Tiring for an old guy.

Game is a bit lame to me but I'm not an explore every nook and cranny kind of player.  It's like Borderlands and Defiance with a gallon of molases in your boots.  They just want to drive traffic to web site to make us try and figure crap out. I may run through it until Evolve drops since Titanfall seems to be fading really fast.

Whew...I thought was just me. I keep saying "I must be missing something" All these people are raving about how great this game is and I just don't get it. I am really trying to get into it but it just seems to be so so for me. I actually was looking forward to this too.

It's the exact opposite for me. I expected to not like it at all but the beta completely changed my mind. I usually hate console FPS games but this one has me hooked.

It is addicting and fun. I'm even enjoying watching my kids take their turns with it. (DEEP is a Tired Old Guy) ...did you dance too much? 

Crucible can't be the PvP experience Halo players raved about for over a decade?, It's rubbish!

Hit max rank (8) in one sitting, and was left wondering "Is that it?"  I'm not sure if the huge hype train was mostly Playstation gamers who were having their first taste of Halo, or what the deal is.  There was a lot that was overly familiar.  Even the ghost's animation for hacking a door console seemed to be copy-pasted from Halo 3's Guilty Spark doing the same thing in the same way.  Enemy AI acts in similar ways, especially at a distance.  The first guns fired at me screamed "Needler!" or "Covy Carbine!"

The aiming feels unusually sluggish.  It shouldn't take that long to turn my character, even at high sensitivity.  I'm coming from Titanfall though.  Aim assist seems quite high.

Very disappointed when enemies were completely immune to my weapons based on a level or gear distance.  That speaks volumes about how it is more of an action game than competitive shooter.  I'd rather encounters, whether NPC or PVP, be settled based on how they are played than based on what is equipped.  This is especially important due to PVP involving loot, rather than weapon pickups (no map control for sniper spawn).

It took me a bit to realize how small the Earth/Russia map is.  Was rather shocked that all those places on my navigation screen were mostly just one place that took a minute or two to cross.

Missions can feel very short.  Strikes can be fun when playing with competent people, and very frustrating otherwise.

My impression is that Bungie loves the concept, story, setting, and plans for this game.  The gameplay is, in my opinion, lackluster.

Bungie has been planning this since Halo 3: ODST at least (hence the easter egg mentions in that game of Destiny), but while the setting is great, the play was just fair, or decent.  Titanfall today still gets me excited during a match because of the gameplay.  Halo 3 often did this as well.  Destiny is a slow and steady pace of general fun with character progression.

I'm not sure what would make it more heart pounding/exciting.  Big bosses that amount to monotonous damage sponges don't do it for me.  It was cool to look at, 20 minutes ago, but feel free to fall over any time now.  I'm not dying, it's whittling away, there's no reason to draw it out that much.

Character abilities seem fun and varied, and upgrading stats in that way is interesting.  Weapon upgrading is also a nice touch.  There were a ton of emblems for sale.  Not sure why I'd want more than a few if I have the one I like using already.

I'll play tomorrow for the bonus at retail, and determine later if retail purchase is what I want considering the wealth of upcoming Fall games.  I'm hoping my Alpha Lupi participation gives something cool too.

For Playstation players this may be the best FPS action game ever.  For Halo veterans it may be a new feather in an old hat.  For me, it's uncertainty, especially in light of Bungie's actions as a company recently.

I was playing explore last night and the beacons kept taking me back and forth through the same series of halls, steps, paths and figths along the way to get to my mission.  Then  in Forgotten Shore I ran into a few unleveled "??" enemies that I could not damage.  Wasted some heavy on them and decided tim to quit.  I'm thinking I'll play throught the beta, play saturday or whatever for the event, and then seriously consider cacnceling my pre-order and look for something else.  Always fun to play something other than Titanfall, go back to Titanfall, and think "hell yeah, this is better"

I like the swift progression.  I don't want to get bogged down grinding just to play PVP.

The bosses are a little deeper than I initally thought and I could definitely see more variety there making PVE an experience with longer legs than I initially anticipated.  Exploiting the weak spots on the Devil Crawler definitely made my second attempt at that go a lot faster than the first.

My first forays into PVP went very poorly, but going in with a six man team opened my eyes a little to more strategery.  I also think loadouts are probably more important then weapon stats.  The levelling in the crucible seems like it works, while my ass was kicked quite a bit, their was a little reciprocal ass kicking once I got my gear sorted out and stopped trying to use my scout rifle on Venus.

I'm interested to see other game  types, but I like the differences between the two maps so far.  It seems to fully support a variety of playing styles independent of map size.

I had some audio issues within a fireteam.  A hard reset fixed them, and it sort of felt like an issue I had with Halo 3 for the life of the game where things got out of synch between my XBL sign-in and my profile sign in for the game.  If a hard reset fixes it everytime, c'est la vie.

I've heard a few people mention the aiming sluggishness, but a relatively small bump on look sensitivity brought me to where it felt right.  Since Halo 4 I play a lot lower than I did in other Halos, so maybe that's why it doesn't seem noticeable to me.  I could just be getting old.

I played until past 3AM two nights in a row, that hasn't happened in a while.

Writing from the perspective of a very casual gamer: I only just started playing Destiny Beta last night (made it to level 3), but felt less bewildered than I generally do in Titanfall. But then again, it does appear to be set at "Normal" (wherein the enemies politely stand still while I am riddling them with ammo). I like the story, graphics, landscapes, and the general atmosphere so far. Have yet to do a PvP.

Regarding multiplayer: I was playing the Beta with Minotaur and invited Agent (after Minotaur made me party leader), but Minotaur and I couldn't hear Agent after he joined. I guess I should have chosen "invite to party and game" and not just "invite to game? (can't remember if "party and game" was even an option) -- Still trying to figure out which party features are generic XBOX one and which ones are game-specific. What works for Titanfall doesn't seem to work for the Destiny Beta (?). (or maybe I just need a cheat-sheet)

http://www.bungie.net/en/Help/Article/11932

"

Xbox One Party Chat

We are tracking an issue were players may lose voice functionality in Xbox One Party Chat if the Party app is unsnapped. To avoid this issue, please form your Xbox Live Party before launching the Destiny Beta, and avoid using the Party chat app in-game. If you wish to chat only within your fireteam, Destiny provides its own Fireteam voice chat functionality, so ....."

Follow the link for the rest and may you fulfill your Destiny  

Was on the X1.

So much to learn.... What's that button do or how do I do that was said a lot. Thanks to Duke and Agent for slogging with me last night. Never did figure out PvP. I don't like it that the weapon cursor is always red. 

The audio performance with Duke was great, and it was entertaining seeing so many other players in-game. I only experienced one period of "lag", if you can call it that - I was frozen for about 20 seconds while the onscreen indicator spun. Afterward, the "Players you met online" list is long-long.  I was expecing the timmies to shoot everything, but they pretty much minded their own business, appearing to be looking for easter eggs or something. 

I enjoy the game, but I don't know if its going to eat my gaming time past, say, a couple of months of heavy play.  The Crucible is an interesting beast where gear and stats should be normalized, but it feels like they aren't.  It might be something as basic as a rock-paper-scissors approach to the weapon you're using, but automatics seems to rule the roost in most engagements. When I first unlocked the Crucible, it felt like I simply was outgunned and underarmored and I was just getting beat everywhere for everything.  I'm not even sure what happened, but that seemed to turn around.

PvE reminds me so much of Defiance, which isn't a bad thing at all.  It might take a while to unpack all the stuff that is in it, and that's worthy of purchase by itself.

Does anyone else think the Hunter's special ability (The Golden Gun) is underpowered?  It exists for, what, ten seconds, has three shots, and you can only take out three people max with it (not taking into account that unlock that lets the golden bullets penetrate targets).  The Titan slam and the Warlock purple bomb seem much more versatile and effective, but maybe they're just simply designed for more crowd control, where the Hunter is supposed to be more of a ranged 1v1 type of play.  Maybe it needs to be specced out like that then.

I find myself wondering what Bungie needed all this time and money to actually do. What we have here is an open map where you repeatedly go to the same locations to do different missions, and along the way you collect different weapons. I don't usually like to make the comparisons like this, but how is this not Borderlands Jr.? They both have special grenades you use, each character has an unique active ability they use, Both games have lots of loot to collect, both have bosses you'll be farming for said loot. They both have a badass rank/grimoire score kinda thing. Both have a central hub town where you meet up then leave from for missions. They both have really big maps you explore with different leveled enemies and loot chests. They both have melee enemies that rush at you and ranged enemies that hide behind cover and try to flank you.They both have tougher versions of enemies that spawn with the little groups to make it more challenging. They both even have a thing where you can gamble on a weapon you get, the slot machine or the cryptarch guy.

The low level cap bothers me as well. We've already seen that the loot isn't really that randomized. At X level all the weapons will have the same attack damage, the only thing that changes is the effect you can level up for it. The bottom of the magazine does more damage or range increases while aiming, that sort of thing. But to get a better weapon, you need to level up. So what happens at 20 when you've got a legendary weapon? (Which don't seem like they're that hard to get if the crucible vendor just sells them) What's my incentive to keep doing the strikes and raids over and over when there's no XP to gain and no weapon to claim? I've done the Devil's Lair maybe 8 or 9 times and I've yet to find a weapon or armor better than the stuff I randomly find just killing the normal enemies in the other missions. I understand it's just a beta, but when has a console beta not been just what we get upon release?

Fighting the raid bosses is cool. The first time I went against the devil walker was great and me and my friends kept running around trying to figure out the best way to do things til we figured it out. The 2nd time we went against him we knew what we were doing and about 5 minutes in when we're STILL shooting his legs, it's a little boring. It's not an MMO where I have to worry about keeping the aggro on all the enemies or healing my teammates, I'm standing behind a collumn shooting a leg just waiting for something to explode. And when he does finally die, what happens? No treasure chest appears, he doesn't explode into loot, I barely even get any XP unless I score the last bullet on him.

And then there's the PVP. Now, keep in mind this is Bungie. Halo has been pretty much the embodiment of fair and balanced comeptitive gameplay for years. It's one of the very few games where skill is more highly rewarded than having a fast internet connection and twitchy fingers. Now we come to the Destiny pvp where you can spawn in with a shotgun and run around doing lunging melees on people. No more 4 shots to the body and 1 to the head and careful use of grenades. Now just spray away with your auto rifle or camp in a corner with a sniper. And to top it all off, they allow loot into the pvp. So now you can bring in weapons that are easier to shoot under fire (toughness) or reload faster (sleight of hand).

I don't know. Maybe I just have high expectations. They had all that time and all that money and an amazing staff to work with. I was expecting something new, something to be excited for. Instead it's bits and pieces of games we've played before kinda stuck together.

My impression of Destiny from the beta build so far:

The graphic environment of this game is visually impressive, a notch better than the ones I saw from Halo 4 and Reach (clouds moving along in the distance unlike the statis displaying of clouds in H4 or Reach). 

The map in Old Russia is huge. Too much areas to explore meaning a lot of times to figure out your strategy on how to pick off the Darkies if you die again and again.

Weapon, accessory, and supporting item choices are too much (and Deep's word, confusing) but it seems that Bungie has meant them to tailor to players' gaming preferences. Whatever floats our boats. 

The Darkies (my term to describe the enemies representing the Darkness - whatever that is) are not impressive and scary enough to me gaming-wise. I had more scary encounters with Forerunner Knights than these Destiny's Darkies (why scary? 343 made the FR Knights move so unpredictable from point A to point B, even disappearing and reappearing around me and I hate to die and respawn over and over because I couldn't hear the sound of the Knight appearing behind or the side of me and meleeing me ). 

Aiming is okay. The scoping is the issue with me (pinning down on where a Darkie is standing and shooting at me) and i just keep firing like crazy. I am having this kind of difficulty in the PvP matches in the Crucible. 

The Crucible - 6x6 PvP matches - the Destiny (radar) sensor absolutely sucks hardcore (no individual pings). Halo sensor and CoD Ghosts sensor are better than Destiny sensor because I can still see how close a player - whether friendly or rival - is to me. I rely on the sensor because I cannot hear other players in proximity or the callouts. Revise Destiny sensor. Big time. 

Don't like the Destiny waiting lobby to launch to either campaign or multiplayers mode. 

Players' choices of faces, colors, hairs, genders, etc... seriously? Why? Becuz its da future! The hair mop versions are so damn silly!

It seems almost every campaign characters wear helmets. Is Bungie promoting insecurity issue? I kid.  "I can't show ma face to the world. I wear ma helmet to hide ma insecurity from the Darkies. I modded the helmet to make it look badass, yeah!" 

That's my take so far. I like Destiny the game but I definitely look forward to the MCC come November!

I'm loving the beta. Only level 5 with about 3-4 hours of playtime. Some of it has been waiting for friends to get in and such. I'm so sick of most FPS, CoD and Titanfall could never hold my interest very long. I love BF, but getting bored of the series and all the bugs with BF4 that have still not been resolved. This is a nice needed change to the market.

Teamed up with Agent on the Beta last night with no audio trouble this time. Problem appeared to have been local to him, which he fixed with a hard reset.

Had the luck of being on the winning team for my first PvP match. I mostly guarded "Charlie" and a got a few respectable kills in the process.

Again, I love the landscape. I could wander in it for hours. The alien villains, however, seem a bit forgettable: kinda "forerunner-esque" with none of the unique variety of Halo's Covenant foes.

Played some Crucible the other night with a friend. WTF is all I have to say. Hope they balance that shit out. Still love the PvE part of the game and will be buying it.