Right then... with the break... another Gamenikki In Exile posting. Actually a lot of my own feedback wound up being aimed at Activision rather than Bungie directly. For the sake of those who don't want to follow the link, I'll just post some of the article here... mostly because all of the article blew out the text limits for posting. [quote]It’s a small map after all. Continuing the line of questionable decisions, Activision and Bungie have tried their level best to keep Destiny from being referred to as an MMO. Rather, terms like Open-World shooter have been thrown around. If the beta release is any indication though, Destiny isn’t quite that open-world. Do not misunderstand me on at least one point. The accumulation of zones stitched together for one large map experience is, in and of itself, impressive. I harbor no doubts that Bungie could actually expose a map experience the size of Ishundar even on the Xbox 360. However, these zones are stitched together with invisible barriers and long tunnels. The actual size of any given open-area map section is likely determined by the system memory limitations of the Xbox 360 and PS3 platforms. During the Alpha players on the Bungie.net forums would mention how the Beta or final release would simply allow players to fully explore the world, going beyond those invisible barriers. Only, now with the additional information from Bungie’s Grimoire, it is known that additional zones will be added through the addition of planets and moons. While this does open up various possibilities for different zone construction, this does mean that as long as the PS3 and Xbox 360 platforms are supported, there really won’t be any call for Planetside scale vehicle assaults on Fallen outposts. The issues with the size and feel of the maps arises in the storyline missions where a feeling of map claustrophobia can set in. The beta does include 4 completely new campaign missions as well as a revamped mission from the Alpha test. All of these missions take place within the Cosmodrome area, and for the most part the player will spawn in nearly the same place on the Cosmodrome map for each mission and travel along roughly the same path… over… and over… and over… for each character. The result is a strong feeling that the map repetition is being used solely to pad out the length of each mission. I’ll go into a saner option for game design in a bit… since now I need to talk about how the world doesn’t change: It’s a static world after all A factor common to almost every single MMORPG in existence is that mobs respawn. No matter what a player does in the game there will be no actual effects on the game world. In some cases this is just practical game design as many players will be loaded into the same server map and all need to access the same dying_random_important_villager_with_quest-Item. Various games over the years have tried to deal with the differences between what players do and the lack of actual effects. Late in it’s life City of Heroes implemented a phasing system that allowed the developers to shift players into a quasi-instanced map with different geometries or events; so one player would see a beautiful park filled with city citizens roaming around while another player would see a park on fire with lots of enemies needing to be ground into dust. Tabula Rasa also approached the problem, and just not by instancing all of the world changing events so that the overworld didn’t have to change for the player. Tabula Rasa also implemented into the overworld a system where the enemy NPC’s would have to actively retake any zone taken by the players. So once players took an outpost… that outpost belonged to the players are long as the players held off incoming assaults. Destiny had both of these examples to look at and learn from, as well as others. Destiny does have an, if not innovative at least seamless, instancing system. Destiny does have some fairly well designed spawn logic. Destiny already leverages the spawning and instancing system to implement unique battle encounters and storyline missions. So… I actually have to ask… Why does the world feel dead? Given the level of developer experience within Bungie I find it difficult to believe that the game has made it this far… and nobody said… “Hey Guys, all of those enemies respawning just randomly? Looks kinda stupid.” Remember that map repetition from earlier? Players will quickly learn that they can just run by, or just take a vehicle, and skip many if not all of the open-world random encounters. A Sane(r) Approach to Missions? Keeping in mind the limitations of the PS3 and Xbox 360 platforms, there is likely room within the existing game to clean up the unchanging overworld. A good case in point would be the connecting tunnels and buildings between overworld zones. Many of the inside spawn points are controlled by Darkness Portals. All Bungie would really have to do is give the player an option for a mission that results in the player terminating these Darkness Portals for the player’s own instances. The practical result is that the passageways, tunnels, hallways, and such are still blocked by whatever method the player used to shut the portal down. This also opens up the possibility for different geometry patterns to be called and for various zones to start undergoing repair. For example, the internals of the first inside portion of the Cosmodrome that the player is expected to travel though is infested with the Hive. After completing a mission to remove the traces of the Hive, the Hallways are now clear and the lights are on within the complex. The end result is that player’s actually feel like their actions accomplished something. On replay most of the Open Area zones already take a page from Tabula Rasa. Enemies remain gone until the next wave of dropships bring reinforcements in. Given the storyline setting of the Darkness attacking everything… the Open Area system is likely an acceptable compromise. If Destiny is already implementing some techniques to make the game world feel a little bit more alive and responsive to the actions of the player, why does the end result feel so… well… half-arsed? A case in point here would be the spawning system. I think only one of the currently exposed Storyline missions actually changes the player’s injection point into The Cosmodrome map. Again, as referenced earlier, this results in the player being trained very early on in the game that it is not only possible, but encouraged, to simply skip past open world events. Had spawn points for Storyline mission injections been placed placed closer to the objectives, Bungie could have lessened the Map Fatigue or Map Claustrophobia and prevented the player from being trained to simply skip past enemies in Open Area zones. My suspicions for these questionable design decisions center around the separation of the Campaign and Exploration modes, hearkening again back to the Map Repetition a few paragraphs ago. In many traditional MMORPG’s, quasi-RPG’s like Borderlands, and actual open-world games like Fallout 3 or Skyrim, all missions are given through a standardized quest based system. The player generally follows a storyline in any particular order they want, based on where they are in the game world. Destiny, however, exposes City of Heroes style Radio Missions while the player is in the Exploration Mode of any given map. However, players rapidly learn that unlike CoH there is no real point to exploring the map. The weighting of the mission rewards, experience, and item rewards means that a player will get more rewards by simply running the storyline missions rather than the radio missions. There is no particular obvious exposed way to trigger an in-game event in an open-world zone, nor are there any kind of CoH stylized Exploration Badges rewarding players for going off the beaten paths. Any particular Loot Chests that are in the open-world map will also be rendered while participating in a Storyline mission. What makes this infuriating is that initiating a Storyline mission requires exiting the planet… which incurs a bloody long loading screen… picking a Storyline Mission… which incurs another bloody long loading screen… then going back to the Planet… for another bloody long loading screen. Successfully completing the mission results in another bloody long loading screen… that dumps the player into their spaceship… which now requires… yes… another bloody long loading screen to go anywhere. I can’t come up with a polite way to say this: If I wanted loading screens in my console game I’d dig out my old PSX. Scratch that… I think the Saturn actually had load times closer to what Destiny delivers on the PS3 and PS4 consoles. [/quote]