Destiny is Terrible

Destiny was supposed to be THE big event that got people into the new generation of game consoles. I've heard from people in the know that the game, which cost $500m to make, is not hitting sales targets. No surprise; the game is awful.

1. The class system is boring. The whole point of an RPG-type structure is that as you level up, you get new capability. In Destiny, the main change is that you can use higher DPS weapons and wear stronger armor.  But since the enemies are just the same things as before with higher DPS and stronger armor, who cares? The only thing differentiating one class from another is a slowly-recharging grenade and an even slower "super" ability. Most of the time is spent shooting the same enemies with the same four or five weapons over and over.

2. The loot is boring. Over the course of 8 levels, the only noticeable change I saw in the loot I got was that sometimes I found a gun that would unlock a red dot sight or higher damage as I used it more, or armor that would grant me more ammo reserves if I used it enough. No fireballs. No heat-seaking missiles. No infrared scopes.  No cerebral bores. Just the same machine gun, but more DPS and a red dot. Whee.

3. The maps are boring. When I started the game and saw the first main location was Earth, I was thought, "Aw, cool, I get to explore the planet Earth! Next-gen is here!" Wrong. In Destiny, "Earth" means "An old cosmodrome in Russia."  The end. You will not go to post-apocalyptic NYC. You will not go to a jungle island in the Pacific. You will not even go to other places in Russia.  You get the one cosmodrome, and that's "Earth." The core game has only five maps like this, so you can forget about seeing much in the way of anything new or interesting. Also, going through the game means revisiting the same locations in these maps over...and over...and over. Compared to the scope of even last-gen games, it's pathetic.

4. The 'MMO' aspect is a joke. Most missions are only accessible to people you personally invite. There are a few with random match-making, so you can forget about encountering any kinds of guilds or groups online as you go through the game. Unless you play the competitive multiplayer, the game feels like a very, very boring take on Borderlands. You will occasionally see other players on the same map as you, running whatever quest they're doing. If you want to, you can silently help them kill some bad guys. You mostly won't want to.

5. The setting is incomprehensible.  Imagine if in Star Wars, Leia kept saying "The Death Star is very dangerous," but you never see it blow up Alderaan. In fact, no one even mentions it can blow up planets. Or that it's a battle station. And it's not called the "Death Star." It's called "Moribus Prime." So the story is that the Rebellion is going to blow up Moribus Prime because "it's dangerous." Also, you never see anyone use the Force or even hear what the Force is. People just say "May the Force be with you" and "He is strong in the Force." There's no Darth Vader to personify the evil, either, just an undifferentiated mass of Storm Troopers who never speak or do anything except sit around, waiting for the Rebel Alliance to attack. Destiny is like that, only somehow even more confusing.

6. The crafting is unintuitive and tedious. The elements you find for crafting all have made-up sci-fi names, so you won't have any clue what they are. Since the things you can craft have equally obscure names and there are a bizarre number of elements and items, you'll probably just find yourself avoiding the crafting menus altogether. Crafting is generally a terrible idea in games, and Destiny just makes it extra terrible.

7. At low levels, the shops have nothing for you. Boy, my weapon is garbage. It's like five levels behind! I'll just go to the shop and...oh, they only sell gear for level 40 and above. Nevermind. Nevermind forever. I'll just go grind through a boss again and hope he drops something that isn't crap (P.S., the boss is going to drop crap).

Basically, Destiny is garbage. It was made by people who don't understand what makes games fun, what makes sci-fi interesting, or understand that "depth" doesn't mean "autistic levels of complexity." Stay away.

Concentration Killed CoDzilla

Last game session, I noticed something about the Druid's combat spells...nearly every single one of them is tagged with Concentration. This is a new mechanic in 5e. You can only have one Concentration effect active at a time, and if you get hit while one is active, you have to make a Constitution saving throw with a DC equal to the damage you took.

The result of this is that the CoDzilla problem from 3rd edition is gone. In case you didn't know, in 3rd, you could make a god-like cleric by stacking the right buff spells and feats. Likewise, the "Batman" wizard (a wizard who can become any class by activating the right spells) is a thing of the past. 4e solved this by standardizing abilities, but at the cost of alienating a lot of fans and making too many classes feel too similar. In 5e, spells feel a lot more like their classic incarnations, but the addition of Concentration keeps things from getting out of hand. Also, only allowing one effect at a time makes the game simpler to run.

Grognards Are Terrible People

Something I only came to appreciate as an adult is that there's a wide gulf between a grown man with a past-time and a manchild whose life is his toys. There is a contingent of adults who are overly passionate about things like comic book plot continuity, the consistency of the fake science in Star Trek, obscure computations in RPGs, the DPS of various weapons in a video game, and so on. These people are almost invariably failures at life.

In D&D, there are a lot of these types. Come on, this is a hobby where public events have signs like, "We reserve the right to remove anyone from the premises who does not practice proper hygiene." I've learned to stay away from these types. Anyone who is going to get worked up about the lore for the Dire Wolf being totally wrong in some edition of D&D not only isn't going to be much fun in your party, he's also not going to be a decent person to be around.

The 5e Druid Is Pretty Fun

I've now played the Druid a few times. Obviously, its offensive ability is fairly limited, but the ability to turn into virtually any animal I want is a blast. Need to scale a wall? Become a spider. Dive under the water? Become a shark or crocodile. Need a quick buffer of HP to get out of a jam in combat? Become a bear. 5e really throws the limits off transformations by having the power recharge every short rest.

The spells are also really solid. I can give everyone +10 to stealth checks. Goodberry is always a favorite (especially since I recharge 2 slots on a short rest). The animal-related spells are a bit tricky to grapple with, but I think with a little creativity, they should become plenty useful. DMs don't often think a lot about fauna, so I'm guessing I'll need to help mine along by asking what kinds of animals might be around.

It's certainly a lot better than the 4e Druid. Since most 4e spells were combat-oriented, taking animal form really crippled the character. I remember a friend of mine trying to play a druid in a 4e campaign I was running, and it just plain didn't work. It wasn't as bad as the summoner wizard he tried earlier, but still, it just wasn't much fun.

In 4e, your animal form was pure fluff. Basically, you had a set of abilities you could use in human form, and a set of abilities you could use in animal form. It fell into the trap a lot of classes in that edition did, where there were seemingly tons of powers you could mix and match, but you really needed to focus on one specific grouping to be any good. Either go with Beast Form abilities or stick strictly with human form abilities. Otherwise, you wind up with powers you almost never use. It also had that common issue of certain spells having such specific conditions attached to them that the right opportunity to use them never really came up.

5e doesn't have this issue, of course. The Druid has a fairly large selection of spells, and many of them can be used outside of combat. This particular druid isn't going the Circle of the Moon route, so I'm mostly playing as a humanoid caster who uses Wild Shape sparingly and mostly to get out of jams (like being pulled into the water by a merrow).

It's a good class.