First and foremost, this is a "Tl;dr" post, meaning that it'll be long and expansive. I'll try to format it into as digestible a form as possible, but that's still going to be quite a read. Secondly, I'm guessing we have 1 or 2 weeks at very most before Destiny goes gold, if it hasn't already, so this is primarily for the attention of the Bungie staff and I will PM DeeJ to draw his attention here. I hope it's not overly presumptuous to do so. Thirdly, this will be two posts and I do ramble on quite a bit. I DO have a point, it's just that lots of the topics are linked and inseperable from one another, so I drift at times. Finally, I was impressed by the Beta, and because of that, I will not really be talking about what's already great about the game, as that really doesn't help improve what's already there. Right, to begin with I'll just say that my experiences were on the Xbox 360 from Tuesday 22nd July (BST) until Beta end. I'll start on the topic of character creation and customisation. It appears that for an MMO, you're not really allowing that much customisation in the creation of your character. Now, for a game that wants you to sink in dozens of hours at the very least on any single character, having a bunch of presets for character creation is a bit disappointing. Now, going with presets is acceptable, though not preferred, but what really bothers me are the lack of a "Pan" option during character creation, and the lack of variable lighting options. You see, the ability to fully pan the camera around your character's face allows you to see all of their dimensions and whether or not you like the face you picked. Same with lighting, which helps to highlight where shadows will fall on your face. And, this is even an issue because of two reasons : - Lack of ability to change your appearance post-creation. - Having to work with limited options. The face I picked for my Female Awoken Hunter looked great in the creator, but when out in the Tower, I had "hamster cheekbones" and a relatively flat face. So, please just add in the options to pan the camera around your face during creation, and allow for proper previews with variable lighting. I want to create a character that I'm proud of and that I feel is my own, and if my face turns out to be "undesirable" according to how I'd like it, then I'm going to be disappointed. Another point regarding character creation is the hair options, in particular, the shaved head. If anyone has been watching gaming news recently, you've probably seen the new Hitman movie pictures and how loads of fans are irritated that Rupert Friend is not fully bald. This is similar to my own surprise when I finished creating my character in Destiny, only to find that the shaved head option still gives you a thin layer of hair. Hair, I might add, that was quite a bizarre colour seeing as I'd thought that I'd HAVE NO HAIR and therefore, it didn't matter. Boy, was I wrong about that too. Once again, this could've been avoided with the pan and lighting options I've already suggested, or remedied entirely if bald meant bald. So yeah, that's my gripes about character creation, and most of it should be simple to fix. My next topic will be the gameplay, and I do have quite a lot to say about this. For the most part, it's been great, and I'm not too concerned about the playable areas, assuming I'm right about my predictions regarding them (that's for later though). However, I realised fairly quickly that the "level cap" of 20 would be easily reached, and whilst you can talk about Motes of Light and stuff, the design of the endgame content is something that concerns me greatly as it should a lot of people. You go to the Tower, you level up, you get better gear, you kill more things. Great. You hit the "cap" within a few days (or a week depending on how much you play) and you're at level 20 where you can now buy and use Legendary weapons. I'm not questioning the time it takes to amass marks here either, it's that if Legendary gear is so easy to come by, and there's no evidence of the Legendaries themselves "leveling up", then just how long will the endgame keep you occupied? I prefer to be doing PvE, and though I can play PvP pretty damn well (modesty =P), I don't really enjoy it. From the way I'm interpreting the design of the game, PvE is a "comparatively" short experience that gears you up and boosts you towards PvP. I can already vouch that exploring the world whilst at a higher level than the enemies can start to get old fairly fast, and with such an emphasis on racing through to 20, just how is the world going to seem fun at the endgame? Really, I have a lot of concerns about the endgame, but other than speculation, I can't say anything for certain other than the design worries my greatly. The climax of your adventure is not what stays with you, it's the journey. Anyway, now on to my weapon "issues". As has already been stated loads, Hand Cannons are rubbish. They need either more damage or larger magazines because they are so phenomenally inefficient and ultimately, ineffectual that other than "it's a cool idea" there's nothing more to say about them. Pulse Rifles are generally fairly "meh" too. Auto Rifles are great and Scout Rifles are brilliant at PvE. Talking Specials, we have Sniper Rifles, Fusion Rifles and Shotguns. Sniper Rifles and Shotguns are fine, but in my continuing war against all things that are "forced burst fire", Fusion Rifles are crappy to use for me, but seem somewhat OP in PvP. And they may very well be the ONLY OP weapon in PvP imo. Heavy weapons are exactly what you expect, nothing much to say there. Regarding Classes and abilities, they're pretty much balanced imo. I never had too many problems with Titans in PvP. If anything, it was the damn Warlocks with their homing Hadouken of death which were a problem. I think they're all fairly well balanced though. Maybe it'll all require tweaking post-release, but from the Beta, everything seems cool. What's more noteworthy however, is that with 3 classes and 2 subclasses each, that's a bare minimum of EIGHTEEN different types of grenade. I cannot tell you how many times I ran out of a control zone because I couldn't tell if the incoming grenade was friend or foe. With so many snazzy effects going on, I just don't know whether the grenades are hostile or not and that needs to be fixed. Also, make the grenade marker on the HUD bright yellow, not white, because white gets lost way too often, and with fire grenades/dark environments in the mix, they mess with red as an identifier. Yellow however, would be a much better colour imo. Then there the problem between having 9 types of weapon in the game (4 Standard, 3 Special, 2 Heavy) and 18 (or more) grenades. I confess, I do find the lack of weapons disturbing. 2 of the primaries are crappy and 1 of the specials is something I don't like, so that gives me six types of guns to use. Worse still, the way the drops seem to work is that every piece of gear you earn is level-dependant. Say, for example, Cryptid Gauntlets. You'll never see any before level 10. Or Komarovs? Each piece is level set depending on whether it 3.0c or one of those 3.1 variants. As much as I loathe to make the comparison to Borderlands, Destiny has so few items and once again, most stuff seemed to be stacked towards endgame, just without enough "meat" to chew through before getting there (or even after getting there as it MAY turn out). In short, more guns please. Perhaps a more conventional clip loading Pistol given the Sci-Fi makeover treatment. Or dual-wielding Pistols to account for their shortcomings. That would help loads with the Hand Cannons too. Overall, regarding weapons, I have a feeling that the weapons were all designed in PvP and then just exported to the PvE experience as well. The misleading Attack stat being identical irrespective of weapon type, how damage is actually calculated and how Hand Cannons are in their current form. These all seem to be things that were conceived and developed around the PvP because of just how balanced they all are in PvP. And yes, I see why you did it, but then surely that ties back in to my endgame concerns. Destiny is an opportunity, and yet it looks like someone already took the "money scalpel" to it. I'm not preordering this game until I've heard more and yet in spite of my initial optimism, this is the situation I find myself in. After 1 week, will I just be sitting on my backside waiting for some Event or Raid to trigger between grinding the Crucible for Legendaries? Will I just have no reason to explore anymore? Will the challenge of the PvE enemies be nullified and so they'll just be nothing more than an annoyance? vvv Continued below vvv