Destiny Beta Preview MultiPlayer

When previewing Destiny I decided against making even a cursory statement on the MP / PVP side of things. The main reason was that if a games MP works then it is something to come back to for years and so judging that off of a few days was silly, but since the Beta servers are back up for PS3 owners things have changed a bit.

Starting a new Hunter character and trudging though the same opening hour or two showed just how right I was in thinking the SP is a boring slog, getting this charter to PVP was the goal and that's when my views on the Beta's MP really solidified.

Going in as a very low level character lead to having to play with only a sniper as a secondary, no a power weapon, no grenades, no jump ability, no special Abilities and having to use a low grade main rifle.

And even with all those 'basics' gone I was constantly top of the winning team. All those perks and stats, trade offs and upgrades all of it is meaningless fluff, when a low level grunt with noting but a figurative stick can still come out victorious.

This naked champ thing is something I did often in Cod4, prestiging' just to see if I was good or had just unlocked enough to make things unfair for everyone else, it turns out I was just really good at it. The difference was when I was 'naked' in Cod4 I felt it, no claymores to narrow directions of attack, weapons that were harder to use with precision lots of small things that meant I had to push myself to win.

With Destiny I wasn't even thinking of winning, just learning the systems again from a slightly different POV, accidentally coming beating both enemy team and all my level 8 team mates, this goes into how pointless the RPG systems are in this game but what really holds the game back is that everything in the game is built around these meaningless systems.

Players die far to quickly, this is supposed to be augmented with building resilient, health based characters, but that will only change dying after one tenth-of-a-seconds of gun fire to dying after two tenth-of-a-seconds of gun fire.

The whole thing is like the scene from Starship Troopers where a cadet asks why learn hand to hand combat when the fighting is done with machines, then the guy in charge throws a knife though his hand. Punctured paw or not its a good point.

If a few bullets at an enemies head will kill them then all that fancy purple magic will go to waste.

For how to do these types of amities right Bungie should have looked at its one time associate and victim on Microsoft FASA, and their masterpiece ShadowRun on the 360.

That game had SMGs,long rifles, sniper rifles, rockets and they were all pretty useless, that is to say by themselves. They were one third of taking out an enemy at best.

If you cased someone down and just sprayed them with an SMG you would really hit them and it would take a stupid amount of time, instead you would make damaging crystals grow around them, throw a 'nade at them and just to seal the deal pepper them with bullets. 'Nades are the only thing on that death list that could kill by itself unless you were against a troll who would 'harden' the more damage they took meaning it was best to do as much damage to one in a short amount of time them back off. Their damage resilience would fade but the health taken would still be lost.

So when dealing with a human, elf, dwarf or troll you would want to tailor your approach to taking them out, Destiny instead goes for 'just shoot em' in the head'.

See a level 1 Warlock, just shoot em' in the head.

See a level 8 Hunter with maxed out everything, just shoot em' in the head.

The sheer usefulness and distinctiveness of ShadowRun's abilities puts what's on show in the Beta to shame.

Since I could talk about ShadowRun all day lets move to a topic where that game has no place, vehicles.

That is the one way Destiny beats ShadowRun and only due to that game having none, but that leads to the far more talked about point of comparison Halo, and would you believe that Destiny is worse in that regard then any Halo save for maybe 2.

This is the one complaint that will probably be fixed by nature of the full game being... well, a full game but as it stands now the vehicles aren’t great. The reason to be hopeful is that there should be a few others in the complete game and these two could be tweaked into balance far easier then the infantry combat could.

Sparrow

A hover bike with no weapons.

Press select then box until it magics up under you.

Very Unreal 2004 like, though it can run people over which the hover board in UT might not have been able to.

Pike

Much like the Sparrow but faster, with 2 crazy fast plasma riffles on the front, very manoeuvrable and is fun to just swirl around on. Eats up anyone on foot but is very underpowered against an Interceptor.

Interceptor

Hover tank with tiny boost, and twin rockets that do good damage but aren’t as fun to use as they should be.

While not the most important of issues all three of these have the same problem, they are hover based.

This means as they are being used they don't interact with the environment very much. Making them like the horrible Ghost from Halo.

The best Halo vehicle without question was the Brute Chopper.

It was much like the Pike but had a giant wheel on the front of it, and it behaved accordingly.

If you were barrelling towards an enemy warthog (Hummer) missed then then spun around for another go the front wheel would grind into the ground then mangle its way in the new direction until it hit and rended that fucker in two.

I would play the game for hours just riding around in those things, they were balanced with the damage they did and took and their use in the sandbox but above all they were glorious to use.

Part of that was how they connected with the ground in such a direct and violent manner. Just bobbing on invisible forces will never be as satisfying.

So that’s enough mud thrown for one post, I am very disappointed with the Beta and can say that with the protection that I am also really good at it. These aren’t sour grapes.

Though there are many bright sides to this whole thing:

It isn't Halo so that series can do a better path then GOSS.

All my issues could be just based on what the early Destiny will be higher level vehicles, abilities and armour might bring a better sense of balance.

Even if the full game is as poorly though out as the Beta hints at the game is set to sell crazy numbers and they will have a lot of chances to fix it in follow ups.

Bungie has the right to have some internal staff work on a new Marathon so I hope in a year or two to hear news of them working with another dev on making a brand spanking new game in that universe.