I liked the control points, but it felt basically like a standard game mode. It plays well, and I like that secondary ammo doesn't replenish when you die. It incentivizes map control and moving around so you can't just camp with your shotgun or sniper rifle. But I'm hoping the full game has some more unique PvP modes.

@captain_clayman: I kind of wish they had just gone with TDM.

I haven't played it yet, but is it so that you bring in your own gear? If so, I'm guessing it'll always be unbalanced and more of a MMO pvp than a Halo-like multiplayer.

@amyggen:

This is just conjecture on my part since I haven't played it, but I highly suspect that there'll be some method of bringing in your own gear, but somehow balancing it out. Like making your gear there for cosmetic purposes only. GW2 for example did something like this, and I think normally in arena PVP these days in MMO's you don't have the situation where "the guy with the better armour wins."

Haven't checked it out yet myself. And not sure if I will to be honest.

The vehicles ruin it for me, they're way overpowered ATM.

I really didn't like their Points Capture rules. You don't gain score depending on how many points you have, you get it from killing people. The more points you have when you kill enemies, the more score you get. I thought the point of that game mode was to allow people who were not super great at the shooting part but were more strategic and team-players to have a game mode they'd be good at. But no. Also, most of the people have no fucking idea how it actually works, and keep stealing points over and over again, even when they are behind.

Everyone has their own gear, but they do a great job of making it balanced. Firstly, you start with full ammo for your primary weapon (which consists of standard rifles and pistols) a small amount of ammo for your special weapon (which are things like snipers and shotguns), and no ammo for your heavy weapon (heavy machine guns and rocket launchers). When you die your primary ammo refills, but your special ammo does not. There are five or six spawn points for special ammo on the map and two or three times a game heavy ammo will spawn in at two points with an announcement to everyone that this has happened.

Because the damage values for all weapons are normalized for everyone, the actual stats of your weapon don't matter as much as whether or not you've upgraded it with special scopes or effects. Also, by treating ammo the way they do the heavy ammo drops serve the role of power weapon spawns which keeps map control as a vital element of competitive play. Because of these smart decisions you're never going to feel like someone is destroying you because they have better gear, and if you get killed by a super powererful weapon it's because someone was able to pick up ammo for it, which you also had every opportunity to do.

@ll_exile_ll: What about armor?

It's an old stable build of the game with outdated values but:

1. TTK needs to be increased, as you play more you get stronger and more powerful and I don't want to play another instagib deathmatch
2. Supers need adjustment, the Hunter one is outrageous, the Warlock one is stupidly powerful and easy to spam, it regenerates in no-time
3. I actually like the points capture rules of the more objectives you own, the more points your team earns per kill
4. The few people who have shields and survive five seconds of everybody dumping on them are assholes, I should figure out how to activate those shields
5. Maps without vehicles need to be separated from bad maps that should be dumped from the game
6. The announcer, despite sounding complete and ready, isn't that good.
7. I also like the ammo system a lot.
8. Right now a ton of attributes do not carry over into, no idea if it'll change in beta or retail.
9. Vehicles are pretty broke and resilient against anything not a Super ability or other vehicle.

With the stuff they've got and how they play, class balance should be:

..in PvE because it sounds like it's all the same in PvP which might be for the best. And number ten: The lag is offputting and the chance of getting the actually good PvP map that belongs in a game like this, that makes the game fun, is super hard. I need more of the moon map.

Same sort of deal as the weapons where the upgrades which add benefits (such as holding more ammo or decreasing your grenade cooldown) are useful, but the actual defense value will be normalized to make it not that important.

wait the speeder bikes have weapons?

@devil240z: Some do on the moon map. They're pretty broken right now seeing as how difficult it is to take out on foot. They feel really out of place. Other than that it seems pretty solid. I'll probably do it just for the gear grind plus I don't like any other first person shooter this much to actually engage in multiplayer at the moment.

The vehicles feel out of place and I have no idea what's up with that announcer guy. Seems like an okay distraction from the main game, being just good enough overall and adding some variety.

Seems alright at best. I don't think it'll ever be balanced, even when the game actually comes out. Game is fantastic and the shooting feels great, but the PvP feels tacked on.

I've actually been having a great time with it. Mainly because the game just plays so damn well. It's nothing out of this world but I think it'll be worth playing in the full game

I've had fun with it, though I've been pretty awful at it, it's probably because my play style isn't really suited to the Hunter I've been playing with - where someone mentioned the Hunter's golden gun being OP, I haven't experienced anything similar, I either die while activating it, die while it's activated or simply don't manage to find/hit anyone before it expires. I was messing around with a Titan this afternoon and that seems like it'd be a much greater fit for me in multiplayer in particular.

It seems like it's important to think of it as "PVP" and not straight up multiplayer in the traditional shooter sense? I could see it being fun if you approach it more like you would approach PVP in an RPG, building your character and trying to find that perfect weapon etc. It's hard to judge from just the one mode and two maps, but I could totally see some people getting super into it while others ignore it completely. I don't think it'll be quite as universal a feature as multiplayer would normally be in a shooter, and for the kind of game Destiny is I think that's okay (though it depends on how heavily they lean on Crucible marks and the gear they unlock).

When looking for a more pure multiplayer shooter experience I think I'll always prefer the sort of multiplayer found in Halo with weapons that spawn on the map that you're trying to control etc. As a multiplayer experience I certainly miss that element of things and the variety it brings (the closest thing is the rush to pick up Heavy Weapon ammo, but then you're still just using the same old weapons).

Edit: Hah, I actually like the map on Earth a lot more than the one on the Moon, too.

Theres a moon map?! HOW

I played 2 rounds of it and thought it was kinda boring.

I like the concept of the kill value increasing because if allows the losing team to work their strategy instead of being rushed to take points. They can be methodical and precise knowing that as long as they're careful they won't be losing points.

I really liked it. Played it with a buddy.

I don't like the moon map that much though. I found myself being out of the action for a while trying to get around it. The anti-vehicle turrets are in horrible places, like the one that over looks capture point B. Seen a lot of people rack up killing streaks in that thing. It'd work better if it had to lock on to vehicles to fire, but have the lock on time be instant.

The warlock power needs to not work through walls. I've been killed a few times through walls because some warlock players have figured that one out.

I like the capture points and scoring system they used. As others have said, if you're losing you're not just rushing to try take points back, if you play carefully, you can climb back up. Having said that though, I've seen some games (mostly on the moon map) absolutely snow ball in favour of the team that gets the initial lead.

Looking forward to seeing what the other game types are.

I'm not great at this type of shooter, which is my main issue really. I played it with all 3 classes, and the Warlock definitely seems at a disadvantage at these low levels, since it has the lowest survivability and without unlocking the focus on the toughness attribute, that's just how it is - so losing straight-up firefights happens much more frequently than with the other two classes. Super-wise, the Hunter's is crazy OP. I've killed 3 guys routinely with the Golden gun.

I hate how small the capture zones are. I don't like that at all. Battlefield 4 is one of the first games which has toyed with the idea of much larger capture zones, turning PTFO (play the fucking objective) into more a mini-deathmatch, rather than *forcibly being a sitting duck*. That's the design paradigm I enjoy a whole lot more for capture zones.

The vehicles are stupid powerful. I guess it would be less of an issue, if there was heavy ammo from the get-go on maps with vehicles.

The ownership I feel for my character definitely gives me some PvP ambitions. I will play it for sure, and I will get good at it. Without that aspect of it, it's not really my kind of PvP, and technically and design-wise, it feels very dated. I voted *wait and see*.

P.S. Playing another online FPS after almost a year of BF4, I really can't fathom what people think was so extraordinarily broken with its netcode. Destiny has all those things (kill trading, getting shot when already around a corner), all the while I feel like I'm shooting *boxy hitboxes*, rather than accurate ones, if you get what I mean. So it has less accurate hitboxes, more simplistic ballistics, a much lower playercount, fewer vehicles, no environmental interactiviy, much smaller maps - yet the same issues persist.

I love it then again, I'm a fan of arena shooters.

The moons mostly okay but if one team decides to go all tank you really can't do much. That's with out doubt something that needs to be changed; specifically the ability for vehicles to capture points.

Rusted Earth a second PVP map that I keep getting (although I do like it) into functions a lot due to its lack of vehicles. The only catch is that it might take a person a bit of time to get the lay of the land, since Rusted's pretty cluttered (more walls, buildings, etc) compared to the moon.

PVP I was not so hot on but maps I played on were fun and seemed like something you would really enjoy if you were into Halo MP. I'm not a big competitive gamer so not for me but seemed well made for what it was.

It's just Halo multiplayer, so I enjoy it. Could definitely use some work though. The capture points on the flags are ludicrously small.

I like it a lot and it further emphasizes to me how much I disliked Halo 4. I think the powers are even more balanced than those in Reach because of the respawn timer, and I really liked Reach. Here's a video I took of a game I played before going into work last night:

I really miss executions though. Maybe they will bring those back.

@seppli I can tell you Destiny does not have the same issues with netcode that Battlefield does. After playing about 300 hours of just the PS4 version of Battlefield 4, this does not. There's kill trading, but that doesn't have anything to do with netcode. Halo players can tell you that happens a lot with competing weapons. Killing people in vehicles isn't hard at all, especially if you maximize the use of the classes jump+ options but they are a but overpowered especially considering there are now hijacking options: I am sure this will be corrected, even by the time of the beta next month. What was extra broken about BF4 was the fact that shots were out of sync with the server so you would be killed behind cover while the server acted as if you were still out, invincibility when you shouldn't have had it, 0 damage weapons, hits not registering, and more...these aren't player issues made up out of the blue...they are issues DICE and EA acknowledged numerous times.

I've had a few moments of fun, but I just don't like "control the points" mode. I always feel like I'm the only one on my team that knows what the objective is (even though that's not the case).

It makes me want to play Titanfall. It's unfair to compare those two but because my character can double jump and has a jetpack I feel like I should be running on walls. I love the game overall but PVP may not be for me.

How do all you people have the Alpha? I want to play pretty badly.

I liked it a lot. And I don't know, but I did pretty well with the Warlock. That Super is really something against vehicles on the moon map. Realizing I could call on the speeder at any time made the moon map a whole lot more enjoyable as well.

My response should be prefaced by the fact that (a) I'm not a huge PvPer and (b) it was an alpha with one mode, but I had several problems with it.

1. I felt like the PvE part of the game is really trying to be something new and unique. I don't know if it will ultimately succeed at that, but in the short time I played, it felt different. PvP just felt like PvP; the same PvP I've played a million times before. It felt very "safe." I would rather they have tried to do something really crazy with it. Maybe the other modes they hint at will do that, but the capture mode in the alpha was, on a conceptual level, really boring.

2. The balance seems way off. My Warlock could pump an entire clip into another player and not kill him while I died in about two shots. This despite being Level 8 and having a pretty good weapon. I don't know if this is an issue with gear, or class balance or what, but I left thinking that there was absolutely no reason to choose any class but a Titan so you could have the most armor.

3. This is more of a complaint specific to me, but as someone who isn't very good at PvP, I would really like it if some of these games made more of an effort to provide an "on ramp" to newish PvPers. My experience with just about every MMOs PvP is that there are a small number of very dedicated players who do almost nothing but PvP and then mop the floor with everyone else. That seemed to be the case here too. It isn't any fun to get killed every five seconds because you don't understand the absolutely most optimal way to play. It's also really hard to get better when the skill level is so much higher than yours.

Something like Starcraft tried to do would be really appreciated. Let me go through a tutorial that goes over basic stuff like "These are the rules of the mode. These are good strategies for this mode. This is how you can contribute to your team," coupled with maybe a tutorial about how different classes should be operating.

Well I only played one pvp match on the moon map but it seemed okay. I don't know if everyone else knew how to deal with them but it seemed like the vehicles were blown up quickly. In every encounter it always seemed like I had a chance to win. Not just playing it like a normal shooter and using the different skills seems important like I seemed to confuse a few people by double jumping.

@ethanielrain:

Agreed. The Earth map was fine, and I enjoyed it a lot. Once I played the Moon map, I saw myself getting constantly oneshotted by tanks, jet bikes, and turrets before I can react to them.

It's a lot of fun. Especially the moon map or whatever. Seems like that map barely ever comes up for some reason. It's totally Halo. I agree with what someone else said... executions would be a nice addition. I feel like I've backstabbed guys and it doesn't do more damage than hitting them in the front.

Hated every second of PvP I tried to do on. Didn't matter which class or guns I had it just didn't seem fun to me. Granted I'm not coming to this game for competitive multiplayer as I prefer a co-op experience to versus play these days.

It's great!

Gotta add that I felt the LMGs were utterly terrible in PvP as well as PvE until I found one shooting at 900 rounds per minute towards the last half-day of the game. Players as well as mobs melted in record time, though in the ranges necessary to hit every bullet with it was suicidal against shotgunners, being one myself.

Sure the shotguns should be deadly in range but there's no defense, you need to have a shotgun ready to equip, and then there are maps where shotguns aren't hot at all because of the longer ranges. They'd need an outfit-switcher if they'd want to keep that balance.