[b]45)[/b] The other thing that Lars played was the Raid stuff (which is apparently Luke Smith's domain), he was very impressed about how secretive they had kept it and it adds something to the game that really compliments the activity for every mood mantra that Bungie has been pushing. Raids feel very different and it was fun to play and you're like "How the hell are we going to do this" and an hour later you're like "LIKE THAT" [b]46)[/b] Enough about other people, it's competitive multiplayer time. DeeJ begins by mentioning that there's a lot more to play with and things are different between higher lethality and a more diverse sandbox and more ways to fight and kill others, an investment game to wrap all around it, Tyson talked a lot about balance, what is different for you as a designer tackling the competitive multiplayer sandbox, building that arena, what should fans expect from Destiny? [b]47)[/b] The first thing they'll notice is that they're not making Halo again and that should be exciting. It's hard, but it's a different game and while the sandbox is different the way it feels and the way you move is reminiscent of Halo but the new things in Destiny like the vertical movement modes and all the different types of grenades and all the choices you're making on your focus and build makes the game feel really different when you run across guys and you go "wow I don't understand what he's doing exactly but that is really cool!" and you have your own set of tools that you use and the sort of player verbs that we have now are much deeper than what we had in Halo and the game is much more strategic in a way where you understand your own build and you go in and attack a situation in a different way depending on where you're at, what mood you're in, what gametype you're playing, all that jazz. [b]48)[/b] Looking at it on paper it might seem like it would be very complex, chaotic, and confusing, but it just feels so simple to slip into it and pick things up, you really quickly pick things up quickly, that guy is a Hunter, he's going to be on the peripheral and he is going to pounce, hit you from long range, land all of his shots, if you want to be successful you need to not be in the open and close with short range stuff and outsmart him, you learn these play patterns that people have and their abillities, like a Titan that always has short range stuff and he's going to run in and smash you or wait for you to run in and he's going to punish you for making the wrong move. It's more complex but it retains the simplicity and clarity of combat. Easy to learn, difficult to master. [b]48)[/b] I can play, I can be competent, if I'm skillful I'm going to win more than I lose, the longer I play the more nuance and the more shades of gameplay I'll see and the more abillities I'll unlock and the more movement modes I'm going to be able to understand, something like I'm going to blink instead of double jump because it's harder to use but it's more effective against someone in a offensive situation instead of in general, all that stuff is cool and fun to play with. [b]49)[/b] Skill is still very important, and it's not just thumb skill, it's understanding how you're outfitting yourself, what weapons you're taking what choices you're making in your build, and understanding how to use all that, like how you get around the map depends on what vertical movement mode you've chosen and there are moultiple ways into each of these more powerful positions that you want to hold on the map, there's one gametype where it makes map control really obvious, you can look left and right and if there's a door to my right a staircase to my left, and straight ahead there's this hole blown in the wall, I know there's three ways people can come in, the game is still predictable but the game has more depth, is the guy going to come up the stairs or through the door or is he going to glide through the wall, what's he going to do when he gets here? Should I plant my proximity grenade on the ground so he lands directly on it, do I want to hide in the corner and sprint and melee him in the face, (while dodging his arc blade), it's really cool how there's a surprising amount of depth to each encounter and again it takes a lot of skill, the guys who play for a while can outstrip people who haven't. [b]50)[/b] That's not to say that they're winning because they have better characters, it's just about understanding the map and the mechanics better, knowledge matters. DeeJ has found with games like Halo that he's somewhat streaky and inconsistant, he's not sure why, but he finds that he's more consistant at Destiny because he has reasons to live and he's not just thinking about "I need to run fast through the map and put shots on a guy", he's thinking about "Well if I do that I'm probably giong to die and feeding them supers" so I have to be smart about how I approach this situation and play to my preffered playstyle and skirt the edges a little bit, lure people into traps, be chaotic, and that's all because of the systems that encourage him to come up with a plan and stick to it because he wants to stay alive because that's how he'll get these supers and if he dies all that's going to do is accelerate the loss. You've got to look at map position and builds and stuff like "I have a hand cannon, now I need to work from the edges, now I have an auto, now I've got to close the gap or flank them". [b]51)[/b] What Lars is talking about goes deeper than thumb skills, but when you start talking about jumping through a window and deciding what abillity to use you get into a discussion about tactics, what would you say to a player who likes games that blend skills and tactics? Lars thinks that Destiny has a lot going for it in that realm, and going back to the builds it's your outfitted character minus your weapons and whatever armor you have set up so you have a bunch of abillities you're choosing and when you choose those abillities you migh tnot be thinking about what tactics you're going to employ those abillities in, but when you decide to take something like the Arc Prox (which is currently his favorite weapon in the game) it's a proximity mine that attaches to any surface and perpendicularly juts out electrical damage in a line four seperate times, it's really fun to use a trap, you don't expect to get kills but you can use it to zone your opponents so you can either force them to go a different way or take advantage of the hesitation to flank. It feels really good. [b]52)[/b] Urk shares an anecdote about when he was playing as a Warlock and the Axion Bolt came on and people were like "HOW MANY NOVA BOMBS DOES URK HAVE?" and they're like "They're just Axion Bolts they're different!", and that's where map design comes in. One of the hardest things they encountered early on was how do you make map movement predictable with all these forms of vertical movement modes? Once you understand the maps and you understand the movement modes things are predictable and you can force people to do things and they can force you to do other things and it goes back to the skill conversation they had earlier. There's a lot more to it than anyone is expecting, and that's a ton of fun. It's just as much fun to land a super as it is to make someone else miss theirs, and it feels really good. [b]53)[/b] Lars shares an anecdote about how he was just playing as a Titan that had an abillity where he sprints and does a shoulder rush and kill dudes but they see you coming a mile away and they can counter you if they see you doi it but he's shoulder charging towards Josh Hamrick and he doesn't see him, he snaps on Golden Gun, he turns, sees him, at the last second he connects right in the face and Josh screamed like a girl as Lars is like "YEAAAAAAAAAAAAAH" and things like that happen all the time and things come out of nowhere and surprises abound, people are in super mode and you can still shut them down. [b]54)[/b] There's all these hero moments that make for great narrative pieces where where you or someone on your team do these combine tactics where two people defend a space and someone comes in, you pepper them out, you throw an axion bolt and when people get driven out of the back corner you use Fists of Havoc and it's so perfect and feels so good and exciting. [b]55)[/b] Many anecdotes about different combos happening are shared by several people, these layering events that build off each other. It's an experience not limited to the competitive mode, they've been playing cooperative and they're slaughering Fallen and clearing them out and they're like "Wait, we're supposed to be doing a misssion right?" [url=http://www.bungie.net/en/Forum/Post?id=63361453&path=1]Link to next post[/url]