for PvP rendering them almost completely obsolete in PvE. In my mind it would be impossible to properly balance the weapons for use in both. If you want people to use a variety of guns in both PvP and PvE you cannot try to balance them when they perform exactly the same way in both areas. Fixing a gun that is too powerful in PvP probably makes it useless for PvE, and making a gun that is really unique and powerful in PvE probably makes it too powerful for PvP use; however, a PvE game needs unique and, possibly, overpowered weapons while a PvP game needs to find true balance or you will never hear the end of complaints from the community.
My solution to this problem is simple. Completely separate the two. I do not mean make a set of weapons for PvP and a set for PvE, but make the way the game uses the weapons different depending on which game mode you are playing. In PvE the guns should work exactly as they do now. They have base stats and then an upgrade tree which unlocks the more unique features of each of the guns. In PvP allow the base stats(excluding damage) to be the only differentiators for the weapons. When used in the Crucible the guns should not have access to any of the upgrades that the weapon has. All of the weapons would have the same basic damage modifiers dependent on the type of weapon that it is. This would still give the weapons enough variety that everyone would not necessarily be using the exact same load out, but it would also eliminate extremely overpowered buffs that some guns can get in a PvP environment.
This, naturally, makes finding and buying new gear much less enticing for the people who play PvP almost exclusively. This is where Iron Banner comes into play. During Iron Banner events guns are unlocked to their full potential in PvP. All the upgrades and damage differences would actually take effect. That fully leveled, upgraded Suros is now a dominant weapon when going up against someone with a blue Shingen. Balance should go out the window with Iron Banner. That is the point. The Crucible is for purely balanced PvP. The Iron Banner is for showing off all of the cool stuff that you have by crushing your opponents. In order to really make this work Iron Banner events should be held for one week every month. For the first few weeks of each month you spend your time leveling up your gear for the end of the month Iron Banner extravaganza when you can finally unleash punishment with your tricked out gear.
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[b]2. Light Levels and Armor[/b] Personally, I like the way that Bungie uses armor and light to raise a player's level, but there is one massive flaw with the way Bungie has executed this. There is no variety in top level gear. Destiny is supposed to be a game where you create your unique guardian, and take them on adventures trying to save what is left of the human race. How unique can we be if we all have to wear the same gear to be max level? We cannot be unique. It is that simple. I spent the first three months of this game's existence working toward getting Vault of Glass raid gear because that was the only way that I could get to level 30. I succeeded in that quest just before the previous Iron Banner event(several of my friends who raided just as much as I did were not so lucky). I then spent the entire duration of that Iron Banner grinding rep so I could get the new Iron Banner gloves for my Titan. Not because they were better than my raid gloves, but simply so I did not have to look exactly the same as every other level 30 Titan. In a game that is so dependent on gear there absolutely must be a variety of viable gear options. Many times I have heard that Bungie's hope is that there is no "perfect" weapon load out, so people will be using a variety of weapons. That is great, but should the same hope also not exist for armor and the appearance of our guardians? There absolutely must be more than one set of top level gear. In my mind there should be three sets per class. There should be the raid set that we currently have, there should be a set that you can unlock through play in the Crucible, and there should be a set that you can get from killing Strike bosses. Each of these armor sets should get you to the maximum light level, but they should be more varied with their perks or even armor values. Maybe the raid gear would provide the highest overall armor value while the Crucible gear adds some cool PvP perks. The Strike gear could be specialized for fighting specific enemy types depending on what Strike boss drops the piece. Everything about the current raid armor and how to get it(now that the helmet drops on normal mode) is great. For getting the Crucible armor there should be some trigger before you are able to get it as a drop. Possibly something like after playing fifteen matches the level 32 armor can now start dropping for you. Once you get one drop then you have to play another fifteen matches before the next piece can drop. Another idea would be to make it available after a you win a certain number of matches. This would help to deter the people who just join Crucible matches and go AFK(Is this abbreviation really viable since we are console gamers? Maybe it should be AFC for "away from console) to gather loot. This would make them want to actually participate to enhance their chances of getting wins. Then the drops could only occur after you actually win a match. I know a lot of people would want it to be purely skill based, but it should be open to everyone who plays. Some people just are not as skilled, but if they are helping a team to win then they should be rewarded. Finally, the Strike armor would be actual drops from Strike bosses. Not post Strike awards, so you will know if you get it when the boss dies and a little purple gem pops out of it. These armor pieces could work in one of two ways in my mind. The first would be that each boss has one or two possible armor pieces that they can drop. For example, Phogoth may drop a helmet or more rarely gloves while Simiks 3 drops gloves or rarely drops boots. The other way would be that each boss could drop any of the five armor pieces(helmet, gloves, chest, boots, class item), but depending on which faction it belongs to the item would have perks to better combat that faction in the future. The example would be if you get the Nexus to drop a helmet it may have a perk that lets you fill your special meter faster by killing Vex while getting that same helmet from Phogoth would do the same thing but it would activate from killing Hive. This would allow us to have some variety at the top levels of the game, but there is one other thing that needs fixed with armor. With the release of the DLC I became very frustrated because all of my gear that I spent almost 200 hours farming and leveling up instantly became obsolete. Less than a week after the new DLC launched I was no longer using any of that armor. The venders in the game were selling gear better than what I had put so much effort into getting. I understand that with new DLCs the level cap will rise. That is great. I am fine with that, but do not immediately make all of the old gear useless. Use the old max level gear as the stepping stone to the new gear. If the venders were selling level 30 gear I would have been OK with that. It would help get the less fortunate players(in regard to RNG) be able to access the new raid more easily without holding back their friends who had already reached 30, but by making the vender gear 31 people who literally just bought the game can immediately be more powerful than the people who put hundreds and hundreds of hours into the game. Bungie basically made everything we did for the last three months meaningless. [b]3. The Story[/b] I do not think anyone is here to deny that the story was lacking in the initial release. Bungie promised to improve upon this with the first expansion; however, I feel that the exact same mistakes were made all over again. I will start by saying that many people did not like the performance of the ghost in the story. That is fine, but completely eliminating the character with the biggest role in the story to this point is improbable. We cannot possibly be expected to believe that the little chatterbox that is our ghost would not speak at all after seeing the stuff from the new story missions. If for whatever reason the actor who played that role could no longer do the part that is not a problem. There are several ways to account for that and still keep the character in the game. Make a cut scene showing our little ghost actually getting shot while he hacks a door/computer. This would be totally believable in the story and mission structure that we have come to know. After the ghost gets shot have him spark a little and say something in a new voice. “It seems my vocal modulator has been damaged.” A quick and easy explanation for having a new voice actor playing the part. Having zero recurring characters from the initial release in the DLC was a mistake. It makes the two seem too distant and unrelated. The biggest issue with the story beyond its lack of depth is that we never seem to be engaged with any of the characters other than a couple chats with the Speaker and the Stranger. When we are dispatched on missions it is always a phantom voice speaking over a radio telling us what we are about to do. Give us a cut scene... Show them speaking on a little hologram... Something... Anything to give us more actual interaction with these characters beyond disembodied voices. The new expansion gave us no new cut scenes at all. Eris may be a great character, but I have never even seen her move. Why should I care about this crazy lady standing by a railing? I need dialogue. The first time you interact with her we could have been taken to a cut scene of her walking around the Tower with our guardian explaining what happened to her and her friends when they tried to take on Crota. Make the characters more personable. The bounty guy is a robot(even though my Titan is also a type of robot). Every other person in the Tower might as well be a robot because I do not care about any of them. I have never been given any reason to care. Make me want to save these people. Make the characters matter. [b]4. Conclusion[/b] These are the things that I think will help make Destiny better going forward. A lot of people may disagree, but I just want to try to do what little I can to make Destiny a better game. This is the only thing that I know I can do. Hopefully, you had the patience to read all of this, DeeJ. If you did, thank you again, and I hope that it does not fall on deaf ears. Have a good one.
