Got tempted by the promotions on PS store and went in with my friend. Considering most of everything was already over, I felt like uninvested in everything. We tried PVP to play with some weapons we thought were cool, but just ended up getting pounded into the ground with hand cannons. One or two quick pops and it’s time to go back to spawn. The game works really hard at making new players not want anything to do with it. I bought the other expansions to see the other areas, but I think it literally a waste of money.
The sad thing is, back in the day, Destiny 1? It was legit a great game.
Then somewhere between 1 and 2, they forgot how to make a game. They forgot that people engage with story missions.
Here’s an example:
In Destiny 1, you start on Earth, the missions all have level markers. You play through in order levelling up. You unlock the moon and play those missions too, then when you’re a high enough level, there’s a strike that completes Earth, and a strike that completes the Moon.
Any of these missions can be directly selected and replayed from the map at will.
Roll forward to Destiny 2 - You get de-powered. Everything is a chore. There are story missions but you have no idea what level they are, you can only play them in the order Bungie has selected for you, and the only way to re-play them is from a Weekly Heroic playlist selector.
Same for strikes. You can’t choose which one you want to play, they appear on a random playlist and sometimes it will be something new and other times it will be the same strike you just played EIGHT TIMES IN A ROW.
Eventually Bungie decides to remove the rewards from the Weekly Heroic Story playlist, causing people to stop playing it, which they take as “Well, people aren’t interested in story missions…” and remove them from the game.
I understand that they at least want PvE and PvP to feel the same in terms of gunplay and stuff, but there’s no reason why they shouldn’t at least balance weapon damage differently in PvP - they wouldn’t affect how guns feel, just how they perform.
Frankly, though, there are a lot of weapon balance things apart from damage that should be different between PvE and PvP. Off the top of my head:
shotguns should have much more range in PvE than PvP. At the range Destiny’s PvP is played at, if shotguns have decent range it feels oppressive. But having them so you need to barrel-stuff enemies in PvE makes them a lot less fun and less viable.
movement speed should vary based on the weapon someone is holding. Take shotguns again: rather than just nerfing their damage or further reducing their effective range, they could nerf the movement speed while someone’s holding a shotgun, making it more difficult for them to close gaps but still letting them be rewarded for making it into range.
headshot multipliers - there’s no reason why they can’t just further adjust headshot multipliers in PvP to balance guns.
I also feel like PvP generally held back the potential for a lot of more exciting weapon designs from PvE. Look at the Borderlands series as an example; it has some crazy weapon designs that can be a lot of fun and can make the player feel really powerful. Black hole guns, richocheting, homing bullets, cluster explosions, shotgun revolvers, and so on. Obviously Destiny is aiming for a slightly less whacky approach than Borderlands, but it feels like they definitely could have done more mechanically interesting things if they weren’t limited by PvP balance.
Bungie needs to stop antagonizing its player base.
Destiny 2 should be split into a PVE and PVP version.
PVE should be paid and have all the previously removed story content restored.
PVP should be free to play and funded with the cosmetic store nonsense.
Characters should be able to play either version at will.
This would allow Bungie to balance PVE and PVP independently of each other.
Destiny 2? You mean Hand Cannons the Game?
I wouldn’t know the current state, I stopped playing after they gutted 1/2 the content and sunset all my gear.
Got tempted by the promotions on PS store and went in with my friend. Considering most of everything was already over, I felt like uninvested in everything. We tried PVP to play with some weapons we thought were cool, but just ended up getting pounded into the ground with hand cannons. One or two quick pops and it’s time to go back to spawn. The game works really hard at making new players not want anything to do with it. I bought the other expansions to see the other areas, but I think it literally a waste of money.
The sad thing is, back in the day, Destiny 1? It was legit a great game.
Then somewhere between 1 and 2, they forgot how to make a game. They forgot that people engage with story missions.
Here’s an example:
In Destiny 1, you start on Earth, the missions all have level markers. You play through in order levelling up. You unlock the moon and play those missions too, then when you’re a high enough level, there’s a strike that completes Earth, and a strike that completes the Moon.
Any of these missions can be directly selected and replayed from the map at will.
Roll forward to Destiny 2 - You get de-powered. Everything is a chore. There are story missions but you have no idea what level they are, you can only play them in the order Bungie has selected for you, and the only way to re-play them is from a Weekly Heroic playlist selector.
Same for strikes. You can’t choose which one you want to play, they appear on a random playlist and sometimes it will be something new and other times it will be the same strike you just played EIGHT TIMES IN A ROW.
Eventually Bungie decides to remove the rewards from the Weekly Heroic Story playlist, causing people to stop playing it, which they take as “Well, people aren’t interested in story missions…” and remove them from the game.
I have no argument with this approach. This actually sounds super reasonable. Bungie management is so bad.
Balancing separately has been something they’ve been told by the community pretty much from the beginning.
They’re too damn stubborn to listen to reason unfortunately. 😕
I understand that they at least want PvE and PvP to feel the same in terms of gunplay and stuff, but there’s no reason why they shouldn’t at least balance weapon damage differently in PvP - they wouldn’t affect how guns feel, just how they perform.
Frankly, though, there are a lot of weapon balance things apart from damage that should be different between PvE and PvP. Off the top of my head:
I also feel like PvP generally held back the potential for a lot of more exciting weapon designs from PvE. Look at the Borderlands series as an example; it has some crazy weapon designs that can be a lot of fun and can make the player feel really powerful. Black hole guns, richocheting, homing bullets, cluster explosions, shotgun revolvers, and so on. Obviously Destiny is aiming for a slightly less whacky approach than Borderlands, but it feels like they definitely could have done more mechanically interesting things if they weren’t limited by PvP balance.