Episodes 52 and 53: Destiny 2 Beta Feedback

We held off posting these here until we had both episodes recorded and posted, but the time has come: here are your Destiny 2 Beta show notes!

The Destiny 2 Beta - Our Feedback

Last week we spent a ton of time playing and talking about the Destiny 2 Beta - above you can tune in for two of those conversations, in which we address both the things we loved, and talked about some of the concerns we have for the game's release.

Going into these episodes, it's very important to remember that we're looking at this as an opportunity to voice our feedback publicly, and we're not holding back when we see a problem with the game that we want Bungie to address. The purpose of a beta test, aside from evaluating technical concerns, is to garner exactly this kind of critical and constructive thought in the game's community. It's possible that hearing some negative talk is not your thing. 

That's fine, and we hope you come back next week.

That said, there are some things we really loved about the beta, too - we share those in these episodes as well, and we hope you stick around to hear them and engage with us on Twitter, Discord, or elsewhere to share your own thoughts. 

A Few Things We Loved

  • The game is graphically beautiful. B-E-A-utiful!
  • The story is front and center and has some really excellent moments - if this is where the bar is set for the whole game, it's going to be one hell of a ride!
  • The pace of combat and gunplay is excellent, in all game modes.
  • The encounter design, level design, map design, new game modes, revamped game modes...it's all top notch. A clear improved and evolution of the first game.
  • The new weapon system makes sense, plays intuitively, and provides us hope for a much better balanced game than Destiny 1.

The list goes on - we really liked the Beta, and are extremely hyped for Destiny 2! However, there are...

A Few Things We Didn't Like

  • The Quickplay and Competitive Playlists didn't feel distinct - they both seemed sweaty and competitive in many ways, yet both lacked major features to reward serious competition (visible rankings, most notably).
  • Some of the NPC interactions felt a little scripted (which, obviously, they were) - this was fine the first few times, but could get stale over time.
  • Failsafe and Ghost bicker in the most annoying fashion possible. Mercules found that turning off the subtitles helps a bit, but having subtitles on is nice when you don't want to miss any of the story/dialogue. We can hope that all of their interactions are not as annoying as they were in the Inverted Spire.

So basically, 90% of the Beta was right up our alley, including most of the things that matter. We have a few qualms about the story and some major concerns about what Bungie will do to differentiate the Quickplay and Competitive Crucible Playlists, but these are problems that can be solved and may turn out to be nothing of note come launch.

Now it's your turn: what did you love? What did you not love? Let us know!