I've got to say, selling a game in a way which specifically encouraged pre-orders, let alone normal release-day buys, in a form that's unfair to assess critically is simply unacceptable to me. Even with this said, the vast majority of the reviews I encountered didn't fall victim to that pitfall of predicating their criticism on just having seen part of the game.
Destiny - Review Thread
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I've got to say, selling a game in a way which specifically encouraged pre-orders, let alone normal release-day buys, in a form that's unfair to assess critically is simply unacceptable to me. Even with this said, the vast majority of the reviews I encountered didn't fall victim to that pitfall of predicating their criticism on just having seen part of the game.
I agree with you that the game should be reviewed as whole, and that the endgame content should be considered if it's likely to be something that players would spend a lot of time on. However... I don't think making any requests for reviewers to wait a week is reasonable at all. They should have allowed the reviewers to play the game earlier in an environment that would have allowed them to experience this content in time for the game's launch. There's a LOT of people paying $60 for this day one, and they shouldn't have to do it blind because reviewers were needlessly restricting in doing their job properly.
The whole "it needs all of you populating it" stuff is BS considering how many reviewers would have been on, and that there's a max of 16 to an instance. The pre-raid reviews are entirely on Bungie/Activision imo.
Razzorn34
Member
Can I borrow your Delorean?
This is what you really mean...
And this is what hurts--A CoD game with a better story than a Bungie game.
Just ouch.
I'd argue reviews that don't take into account stuff like new game+ are not really complete, either. And note I have never said the raid should affect the review (meaning, score). If it's too hardcore or whatever, that's fine. But the review should account for it. From your last line there, I don't think you actually understood what I wrote.
Glass Shark
Banned
I can't help but feel that this simple fact makes the entire game totally pointless for a large subset of potential players, including myself. What incentive do I have to play through the seemingly mediocre story if I'll never be able to fully appreciate the endgame?
Call of duty games have stories?
It's not funny, it's sad.
foxuzamaki
Doesn't read OPs, especially not his own
Jesus christ I would have been a genius
The problem is... the Raid isn't all that good when 11 hours later in stream one of the best FPS players is constantly failing on the same boss, where getting insta-killed from a hobgoblin is resetting their progress every time.
Just listen to how little fun they are having on stream...
Just listen to how little fun they are having on stream...
Anton Sugar
Member
Link?
Maybe I did misunderstand you. I may have misunderstood the context of your discussion with Morrigan Stark.
I thought she was saying it's not acceptable to delay reviews for a chance of 6's becoming 9's and it's not fair to dismiss reviews made prior to the raid being opened because of the nature of that content.
http://www.twitch.tv/triplewrecktv
Spoiler since it is the 4th boss? (seems the same as 2nd?)
I don't think any reviewer could ever finish this boss fight within this MONTH unless they don't play anything else. If anything this should lower the scores, since we now know all of our levelling has been worthless.
Sounds like week one of heroic WoW raids.
Ingueferroque
Banned
-MD-
Member
If it's anything like the last half dozen CoD games I kinda doubt it.
NullPointer
Member
Its different content, which makes it unlike a new game+.
And since when do challenge modes not count for reviews?
Not defending Bungie locking it out, but I think its fair for reviews to put in an addendum for the raid. For some people the quality of the raid will make all the difference in the world as to whether they buy the game or not.
These guys are raging, totally not having fun.
EDIT: As someone who adores high difficulty challenge modes, I appreciate that the raids are Challenging, but challenging a 6 person team is a bit much when it takes so damn long. The closest party challenge I have played has been some of the harder parts in Guild Wars 1, but the teamwork wasn't just, go to portal, shoot boss, not die... It looks like a huge damage sponge with OHKOs that are completely RNG... so throw any talk of great gunplay mechanics out of the window.
A better raid would be doing the whole Halo game on Legendary in a sitting... That's the problem of Destiny in a nutshell.
In terms of review scores, I don't doubt it. A new shiny Call of Duty made by a developer that isn't Infinity Ward? It'll score well.
vasametropolis
Member
Not even in highschool is this correct... let alone the 9 point university scale. It differs by province too so this is not reliable.
User 479360
Banned
This is Ontario's scale.
Letter Percent
A+ 90% - 100%
A 85% - 89%
A- 80% - 84%
B+ 77% - 79%
B 73% - 76%
B- 70% - 72%
C+ 67% - 69%
C 63% - 66%
C- 60% - 62%
D+ 57% - 59%
D 53% - 56%
D- 50% - 52%
F 0% - 49%
Anton Sugar
Member
Thanks--watching now. Read earlier it took one group 16 hours to get through.
That was an internal team...
Sho_Nuff82
Member
I think it's "hey this encounter design looks interesting, why isn't anything like this in the first 30 hours?" is a pretty legitimate criticism. It speaks to Bungie either grossly underestimating their player base or grossly overestimating the vanilla content's appeal.
Yup, sounds about right.
Ever raided before? Normal guilds will spend months trying to clear a raid. Unless you're the best guilds in the world, you don't expect to clear it in a day.
KyanMehwulfe
Member
The lock gives an excuse to not include it in reviews. I don't know if a review written before it really gives the game a full review. But, remember the uproar over that tweet saying it's a pity that people didn't wait until the raid, and how many folks didn't like that. Especially over just 1 week, I mean, it's not like this is World of Warcraft adding a new dungeon 3-4 weeks later. For all the work and money that went into Destiny, it feels like they just had no plan whatsoever for public relations and release. Relative to the development and budget of the game, it would have taken so little effort to let reviewers into an internal version a little early and to make sure Raids were accessible one day one instead of locking it for a week. They spent $500m on a game and take PR hits so large over such simple things. I worked in consumer behavior as a graduate for a while and it's just crazy to me how such an expensive investment can make such cheap-to-fix costly-to-ignore mistakes.
If the raid was finished in a day, I would be pretty disappointed.
God I hope not, it's a publisher problem not a reviewer problem.
Really? I guess it's not so hard after all. Disappointing. I wanted some content that would take a few weeks (or days at least) in order for people to get the skills/gear necessary to beat it.
uncledonnie
Banned
I can agree with this. I just think from what I've seen the raid experience may actually lower the score.
Nah breh, it's hard, but not for the t reasons. Not for preparing the best skills or strategy, you need a whole team of good FPS player and a lot of patience.
exactly. It's an issue with their own shitty internal policies.
I give the Destiny Review Thread a 9/10. It's mechanically sound but feels awfully repetitive at times.
Morrigan Stark
Arrogant Smirk
Yeah, but considering how locked it is, it makes no sense to expect reviews (which are there to inform potential buyers after all) to take that into account. And even when you disregard reviews, well, locking out the so-called best part of your game behind ridiculously high requirements (which involve massive grinding, not just "gitting gud") is just bad design.
"Hey guys, you gotta slog through 20 hours of boring-ass grinding, and you gotta find 5 more friends, on the same platform, who also spent those 20 hours grinding and are the same level as you, with free time in the same time zone as you, before you can play the only semi-exciting part of my boring game! Please be excited."
uncledonnie
Banned
That's a damn good analogy. Hopefully it doesn't turn out that way because most people had written off PSU at that point.
It sucks for sure, but as a critic, it's your responsibility to be honest with your audience and rate the video game presented to you as it stands on its own, distancing yourself from all those logistics you mentioned.
Watching this stream... I know for a fact there is nothing more I could do. If these guys where higher level than I'm sure it wouldn't be like this, but they are LV26... The highest Destiny players are LV28, and some of those include accounts shared by multiple players.
Sure levelling could be fun for most, but it isn't anything more than an average experience to do so, especially when you get engrams from low level enemies. This means you can get you Exotic from doing the same missions in the beta. Most of the farming videos include patrolling a single area.
Expecting a very long time of this to get from the LV26 most Destiny overplayers are now to get to a higher level to make the raid easier makes no sense. I know that almost every other online RPG takes days of levelling to get anywhere near the cap, but this is actually a 5th of Destiny's content, the other 4 being the story planets where the strikes take place.
The big issue is the space between finishing campaign and doing this raid.
Also...
https://twitter.com/Bungie/status/511972115776425984
What level do you have to be for Hard mode. Just more damage spongey and more OHKOs? Or more grinding to make it the same difficulty?
KyanMehwulfe
Member
There's a harder difficultly level... Dunno if that makes a difference to you or Destiny but sometimes Hard mode is the only good mode. Harder difficulties in WoW usually were a lot more fun from a hardcore POV, and Hard mode in FF XIV is pretty crazy. Dunno about Destiny of course, just pointing that out.
ebullientprism
Member
I cant see it it at work but DSP actually did a review and it was good? That DSP? 
PerezDeCorcho
Member
He tore Destiny a new asshole.I cant see it it at work but DSP actually did a review and it was good? That DSP?
Kagoshima_Luke
Gold Member
I think the issue here is some are using the word average as "statistically average," while others are using it as a synonym for mediocre. Something can be mediocre and not have an equal number of things better or worse than it.
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