Raiding On A Console: Destiny

A big welcome to latest contributor Ben McJannett. As you’ll read below, Ben’s into console gaming in a big way. Great to have you on board Ben!

Destiny is coming.

Not long now.

In just a little over a week, players on PS4 and Xbox One will be creating their Guardians and taking their first steps. Or maybe you will be recreating your first steps if you participated in the beta like me. Slowly they will meet their ghost for the first time (I called mine the Dinklebot 5000, or Dinks for short), they will take their first steps and say “Is this just Halo MkII?”,  and slowly realise that skills are from skillpoints. Monitoring the reactions of some players I think would be priceless, but that’s getting off topic. Soon they will realise they can create a fire team and join forces against the darkness. Not much longer after that they will get to their first strike mission and join a queue. They will then realise this is an MMO at its core.

For those unaware, Strikes are Destiny’s dungeons/instances. By the time players reach the first one at level 6 they will have seen a little bit of instancing/phasing in the story missions,  but this will be the first time they actually are forced to group with other players and go through the usual dungeon tropes. For most players reading this, they will have already an understanding of the MMO space, but I sense the way Activison is marketing the game towards the FPS crowd we could be attracting a new type of MMO player. Noobs we would normally call them, but chances are these are the same players that will destroy us in the crucible. So Semi-Noobs? Time will tell.

What I am most curious about is the raids Bungie has promised us. If you have read the latest weekly update from Bungie, you probably enjoyed the little Q&A with Design Lead Luke Smith. Luke talked briefly about the difficulty of the Raids and what to expect in terms of loot. All of which, if you’re like me, would get even the most casual raider excited. What really got me wondering though was a comment made by one of the forum members about only being able to get loot from the raid once a week. To the normal raider this is a normal rule, however this game is attracting a completely different subset of gamers to it and they do not understand our strange ways, so to speak. Basically this player had made the comment that it “sucks” they can only get loot once a week from the raid. Many of the other posters were quick to reply and inform our new MMO friend that it is the normal rule in the MMO space. The exchange has piqued my interest in seeing how everything is going to play out.

There really hasn’t been a big name MMO on the console market yet, and I believe this is the first one really on the latest generation of consoles. Elder Scrolls Online was originally supposed to be released in June and has been pushed back with no confirmation of a release yet. Had it come out, this question would be already answered (even if Elder Scrolls hasn’t met such great praise on the PC).  I’m hoping I’m not the only one looking forward to seeing how things go with Destiny and its raid mechanics. Will it be the game that sets the standards for MMO’s on the console? We will know soon enough.

I’ll be there with Dinks, probably dancing on top of a cliff somewhere.