According to ‘Time Wasted on Destiny’ I have a total of over 1250 hours implemented into Destiny 1; I have every single Flawless emblem from Trials of Osiris, almost 200 total Raid Clears, over 5350 Grimoire, every single exotic in the game, etc, etc, etc. You get the point — I have done everything you can do in Destiny ten times over and then some. I don’t even consider myself a ‘Day 1’ player because I bought this game at Midnight on release and played it till the sun came up the next morning — I’m a ‘Alpha-Beta-Hour-1’ player.
The amount of stories I could tell, experiences I’ve had with complete strangers is amazing when I look back at what’s happen since Destiny has released. The community is the best community in the gaming world!
Now… when all the talk came about on how you wouldn’t bring anything over to Destiny 2, I had little to no problem with it. Scrap all the weapons, get rid of all the armor — reset everything if you have to – but give me something that shows my accomplishments in D1, so moving forward everything I did can be shown. If it was completely up to me, I would just want my emblems to transfer so I can equip things you CANNOT get anymore, whether it be time sensitive, bought from the Bungie store, etc. I mean how awesome would it be to rock the Year 1 Flawless exotic Emblem all through D2 and beyond — those type of cosmetics would become unicorns.
Alright, enough of that…. let’s get to this Beta.
I went in and played the first moment I could (a day late, Xbox player here) and something was very apparent to me, everything was extremely slow. It felt like everything was a nerfed version of D1. Sure there are new abilities, classes and supers to play with, but the core gameplay seemed off.
PvP
This is the closest I’ve ever seen to balanced, but supers and abilities have been hit twice in PvP. The cool down on grenades is painful (we know now that gear perks will increase the cool down) and you only get 1 Super per match. The weapons feel good, but the aim assist seems a little non existent — I feel like I’m missing a lot of shots that should land all the time. We will see how that and others things grow when the game launches.
Getting 15, 20, 25+ kills a match granted me my super around 80-90% through the game. If you destroyed a team the game would be called and no supers would be used, if your getting smashed you might get your super if you are carrying your team, but right at the end if you have the time. The only time supers felt right was when the teams were absolutely head to head the entire match and everyone got their supers 90% in, but even then, the last minute is Mayhem of everyone forcefully using their super to win.
If getting 1 Super per match is the new, fine, just buff the bar to like 20% when the game starts so you get your super, at the worst, 2/3 through the match so you can decide when to use it at the right moment instead of forcing it all at the end when the majority get it. Doing this would enable you to sit there and get your super 2/3 in (the worst player) and then higher skilled players would have the chance to get their supers twice, both at the middle and the end. It makes little sense that you could have 20 kills with an efficiency over 6.0 and get your super once right at the end of the match. But, like I said, if this is the new meta I’m fine with it, just buff that bar so you can get it faster — even if you can still use it once give us more room to use it, not force it.
Grade: B+
Either way, PvP will just take some time to get used to. Outside of nit picking, just increasing the time on supers and abilities would help drastically in my opinion. I think it’s a few little things here and there that will be addressed and fixed, so I’m not worried about it. I do hope theres a way to play 6v6 because 4v4 makes PvP’s flow extra slow. If Trials/Competitive is 4v4 now, make the standard 6v6 or 8v8 with the buff on what I mentioned, this game works best at a faster speed.
PvE
The double hit on Super Energy and Abilities have slowed down PvE immensely in a really negative way. Running around with two primaries while getting just a handful of Power Ammo every strike makes every single enemy feel like a bullet sponge. During the Beta, I played the strike twice and I didn’t want to touch it again because it felt painfully slow. Auto’ing everything to death with both primaries was extremely boring. I’ve played strikes a 1,000 times in D1, so I get a whole new strike and I’m bored immediately… yikes.
PvE, as you can see, is my biggest worry, everything (to me) feels like a sponge and I’m just spraying primary everywhere and everything is being auto’d to death. There’s no precision anymore changing weapons between a pulse & a sniper & a rocket launcher for different situations throughout a strike. Using the same type of weapon the entire time, especially during a strike is rough. Those Power Ammo bricks are like exotic engrams.
On top of this, supers and grenades (like PvP) are out of this world slow. Getting your grenade back is so painful I’m forgetting I have one — waiting forever for my super to fill is like watching sand drain in an hour glass. Then when you FINALLY get your super and use it to wreck a horde of enemies you leave 2-3 orbs which literally moves the Super meter a couple millimeters when your fireteam members pick it up.
Grade: D
I know I’m bashing this aspect of the Beta hard, but PvE has always been my go to. Playing for hours late at night finishing a couple raids on reset day, doing nightfall, strikes — it’s the best aspect of Destiny. I love PvP, but PvE is where time really gets lost for me and I dive into this game. This is coming from someone with over 200 raid clears, someone who has every piece of armor from every raid, every weapon, all the ornaments, every node in the Age of Triumph book filled…. you get the picture.
I need it to be like how it was, constantly building supers with your fireteam, melting enemies with guns outside of your primary weapon, grenades all over place… that’s the good stuff in PvE. On this note, Bungie has already come out and explained that gear will increase all of this, so I just pray that it does.
Conclusion
Obviously this is a Beta and not the final version of the game, but we are a month and a half out, so it’s hard for me to believe that we’re playing a build thats really that old. I really hope it was an extremely old build and all these problems brought up by the community are addressed and it was focused on the stress test aspect.
Bungie has done so much right, I would be crazy to put my money up against them, but we will have to wait and find out in September… To be brutally honest, part of me wishes I would have skipped the beta. Anyone that’s an Veteran in this game has high hopes, we have to have high hopes for a game we love because we want the best out of it. The CORE of this game looks to still be there, we will just have to see if a few tweaks fix the problems, or if there is a bigger issue at hand.
What do you think? Will all the problems brought up by the community be addressed? Will this be the game we all have been waiting for? Let me know in the comment section below.
Guardian out.
