Destiny 2 PC Beta - Impressions

[CritialGaming]

Destiny 2 is now available for the next couple of days in an open Beta test on PC. I wasn't much of a fan of the original Destiny more because I didn't want to pay for Xbox LIVE, rather than the game itself. So Destiny 2 coming to PC is exciting for me because I was always interested in the concept of Destiny itself.

Sadly Destiny 2 worries me based on what is here. It's no secret that the original Destiny had problems, from lack of story, to a shitty RNG loot mechanic that made the grind unreasonable. At least early in Destiny's life when I play for a little while on a free Xbox LIVE trial, I cannot say anything about how the game evolved later on.

The Beta starts players off at max level (20) and fully equiped with a light level of 200. I don't know how powerful this is by comparison to endgame of the first game, but here the level feels pointless and uninteresting. You have your base class abilities and you mow through long flash corridors of dudes in what is supposed to be an exciting event about the unveiling of the big bad guy for this game. Your old hub is on fire and busted up and you have to fight to try and stop the invasion. Clearly the setup here is you return to Destiny with a fairly high power level, only to have the climax of this mission happen and you are stripped of all your power, sent back to level 1 and Destiny 2 can really begin.

The problem with this mission for me is the lack of enemy variety, the lack of any real interesting effects or challenges to show me how Destiny 2 is making improvements on a fairly generic run and gun formula. You face only three enemy types, or four if you count the armored boss version of one of these enemies, and you mow down a handful of them in each "section" before moving to the next section. Not once during this mission did the game try to get me to use any of my character's abilities, nor did it even mention I HAD abilities. You simply run through, shooting everything in sight and win.

I get that this is an intro tutorial section, but why wouldn't you try to get people hyped by showcasing the cool shit you can do? Give me a section where I have to grenade fuckers, or activate my awesome melee shield ability to punch the shit out of a big dude. SOMETHING to showcase more than point gun, shoot bad guy, would have been nice. It just seems low effort, and I get that there are three classes with different abilities so being told to use specific abilities might not have worked. But really three branching rooms designed to showcase each classes ability wouldn't have been that big of a deal honestly.

The set pieces are nice, and the game is really going out of its way to give all the NPC's personalities and giving you a reason to care about the story. Considering story was a big issue in vanilla release of the first game I see why there is so much effort on this front. But the bombastic explosions, and the showcasing of NPC's doing cool shit just reminds me that the game isn't letting me do that cool shit. At one point you watch a character single handedly blow up an enemy ship, and I was sad that it didn't let me fight that ship and blow it up myself. It's like a Call of Duty campaign where you watch the NPC's do the important cool shit while you just shoot people.

After the big story mission, the game brings you to a menu where you can run a PVP match, or a Strike, neither of which I have done yet, but considering the game never once mentioned ANY of my class abilities or how to use them I would imagine the PVP mode a clusterfuck for someone not experienced in the first game. The strike will hopefully showcase improvements on the loot system, but I have a feeling it'll just be a flashy shooting gallery.

None of which leaves me all that hopeful for Destiny 2 being any good.

Have any of you played the BETA? If so, what do you think so far?

 

[CritialGaming]

How big is it? I don't wanna install the Blizzard app to find out.

it was a 16GB install.

 

[DaCosta]

I've only played the story mission so far, and only with the Warlock class (I think that's what it's called), so I don't know how much the other classes might change the experience. Here are my initial thoughts:

Terrible for beginners: It explains nothing. Nothing about the story, the world or who these characters are. Sure, you get that those three are good guys and the spacemarine looking dudes are evil, but context would be nice. Nothing about the gameplay either. Doesn't tell you about what your abilities are, doesn't even tell you that you have them or what keys they're bound to without going into the key binding section in the options menu. I think there are different damage types, but I'm not sure, the game sure as hell didn't say it.

Poor showcase for the game: That mission was basically one long corridor. I've read the game has an open world, with quests to break up the pace, I wouldn't know that from playing this beta.

Great game feel: Between the pain animations for the enemies, and the sound design in the weapons, it really makes the shooting feel powerful, impacting and satisfying.

Slow and lacking in movement options: Considering the last few FPS games I've played recently were Doom, Titanfall 2, and a bit more of Overwatch, I've been spoiled for movement lately. By comparison, Destiny 2 feels slow, with just the ability of jumping fairly high, and a very short air dash, with a very long cooldown.


I meant to play this beta to figure out if I'd buy the game or not, but I'm still on the fence. I'll wait for the reviews of the full games to come out, once it hits console in a couple of weeks.

 

[sXeth]

The Beta starts players off at max level (20) and fully equiped with a light level of 200. I don't know how powerful this is by comparison to endgame of the first game, but here the level feels pointless and uninteresting. You have your base class abilities and you mow through long flash corridors of dudes in what is supposed to be an exciting event about the unveiling of the big bad guy for this game. Your old hub is on fire and busted up and you have to fight to try and stop the invasion. Clearly the setup here is you return to Destiny with a fairly high power level, only to have the climax of this mission happen and you are stripped of all your power, sent back to level 1 and Destiny 2 can really begin.

The endgame of the first game level wise moved around multiple times, including a systemic overhaul with Taken King. Though in the Beta you're using Legendary (and one Exotic gun), which were largely the post-story weapons in the first. On the class screen you seemed to have one set of abilities unlocked with another set sealed and 2 classes. (Destiny 1 had 3 classes (Eventually), and 3 sets of abilities for each. Dunno if the third set of build options was found redundant (In D1 there was usually one never-used one), or locked off for later, or what)

The problem with this mission for me is the lack of enemy variety, the lack of any real interesting effects or challenges to show me how Destiny 2 is making improvements on a fairly generic run and gun formula. You face only three enemy types, or four if you count the armored boss version of one of these enemies, and you mow down a handful of them in each "section" before moving to the next section. Not once during this mission did the game try to get me to use any of my character's abilities, nor did it even mention I HAD abilities. You simply run through, shooting everything in sight and win.

Yeah, the mission clearly doesn't tutorial much. It was definitely a Beta, not a demo or introduction. The Strike has some more enemies both within the Strike itself, and if you explore around the bit of the planet they didn't block off. Vex didn't seem to have any units beyond their D1 variants. Fallen got at least 1 new ones. The Cabal are whats seen the most of in the beta, having added a second version of Centurions, dog-type enemies, flamethrower dudes, and bomber ships (which you can blow up in the strike, if you're quick enough when they do a fly by).


The PvP I found just to be generic and uninteresting. The maps are smaller and lack verticality or space for any of the mobility options to matter. Abilities were scaled back to the point of being non-factors (both in terms of charge time and effectiveness). The interesting gun type is basically also non-present because the ammo spawn is stupidly rare (and single person now) and easily ambushed before you even finish loading it. So you just get a bunch of people running around shooting AR's at each other like every other twitchy shooter (Time-to-kill also got chopped way down) with none of the unique flavor of a game about sci-fi future space wizards.

 

[Kerg3927]

I've watched the trailers and watched a friend play some of the beta the other day. I haven't played an MMO since I bailed on WoW for last time several years ago, so I've been kind of keeping my eye out for a new MMO to check out. When I saw this was coming out on PC and that Blizzard was involved, I was intrigued. Blizzard usually does quality stuff.

But it doesn't look like my cup of tea. The dialogue /story snippets look really cheesy, just at a glance. I'm also not a big fan of first person games. I like to be able to see my character as I play and gear them up.

 

[TheMysteriousGX]

Note on the "slow" part: try it with the Hunter.

Titan focuses on Armor and Warlock focuses on Recovery, and the beta builds focus on those hard. Meanwhile, the Hunter focuses on mobility.

Most builds aren't going to focus that heavily on one stat.

 

[Zhukov]

Utterly unimpressed.

On the plus side it runs great, it looks pretty, the guns feel alright and the voice acting is fine.

I could see myself having a bit of fun experimenting with abilities and builds.

On the other hand, umm... everything else.

Gameplay reminds me nauseatingly of Borderlands. Healthbar-em-up shooter. Rather mindless, and I don't mean that in a good way. I'm either half-heartedly picking off mooks or holding the trigger down over some dude's massive healthbar. Every now and again a bunch of melee enemies show up and you end up doing the annoying run-backwards-while-shooting-at-their-healthbars dance.

Despite the nice graphics the visual design does nothing for me. As far as I can tell there's no reason to explore the environment or really pay attention to anything except your crosshair and the enemy's healthbars so all the pretty stuff just sort of slides past. I feel a bit sorry for the people who no doubt put a great deal of time and effort into all those details.

The fact that it starts you out at level 20 with what seems to be a fully kitted out character makes me suspicious. You don't introduce players to a game on level 20 because level 1 is super fun.

The Nathan Fillion robot is trying way too fucking hard.

The villain showed up and commenced spouting cliches like they were going out of style. "You are weak and I am strong and strong things are better."

The game couldn't find me a PvP match, so I've no idea what that's like.

Rather dull. Didn't even bother finishing the available content.

 

[Hawki]

When I saw this was coming out on PC and that Blizzard was involved, I was intrigued. Blizzard usually does quality stuff.

Only involved in as much as providing servers for the PC version. It's Bungie's show otherwise.

Of course, since I still can't launch StarCraft: Remastered from the Blizzard App right now, despite having paid for it and played it prior, I'm not giving Blizzard any freebies.

 

[laggyteabag]

I quite enjoyed it.

The shooting was great. The game felt fantastic at 60+ FPS. The game looked gorgeous. The story seems decent.

I have to say, though. The level design let the game down. Can't say the game put its best foot forward for this beta. Hopefully it is much better in the full game.

The story intro was, as you say, a corridor. There was basically no freedom. Run into room. Shoot guys. Wave Defence. Shoot more guys. then rinse and repeat, but replace "wave defence" with "miniboss", and that is the intro chapter in a nutshell.

The strike isn't much better, either. Its basically the intro chapter, but much larger, and with an incredibly simple boss at the end that really boils down to - 1) Kill adds, 2) Dont stand in the fire, 3) DPS boss. Fancy visuals aside.

As for the PvP. Will probably be more interesting when the sandbox expands, but I must say that I am enjoying the lack of constant shotguns.

Would I buy the game? For 50 pounds... eh, probably not. Closer to 40, and we'd have a deal. Not that it matters, though - I got the game for "free" with my new GPU, so I've got the game whether I like it or not.

 

[Myria]

Terrible for beginners: It explains nothing. Nothing about the story, the world or who these characters are.

One of the things I've found very confusing in the run-up to Destiny 2 is how pretty much everything Bungie has done, from trailers to the beta, has been firmly and purposefully aimed at existing fans, to the point where a lot of it isn't going to make any sense to anyone not already familiar with Destiny. I really don't get the why of that, it just seems weird and pointless.

I've been playing Destiny since the beta, and have rather mixed feelings on it. What it does well -- movement and gunplay primarily -- it does extremely well. What it does badly -- story and lore, especially -- it does so badly it's hard to believe it wasn't purposeful. Things have improved greatly from the original release, pretty much everything has been reworked at one point or another, but it's telling that it took them almost two years to get the game into a decent playable state.

Personally I was extremely unimpressed with the Destiny 2 beta. In a lot of ways it feels like a expac, one could easily mistake Destiny 2 screens and vids for Destiny 1 as very little in the visuals, gameplay, or enemies has changed. It is significantly "dumbed down", though, the weapons system, class systems, greatly slowed down movement and pacing, way slower super and grenade regens, removing all random rolls on gear/weapon drops (great idea in what's essentially a looter-shooter), smaller locked-sized PvP groupings... It wasn't a complex game to begin with, anything but, but Bungie has seen fit to simplify it even further and the only real explanation for that is they want some of that sweet E-sports money. But much as with all of the hype being squarely targeted at fans, I just don't get how they think that's a good idea. At least at launch, Destiny 2 won't have a ranking system, no private matches, and it relies on peer-to-peer networking. Any one of those would kill any chance whatsoever for serious PvP, let alone an "E-Sport", their combination spells a trifecta of PvP-fail. No way in hell would any sane person think that's going anywhere.

I dunno, Destiny 2 will sell like hotcakes, just as the first one did, and probably maintain a decent population through whatever life Bungie decides to give it before coming up with Destiny 3. As far as I can see, though, it's not an improvement, is arguably worse than the original game -- itself not exactly a top-ten-best-game-of-all-time candidate, to put it mildly -- and is doing little or nothing to excite/entice new players.

Overall, not really sure what the hell Bungie is thinking here.

Oh, and the changing the game to do the silent protagonist thing... Not a fan. Especially not when you have things like the opening scene where your ghost talks to you, asks questions (albeit apparently rhetorical ones), and your character just sits there like a derp. God is that jarring...

 

[Hawki]

One of the things I've found very confusing in the run-up to Destiny 2 is how pretty much everything Bungie has done, from trailers to the beta, has been firmly and purposefully aimed at existing fans,

Really? It seemed to be in the trailers that Bungie is trying to get new fans, what with the "Meet X" character trailers and their attempts at humour. From my perspective, these really don't fit Destiny. Not that they haven't done wacky trailers before, but Destiny seemed to me to be at its best when it was played straight.

 

[Zhukov]

Managed to find some PvP matches.

It was awful.

The only weapons worth using are the accurate single shot or burst guns because those are the ones that are good for headshotting and if you aren't headshotting you'll be killed almost instantly by someone who is headshotting.

Every now and against someone gets their super thingy and kills everyone in sight more or less effortlessly.

Melee is weird with an auto-aimed lunge thingy that felt like bullshit even when I was the one getting kills with it.

It's just so insubstantial. Everything comes down to who can land the first couple of headshots or, at close quarters, who can mash the melee button the fastest.

It feels like a shitty 2006-ish Halo imitator that one might expect to pay $15 for. Except this has juiced up graphics which you won't even notice 99% of the time.

 

[CritialGaming]

Can't believe Sony paid a premium to have this series first. I suppose it looked different and interesting enough but it was still Bungie. Halo was always over rated imo because Microsoft needed it to be "the biggest thing since sliced bread" and they had the money to make it so.

Fast forward two generations and we have mainly it to thank for some of the most anti-consumer business models in the industry.

 

[Mcgeezaks]

I liked it, I also liked the first Destiny (I bought a PS4 just for it) but got tired of paying for PS+, ~30fps and using a controller for a fps game. So yeah, looking forward to finally play Destiny on PC.

 

[DaCosta]

Note on the "slow" part: try it with the Hunter.

Titan focuses on Armor and Warlock focuses on Recovery, and the beta builds focus on those hard. Meanwhile, the Hunter focuses on mobility.

Most builds aren't going to focus that heavily on one stat.

I've tried all modes and characters now. The Hunter was definitely my favorite, but the game still feels too slow. The cooldown for the dodge is just way too long, so most of the time all you can do is walk around and double jump. Feels more like what I would expect from a run of the mill military shooter, and not a space wizard.

If the cooldown was much smaller, and the dodge was more of a core part of the kit, and not something you have up once in a blue moon, then it would be great. Unfortunately, as someone said in a previous post, they are gimping the PvE for the sake of PvP balance, which is a shame, because though PvP was pretty generic, PvE was fun even while being held back like this.

 

[meiam]

Tried both the titan and warlock and wasn't very impressed but it wasn't bad either. My two biggest complain are, one the lack of weapon variety, I wanted to use a shotgun and its flat out not available for warlock and the titan can only use it every blue moon since ammo is incredibly limited for it, is that representative of the full game? Two its how insanely long those cooldown are, I kept trying to use ability that I though for sure were off CD by now but still were recharging, its seems like most class have some way to speed up CD recharge time, but because it usually involve either killing enemy a specific way or melee attack its hard to pull off reliably with other player around often stuff just died before I'd get close enough to melee.

Combine those two problems with the utter lack of exploration and you just end up with a lot of not particularly interesting shooting.

The story sequence were rough too, I'm fine with playing as a grunt but I hate when games keep trying to include the player and act like we're super important while other NPC do all the real jobs and we do pretty much nothing.

So as is, I don't think I'll pick it up at release, I'll see how the server pop hold up and maybe will grab it when its half off.

 

[sXeth]

Tried both the titan and warlock and wasn't very impressed but it wasn't bad either. My two biggest complain are, one the lack of weapon variety, I wanted to use a shotgun and its flat out not available for warlock and the titan can only use it every blue moon since ammo is incredibly limited for it, is that representative of the full game? .

You can get guns on any class. Dunno why they didn't just load up everyone with one of each. I did get the shotgun at the end of the strike with a Hunter though.

The ammo I dunno about. It was a common complaint, though I never had much issue with it during the Beta. They were apparently changing that and cooldowns, but whether that made it into the PC beta build I have no idea.