Famed Halo creator Bungie’s first game as an independent entity is Destiny, and publisher Activision believes it could be the biggest new IP title in video game history. Maybe they’re right, but I don’t think it’s a given that what amounts to a shooter MMO will be able to engage a cross-section of gamers just because the Bungie name is attached to it. Garnering a big launch is one thing — keeping players involved is something else. Granted that we haven’t yet seen all that Destiny has to offer, here are five things Bungie hopefully has already done or will do that can help keep players engaged.
1. Have a personality
This has never been one of Bungie’s strengths, as the Halo games tend to have all the personality of a paper bag. They had other things going for them, of course, that allowed the franchise to be hugely successful anyway, but Destiny is not Halo. It’s more like Borderlands or Defiance with its “shared-world shooter” concept — it’s clearly trying to tap into that Borderlands fanbase with its expansive empty world meant to be explored in co-op but structurally is more MMO-ish, like Defiance.
In any case, what really separates Borderlands and Defiance is not structure but style: Borderlands is amusing and Defiance is bland. With any game, features and content get people in the door but personality gets them to stick around. And when the game is amusing, they tend to be more forgiving of shortcomings. It’s just like with people, really. Anybody can get far by being attractive or competent, but being smooth and cool (and funny, if it’s appropriate) is how you get people to remember you, especially if you’re aiming for mass appeal. Borderlands is very cool and funny, and that’s why people love it. Destiny cannot risk being devoid of personality if it wants to be a lasting phenomenon.
2. Cater the story missions to solo play
Bungie is playing up the story and lore angle for Destiny, but there’s a big problem with that: generally, the people who really get into story and lore in games want to play those games alone. There are many reasons for this, but a huge one is how difficult it is to find one person (or more) who cares about that stuff as much as you to play through an entire game without it taking years. I had one semester in college in which I lived with a guy who was down for any game at any time, but we had three classes between us and no jobs for a few months. Coordinating schedules is not so easy now.
Because of that difficulty, these folks not only prefer solo story games, but story games that are only possible to play solo, because adding co-op is usually a sacrifice in quality somewhere. So while having cooperative play on a massive scale will undoubtedly get some people in Destiny’s door who otherwise wouldn’t, basing the game on a cooperative structure will likewise keep some people from ever playing it. Allowing people to play the story stuff solo, which Destiny will do, is not enough.
Borderlands, for instance, is decent enough when you’re playing alone, but those games are obviously balance for co-op in terms of how enemies behave. Regardless of how many hit points they may have, the enemy AI is still constructed to be fought by multiple player characters, and so solo play is frustrating. So if Bungie wants the solo gamers to get involved with Destiny, they have show that playing solo is no worse mechanically than playing with friends.
3. Build a story that’s digestible in co-op
Destiny isn’t like Halo mostly because the Halo campaign stories are presented as if you are alone. I don’t know how the stories in Destiny will be built, but as it’s a persistent online game I think it’s safe to say it’s unlikely that the game will assume you’re playing by yourself even if you do run the missions solo
The struggle with co-op games has always been the disconnect between solo and co-op play — they’re rarely on par with one another. Either solo or co-op is almost always a significantly better experience than the other for gameplay, or solo is far better if you’re interested in the story. Co-op usually is a distraction from that, and online co-op is even more of one, and online co-op with randoms can be horrible, as anybody who’s ever played a story-heavy dungeon in any MMO can tell you. While most of the story-lovers may prefer to play solo, that isn’t law: some do want to play with other people, either because of gameplay preference or a desire to experience Destiny as envisioned by Bungie. But however Destiny does it, if the people that are there for the story end up detesting their partners because they couldn’t get into it, then they might just stop playing. Some games can’t salvage a gamer after it puts a bad taste in their mouth.
In our crowded marketplace, the onus is on the developer to keep the player from giving up on it, rather than being on the player to persevere through nonsense. You might say it’s not on Bungie to control the community that way, but they did choose to make a story-focused MMO shooter when they could have, you know, done something else.
4. Make customization meaningful in a first-person game
Destiny is a first-person shooter with heavy customization options, which is frustrating as a concept. It’s similar to the Elder Scrolls games, where you can spend all day designing your character’s face then never see it again once the game begins.
Bungie addresses this somewhat– when in the non-combat quest hub you can move around in a third-person view, and during combat the camera will pull back during special combat moves so you can see them in all their splendor. But you have to wonder if that will be enough. If Bungie wants the bulk of players to care about which helmet they want to wear (beyond just the stats), they're going to need to let players look at themselves a lot. Granted, a third-person view in combat would be a huge balance issue for competitive multiplayer, but I'm sure they can figure out something more than what they have now.
5. Don’t hide the lore
Destiny is, ostensibly, a game about a bunch of fighters wandering different worlds in order to recover artifacts and information about the past. If the bulk of the world's lore comes in the form of something analogous to Halo's hidden terminals, i.e. collectibles that many players don't even know are there, then Destiny won't really be about what it claims to be.
Essentially, all lore stuff in Destiny — not just whatever some developer deems “relevant” — has to be incorporated into the structure of the missions. You can have notes and audio recording or whatever else might create a codex entry as bonus objectives or whatever, but those bonuses would need to be stated outright and there should be extra rewards earned for completing them so you don’t get players who care about finding that stuff coming into conflict with players who don’t. Having random co-op partners flake out on you because there’s no tangible incentive for being thorough wouldn’t be too endearing.
