Destiny: Rise of Iron 9.20.16

Maybe they will later on like with borderlands.

spronk_sl said:

the thing i hate most about this game is that the story is disjointed and confusing to me. i forgave the alpha since it dropped us in the middle, but the beta shows all the intro videos and starter sequences, right? I love the immersion of Mass Effect, Halo, Creed, Borderlands, etc but this just has me scratching my head. If this was a movie or TV show everyone would be savaging it for the worst pilot ever made.

As I understand it, mankind went to mars and found a giant silver sphere. it created companion cubes to communicate and work with us, and we got some good technology for a couple hundred years. then the "darkness" came and fucked us over, and the sphere came to earth and created the last safe haven aka "the tower". peter dinklage found our dead body in a russian auto junk yard and rez'd us, and now we do stuff the cube tells us because we are retarded.

who the fuck are these blue people? or the robot people? why do the "darkness" npcs just hang around old russia, chilling out around what looks like a 80s schwarzenegger set? Why do I keep going off into warp speed Star Wars style, when all I seem to travel between is points on Earth and Mars? I tried looking for some lore on bungie.net but it started talking about some place called The Reef in "the distant black" where humans now are, I assume thats outside our solar system but not really sure. If we are Interstellar, isn't the "The Darkness" everywhere? Why the fuck did that stupid silver sphere come anyways, it even says the Darkness is its ancient enemy... so did it lead its enemy straight to us? what an asshole

i'm sure the explanation will deepen as we get more into it, but it doesn't feel very well woven so far and imo a game's story should draw you in within the first hour, not near the end.

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I think you have a lot of the details right in your post, but my understanding is slightly different, mostly as far as the chain of events. First mankind discovers this sphere on Mars. I believe it is then that the Sphere (the traveler) comes to earth and with its help we enter a golden age of advancement. This Golden age thrusts mankind onto a galactic stage in both life expectancy and technology. From there mankind ventures out amongst the stars for a couple of hundred years.

This is the point that the Darkness returns and a great battle ensues. In the end the Traveler is ultimately defeated and I believe considered "dead" even though it is somehow offering marginal protection to the last city on earth. In the Travelers' last act before going dormant it creates the Peter Dinklage (the ghosts) and gives them the mission to seek out worthy heroes who can wield some sort of power (forgot name). This is why you find yourself being resurrected and becoming a guardian.

As for the rest, I think the blue people are either GMO people or an alien race we met amongst the stars. I think the robots are just byproducts of our significant advancements over the few hundred years of the travelers presence. The sphere did not come to us, it was hiding from the darkness. Perhaps it came to earth after we found it in hopes it could build up a powerful ally before the darkness found it, but ultimately ran out of time. We enter "light speed" so that we can get to other planets without it taking 6 months and I am pretty sure the Darkness NPCs only hang out in Old Russia because the game is very locked down for beta. I do not think the darkness is everywhere and consuming ala the never-ending story. I think it is more of an alien empire chasing the sphere, perhaps its an evil sphere that has built up its own evil army, we do not know. But it is clear that it is chasing after the sphere, so it has limitations. Take the above with a grain of salt. It is mostly how I understand things from a level 5 perspective and other than the specifics in the first two paragraphs, this last one is almost pure conjecture.

Its amazing how much I love this game, mainly because I suck (getting better). I actually went into this weekend very jazzed to play Archeage and Destiny (mostly Archeage to be honest) and I had thought that I would find the excuse I needed to put Destiny on the back burner and talk my wife into letting me blow $150 on Archeage. A funny thing happened. I played Archeage to level 15 on one class, 10 on another and messed with a few others, plus did a lot of just roaming around. In the ended I put a good 6 hours into Archeage but something strange happened, which has been happening more and more with MMOs lately for me. I suddenly got this overwhelming feeling (and a internal voice monologue) that consisted of whats the point of this, why are you playing, are you even having fun, and ultimately your wasting your life. I chalk all this internal debate up to burnout from playing the same MMO with a different skin for the last 10 years. I know Archeage gets better in time and has a lot of potential that still excites me, but I am 33 and have a family (including a newborn daughter), I do not have time for this waiting game crap. Make it fun from the start and not a slog. When it came to playing Destiny, my daughter only allowed me about 2 hours and I had a blast. I suck at shooters, but this game just had the perfect feel to it. I never questioned the validity of playing it or the fun I was having. I was on the edge of my seat more than once (probably because my low skill lol) I loved the story. I loved the rpg bits, it just felt right. So at this point I am not sure if I will ever play Archeage again and have upped my Destiny Preorder to a limited edition. It was not the weekend I expected.

That is a pretty good write up.

I'm sad to say I will miss you Destiny while you are down. =(

The level 8 twink wars will never happen again after this week. They should do some level locking like old school wow pvp.

I celebrated most likely (I better now....) getting an extension of my work contract today with buying a PS4. I pre-ordered on PSN and got automatic access to the beta.

Downloading now at agonizingly slow speeds (0.5mbits it seems) and it says I am nr 10400 in queue.... Is there really a 10000 queue? How long is the wait to get in on average?

Also wondering if the servers are EU/US based? Am I locked to EU servers because my account is linked to Norway?

Droigan_sl said:

I celebrated most likely (I better now....) getting an extension of my work contract today with buying a PS4. I pre-ordered on PSN and got automatic access to the beta.

Downloading now at agonizingly slow speeds (0.5mbits it seems) and it says I am nr 10400 in queue.... Is there really a 10000 queue? How long is the wait to get in on average?

Also wondering if the servers are EU/US based? Am I locked to EU servers because my account is linked to Norway?

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Not sure about a Queue. I was only able to log on for limited amounts of time because of other commitments, but I always got right in. I know that servers are supposed to be down today and tomorrow and then back up on wednesday and running until the 27th.

Yeah servers are down. I've never seen a que for Destiny, it's not on dedicated servers like MMO's. It's a matchmaking thing.

I think someone already said it's down until Wed

Yeah, beta is down for maintenance until Wednesday.


...Wait, so the max level really is 20? I thought they were showing just 1-20 with much more tucked away because it was beta. Hmm...

Well, technically they're showing just 1-8 with 9-20 tucked away because it's beta.

But yeah, the leveling seems to be done Guild Wars (1, not the piece of shit sequel) style. Which is cool if you have a massive amount of content that doesn't even begin until max level, but I'm a bit skeptical about that being the case here. I'd like to be wrong, and I'd surely buy the game if it turns out to be so, but I don't think it's going to happen.

eXarc_sl said:

Yeah, beta is down for maintenance until Wednesday.


...Wait, so the max level really is 20? I thought they were showing just 1-20 with much more tucked away because it was beta. Hmm...

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I am pretty sure the max level in Beta is 8 atm. There are rumors it may go up in the second half of beta (23-27), but who knows. I have my doubts. From interviews I have read they really want to focus on gear collection over leveling. So the game is really about horizontal growth that has consistent gameplay instead of the classic do all these often mind numbing things till you get to 50, then we will change the focus of the game for endgame and the fun will begin. I feel its sort of like Guild Wars in the sense that you can get to max level rather quickly, but there is still a lot of content once you are there. So I think its important to remember that amount of levels does not = quality/amount of actual content.

However, rereading what you posted you probably were not alluding to much more content tucked away, but rather many more levels, oh well, I already wrote this so I am posting it lol. I do like how they are doing things though, makes it much easier to introduce friends after release in a way that they do not feel way behind and you can start having a blast right away.... Now just to find friends on the ps4 lol...baby steps.

Edit: The only thing that concerns me about this game is the quality/length/amount of DLC we can expect and at what price. We already know that Destiny (unless I am making crap up) is going to span over multiple titles and its likely your character progression will follow you. I assume those titles will be sort of like the large MMO expansions we are used to seeing for traditional MMOs. Then we will have Destiny expansions (like the two already being pre-purchased with pre-ordering) that seem to resemble traditional dlc, but not a lot is known about the two current "dlc expansions" for Destiny. However, a $35 price tag is not small so I hope that the content (quality and length) is worth the price because if they plan on extending this games life with overcharged dlc that lacks in either quality or length, I will be pretty disappointed for being nickle and dimed. I have no problem paying for "expansion dlc" at a premium price if it is made with a good chunk of quality gameplay I can get into for a few weeks or months of casual play.

I understand max level is 8 for beta, I thought everything 9-20 was being shown to give us more stuff to look at and soak up. I legitimately thought everything up to 20 was still like a beginner/intermediate type of area. Haha.

the way I understand it, is that subclasses can level from 1-20 as well. so your hunter can level to 20, and then switch to a bladedancer and start over at 1. not sure how that would affect gear though... but it seems like there will be several subclasses per main class and they level up like guns and armor

j00t_sl said:

the way I understand it, is that subclasses can level from 1-20 as well. so your hunter can level to 20, and then switch to a bladedancer and start over at 1. not sure how that would affect gear though... but it seems like there will be several subclasses per main class and they level up like guns and armor

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I know that as far as we have been told each class currently has 2 subclasses (maybe more in the future?). You start from level one as one subclass and you unlock the second one at 15. Other than that, I know nothing. I did not realize that the level 15 unlock was a "now you can play the character you really want to" option that only some of the community will feel forced to or want to take advantage of. I hope that is not the case, even though I would probably level up both for the heck of it. I just hate unnecessary time sinks as a principle and going the above route would give me a rotten taste in my mouth that is about the same flavor as ESO veteran ranks.

It is my hope that they are less evil (I won't say smart, because smart to them is what makes more cash longer) and make it so that when you are 15, you would just have access to an additional spec (subclass). You would then have the option to do one or more of the following on your way to max level: stay with the subclass you currently are, put points from the old starter subclass into the new subclass using your accumulated points so far (basically picking the new subclass as your main), or have the ability to save the accumulated points earned to 15 separately into both specs/subclasses, allowing you to have different loadouts. I really hope it does not turn into a situation where I need to play 15 levels just to play what I want.

Destiny - Vanguard Trailer - IGN Video

I get the impression that the 1-19 zones are considered starter zones and the 20 zones will be plentiful. Similar how wow doesn't put much effort into the regular dungeons because the heroic versions are the ones people are going to be spending all their time in

j00t_sl said:

I get the impression that the 1-19 zones are considered starter zones and the 20 zones will be plentiful. Similar how wow doesn't put much effort into the regular dungeons because the heroic versions are the ones people are going to be spending all their time in

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This is more or less what they said the reason for few levels were - Level to 20 and do the strike content and exploration or some such. I wish theyd have an AMA or something but hopefully it will come up on IGN-First bs.

j00t_sl said:

I get the impression that the 1-19 zones are considered starter zones and the 20 zones will be plentiful. Similar how wow doesn't put much effort into the regular dungeons because the heroic versions are the ones people are going to be spending all their time in

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This is the feeling I got when hearing the devs talk about their horizontal progression goals. It seemed like they wanted the path to 20 to be very fast. A couple of articles have stated that its Bungies goal to get players to max level in a few hours so that friends that start the game later do not have a ton of catching up to do before they can play with their friends. I know the beta is extremely limited for one reason or another and bungie should have more information about this available (I mean launch is around the corner), but I think (and its my hope) that they will have lots of zones, story, and dungeon/raid (strike) content at the cap.Then from there they will keep expanding on the content at the max level.

I actually wish more mmos would do this. It sucks that they spend so much time adding content for lower levels that people rush past or hardly ever go back to. It would be nice to limit or eliminate leveling and keep all content fun and available. Obviously that means focus for keeping players subscribed would need to change, but that would not be a bad thing imho. Although I may be wrong, I have a hard time thinking that limited beta content translates into not the game is unfinished or there will not be enough to do. I do concede that Bungie has done a piss poor job at sharing what the leveling experience/ after max level experience will be like. Hopefully they fix this.

The only thing that would make me like this game less is if the difficulty of the end game raids and strikes isn't high enough. Me and my group spent a lot of time at the beginning of the beta farming gear for the crucible and it started to seem to easy.

Then we started new characters and did all the story missions on the harder difficulty only. Usually the missions were two levels above us and it was a ton more fun and actually quite difficult. I plan on playing all the missions on the live game on the highest difficulty the first time around just to feel that weight.