Dust Palace Preview

Overall I am very pleased with the Destiny Alpha. I played the hell out of it this weekend and I did not come across a single bug. I will definitely be pre-ordering this game now. I have a couple good clips saved, but I unfortunately could not a get a clip saved of any of the three times I was in a group that took down a devil walker. Its in my one stream, but the quality on twitch was very crappy. I was able to get one of my 3 good clips uploaded to youtube tonight, and this clip was from my experience with the multiplayer aka Crucible.

This is a clip of Destiny First Look Alpha, Crucible aka multiplayer, Control aka 6 vs. 6 Domination.

I thought Destiny would be an amazing game with a co-op campaign and another pointless multiplayer option like all other games on the market now.. but I was wrong. Destiny's multiplayer is incredibly fun and it blows away CoD multiplayer because people will actually play the objective.

All unlocked weapons in the campaign can be used in the crucible matches. The multiplayer in Destiny will also earn you weapon and armor drops and will also earn you additional points which lets you buy better armor with in game currency for use in all areas of the game.. This creates a great atmosphere for players to enjoy all aspects of the game as a whole.

Interesting. It looks a bit like Halo. I'm sure they will have a "Slayer" type mode. I said I wasn't a big fan of Halo multiplayer, but with how the weapons work in this game I'll probably enjoy Destiny's version of multi a lot more.

Here is the extended trailer for Destiny!

This game is awesome.

Check out this video I took yesterday when I played the mission "The Dark Within" on legendary. I one shot killed that wizard with a rocket launcher to the face.

Awesome. I see you now reload every chance you get like me. I remember you asking me about it on my Black Ops 2 videos. We definitely had different rifles though. My gauntlets got an upgrade as well... this is going to make it harder to part with lower level items, especially when the have an added attribute like +5 strength. My gauntlets were 19 defense, and I couldn't part with them over some 31s because of it. Green items upgrade... but they also give you extra components for dismantling I found out. regular items give you monetary compensation, but uniques give you crafting materials.

Here are a couple I caught from the extended alpha today... excuse the grenading myself I still get the buttons confused... every game has to have their grenade button in a different spot.

I don't think I saw either of those missions. How the hell did I miss those.. hmm.. maybe I did them and can't remember the completed mission screen. I love that assault rifle you have. That RDS scope is perfect. I think in the beta I'll try Titan or Warlock. Hunter is good, but I often neglected using my golden gun because I kept saving it for larger enemies. But then again, since we were level capped, all the enemies were relatively weak by comparison at the end of the alpha and the stronger attacks weren't needed.

After looking at your videos, I see youtube does the same thing to you with quality. I know the clip on my laptop is beautiful and looks exactly like on the PS4, but when youtube finishes processing it, the quality takes a noticeable hit. It still looks better than facebook sharing, but still.. maybe this will be fixed once we can upload directly to youtube via the PS4.

I'm still saving from Facebook because I'm lazy.

Heh, I remember that mission in you second vid (destiny 3) and I never did pick up that one in your first (destiny 2). Kinda glad I didn't pick up the first one, that tunnel leads to all sorts of nasty things (ask Sledge). I'm honestly really impressed with what they showed us in this Alpha and am hoping for a lot more of the same come Beta. I really enjoyed the way the game played out and multiplayer was quite surprising (wish Sledge could of got some video of the two of us playing it) and if all the strikes are as fun as The Devil's Lair I'm really looking forward to all the co-op stuff in this game.

I tried out a Warlock before the Alpha closed and don't think I'll be playing one anytime soon. Not my type of play style (plus I kept getting my ass handed to me, so used to the Hunter's abilities). I'll most likely stick to playing Hunter come Beta and might try out a Titan. I just love the feel of the Hunter and it's abilities (throwing knives around is freaking fun).

Did you guys happen to catch the article VG24/7 put up about the exclusive content for us PS users. http://www.vg247.com/2014/06/16/heres-what-youll-get-if-you-buy-destiny-on-playstation-platforms/, there's the link. Nothing spectacular but I do like the fact that we're getting an exclusive strike (on Mars), an exclusive mp map, and those armors and ships are rather snazzy looking if I might add (really digging the Hunter's, thought that yellow needs to go). Not to hip on the weapons as I prefer to stick to Scout Rifles and Sniper Rifles.

It may be timed exclusive, but it's almost a year timed exclusive. Lol. I liked the Warlock but I'm going Titan in the beta to see what it's about.

Yeah I went down that tunnel... Took a shot at one of those mystery ranked and gtfo'ed.

I definitely need to try out the two other classes. From what I've seen of all three in the multiplayer, it looks like Titan is the way to go. But for the campaign, Warlock seems very interesting to me.

Wow.. Turns out Destiny will be a Playstation exclusive in Japan:

http://kotaku.com/destiny-is-a-playstation-exclusive-in-japan-1591865980

I'll be on all week on the games launch... but once the 3 of us are "strong enough", I'll take another vacation in late jan early feb to tackle that Vault of Glass... I'm intrigued.

After this, I'm pretty sure I'm going to go with Warlock first... unless they take the glide jump away. I'm still going to try Titan on the beta.

Heh, after watching that vid it cemented my love for the Hunter even more. As I said before I'll be rolling a Titan out for Beta just to see how they play (who knows, might like it even more then the Hunter). I have the entire last week of July off (vacation, yay!) so I'll be fiddling with all three classes extensively during the beta and making my final decision for what I'll play on release. I would take release week off but due to inventory for the store being during that time I can't (plus I'm already taking two days off over the 18th and 19th of September to go the FFDP concert in Bismarck). Hopefully I'll have a new job by release anyways so I can have a more flexible schedule to play this with you guys (and hopefully get my ass off these night shifts, they're slowly killing me).

The Hunter definitely sounds like my class. But crap.. the other two classes have some serious jumps. I'm really interested in seeing what the lightening attack for the Hunter at level 15 looks like. The golden gun is nice for some bosses and higher level enemies, but for taking out a group of enemies the other two classes have the Hunter beat.

The Warlock's Nova Bomb is what I'm liking the best aside from the jump. The Titan's seems to get up close and personal, which isn't always ideal... to me thats more crowd control than getting a good hit on a boss. The Nova Bomb does both, While the Hunter is more so getting in some good shots on a higher level entity.

However I am interested in the secondary abilities like the Titan's dome shield... I'll know I'll do each class eventually anyways.

http://www.vg247.com/2014/06/19/destiny-ps4-xbox-companion-app/

Looks like they took some of the better ideas of the Black Ops mobile app, along with Battlenet, and put their own twist on it.

Very nice. Now if Destiny had assignments like battlefield, I'd probably use that app all the time to track my progression.

I wonder what level cap will be in place for the beta and also for the full game. I'm also wondering how many character slots we'll be given in the full game. If there is a level cap of 50 in the full game, I'll probably make a character for each class and have 1 focused on multiplayer. I like that the game has vaults right at the main entrance to the tower. They should function just like the Xunlai chests from GW1 and those lockers on Borderlands 2 so we can get transfer powerful weapons from an advanced character to a lower level one.

If Destiny is going to be like other MMOs, the first large DLC will probably include a couple new classes and give us another character slot or two, but they'll eventually charge for additional character slots and character customizations.

I'm assuming level cap for Beta will be 20 as all the Legendary gear in Alpha was level 20. Just an assumption and I'm assuming it'll be between 20 - 50 for retail (as most MMO's usually cap at 50 (some rare ones don't)).

Character slot wise I'm going to guess 3 slots, one for each character class as you really can't specialize your characters to do one thing in this game like you can in most MMO's (I mean you can swap abilities in the tree at will). Plus honestly there really is no reason to go beyond 3 slots, anymore and thats just ridiculous (who needs more then one Titan, Hunter, or Warlock at any given time).

I'm going out on a limb here by saying I doubt there will be no more new classes until the 3rd or 4th DLC. I'm assuming the first two will add more Strikes and probably more planets as it seems like only the Moon and Mars will be in retail besides Earth (this is just speculation, I'd honestly be really surprised if Venus and Mercury were added into retail). Most likely they'll also contain new multiplayer maps/modes and probably new armor sets and weapons. Who knows what Bungie and Activision have planned for this game, I mean this is the only game Bungie is developing for them atm and they plan on keeping it going for a long while by the sounds of it.

Interesting app, I'll have to check it out when it's released.

http://www.destinythegame.com/game/destinations

Venus will definitely be in from the start. They've already heavily detailed the Vex and have photos of Venus' surface environment. If you watch the last trailer closely, you'll also see a place called The Reef. During the alpha I was accounting for all the empty circles on the destination map. There were enough for Venus, Mercury, Mars, and The Moon. But now that I've seen The Reef, you may be right about Mercury. In the first E3 trailer Jupiter was a dim circle, but not mentioned. The game has a supposed 10 year life cycle. I suspect more areas like Jupiter's moons and Ceres could be added. If its really going to have more than the traditional year cycle, I'd expect one new location a year, maybe two. Speculatively, some of these locations will be for max level only. I hope there is a heavy investment in the aftergame. I'm liking the levels of difficulty selection for each mission which is promising to that aspect.

I'm going with 3 slots as well. Once you've completely unlocked your skill tree, you can change your guardian class to your liking between story and multiplayer set ups fairly easily. There isn't much point to having 4-6 unless they make new classes down the road... but even then I think 3 is going to be enough. After gathering that plant, and seeing what kind of components you get from dismantling equipment, It's apparent there will be a crafting aspect to this game. I'm excited to see this, I'm hoping that you can craft better equipment that you can buy or find.

Going back to the 10 year life cycle... which probably wont be anywhere near that span... it will probably be 3-4 years. I doubt there will be a season pass if they go this route. They've got to make money if they are going to dedicate their time and work to this. Plus if you pay up front and get only a few things within a year because the development is stretched out so long, impatient whiny gamers are going to cry foul like they got ripped off. I hope they take a similar approach to PAYDAY and do a nice mix of free and paid updates. This would really be a thorn in Microsoft's side though as they absolutely hate any kind of free downloads through the XBL store. With their recent change in joining PSN on the free games for subscribers train, maybe there's a chance. With as much love as Bungie has been giving Sony, I don't see the free stuff coming if MS wont allow it. It will be a PR nightmare like it was for Left 4 Dead when the maps were free on Steam, but not on 360. Journalists can be assholes, as the developers were grilled instead of MS.

http://www.vg247.com/2014/06/20/destiny-ps4-xbox-bungie-devs-helped-sony-make-the-dualshock-controller/

Wow, Sony really welcomed Bungie with opened arms. The PS4 controller is far superior to PS3's... I guess we now know why.

http://www.vg247.com/2014/06/21/destiny-ps4-alpha-statistics-bungie/

The game held up amazingly well during alpha.... thats pretty crazy for a 4 1/2 day period.

I'm glad Sony worked with a developer (possibly more) in designing their controller. It is a huge improvement over the PS3 Dualshock 3 controller. Those are some impressive stats. Once the full beta starts on all platforms, it'll be obvious how close Bungie and Sony have become if the Xbox versions have numerous bugs. The alpha played so smoothly, that I never found a single bug on the PS4 version.

MS really screwed up with how shitty they were to Bungie. I think they could have worked out a better deal to where Bungie still owned Halo but it could only be released on Xbox, rather than stripping it from them completely. Bungie made Xbox if you really think about it. Its almost like Nintendo telling Mario devs to f**k off. After the butt kicking Sony received by 360 last gen, they were pretty smart to bring these guys in and absorb their input. I wouldn't be surprised if Bungie was the first to get a PS4 dev kit out of anyone.

http://www.bungie.net/7_Bungie-Weekly-Update---06272014/en/News/News?aid=11607

PS4 trophies.

I bet the easiest way to get that Flawless Striker trophy will be to have maxed out players going back to that first strike in the game. Now I'm wondering how powerful a Legendary weapon is compared to an Exotic one.

Hmmmm, go figure theres a trophy linked to the number 7. Bungie at it's love for the number 7.

Don't think it'd be entirely hard to get that trophy while doing them normally. Had we actually took our time on The Devil's Lair I'm pretty sure we wouldn't of died as much as we did (I mean some of our deaths were kind of our fault). Then again you'd also have to do it with people you know and trust because doing it with a match made group would be rather difficult (especially if you get stuck with 3 hunters like we did).

Hmmmm. so there are going to be guild like entities in this game. Was wondering since there was no mention of it in the Alpha. Wonder if we'll be able to play around with it in Beta?