The Destiny 2 Beta has concluded as of July 25th. I’ve invested about 15 hours into testing all three character classes, The Crucible, the story mode, and the strike. Here, I am going to discuss what worked for me, what didn’t work, and what needs to change for launch day. I believe that this longer article will sum up all of the criticisms that have thus far accumulated.
Initially, I was not impressed with Destiny 2. The guns felt weak, abilities took too long to recharge, and the 30 FPS was a massive step down from the 60 FPS that I’ve become accustomed to. What’s worse is that The Crucible felt like a blanketed downgrade from everything that made the first Destiny’s Crucible experience so much fun. For the purposes of this article, however, I am going to attempt to keep my complaints as levelheaded as possible.
DISCLAIMER: I understand that this was a Beta and therefore not representative of the complete experience. All of my criticisms are liable to be, or have been, addressed.
The Story Mode
The story mode was decent. It was grandiose and a return-to-form for Bungie’s exceptional approach to storytelling in First Person Shooters. I’m happy that NPCs are actually DOING THINGS now and not simply spouting exposition at us through a radio. One complaint I have (the same complaint I have with The Taken King’s story mode) is that the game thrusts you into this large-scale conflict without any meaningful setup. It would be nice to see a calm-before-the-storm cinematic that precedes Gaul’s assault on The Last City, similar to the award ceremony in the beginning of Halo 2. Another complaint I have is that, yet again, our characters have zero personality and do not utter a single word.
At any rate, if Bungie can maintain the level of quality that they delivered in the first mission throughout the rest of the campaign, then I will be very pleased.
The Strike
The Inverted Spire strike is pretty much what you would expect from any strike in Destiny: plow through hordes of enemies until you reach a bullet sponge of a boss. Interestingly, my team and I died 5 times on the boss fight, and thus I commend Bungie for actually challenging the player and not making the mission so exploitable. I can’t imagine what this would be like on Nightfall difficulty.
Overall, I was not very impressed with the strike, but it is good time-killer in the event that you want to sit back, relax, and shoot mindless aliens for 20 or so minutes.
The Gameplay
Now I can talk about the nitty gritty—the REAL meat of my criticism: the gameplay and The Crucible. First off, I know I’m beating a dead horse when I say this, but abilities charge way too slowly. This includes the Super ability, grenades, and supplementary character abilities. As my disclaimer noted, this has probably already been fixed, but I’d like to talk about it nonetheless.
To put things into perspective, in a typical strike, you will only get to use your Super twice, and no more than three times. And The Crucible? Forget it. If you’re lucky enough, you’ll only get your Super in the last 2 minutes of the match (when EVERYONE ELSE uses it). That is ABSOLUTELY pathetic for a game whose majority of fun derives from utilizing unique abilities that alter the dynamic and flow of its combat. Destiny 1 was special because I got to live out my childlike power fantasy by wielding the Light of the Traveler and vaporizing my opponents into thin air. I still get to do that, but those moments of empowerment are few and far between, and ultimately take a lot of enjoyment out of the equation.
Also, who in their right mind at Bungie Studios thought it would be a good idea to nerf melee damage THIS drastically? In The Crucible, it takes up to THREE punches to defeat your opponent. That desperately needs to be changed, because dumping several rounds into somebody but then having to stab them two times severely disrupts the fluidity of closer-ranged encounters and leaves you more vulnerable to team shots.
Gunplay is as always, smooth and solid. Say what you want about Bungie as a developer, but they understand shooting mechanics. In fact, much of what keeps people coming back to this game after all these years is just how good it feels to shoot things. But remember when I said that the guns felt weak? I meant it. Unfortunately, the primaries that we were given in the Beta often felt like peashooters, while the sniper rifle felt like a slightly stronger scout rifle. Again, this is subject to change, but right now, guns are underpowered.
Finally, the transition from a PRIMARY/SECONDARY/HEAVY loadout to a PRIMARY/PRIMARY/SECONDARY loadout really hurts the PvE experience. While I can understand this design choice for PvP to a certain extent, in PvE, it’s insipid having to switch between two mediocrely powered auto rifles and rarely getting to use a sniper, rocket launcher, or shotgun because power ammo is so scarce. I sure will miss my Fatebringer/Blackhammer/Gjallerhorn combination. Can we please go back to the way things were in this regard? Of course, it is more balanced as it is now, but sometimes, balance is boring.
The Crucible
So how is The Crucible? In short, watered down.
I thought I was going to despise the 4v4 format, but it’s not as bad as I expected. The maps are specifically scaled down to accommodate 8 players instead of 12, and so you’ll encounter your opponents about as frequently as you would on a map that’s been built for 6v6. Despite this, I prefer the classic 6v6 format because in 4v4, there are fewer opponents to engage with and thus fewer opportunities for extremely satisfying multi-kills. Why is it that Bungie can’t just do what they did with their Halo games and design some maps and modes for 6v6, and others for 4v4? Blanketing 4v4 across ALL maps and modes is a colossal step backwards because not everyone is going to prefer these smaller-scale, less chaotic matches. Personally, I want to see Combined Arms and Rumble make a return.
I love and hate the new scoring system in Control. I love it because it’s been simplified in such a way that I understand how points are distributed between both teams (in Destiny 1, it was convoluted and made no sense). I hate it because it needlessly rewards assists. If I kill somebody, I want it to MATTER. In other words, I want to feel like I deserved it. However, in Destiny 2, if you so much as scrape an opponent and one of your teammates deals let’s say 90 percent of the damage, you’ll be allotted a full point (i.e.: +1 point). Alternatively, if you deal 100 percent of the damage, you’ll be allotted two points (i.e.: +2 points). With that said, it appears that the only indicator of individual performance is Efficiency, which is a special number on the scoreboard that aggregates your kill/death/assist ratio, level of accuracy, and other factors. However, I want the scoreboard to display the number of times you acquired FULL kills relative to the number of times you died. Currently, the game has either eliminated or minimized these statistics in favor of giving everyone on the team a participation medal.
By the way, I hope to God that we are not solely relegated to Quickplay and Competitive in the final game. THIS IS NOT OVERWATCH. Destiny 2 is expected to promote diversity and versatility by featuring multiple playlists that cater to different preferences and different play styles. It should NOT be this restrictive and barebones.
A couple more suggestions that I would like to offer are to increase the score limit in Control from 75 to 100, and to increase the rate at which players’ health bars regenerate to both deter and prevent incidences of team shooting. It is very frustrating when, upon legitimately outplaying your opponent, someone else comes from around the corner to “clean you up” because you couldn’t recover in time. As for Control, the score limit is a little too condensed for my liking. Bumping it up to 100 should make matches last for just the right amount of time.
Skill Based Match Making is ever so prominent in Destiny 2, and just like in Destiny 1, I am routinely punished for performing well. Whenever I have one great match or a string of great matches, I am pitted against full teams of 4 and get utterly decimated. Why should I be forced to play my heart out every single match against players who are just as good if not better than me? I said it before and I’ll say it again: Bungie needs to either abolish or restrict SBMM to COMPETITIVE-ONLY playlists so that The Crucible can remain a lighthearted, laidback experience. Not every game on the market needs to be an eSport.
Fellow Destiny player Tibbaryllis2 puts it perfectly, “The game is infinitely better when you go through a cycle of games where you have some close matches, you stomp some people, and you get stomped by some people. You need all three; one helps you get better, one helps you have fun, and one keeps you humble.”
Final Word
Believe it or not, I criticize Destiny this harshly because I love it and want it to succeed. It’s the only game that keeps me coming back to it on a consistent basis, and I’ll be damned if it sacrifices its identity to become another generic, bland, dull, and dry shooter game.
So far, Destiny 2 is not a game plagued by poor design, but rather by poor design decisions. It seems that Bungie’s best answer to the complaints players directed toward Destiny 1’s PvP experience is to literally nerf everything that made it fun in the first place, and achieve a more leveled playing field in a panicked attempt to please its entire player base. In doing so, they punished the PvE-centric audience.
I hope that come September, my opinion on the game improves and does not worsen. In either case, I’ll be here to call it out.
Thanks for reading.
