Having played through the Destiny Beta on a couple characters now I find that it does not scratch all the itches that I expected it to. It probably won't.

There is still much that project legion can offer players in the FPS genre.

Just do not, for any reason, create a game designed for this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rk8XlA_HfvU&feature=youtu.be

Loot chests? Loot chests that re-spawn in the same few locations over and over and over again? That encourage farm routes?

So, maybe the fallen are gathering the loot and putting it into the chests and aren't very creative with where they put those chests. But you would think that they would figure out that someone is farming them after a while. And move their bootyGǪ

When making legion, it will be worthwhile to always question your booty. Why is it there? How did it get there? How easily can it be farmed? Do we really want to have booty chests?

This is all assuming that Legion will launch with a free roam exploration system that actually works.

Or that it will launch with that at all.

Or that it will launch, period.

By new hope, what I meant was:

Destiny was going to be the game that did everything Legion could ever hope to do. And do it better, on console, before Legion ever even got the greenlight.

But Destiny is not that game.

So it is worth making Legion, worth putting effort into the game to make sure that it does launch. Because Legion can be something more than just another "free roam exploration system."

If CCP were to put just a little effort into building simulation into Legion so that the things you find when you go to the planets and the things you do are part of a dynamic and living game world that would be a big step in the right direction. Giving players themselves the tools to interact with and change what other players might potentially find or encounter during a "free roam" would be another step in the right direction for project legion.

It doesn't have to be overly elaborate or complex. CCP do not need to create a unique drone language for rogue drones that players can learn so that they can make treasure maps when they intercept and translate rogue drone communications. Even introducing something like random enemy spawns with random loot locations would be a start. Or, if there is a static source that you can reliably go to to find some loot, there should be a damn good and well thought out reason for it to be like that. Something other than, "Well, it is a game and video games always just have loot chests. That is how we've always done it."

In Destiny all of the enemies re-spawn in the same places in the same numbers every time. And loot chests appear in the same few locations over and over again. It is a fine game mechanic and I have nothing against dungeon crawling or grinding loot or even farming. But it is a game mechanic that is as old as dirt. And Legion can offer players something more dynamic and engaging to do in the sandbox portion of the game that farm treasure chest routes.

The most ugly part was that he could run through all of those NPC like 'nothing happens'.

I agree that in theory, Legion's exploration sounds superior to Destiny, but it's all vaporware right now. Until Legion gets greenlit, we're indefinitely stuck with this dead carcass of a game called Dust 514. The thing about Destiny is that it currently exists, you can go out and play it right now. I can assure you that the game already looks better and plays better than both Dust and anything we saw about Legion at fanfest. Destiny (and several other good looking PS4 games) completely debunk and falsify CCP claiming the outright necessity of making Legion a PC exclusive. Just the beta of Destiny proves that even 8 year old consoles can handle a superior game, to say nothing of next gen.

Legion has better ideas, but CCP has proven time and time again that they can't deliver. Unlike Legion, Destiny isn't vaporware.

DUST has failed dismally as a shooter. The core mechanics are disfunctional on so many levels that it's embarrassing. DUST failed so hard as a shooter that it never even had a chance to implement itself as an MMO set in New Eden. The challenge CCP set themselves was beyond CCP's capabilities/resources/ability to deliver.

Destiny, in it's current state, has failed, even as a semi-MMO. They have not created the right combination of tools/systems to bring their playerbase together and thereby give some meaning to their shooter. As things stand now, what is left after the level grind? Even with great mechanics, we've all been to the Crucible, or something like it, before - it was meaningless then and it's meaningless now. On the core FPS mechanics, however, Bungie has executed flawlessly.

I joined this project because ccp is supposed to be not a flawless developer, but a developer listening to its customer base. The only times I saw ccp listening to its customers is now that they thrashed dust and throw out how fixes to keep the guys entertained.

II thought ccp would learn from that and keep the development of Leon transparent, but here we are, a couple of months later from the ff Desaster which could easily get an reward in the Guinness world record for the worst presentation and announcement a developer ever did, and we are still sitting in the dark. Nobody knows if Legion is even greenlit yet.

I think CCP Rattati has shown a great example for how both continued DUST iteration and Legion development should be handled. We need to encourage them to do that even more.



Definitely hoping I can dig into where any roadblocks might be here, on getting more information out there. But some of it is just time. Legion isn't almost ready, it's a game being developed, which isn't a short process.

Oh, they've humiliated themselves sooooo many other times than that. boot.ini

I wouldn't go so far. With either game. Both in terms of their failings and Destiny's flawless execution. But yeah, in general, Bungie gets a free pass because they know how to make a shooter and CCP? Not so much.

There are a lot of core FPS mechanics in Destiny that were present in Dust 514 that caused endless howling an gnashing of teeth here on the Dust forums. There isn't anything like stamina management in Destiny and you can jump all you want but here in the world of Dust 514/ Project Legion we are still getting our knickers in a twist over "bunny hopping." Destiny has that weird acceleration curve / dead zone on a lot of the guns (at least for me) where the reticle won't budge, won't budge, then goes flying. Destiny has stunlock! But it all still works. The guns are more satisfying to shoot, character movement is never insanely frustrating (you can even see your feet) and even the special abilities (though they looked out of place for an fps in all the vids I watched before actually playing, especially with the shift to 3rd person pov) are a blast and seamlessly integrated into combat.

Finally, in the last few days especially, organized fire teams in the Crucible have been rolling randoms and totally curb stomping players who aren't on fire teams or playing with mics. The fire teams will get an early lead and players on the opposing team will start quitting out of matches. You get 6 v 4 or even 6 v 3 for a while and the matchmaking will start dropping in new players on the losing, undermanned teams toward the end of the match when there is not even a slight chance that they can make up the point deficit. A multiplayer experience we here should all be intimately familiar with.

In the end, though, when it comes to core FPS mechanics, Dust 514 is ok, with occasional gratifying moments that lift the game far above its usual drudgery. And Destiny is just a great game with a few minor imperfections. Destiny's flaws could go either way. They could all be easily ironed out by full release, or the may become more glaring as people play the game over the course of weeks and months.

Which brings us to "Even with great mechanics, we've all been to the Crucible, or something like it, before - it was meaningless then and it's meaningless now."

Even if CCP had been able to release Dust 514 with flawless core FPS mechanics, the game never stood a chance. Dust 514 is nothing more or less than the Crucible. From the Academy to Planetary Conquest. There are minor embellishments: more than twice the number of players in a given match, timers, voice chat channels, but at its core Dust 514 is the Crucible, all the way down.

It is encouraging that with legion CCP seems to be (hopefully?) taking a slightly different approach. Instead of taking that most well worn aspect of the FPS genre, point control multiplayer, and attempting to build an entire game world out of it, they are instead attempting to build a game world first. One that allows for player v. player conflict, sure. But I believe that if CCP can build a great game world first and foremost, that will give them some breathing room to continue to refine and improve the FPS core.

And I guess part of why I am still here, and still hopeful, despite the last 2 years, is that very few developers are even talking about making anything close to "that game." Heck, most of the time CCP aren't even talking about making "that game", the one in my fevered imaginings that I have dreamed about possibly playing since seeing the Dust 514 reveal trailer in 2009. But when CCP talk about Legion, they still somehow manage to get closer than anyone else. For a half a second it looked like Destiny was going to be "that game" but it isn't even close. Don't get me wrong, it is a blast, so far in Beta. Basically Destiny is Phantasy Star Online with more guns, less multiplayer and a PvP arena. And that's fine by me.

But "that game" is something else entirely.

We have very different definitions of core mechanics.

For me core mechanics are very simple and don't involve things like stamina or even bunny hopping., which are second-order game design considerations. Two different games, one with bunny hopping and and one without, could still both have great core mechanics. Those would be:

-aiming
-movement
-controls
-animations/timing
-interaction with environment

That's it. In one simple sentence good mechanics means the faithful, reliable, predictable translation of player input to the avatar's actions in the games.

Good mechanics do that. Great mechanics do that and make it feel good. I call that kinesthetic aesthetics.

By that measure CCP has failed with DUST and Bungie has turned in a masterful performance with Destiny.

To date, i have not heard one CCP employee, Rouge included, place any importance at all on core mechanics. Have you?