Loading Destiny

I sunk my teeth into Destiny a bit more this week. Probably put in another 6-7 hours. I was able to beat the "single player" campaign and did some grinding as well, if you can even call what I did grinding. At this point I feel as though I've experienced enough of Destiny to talk about it, although at the same time I've only scratched the surface of the late-game content.

Destiny Awaits

Currently I sit at level 20 which is the soft cap. I say soft cap because you are able to get to a level past 20 but not by any conventional means—you know, with experience. Instead what you have to do is find equipment that has a special attribute on it called light. It is this light that will level you past 20. It's an interesting idea for sure and I don't remember it being used in any other game before. But, it isn't without its faults. Destiny basically forces people to grind for equipment once they hit level 20. I have yet to take part in any real grinding since someone recommended that I focus my efforts in another way. But essentially the way to grind in Destiny is by focusing on kills per minute. Since each enemy has a drop rate for loot and the game ignores an enemy's level, enemies will drop equipment for your level instead—which is awesome by the way—so you can grind anywhere you like, be it against strong or weak enemies.

Now what got recommended to me was to focus on daily and weekly events. Doing these missions is not only more active and entertaining for the player, but I also gain money and I can work towards my bounties, which are these passive missions—like headshot killing 100 enemies, or melee kill 30 enemies without dying—that give you experience and faction points, the latter of which can be used to buy sweet ass equipment for level 20+ characters.

So to get to level 20 I went through the story, which is negligible at best. I can easily say I did not pay much attention to it, and maybe not because it was bad per say, but because it fell into the MMO trope, at least for me. The moment I start playing a game with a friend (or even when I was streaming games) I get too focused on the co-op / talking with people that I hardly ever pay attention to the narrative. The same exact thing happened in Halo. I never played Halo alone and to this day I could not tell you what the story was about other than you gotta go kill aliens before they wipe you out...which spoiler alert: That's more or less the gist of it in Destiny.

The missions are enjoyable at least, and the environments—Earth, the Moon, Venus and Mars—are all unique looking and are host to different enemies and factions. The smaller 2-3 person raids in each zone are like longer missions with big ass bosses at the end. They're pretty cool, but unless you're a higher level, I would suggest going in with 3 people versus 2. The larger 6 man raid is only available to people that are at least level 25, so I have yet to try it, but it's supposed to be fantastic.

A few things do bug me about Destiny though. The load times are atrocious, and I really do mean atrocious. This is like first Mass Effect elevator bad. But whatever, it won't kill me. It's a fairly minor point that won't stop anyone from buying or playing the game, but it does get in the way everywhere.

Another thing is the public events. After completing a couple of missions at each location, you get the ability to do a patrol around the map. On patrol, you can pick up inconsequential side missions that don't take too long to complete, and on occasion a public event will occur. A public event is like a mission everyone can take part in together, and they just appear on the map. They usually consist of destroying a large boss character, or defending a point from a barrage of enemies. If you've played any MMO recently, they are all starting to do this. Guild Wars 2 was one of the first games I played with public events in it and it's quite a bit of fun...you know, when there are actually people in the zone helping! The first public event I took part in, there was a ton of people joining in. It was super cool and I had a lot of fun. Every other time one appears on a map, I'm apparently the only person around to do it. It's possible to finish with a gold rating on your own, but holy shit is it hard! One of the reasons for this might be that there is a cap on how many people are in a patrol instance at any given time, and if memory serves, it's not a very large number (8-12 people I think but don't hold me to that). It's just not enough.

Final Thoughts

All-in-all I'm enjoying my time with Destiny. I love playing online with my friends, and I really want to hit level 25 to try out that large scale raid. Tune in for more next week!