Destiny's Structure Closer to Borderlands or Monster Hunter?

They aren't really that different. If you farm for pieces of creatures that you then assemble into new weapons/gear, THAT'S more like Monster Hunter.

Borderlands doesn't have various instances of the same environments. You just take on quests and venture out in the eversame world. In Destiny you'll accept missions in the central city hub, which will take you to different instanced versions of the same environments. Some missions are coop strike missions. Some take you to a public space version of that same environment, with random players and huge public events. Some are story centric, and will likely be the solo stuff. Ecetera.

Pretty much like Monster Hunter. And very unlike Borderlands.

Mission structure of MH with the gameplay of Borderlands.

Yet Halo predates Borderlands, and from previews we know Destiny *speaks* Halo's language, so to speak. So it's rather Halo's offspring, structured like a Monster Hunter game, with innovations in how players are brought together for multiplayer.

Borderlands is a FPS RPG, but its language is squarly centered around the randomly generated loot, and not at all around tight FPS gameplay. Destiny seems very much focused on preserving the core tightness of the FPS gameplay, despite the overlay of RPG systems.

While Borderlands and Destiny do share a vaguely defined genre of FPS RPGs, I don't see how they're comparable beyond that.

Sounds like Borderlands, right down to the Halo comparison, with a touch of Phantasy Star Online 2 (public sections).

@seppli: They both have loot system with hell-of guns. Apparently it has "more weapons than all the Halo games put together - squared and then squared again." It's not "millions" like Borderlands, but it's puh-lenty.

I haven't actually indulged in Borderlands multiplayer, but as far as I understand it, the world isn't instanced for every mission seperately. In Destiny, as far as I understand it, you accept a mission in the hub city, then you embark on the mission, and the environments are then tailor-made for that mission. Mission-specific spawns and events, and so forth. Where-as in Borderlands it's just the host's world you play in.

That's about as many as Battlefield 4 has, if you count all customization variations. I believe Destiny's guns are handcrafted and balanced, and if there's random loot drops, it'll be purposeful reconfigurations of hand-designed and mindfully balanced components and modifiers, not the willy nilly chaos and subsequent slew of unfun and loose weaponry Borderlands tends to spit out.

monster hunter majority of that game is about the prepration. Buffs, getting the right equipment before the battle. And then it's all about making a rad hat out of monster. Destiny sounds more like Borderlands.

I think both games share a lot in common but I'm gonna say it'll be more like borderlands simply because it's first person. I think for a game like Monster Hunter, you need third person because of animations. There is no spatial awareness in FPS. Also, I don't really don't think the whole "hub thing" is that much different in Borderlands... it's just that the game is bigger and you have multiple hub towns. I personally found MHTri boring in the sense that I was revisiting the same places over and over and over and over again. Borderlands has that same structure but you are also constantly moving form one hub to the next.

So, I think Destiny will share that one hub town that MH has but have mostly everything else be like Borderlands, albeit a little scaled down on the loot and items and that side of being an RPG.

The skills that comes with each class gives me a very strong Borderlands feel, it looks as though they're going to be things you rely on like in Borderlands.

What I'm saying though is that the levels in Destiny are instanced according to the mission you're on, while in Borderlands you simply play in the world of the host. That makes for a huge structural difference. I'm also unaware of a proper multiplayer hub in Borderlands. As far as I can tell, the big city in Destiny will be a proper MMO-style hub town, with players running around everywhere. A place to mingle, team-up, and probably trade.

I imagine there will be a mission terminal somewhere. There will be a list of missions in that terminal, much like the list of mission you get in a monster hunter game. Each of these missions is linked to its own version of an environment. You'll have to beat a certain amount of the available mission to unlock the next tier of missions. Structurally Eexactly like Monster Hunter.

From the little bit that I have seen of this game, it has always kinda just looked like Borderlands with a different artstyle.

In Borderlands, you visit the world of the host, and complete quests within that world. In Destiny, you embark on a mission. That mission happens in a level purpose-built for that mission. Destiny's Devil's Lair strike mission, which we've seen in last week's trailer, happens in *Old Russia*. There's likely tens of missions in *Old Russia*. All of them share the same environments, none of them happen in the same version of *Old Russia*.

Oh, I know that BL isn't instanced. In that regards it will be totally new. But I still feel like it'll be somewhat similar. It will definitely make Destiny last longer and be more appealing to those who want to keep playing, because Borderlands gets stale fast.

And when I'm talking about a hub, I'm just talking about the town/area that feel like a general "hub" area, AKA with vendors, quest givers, bulletin boards, etc. Kind of like that beach village in MHTri, but in Borderlands each new area usually has it's own hub. You're right though, I believe the Destiny hub is going to be like a proper MMO hub city. Which will be awesome.

Structurally in that sense, yes it could very well be like MH. I guess I was thinking of different structures, like how a combat scenario would go down (class-skill based confrontations) and a more fast paced FPS VS a slow, preparatory, animation based game. But yes it sounds to me like you're right.

PS that video you just posted has LANCE REDDICK VOICING IT mind blown.

Other than the hub area, there's not much of a difference between the world structure of Borderlands vs Monster Hunter. The things that make MH unique are things like the combat style, crafting systems, ancillary mechanics, etc. Other than that, going through the same area multiple times for various missions is exactly what you do in Borderlands. And you can totally farm things in Borderlands, and you'll do it more in a Borderlands way than a MH way when you do it in Destiny as far as I know.
Instancing is a pretty nit-picky difference to call out, so I don't really see the difference between an open play-space you repeatedly visit for multiple missions and a play-space you load into repeatedly for multiple missions. And Borderlands, much like Destiny, is a shooter.

Unless they really drastically change the environments with props and stuff and they just keep the BSP, I don't think that is all that different from Borderlands. If anything, I think the world structure should be compared to something entirely different than either Borderlands or MH. I don't really see any MH stuff in Destiny but it's clear some of the loot stuff and all that has some Borderlands DNA.

Destiny and Borderlands have a drop based loot system. Much of MH is crafting based. That is, IMO, a big difference.

Destiny and Borderlands are both open-ish shooters with RPG elements. MH is a completely different sort of combat experience, although it is open-ish.

Maybe some of the online stuff vaguely relates to some MH stuff but otherwise, I don't know that either are a great general comparison. Just for a few particular features or elements.

Destiny has a Central city hub. There you chose your mission. You team-up with a couple of dudes, or embark solo - Dealer's choice. Bungie has stated various missions happen in the same environmets, just retooled for that mission. Farm missions for the loot you want. Ecetera. Pretty much like Monster Hunter. Only instead of Monster Hunter gameplay, it's tight coop Halo-style FPS gameplay.

That sounds a whole lot like Borderlands to me!

It really, really, really looks like a Borderlands-esque game.

I get more of an MMO vibe from the videos I've seen but whenever I hear someone describe or talk about Destiny it comes across as very similar to Borderlands but no one seems to come right out and say it.

I really hope they can straddle the line between Monster Hunter, Borderlands, and work in some MMO elements to really make the game feel challenging and alive.

Well, this is all interesting to me. I thought Destiny was just Bungie's take on Halo. I watched some of that gameplay video and that's the impression I got. I guess I'll have to pay more attention to the details as they come out.

I don't know enough about Monster hunter to draw comparisons, but I can definitely say it's similar sounding/looking to borderlands. I'm super interested to see more about it. Everything I've seen so far has sat right with me, so It's release can't come soon enough.

Monster hunter structure and progression. Borderlands gameplay.

I don't think that's possible. You simply can't get the same balanced tight gameplay with a huge variety of guns. The method with which you aquire them isn't important.

Think of Battlefield 4. That game has literally hunderds of thousands weapon combinations - all of which is as tightly balanced as it gets. I think Destiny goes down a similar path, just with more extreme modifiers and some minor statistical variation. If Bungie created and balanced like 50 top tier weapons and *weapon upgrade trees*, and has like 10 weaker versions of each for the sake of progression, as well as a slew of additional customization options - you'll easily get hundreds of thousands meaningfully differentiated guns, which boil down to those 50 purposefully designed guns and tight balance and gameplay.

Like there's 5 hand cannons in the game, with specific damage models, reload time, accuracy, bullet count, recoil, ecetera - all meant to be balanced against each other. Then there's like 10 different *talent trees* for hand cannons, which vary in things like elemental damage. Additionally, there's like 5 customizable parts to each hand cannon, as in 5 types of sights and 100 liveries - that kind of stuff. The result? Tens of thousand variations of tight playing hand cannons.

At least that's what I'm imagining. I doubt it's a crazy randomizer like Borderlands, which literally spits out trash most of the time.

Option D, since I always thought this to be just a competitive online shooter...or maybe it is, I don't know.

I am in the alpha. It has enough content for a demo but I'm surprised by how bored I became of it. To me it boils down to bits and pieces of what we have already been playing for many years already but it may feel new to people who haven't experienced similar games. It reminds me of Hellgate London, Tribes, WoW and mostly Borderlands. I hope the final version has more strategy than just ducking in and out of the same cover between firing shots for the entirety of most of the fighting. The boss fights are just a grind. Eventually, all it becomes is aim for head or part of body able to take damage, seek cover, kill some wave of adds, shoot boss head some more grinding down his hp very slowly on Legend and look for ammo. Even if you are behind cover you can still take aoe damage in a fairly large radius otherwise the game becomes too easy. The vehicle battles are just ridiculous how simple it is for any decent player to two shot people while sitting pretty safely, so they might want to tweak that a bit, especially when a team of decent players control a bunch of ships. From their dev interviews I don't think they want to figure out how to balance PC players at the moment which is why PC version is unlikely going to be released for a while. Mouse and keyboard in a seamless world that connects all platforms will just wreck everyone on consoles for pvp and pve. In other games pve I've seen people complain about not being able to do anything because the better twitch gamer kills everything pretty quickly. The solution in the past for those games is higher monster hp or scaling players but it just ends up too boring of a grind. I hope this game is better when it is released.

I think of it as PSO with Haloy Gunplay and magic in a Star Warsian Fantastical Future.

Unless you're carving materials from the enemies you kill to craft your weapons and armour, I don't think it's like Monster Hunter at all really.