Destiny Beta Impressions Thread

So.... I searched and didn't find a topic for this in the first few pages, so apologies if it exists already.

Anyway, back on topic, the Destiny PS4 beta started today (folks who pre-ordered on PS4 from select retailers should've received their codes by now. The Xbox One beta starts later this month.

To me, coming from someone who played the Destiny Alpha, the Beta is even more amazing. The game is really opened up, the visuals have received a HUGE upgrade and are now beautiful. Then there's the gameplay, which is incredibly fun and reminiscent of Halo (which IMO is a good thing). Overall I'm very impressed and can't wait for this game to fully release.

Very curious to hear other gamer's impressions.

I kinda skipped this, figuring they were going to wipe all beta progress before launch, and I go through that enough with MMOs and early access...wasn't in the mood. Now i saw something where they might keep the progress? That generally is viewed as not a good idea where co-op and pvp are involved. I can't form too much of an opinion on it as it rarely happens. In the cases where I have experienced, it's generally been a bad move.

anyway, the alpha was fun, and that build was probably months old at the time it was made playable. I imagine they've improved it a lot. The one group instance they had was fantastic, especially on Legendary. The one place I worry is with the quests in exploration mode...are they still randomly generated node hunts or are their legitimate side quests?

I'm gonna give it a go as soon as it's finished downloading, which might take until the morning, unfortunately. I'll have my impressions as a video series on my channel, so I'll post those on here when I can.

So far I'm pretty unimpressed. It feels like a less-fun version of Borderlands. Everything is a massive bullet sponge, bosses especially. After a while, it just feels tedious, not enjoyable. I was also hoping it was an open world game, like Guild Wars or something, but it's not, it's just a mission hub. I hate that you spend, literally, 40 minutes on a boss fight and he drops nothing. Sure you get a reward at the end, but it would be much more satisfying if the boss dropped something, or a loot crate. I don't like how the mobs just spawn on top of you at times. That's just poor design in my opinion.

The weapons feel really lame. I picked up a rifle that supposedly does fire damage (I guess), but there was no graphical effect to reflect this. It's the kind of game I can imagine playing for a week, then never picking it up again. Why should I? Borderlands does the same and it is deeper and a lot more fun. Where are my skill trees or character customization in Destiny? It feels like a game that is 5 years too old already (in regards to the mechanics, the graphics were very nice).

It's not a bad game, but it's not a great game either. They either need to make the weapons more powerful, or the bosses more interesting. They aren't particularly challenging, just tedious. I found myself resorting to doing a lot of melee because it does so much more damage than any of the guns. That's just ridiculous and unacceptable, it just makes no sense (Halo suffered from the same imbalance but this feels much more extreme). Not being able to "fight for your life" when you go down, ala Borderlands or Guild Wars is lame too.

I'm just very unimpressed. It's Halo with loot, I was hoping for a lot more given all the hype. On the positive side, the multiplayer works great. No issues with connectivity or not being able to jump into a game with friends.

Definitely had a lot of fun… Pulled an all-nighter and basically did everything haha.

I agree with the above posters, though. It's like Borderlands without the quirky humor and cool skill trees.

I'm enjoying this game a lot. The guns feel good, the controls are smooth, and the online is solid so far. The story's vague, but I imagine we'll understand everything once the full game gets released. I'm kind of weirded out by the MMO type stuff, like the central hub town. I guess I just have to get used to it. Also, the interface is well-designed, but it feels clunky to navigate cuz you use the analog sticks instead of the d-pad. Can't wait to keep playing the beta.

I was really on the fence about Destiny. Now That I played the Beta, I will be pre-ordering soon. The game is gonna be amazing!!!

@gregbmil: This game is just made me wanna fully pay off my pre-order. I need to see more!!!

@Granpa0: My guess is you haven't looted a really powerful weapon yet. I was able to loot a high impact, semi-auto rifle in the alpha that could take heads off instantly (and was admittedly a beast in the crucible). The same boss that was a bullet sponge when I first started the game was then being dropped in no time. I will admit that it was a bit tedious when you have low level weapons and equipment but once you find some good gear, it kind of allows you to stretch your legs and add style to your gameplay.

As far as the layout of the game, I believe the final build is truly open world and the devs are just providing slices for alpha and beta testing. I probably won't be able to participate in beta, but if it's anything like the alpha, they drop you in a mission and then give you free reign to explore (that is, a small piece of the world), redo the mission, or participate in the crucible. I know in the "free roam" mode in the alpha, I was actually able to find my way to the wall from the early gameplay demo and get outside of it... Of course I hit a wall eventually.

"reminiscent of Halo"

*whoosh*

No sale.

@Star0: it honestly feels more like Borderlands than Halo in terms of overall gameplay. The only thing reminiscent of Halo is the art style and creature design, as well as some of the lore.

It's only slightly more content than the alpha, and no new areas for single/co-op, though some areas that weren't populated in the alpha are now thanks to the added story objectives. Same level cap, too. Was kinda disappointed as I was looking forward to maybe trying out the sub-classes to see how they differ, specifically the sunslinger, which sounded a lot like a Cleric concept. The only thing they added to the campaign side was a bit more context for the story missions and they seemed to have increased the rate of public events.

@Ish_basic: only one thing left now. Waiting until the finished game arrives in September.

Overall, this plays like a standard FPS where you are outnumbered, running behind walls to avoid gunfire with no cover system.

I've never played Halo but trust me, this is no Borderlands 2. I tried Borderlands 2 and it was an instant turn off for me with its wacky FOV and arcadey feel.

The first part of stage one made me feel like I was playing Bioshock 1 for a minute with the lights cutting out and enemies popping up all over the place.

The tower station part seems kind of janky imo. I know this is supposed to be like an MMO and you need a place to purchase gear / weapons, but the whole tower station feels like unnecessary padding. When you first arrive, you see a bunch of other players, just as clueless as you are to what the hell is going on.

I don't like the fact that you have to stand in a certain area to view the map to see where you should go. You should be able to view the map from any location in the tower.

There are a few vendors, but when you first arrive almost everything is unpurchasable because you are leveled too low to buy anything despite the postmaster giving you extra money to purchase upgrades.

Also, I know this is supposed to be like an MMO but there are way too many uninteresting cut scenes. The story sucks so far and is pretty boring. Nothing going made me care about the characters or their objectives. I just wanted to know what to shoot next.

Hopefully the final version will have more color choices for skin tones and everything else. All skin tones seem to be bright, wacky colors except for the hair which has black and brown colors. Bungie could also make males from the Awoken race a little more masculine. I felt like I was playing an androgynous Raiden from Metal Gear without the biker boots.

I'm not really feeling the rechargeable grenades which seem to take forever to recharge when you have a boss and 7 goons chasing you around the room. On the plus side, the controls play pretty smooth.

Not a bad game at all, but not something I would pre order or pay $60 plus tax to play, I'd definitely wait for a price drop.

For all you graphic whores, here a bunch of Destiny screenshots comparing the PS3 and PS4 visual differences.

@HipHopBeats: I'm not really feeling the rechargeable grenades which seem to take forever to recharge when you have a boss and 7 goons chasing you around the room.

Try getting gear that has discipline stats on it. I have 70 some Discipline on my warlock and my grenades recharge rather quickly.

One other thing that's changed -though level the cap remains the same, you can get further into the skill tree as the skills seem to continue to gain xp this time around. I've already unlocked stuff I couldn't unlock in the alpha.

I really want to try sunslinger, too. That Angel perk that lets you hover in midair when you pull up your scope while airborne sounds fun. And Fireborn - self ressurection. It looks like there's a spot for a third subclass, too. Wonder what that will be.

I have to say that I'm excited and worried at the same time.

Yesterday I was talking to a friend and he asked about the game and when I described it to him I realized how excited I really am for this game. I said: It is an FPS, a mix between Borderlands, Halo and Mass Effect with some old-school Star Wars flavor and incredible music. After I thought about what I just said I realized how amazing that sounds, and it really is. I don't know how Betas usually are but this one was pretty solid in my opinion. The gameplay is great, the weapon variety is clearly there, the graphics are very good (for an open-world game) and the story has me intrigued.

I am still a little worried about the game though. My skepticism is not caused by anything that is actually in the Beta but by all the things that are unknown at this point. I feel that we don't really know a lot about the game. The trailers that I've seen so far haven't really done a good job at showing us what this game is about. Bungie hasn't helped at all with keeping everything kind of mysterious up to this point. All we know about the game is what we saw in the Beta and that it cost a crapload of money. (Everything I'm going to mention now might be irrelevant once we see the final game but like I said we just don't know)

Here are a few questions/points I have:

• Map: We don't know how many planets are going to be playable and what kind of variety we should expect from the game, up to this point the trailers only showed places that look exactly like what we have in the Beta. I hope that we get different looking places because I don't want see just brown for the entire game (remember the first Borderlands? Yikes).
• Classes: We don't know a lot about the classes that are in the game, right now I feel there isn't much that really sets them apart from one another, and are there really only three? Are they going to add some in the future? And what is the level-cap?
• Enemies: The enemy variety was actually pretty decent, I just hope they change them a little bit in other areas because the colour palette was kinda the same for all the enemies. However I hope that we will have one ultimate nemesis, right now we haven't really seen what or who we are actually fighting. "The Darkness" is in my opinion a little bit unspecific, I personally like to know who we are up against, maybe it's just me but I like having a big nemesis that we can focus on (like Vaas in Farcry 3 or Handsome Jack in Borderlands 2).
• Missions: This is my one big gripe with the game so far, the mission variety is not there. All the missions have just been: go from point A to point B and kill things. That's it, that's all there is, and I do know that you could say that about every mission in any FPS game, but here it felt especially obvious to me that every mission was the exact same thing. As an example I can draw a comparison to Borderlands again: In Borderlands you get the missions from a person that "talks" to you, you get a text explaining what you should do (mostly a funny text), the person that gave you the mission is talking to you while you're doing the mission, not huge conversations but little messages and when you're done you turn the mission in to that exact person. All of those things might seem like small, insignificant things but they really help to bond with the characters in the game. (I know this could be in the game here as well seeing as this is just a Beta, but we don't know)
• The loot: This is just a personal choice I guess, but I prefer getting to use what I looted right away instead of having to get back to one person just to "encrypt" it, I can see this getting really annoying if you have to travel back to one person over and over and.....
• The "Dinklage": Before everyone tears me apart here for criticizing him, he's my favorite character on GoT (what a surprise I know) and I really like him as an actor but boy does he suck here. I don't know if it's bad writing, bad directing or if he just phoned it in but something is clearly wrong with his performance as your sidekick, and just the thought of having to listen to him for 30,40,50? hours is just terrifying.
• The absolute and undeniable most important thing ever asked about Destiny: Are we going to be able to spend countless of DLC-money on new (useless but incredibly cool) dances like we do with TF2-hats?