Hey guys,

Just wanted to make an overall thread where we can share our thoughts about what we think about the Destiny Beta. I figured it would be cool for some who were in the Alpha to also be able to compare and contrast whats changed since then.

So far for me the two big standouts are this (I did just start the beta. The aiming movement seems to have been changed a bit. It seems much faster than before which I like. The second one Peter Dinklage's voice work, specifically how it sounds way better now. The voice work in the alpha was completely raw and now it sounds substantially better so far with the new work that has been done to it. I didn't have a big problem before but now I think it sounds great. Hopefully it keeps up and remember, watch out for Moon Wizards.

I just got off of work and still downloading. Apparently about a billion people are doing the exact same thing.

It's still really fun, just like the Alpha. Already got to the level cap (8) with a character in the beta.

At this point, I'm pretty much sold on the game, assuming it has plenty of content.

@mooseymcman: bummer it's locked at 8 again but understandable. I just want more content in this than the alpha which was a bit sparce.

There's a few more story missions, and another multiplayer map, but aside from that, it seems like the same content as the Alpha. Story missions are on the same Russia map, too.

They removed the "That wizard came from the moon" line. I was wondering about it since I didn't hear it during the missions, and Polygon just confirmed it literally minutes ago.

I'm just in here to find out if it's the same as the alpha.

I didn't play the alpha, so this is my first chance to give Destiny a shot. First impressions are that it seems pretty good! I'd prefer a smoother framerate (PS4 here) but it sure does look pretty. I do need to get over my hangups on playing with people I don't know in real life - I got an invite from some random guy while playing and my response was to shut off the machine. :/

Dinklage sounds a lot better. The put a bit of a filter on it and interspersed some of the dialogue with robot sounds.

The beta caps at Level 8 just like the alpha which kinda sucks. Had a ton of fun with it though and will replay it with a Titan and Hunter, while using my Warlock for PVP.

Its a pretty game but I really really don't like the character creator nor the art direction. Like I dunno It seems like a really really solid game and part of me really WANTS to care and I certainly don't blame other people for being desperately in love with it but Its just not hitting me in my proverbial gaming G-spot.

I'm really at a loss because I play it and I'll most likely play some more soonish and I don't see anything really wrong with it yet its just not hooking me.

I'm intrigued by the PSO-like set up, and I danced with random people for the first time since vanilla WoW.

The story stuff seems pretty dumb so far, making everything sound important when you're just kind of jumping around missions. I worry about a good, cohesive narrative in the final game.

I like that I can run slide, as I just came off Wolfenstein. But I feel like the gunplay is a step back from Halo, mainly because I need to left trigger before right triggering now. Bummer.

Still, it's intriguing.

still loving it, destiny is still awesome, its a bit of a shame though that half the content is from the alpha, and then

they tease some moon mission thats locked at the moment, my guess is that mission will open up near the end of the beta,

also word is we may get to keep our progress after the beta, Realllyyyyy hope thats true.

I'd be shocked if that were true, but it'd be cool for sure. Where did you hear that, out of curiosity?

I'm kind of worried on how long the game is.

I only played for about an hour but I still find it just as fun as the Alpha. I'm probably not going to play a ton of it since I don't want to burnout on it before the game comes out. This might sound dumb but one small gripe I have is that you can't turn your characters head while your creating it so you can't get a good look at it.

Didn't play the alpha but so far i like the art style of the game the most. However the shooting doesn't feel very good, and the story and voice acting seems kinda lame. Guardians fighting the darkness? The robot sounds like it's reading off a script rather than actually engaged in the story.

I'll have to play it longer though, i'm only on mission 4 now.

I am really enjoying it so far. Some random thoughts:

The difficulty seems to have been scaled down a little from the Alpha, enemies are much less bullet spongy. Biggest example I noticed was the first wizard encounter took about 2 minutes to actually take out the wizard. This time it took about 30 seconds ones I cleared out his minions.

It also seems like they lowered how long it takes to fill up your "ult" meter. This is great because it felt like it took way to long in the alpha.

I still think the magnum is really lame to have as a primary; it would be much better suited as a sidearm. It just doesn't do enough damage for the amount of shots you get and the reload time is way too long.

Chest placement seems real weird. In borderlands you have chests everywhere; if you follow the main path you are almost always guaranteed to hit a few in a level. If you go off the path and look you are sure to find more. In this game it seems really scattered and inconsistent. I kind of stopped looking through rooms that I clear since you don't actively pick up loot and chests are so few and far between. I keep having this feeling in the back of my mind that I am missing stuff as I am progressing. Maybe I am just ruined by games like borderlands and diablo 3 where you are getting loot and opening chests pretty regularly.

I love the unique jumps between the 3 classes. Each class has such great maneuverability and in such different ways.

Still having fun, still have no idea what's going on in this world or why I should care.

Kinda sad that there's not much more than there was in the Alpha. I've been following beta info pretty closely, and they made it sound like there would be a lot more content than they had in the Alpha, but... oh well. At least there'll be stuff to look forward to.

@kylenalepa: The frame rate is kinda crappy id say. I played the alpha and I don't remember it being this way. If you wanna play with a fellow duder my psn is seamah.

After having played the game for a good few hours now, and apparently reached the level cap (8?), I can't really say it's a bad game but I don't understand why people would get excited about it. My preliminary impression was that the game felt very chopped up, but then I got to the open-world part and it has some good potential. Although I bet that's the part of the game most people will like the least. The thing I just don't get is what's supposed to be the hook. For a loot game it's really lacking, for a shooter it's good but nothing special, for an open-world game it's average at best and the story is nothing to write home about.

I've yet to do any of the real multiplayer stuff though (no ps+), but I guess I'll check that out sometime before the beta ends. I'm guessing that's what's hooking people ? The good old "play game with friends, game gets good". But when compared to similar games I can't see what makes it more interesting than say Borderlands. At best I would say it's Warframe with better combat, but that's not really saying much.

I did (as mentioned) enjoy my time running around in the open world clearing missions though, but that's gonna grow old fast. The more I think about it the more I come back to my old wish of the game being completely seamless. Remove the tower (which just feels like a convoluted menu anyways), make the story missions and strikes trigger by entering the areas and have some pvp enabled battlefields you could enter. It would make the game feel more cohesive over-all and would vastly improve the "open-worldness" of it all.

@ares42: I love it because I wanted a Borderlands without the "humour" and a Warframe without the INSANE amounts of grinding. This delivers on both fronts.

For me, the biggest issue is that the narrative just feels extremely loose and practically nonexistent. If Bungie really wants to build this huge universe, shouldn't they do more up front to actually sell the world? I like that they added some setup and those actual cutscenes, from what seems to be the actual beginning of the base game, but they really don't help that much. Dropping a bunch of random terms and speaking about characters who are supposedly important with next-to-no context for why they are important isn't a great way to handle storytelling. What is the Darkness? Why is it made up of different races? I'm aware that some of these questions have been answered outside of the game, but that doesn't work for me. I know Bungie likes their outside-of-game storytelling, but I shouldn't be forced to go read wikis and books in order to understand base story concepts.

Without question, there needs to be some basic explanation and world-building happening early on to introduce players to the greater narrative. Maybe there will be more here when the game comes out for real, but for now, it seems ill-fitting for a company that created a world as vast and intricate as the Halo series.

I've come to realize that a bunch of encounters involve me running backwards as guys run straight at me. Couple regular sized dudes, one big guy, or a horde of small guys. I feel like I'm doing something wrong to unlock the AI but I haven't died yet. Other times, I just shoot indiscriminately at a mob of clumped up aliens in a corridor watching the life bars go down.

I'm... disillusioned. I can see why it'd get addicting, but after two hours I'm not dying to go back.

The first time I played through the co-op strike mission, I loved the hell out of it. I was naturally strategizing with the people I was paired up with and we got through it without too much difficulty. I just tried again with a new character, level five paired up with two other level fives, and it was the hardest thing ever. We wiped back to checkpoint numerous times, which never happened the first time. Sure, one of the dudes seemed to refuse to help anyone when they went down (that fucking dick) but I don't know why it seemed so much harder. The one dude who was actually reviving people, aside from me, eventually bailed on the match, then I did as well. If they can ensure the experience of the first time I did it, it will be my favorite feature in the full game. If it's more like the second time, I will avoid it at all costs.

The shotguns in this game seem completely useless. I tried some high level ones at close range and they still were no where near as effective as machine guns at close range. Same with the revolvers (at least those make you feel like a badass). Hopefully they will do some weapon balancing before the full version.

The Handcannon does insane crits. That's the advantage over the average damage.

@brianp: It's one of those things where you will probably want to group up with your friends/fellow duders before hand and then jump in. Random matchmaking in that situation is usually not great, especially in a game of this scale in a marketing sense.

I really hope they implement clans into the actual game so this process is easier.

@wemibelec90: See that worries me... because they're so secretive with the story and that just makes me think that there isn't really one there to begin with. You have all these really wonderful looking assets and yet they have practically no back story on them and it makes everything seem so lifeless. I'm kind of hoping they have some sort of codex like they do in mass effect to explain things, but I guess I'm just going to have to accept "space magic" as the answer to everything.

http://www.gamespot.com/articles/bungie-hasnt-decided-if-destiny-beta-progress-will/1100-6421127/

the way that article puts it sounds to me like its a "maybe" at the moment,

Big change for me between alpha and beta is that the multiplayer finally "clicked" with me. It doesn't feel like a clumsy mess anymore, and I really fucking like it.

Two things that continue to bother me:

• Devil Walkers have way too much health
• Vehicles need some massive retuning in multiplayer

Some new quibbles:

• Handcanon is fucking useless in PVP
• No way to customize your character after creation (sub-point: why are there no beards? D:)
• Alternate landing locations for explorable would be great
• Loot seems too arbitrary. It seems like smaller fellows are more likely to drop loot than even the big bosses. I don't know about you, but I like my bosses to explode into goodies when I put them down... not some random grunt.

I pre-ordered the fancy digital edition, and I'm really happy. This is easily my most anticipated game of the year after first playing the alpha. With the new (albeit limited) looks at Mars, Venus and other locations on Earth, I'm super pumped to see those aesthetics in more explorable modes. :D

@whitestripes09 said:

A bit of a codex does exist at the Bungie site, but it isn't fully fleshed-out as of yet. Also, I think putting something like that outside of the game is ridiculous.

im with you, i felt tricked especially after watching this

True, I guess maybe I just had amazing luck the first time. I hope the clan stuff fits in to the game as well. I don't really have anyone on my psn friends list since I don't know many people who play video games and I don't usually play online stuff. It would be nice to group up with people from here without having to manually add everyone to my friends list.

@ares42: If you aren't playing online, you're only getting the worst parts of the experience in my opinion. I'm not sure if you're getting the Journey-like random player encounters without Plus, but that really adds a lot to the open world exploration for me. The Strike missions are fucking great; they almost perfectly blend traditional MMO dungeon/RPG design with Halo coop missions. All of this comes together in the multiplayer mode where you bring back all your favourite looted guns for competitive play (your loot acquisition in multiplayer is pretty lackluster--you're encouraged to scavenge the world for new gear). For me, the most impressive thing about the game is that it harmoniously brings all these things together--something that you apparently feel the opposite about.

@wemibelec90: I completely agree. I wish they spent more time introducing each of the enemy factions as distinct entities. It feels like they've set up a fantastic backstory and 'background lore,' but struggle materializing it for players to enjoy. I understand that they want to keep swapping around enemies for variety's sake, but they use The Hive and The Fallen almost interchangeably in early missions. If it weren't for a couple three-way conflicts, I would have thought that they were allies.

In Bungie's defence, these early portions of the game aren't trying to tackle lofty, heavy narrative beats. Your character is just trying to survive and establish a rudimentary infrastructure for the rest of the journey. It isn't that they're trying and failing, it's that they aren't trying to begin with. They desperately need a bit more of a narrative hook in this prologue experience, then they can briefly wander back into this infrastructure business.

@project343: You do get random players if you don't have Plus. I've seen guys wandering around as I do Story missions and I don't currently have Plus. Of course, anything that requires Plus (strikes, multiplayer, etc.) is locked off.

As for the narrative, I suppose it's possible that Bungie may end up explaining things just after this beta ends. Or maybe they are holding back the bigger story bits for the actual game. Still, it doesn't bode well for those of us who play the beta because it sets those expectations. They haven't really said one way or another (at least I haven't seen it) whether this is culled directly from the game, but the newly added opening/cutscenes make it seem like it might be. If so, that makes me very worried about how the rest of the game unfolds. They don't really have time to change things at this point, either, since the game comes out in two months.

Also, as an unrelated side note that I just wanted to mention and forgot to do in my original post, I didn't really notice much of a change in Dinklage lines. Of course, I didn't find them that egregious in the original; a few effects and it would have been fine. I do find it funny, however, that everyone fixated on a line I didn't think was that bad, but NO ONE noticed the far worse "It's the Hive!" line from the original Alpha. THAT line reminded me of the early PS1 days of terrible voice acting. Funny enough, this line was also changed in the Beta.

Loving everything PvE related. I did around 5 matches of the crucible, and I don't think I'm going to bother with it in the full game. It just seems bad, straight up. Like an afterthought.

I didn't play the Alpha- but I spent a good few hours today playing with my younger brother and already hit the cap. Would have been nice for something to point out that cap in-game so I wasn't running around trying to figure out why things weren't working.

We also tried the Devil's Lair "dungeon" or whatever term they're using for their equivalent. We got matched with a third, and attempted the "defend against waves of guys" segment about 10 times before we gave up. We weren't at the cap at that point, instead at 6 as the map seemed to suggest. For that matter, it was a bit hellish trying to get to the instance from the insertion point where it put you- being level 5-6 with what little gear you get at that point trying to get past these groups of lvl 8-9 mobs was interesting at least. Seemed the fellow we got matched with didn't know what he was doing either- it took him a good 6 minutes of wandering around on his own before figuring out that the game didn't put us where we had needed to be. We'll try again tomorrow and see if it goes any better.

Though that all sounds a bit whiny, I did enjoy my time with it and can see myself putting a lot of time into the finished product. I'm hoping there'll be something more to do with it- I've not been into competitive FPS in a long while so the Crucible stuff hasn't tempted me yet. If those 8 levels and one area are all there is for now, I guess it's back to waiting for Retail for me.

I liked this game the first time, when it was called Warframe.

I don't see this keeping my interest for much longer than Titanfall did (a couple weeks). The random mission generator for limited maps accessible from an overworked hub just seems a little lazy and quickly tiring. I hit level 8 in a sitting durin alpha, then today in beta, and now not only am I done for the time being, but I'm looking forward to October for gaming to start up again, rather than September. I just don't care to do any more "kill te guys in this area, now walk over there and kill a few more and pick up their cloth". Not to mention, pick up parties don't really seem to be served by the functionality if the game, so it is very much a single player experience... Which is weird. A supposedly very social game that they keep going on about and yet I have heard no voices nor seen anything more communicative than a dance emote.

I bought it. I'll play it. It just won't have legs nor am I excited for it. I thnk I am. Ore excited for the next COD and I don't even like COD.

Did anyone preorder the PS3 version?

I'm still not sure whether to buy Destiny for the PS3 or not, since so far, almost all of the coverage / footage I've seen has been from the PS4 version. And I'm pretty sure there will be some differences between these two versions.

@wolfskind I am playing the beta on PS3. It's not quite as shiny as the PS4 version of the game but it runs at a solid 30fps and looks about as good as a PS3 game can look. In terms of feature parity it matches the PS4.

I've only played through the opening mission so far, but it was really awesome to see how the game opens.

All of you are making me sad.

@wolfskind: The textures are muddy, the grass looks AWFUL, shadows are incredibly low res and the post processing glitches out occasionally giving you a second of a bright colour but other than that is the exact same.

@smcn: It makes me so sad that no body at that company decided to stand up for dumbness in video games. What has this world come to?

I don't think this question deserves its own thread so I figured I just ask it here. How do you party up with people you find just roaming around in the open world?

You can also talk about these things on our Lincoln Force forum, by the way.

@wolfskind:

It seemed pretty okay on the PS3 for me!

It's clear where Bungie had to cut some corners to keep that frame rate up, I noticed some level of detail/adaptive resolution texture stuff that stuck out, briefly, in spots. But for 99% of the time that I was running and gunning I had no complaints about the performance or the feel of the controls.

Difficulty balance (or rather the difference between the easy bits and the hard bits) was a thing that slightly stuck out to me as being a thing, though.

The problem is that you are hopelessly addicted to FFXIV and nothing is going to do it for you like that game does until you stop playing it and break your addiction.

I'm going through some weird thing where I'd rather play my Vita or 3ds than on a console, so I probably won't be buying this game. However, the Beta is certainly impressive and it'd be sad if Activision/Bungie doesn't have a massive hit on their hands. The game has a Sci-Fi vibe that really appeals to me, like some of the best parts of Star Wars. Playing on my PS3 and it looks and plays really good, much better than I was expecting.