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Initial Thoughts on Borderlands V Destiny

One thing I like more in BL is the active class skills. Dropping an upgradable turret, trapping an enemy in a bubble or turning that bubble into a charm spell, dual wielding weapons, summoning an upgradable robot, going totally berserk with an explosive axe, turning invisible for a backstab. The gun play may feel way worse but I think the active skills feel much better. I don't find the class skills in Destiny as satisfying to use.

I'm actually looking forward to the pre-sequel adding the double jumping, jet packing, body slamming into the ground mechanic due to being low gravity.
 
I agree that it's not fair to compare the two considering we only have a Beta of Destiny and multiple Borderlands games. That being said I already find the setting and lore of Destiny to be more promising than anything I encountered on Pandora, the humor and characters of Borderlands have never done much for me. I'll take wizards from the moon over nine toes and three balls any day of the week.

Also I appreciate the overwhelming gun loot in Borderlands theoretically but in practice it just added lots of downtime and micromanagement to the minute to minute gameplay. Common items were automatic vendor trash and the rare stuff was too hit or miss depending on how they operated. Destiny's gun drops being rarer and not quite so random works well alongside a system that rewards sticking with the same weapon for a bit. Plus the inclusion of armor slots adds to the overall variety of loot that can drop and allows for more RPG-like customization.
 
One thing I like more in BL is the active class skills. Dropping an upgradable turret, trapping an enemy in a bubble or turning that bubble into a charm spell, dual wielding weapons, summoning an upgradable robot, going totally berserk with an explosive axe, turning invisible for a backstab. The gun play may feel way worse but I think the active skills feel much better.

Keep in mind you're seeing level 8 skills, since that's the beta cap. There are a lot of cool skills for higher level players that Destiny hasn't shown yet.
 
Not fair for me to Judge Destiny's co-op but my guess is it won't be nearly as good as Borderlands.

PvP is almost non-existent in Borderlands, but in Destiny it's just soulless. A person can only play so much CoD knockoff, 3 flag domination, heavy auto aim nonsense over and over again before enough is enough.

Destiny never once grabbed me with any pre-release media and the beta had nothing I never played before.
 
Soo can every neogaf member have their own beta impressions thread now?



Also. Love borderlands, and Destiny is nothing like it IMO. Unless you oversimplify it.
 
I haven't enjoyed a single Borderlands game, yet I played over 15 hours of a goddamn 4-mission Destiny beta.

The gulf in quality is vast.
Yeah I refer to destiny as borderlands if the gameplay was actually good. I tried hard to get into BL2 but it's just not.... good meanwhile destiny playing like GoTY
 
Keep in mind you're seeing level 8 skills, since that's the beta cap. There are a lot of cool skills for higher level players that Destiny hasn't shown yet.

I hope so. The reuse timers on skills are way too high in Destiny compared to 12 seconds for Maya, 13 seconds for Zero, 42 seconds downtime with 20 seconds uptime for Axton/Sal, etc. Hopefully Destiny class skills can get down to those numbers of reuse timers because I'm a sucker for that as that differentiates the game from other FPS games.
 
PvP is almost non-existent in Borderlands, but in Destiny it's just soulless. A person can only play so much CoD knockoff, 3 flag domination, heavy auto aim nonsense over and over again before enough is enough.

Aren't there a bunch of modes available in selection and they only showed off a single mode specifically for the beta? This seems like a weird complaint since you haven't played the other seven or so gamemodes.
 
Beta does a pretty bad job of telling me anything about the universe I'm in, which is fine since it's a beta, but I do hope it does become interesting in the full game. It is really Dry.

I will definitely agree with this, if the beta is an indication of the storytelling in Destiny, plot will be piss poor.

Bungie have clearly developed a world with much lore in it and its concepts are on show but as for an actual plot or any cohesive storytelling? Nothing seemed to be there in the beta.

We got one cutscene with someone basically saying the ambiguous "darkness" is evil, all the while your resurrected guardian (a perfect audience surrogate to get people acclimated to the game universe) doesn't ask any questions about the world he is in, he just shoots at things Ghost tells him to.
 
Got to say the loot spam drops and billions of 0.0001% differences in loot got old quickly in BL. Might be a good game for a digital hoarder, but not me.

I'm liking Destiny's more conservative drops. It allows me to make quicker choices on what guns are objectively better for my use and gives me time to play with them without that feeling that one of those 15 drops might be getting overlooked.
 
Destiny is what Borderlands would play like if it were actually well-designed and interesting.

Borderlands is a bad shooter that gets a pass for being bad because it has (great!) 4-player co-op and a loot dynamic that (previously) no one else had. I also hear some people like Claptrap- I dont know who these people are, but maybe thats the big difference.

Destiny feels like an enjoyable singleplayer game first and foremost, a good shooter, where simple mechanics like traversal and melee feel amazing and polished to hell and back. On top of that it feels like your story overlaps with a living world, a la the Souls games or Journey, and you can go back to locations on a higher level without having to restart the entire game. Everything makes sense mechanically, and once you start to feel the flow of things (like how to do the Devil Walker fight properly) it all clicks and you realize people really worked on the gameplay.

Its not even fair to compare the two, and Im just happy Borderlands has a couple niches still (jouvenile humor, being on PC, etc) so it isnt outclassed and replaced completely.
 
Yeah. I think in a game such as these the wackiness of Borderlands is a huge strength. Destiny comes across as taking itself too seriously at times. The biggest negative to me is the dialog and weapon design.
 
Both have huge flaws (as far as i can judge Destiny by its beta). I was hoping Destiny would be a good Borderlands but it hasn't really convinced me yet, and the PVP just flat out disappointed me.
 
Got to say the loot spam drops and billions of 0.0001% differences in loot got old quickly in BL. Might be a good game for a digital hoarder, but not me.

I'm liking Destiny's more conservative drops. It allows me to make quicker choices on what guns are objectively better for my use and gives me time to play with them without that feeling that one of those 15 drops might be getting overlooked.

BL2 pretty much eliminated the "every enemy drops stuff" thing from BL1. I think a lot of people must have only played the first game.
 
Destiny needs space combat and a summon class for me to consider it
Why can't Peter Dinklage be a big stompy robot I can sit inside? He's Robo Navi here
 
I'd agree with this. Also makes sense since I was a huge PSO fan back in the day, and now I'm digging Destiny.

Yup, caught me completely by surprise when I realized, "holy shit.... this.. this is like PSO!"

Between that, stellar sound/art, and solid as hell gameplay loop, I'm officially a believer.
I finished the first Borderlands and felt that alone was enough for me....
 
I hope so. The reuse timers on skills are way too high in Destiny compared to 12 seconds for Maya, 13 seconds for Zero, 42 seconds downtime with 20 seconds uptime for Axton/Sal, etc. Hopefully Destiny class skills can get down to those numbers of reuse timers because I'm a sucker for that as that differentiates the game from other FPS games.

You get stats and skills on your gear that boost this. My grenade recharge on my Titan is 100% faster, not to mention kills with my auto rifle speed it up, and then damage from my grenades speeds up my melee recharge.

Personally, I really dig the way they handle it because you can swap different armor in and out as needed. There is no one "best" piece.
 
I found the overall art style and tone of the Borderlands franchise to be extremely off-putting, but that's just me.

And yes, Beta vs franchise is silly.
What an awfully strange thread. You're comparing a series with multiple games in it to a beta. Do you see what you're doing wrong there?
Smash vs Destiny
Borderlands vs Destiny

Stay tuned for the next thread: Uncharted Vita vs Destiny
 
Shockingly I also prefer full games to betas. And don't even get me started on alphas.

Why don't we start this thread back up in September? You know, so we can compare games to games as opposed to games to network tests
 
Aren't there a bunch of modes available in selection and they only showed off a single mode specifically for the beta? This seems like a weird complaint since you haven't played the other seven or so gamemodes.

The fact that they're leading with boring 3 flag dom means they have nothing of interest to offer up.

When you create an entirely new IP and lore you have the great opportunity to create a new gametype(s) that fits around the lore of your game.

If Bungie had that they would have definitely lead with that or AT LEAST showed us it in some way. Its easy to spot when a dev is playing it safe vs when they're trying something new. They will almost certainly try to push that new thing in pre-release media.

Same thing happened and disappointed me in Titanfall. Beta only had TDM and 3 flag Dom. Gameplay was your typical run-n-gun with some nice new elements like titans and the great player movement, but the game got stale and boring because the full game was the same gamemodes we've seen a million times before. Destiny will be no different IMO.
 
I say one thing Borderlands guns actually looked and felt like they were from the future.

Borderlands does something brilliant with it's various gun manufacturers and how each company has a special look and quirk to their guns. Like Hyperion guns increase in accuracy per shot. Would have been nice to support one company and get sent on mission to sabotage competitors.
 
Actually credit where it is due, Borderlands didn't tout itself as some sort of strange revolution in FPS. Bungie and Activision's strange boasting of this game at it's reveal still looms over their game, and makes me wonder what it really is.

Is it an MMO? Not really, it sounded like it at first but Bungie quickly dialled back on that and called it "a shared world" FPS. What does that mean?

All I see from the beta is a campaign, some multiplayer and coop missions....like any other FPS then.
The other elements that are there don't amount to much, the tower is just a lesser PS Home, the "galaxy" we were promised to explore is just a level select screen, and encountering other players in Old Russia is a fleeting experience, akin to meeting players in Journey.

At least Borderlands knows what it is, a loot driven FPS with obnoxious humour, even if Destiny does play better.
 
I hope so. The reuse timers on skills are way too high in Destiny compared to 12 seconds for Maya, 13 seconds for Zero, 42 seconds downtime with 20 seconds uptime for Axton/Sal, etc. Hopefully Destiny class skills can get down to those numbers of reuse timers because I'm a sucker for that as that differentiates the game from other FPS games.

Agreed. I've played a bit of the Destiny beta so far and aside from the slowness this is my main complaint as well. Borderlands 2 is fun because of the powers and without it it'd be a very boring game. The Destiny skills so far just aren't very good and the timers are too high. Even if that gets more interesting though the movement is still very slow so I don't think I'll ever like the game as much as Borderlands 2.

Not terrible is probably the best thing I can say about what I've played so far of the Destiny beta. Though as others have said it's not entirely fair to judge the game on the earlier areas in the game (everything up to lvl 5 in Borderlands 2 is also quite boring).
 
Huh? Floaty? Borderlands felt fine to me. It plays like COD, which I like since the gunplay in COD was always tight feeling to me. I never had an issue with the shooting. Even BL1 was pretty solid, but 2 tightened everything up just fine to modern standards

I feel bad for people who can't handle the humor in BL2. You know what I do to enjoy the game? Not take it seriously. Claptrap is supposed to be annoying, that's his character and it's clearly working.

But really, everyone has different tastes and that's fine. I can understand people not liking Borderlands. I feel bad for them because it's easily the best series from the last generation for me and I'm dying to play 3. I think I beat BL2 like 15 times, and BL1 at least 10. 2 was just so polished and well put together (for how big it is) and there was really nothing like 1 at the time.

As for Destiny, I won't get a chance to play it since I refuse to buy another console, but from the videos it look competent enough.
 
For me it's the loot. In Borderlands I always just felt like I would keep using whichever gun had the most green numbers, not really caring much for the gun. In Destiny the guns seem a bit more personal.
 
Destiny's pve instances are just fighting waves of stupid enemies until you reach a large bullet sponge enemy that just sits still. So it's probably a lot like borderlands.

It's PvE, not PvP. PvP is competitive multiplayer. PvE is you against the enemies with a dash of co-op.

edited for you :)
 
Destiny's pvp instances are just fighting waves of stupid enemies until you reach a large bullet sponge enemy that just sits still. So it's probably a lot like borderlands.

It's PvE, not PvP. PvP is competitive multiplayer. PvE is you against the enemies with a dash of co-op.
 
I didn't dislike Borderlands 2 (the first I didn't get into), but Destiny is like an entirely different beast, especially once you start getting into the mechanics. It's just so much more fun to actually play from a gameplay perspective. And in any event, after playing Destiny, the similarities to Borderlands imo only go so far. This is its own unique thing that feels distinct.
 
Really what this beta has shown me is that some higher ups at bungie must be some big Phantasy Star fans!
Agreed, one of the big reasons I feel drawn to it. The closest touchstone as far as I'm concerned.

phantasy_star_portable_2_mission_select.jpg
 
God forbid games show a little personality and fun. Save us Saint Marcus Fenix!
Not to mention Borderlands has a LOT more variety in terms of classes and like a ZILLION?! GUNZ!

I'm all for fun and personality. Clever comedic writing can improve every game.

But I felt borderlands' approach to this was so damn ham-fisted and mediocre that it severely detracted from the game. There is little fun in rolling my eyes and cringing every six seconds. The art style gave me the same vibe. If it's for you then that's great, you probably won't need Destiny in your life.
 
I prefer the cryptic and mysterious world of Destiny far more than the endless parade of dumb jokes from Borderlands. The best gun in BL2 is that gun that yells at you when you shoot, and I loved it for a grand total of five minutes, then it got annoying.

Just because a game is trying to be funny and there are A ZILLION guns doesn't mean anything if the execution sucks. I gave Gearbox a pass though, cause the game is fun.
 
I don't like Destiny's story vibes either. It seems so stupid. The darkness is coming. I know what they're talking about, but that sounds completely unmoving.
 
are people really comparing content in a closed off beta to a full game ?

How much do you really expect the game of change?
Are they suddenly going to add dinosaur mounts?

I don't like Destiny's story vibes either. It seems so stupid. The darkness is coming. I know what they're talking about, but that sounds completely unmoving.

Ugh... that too. We are THE CHOSEN ONE! Is it so hard to come up with something else? Like about smugglers or bounty hunters or hell a crime drama type thing where a psycho EXO is going around killing humans
 
Borderlands 2 UI is fucking abysmal while Destiny has a gorgeous UI.

Bullets appear to be impactful in Destiny; gunplay in Borderlands just isn't fun.

Artstyle is gross in Borderlands.

Destiny will offer new content constantly.

Loot feels specifically crafted in Destiny and not like some randomizer like in Borderlands.

I love the PvP in Destiny regardless of the balance issues.
 
are people really comparing content in a closed off beta to a full game ?

This beta is a look at the first chunk of the game. The only thing that will change before release is polish.

Those of us who don't like the beta won't necessarily dislike the full release, but we sure as heck won't like the first chunk of the game.
 
Haha man. It's crazy that a game that sold 10 million copies seems to have zero fans on GAF.

10 million people bough Borderlands and apparently they all hated it.

On topic: people who have spent time in the Destiny beta seem to love it, so I'll reserve judgement for now. But it's really not capturing my attention.
 
God forbid games show a little personality and fun. Save us Saint Marcus Fenix!
Not to mention Borderlands has a LOT more variety in terms of classes and like a ZILLION?! GUNZ!

Who cares about having a zillion guns if they're barely different and not all that fun to use. And if we're talking about quality comedic writing in a video game look at the portal series, the humour in Borderlands is what makes it feel like it lacks personality:

I just think that if you're going to tout Borderlands as being 'more fun' because it's ghost written by Reddit, you're taking a shaky stance.
.
It seriously feels like the writers just regurgitate whatevers happening in 'Whats Hot', and in the end you get writing which feels like a hodge podge of old memes and 90's fads.
 
Never really understood the need to compare. I can see someone saying it has elements as this or that. But these are totally different animals to me ...
 
I haven't enjoyed a single Borderlands game, yet I played over 15 hours of a goddamn 4-mission Destiny beta.

The gulf in quality is vast.
My thoughts exactly. I actually enjoyed BL2 quite a bit but the moment-to-moment combat in Destiny is FAR beyond that in any of the Borderlands games. It's not even close really.
 
I'm a huge borderland fan, but it has nothing on the gameplay mechanics and just feel of destiny. Also, being a huge pso lover, this is like a love letter to that series and couldn't be happier.
 
Borderlands is a prime example of a game series that tries too hard to be funny.

Seriously, the writing makes me cringe. I enjoy the game though, but only on mute.
 
I think Borderlands is just a much more fun game in every way
Borderlands has charm while Destiny is just pretentious and stupid

The gun play in Destiny is much better, but even so.. it is more fun in Borderlands
 
hey

you know what Destiny has that Borderlands doesn't?

quality FPS mechanics.

And you know what Borderlands has that Destiny doesn't?

quality loot FPS mechanics.

The comparison between Destiny and BL really depends on how you expect fun from a game in an FPS form. In the aspects of loot, skill, and character development, I don't see Destiny is any attractive.
 
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