Destiny.

From everything I have heard the whole " Single-player MMO" thing is a complete fallacy. It's a lot closer to games that already exist, such as Test Drive Unlimited (Persistent world with players who you can only see when they're close) Or Journey (Other players are matched to you and join.)

Destiny's world is made up of multiple public areas, "places where you just run into other Guardians." As players approach these sections of the game, the networking technology created for Destiny automatically matches players located within the same zone and injects them into each other's worlds. As players that don't stick together move away from the public areas, their avatars disappear from each other's games.

That sounds very similar to what exists in Fable II and III. Also note that Bungie already debunked MMO like numbers of players.

While the concept sounds like an MMO, Bungie says players shouldn't expect to see town squares littered with hundreds of players. "[The] amount of players you see is design controlled," Bungie COO Pete Parsons said, adding it's "not about stuffing as many people in there as possible."

So far given what they said, it's not sure if a connection is permanently required while playing, as all they said was you need a constant connection to "realize the vision of the game". That's vague enough to allow single player or not, we'll have to wait for more information.


Now let's get into Civ's Gripes.

1

Given the language they have been using, which include "weapons/equipment that you find/get for completing tasks" "Raids", "Dungeons" and "Supporting the game for a Decade" could get the old warning signs that it could be a loot-driven dungeon crawler much like Diablo. So yeah we've seen that kind of game add some F2P like microtransactions here and there, such as the auction house in Diablo III.

That being said, they did apparently mention that the weapons/equipment would each have a story of how you got them in the game. Paying $5 for a premium gun not be the best way to foster that.


2
The vidoc did an okay job of showing environments, which looked great, but it's hard to say at this stage how much would be playable. They did mention their new tech for generating environments and how it could create playable environments much faster than what they did in the past, and they demonstrated that to the press by the construction of a moon base. It's will probably take a long time to find out how much of those assets are used for each pre-fabricated building and the amount of repetition.

They did announce that you will visit most of the other planets in the solar system to explore the ruins of human colonies back from the golden age. So far they said Mars, Earth, Venus and what appeared to be a derelict ship around saturn were playable environments.

3

Again, partially covered this with the answer but I'll add a few additional points.

First off, they described a scenario where Jason Jones and Staten in the game went on a raid to recover and ancient artifact, but they get ambushed and are in dire need of help, then another player appears on a vehicle and wipes the enemies and the three work together to retrieve the artifact. So it may be quite circumstantial and depends how intelligent their new matching system is. Halo matchmaking could take millions of people playing together in a similar fashion, so I think it's well in their ability to cope with latency.

I would really like to know more about the game before adding more conjecture.


At this point we only really know that Bungie is making an MMO-esque FPS with a futuristic background.


Nothing in their to really speak of in terms of the game besides what the game makers have cryptically said. And hints from that is them just hyping it to be an awesome game that everyone should buy because they've been working on it and it's great. Guarantee you I can look right now for game creator interviews for Alien: Colonial Marines and they would be saying the same thing about their game.

The first of my concerns has been troubling me for a while now. It applies to most f2p games and it makes me cringe every time I hear a dev or publisher talk about f2p as the future of the industry.

I don't want a game to force me into 100+ hours of playtime before I feel like I'm getting the full experience. I feel like Tribes, Warframe, and Planetside all do this to an extent and it destroys my ambition to play from the start (especially when it begs me to feed it money the whole time).

My other two concerns were more just questions about how the game is actually supposed to work. All I could really make out from that ViDoc is "It's a sci-fi MMO-ish (but no really) shooter with exploration and galaxy and bad guys in space. It's on consoles, there are iOS apps, and you'll probably definitely maybe need the internet always. Also, we're really fond of the term 'Persistent World' but we're not going to define it yet."

I'm happy Bungie is working on a new sci-fi shooter IP because, well, they have a great reputation with those. I'm also happy that they're trying to take it in new directions and I hope they can make a big impact in the genera like Marathon and Combat Evolved did.

Of course, it doesn't make sense to place all bets on a game we know almost nothing about, but it's not Destiny I'm excited about - I'm just excited that Bungie is back.

I got a feeling that its more similar to Fable 2 than an MMO except instead of floating orbs there actually might be a player.

I'd like an option to just be able to have friends appear that or they better turn off friendly fire becuase otherwise the game could turn into DayZ "social interaction" very quickly

Destiny doesn't look like it will be a survival game or have multiple playable factions, so I doubt there will be much PvP outside of controlled environments.

I'm talking about nobody trusting each other because they are afraid to get Team-killed.

Though i can see the game being Similiar to playing Minecraft on a Server at least in terms of encountering other people. There's other people in your world doing their own stuff and if nearby you can see what they are doing.help them and vice versa.

Well, you're all sort of on the same team, so PvP doesn't make too much sense. I'm sure the mechanic will be there somewhere, but probably in the form of something like an arena.

Nocbl2 wrote:Well, you're all sort of on the same team, so PvP doesn't make too much sense. I'm sure the mechanic will be there somewhere, but probably in the form of something like an arena.

That would be my suspicion as well.

Aye.

They'll almost definitely have a competitive PvP aspect to the game, though.

In some form or another definitely. To that their is no doubt.


I'm curious as to how big boss fights will work.



In a typical RPG there will be some huge boss that has so much health and attacks and little support units around it that a dozen or more guys fighting it is fine but with that many people using guns it seems that the fights would be weird to me. Everyone getting distance and shooting at targets across the room.

I'll look up one of those other shooting MMO's and see how they handle it.




Then again this game could just be all human sized enemies and no huge sized bosses. Still too early to say anything.

Well, if anyone can change the game in a genre, it's Bungie. They did it with matchmaking, they did it with Forge, they can probably do it again here.

It'll probably have the most simple or basic features of MMO's, like the... large amount of players in a persistent/instanced world part. The time and budget they have for each project isn't really enough to make anything close to a real MMO.

I think the MMO inspired ideas will be pretty cool, especially for this genre. Plus, it has Marty O'Donnel so it'll have an amazing soundtrack no doubt. I'm not sure if the world will be as deep as Halo was or if it'll be as engaging as Halo was either.

With a planned 4 games to be released every other year with DLC and microtransactions, I'm pretty sure it'll be a flat price like most AAA games.

Can someone explain what a "value-added paid service" is though? Apparently it'll be included.

Sounds like an optional subscription...

And still Vigil has not learned how to make a topic without a period in it.


This one was just a single fucking word!!!


His next thread is just going to be " . "

From a pure business perspective, a mobile value-added service is an additional service for which subscribers pay extra. In other words, the service offers some kind of value, and the subscribers are willing to pay for it.

Stole this from an article. It sounds a lot like... ugh, pay-to-win which is the epitome of bad monetization, so I sincerely hope that Bungie is above such a cheap trick. Instead, it could just add neat features that enhance gameplay, rather than break it.

Armor Patterns/Skins are fine and dandy to pay money for, but I do not believe in being able to pay money to catch up/be on par/beat other players who are more conservative with their money.

Armor/Gun patterns yes. Actual Armor or Guns no.

Press release confirmed it's not coming out in 2013. And not that double speak of "Fiscal year 2013" either. Just plain probably not coming out 2013.


Honestly I wouldn't even want it to since what we've seen so far and their reluctance to show videos of the game it would probably be a rush job if it was released this year.

Also since Sony is probably making a PS4 confirmation announcement tomorrow chances are both it and the 360 will be released this holiday season making Destiny more than likely being released for the next generation of consoles early 2013.

Found a nice article here also.


Bungie plans to make the game focus around a number of core pillars (which all MMO's say nowadays).

Guess how many?

Spoiler:

http://www.ign.com/articles/2013/02/17/bungies-destiny-a-land-of-hope-and-dreams

Gauz wrote:I think the MMO inspired ideas will be pretty cool, especially for this genre. Plus, it has Marty O'Donnel so it'll have an amazing soundtrack no doubt. I'm not sure if the world will be as deep as Halo was or if it'll be as engaging as Halo was either.

"Composer Marty O’Donnell is already hard at work scoring Destiny. A full 50 minutes of soundtrack material is already in the can, recorded with a 106-piece orchestra in London at Abbey Road Studios. Oh, and some other material conjured up by O’Donnell, his longtime music writing partner Mike Salvatori, and rock god Paul McCartney. I heard several samples and it’s clear that O’Donnell is not only at the top of his game, he has no restrictions either, with pieces clocking in “as long as they need to be.” Most pieces, he said, are between five and seven minutes each, far beyond the 1-3-minute tracks he’s always had to adhere to in order to fit Bungie’s games."

Yeah the soundtrack is looking epic so far.

I'm pretty excited about this game actually.

i want hear those 50 mins...

I want to love this. I don't know enough about it yet though, but if Bungie could create a universe as love-able as Halo again... well I think I'd relapse

I sincerely hope Eric Nylund isn't planning to write any books about Destiny. ..

You all know that the sphere above the city is going to turn out to be something that will destroy humanities greatest city. That shit is inevitable.


That or Master Chief is in that shit just getting ready to finish the fight lol.

Gauz wrote:I want to love this. I don't know enough about it yet though, but if Bungie could create a universe as love-able as Halo again... well I think I'd relapse

I sincerely hope Eric Nylund isn't planning to write any books about Destiny. ..

but... nylunds books were the best part about the halo universe....