Here is my mish mash of tips and thoughts on early level PvP in Destiny

 

1.       The hold the point games don’t work like they do in other games.  You don’t get a ticking time amount of points just for holding them.  What you get is points when you kill an enemy player, the more flags you have when you get the kill the more points your team gets.  So while its important to cap and get points, its even more important to be careful and not die a lot.

2.       Brings me to my next point.  Stay with your team especially if you are new.  If the enemy is distracted targeting someone else or under fire from somewhere else you can get your shots off and not as easly get shot yourself.  Also if you are the guy getting shot at but you are with a team they are getting free shots.  Its valuable to try and stick with teammates.  Sometimes its ok to go run off by yourself but I’d say it’s a more advanced thing to do once you get much better at the game and even then caution is actually way more important than aggression.

3.       For main weapons as a starter I’d suggest using the fastest firing automatic weapon possible.  The damage is normalized for pvp based on fire rate and impact.  But as a beginner its much easier to hit and make some kills if you can squeeze the trigger and just let the bullets fly as many as possible.  Later once you are good something more powerful and precise is great.  But starting out you can’t afford to miss those shots on that type of gun.

4.       On maps that have vehicles get in and ride!  They can take a lot of punishment, kill pretty easily, and are pretty fun.  My best tip for them is if you are under strong enemy fire hit the boost button and just race on out of there fast.  Recharge your shields then head right back.  Best if you can catch someone out in the open areas.

5.       Crouching takes you off the radar, make sure to crouch, sneak and find good places to hide and watch the radar for your enemies!  This will help out a ton once you get good at looking up there.  Find the places where you are above them and they can’t see you well or you have a nice hallway to defend or others like that, terrain advantage and knowing where you can and can’t go are also very important but just require practicing and play time.  Don’t be afraid to run around on the map and look for these areas.

6.    Get bounties before you go!  Getting bounties from the tower for different things you can accomplish (such as play 5 games) will go a long way to helping you level up, get more skills and abilities, and enjoy your time spent PVPing.

Destiny - First hours brief impression

Gameplay = solid, computer AI seems tough but not impossible.  They don’t just sit there and let you blow them up.  They hide, they dodge, and they fire.  Firing weapons was a challenge for me using xbox 360 controls, so will take me a bit before I don’t feel like a total novice.  So far had 3 different gun types and all were pretty fun.  The shotgun (which I really really really want to like) is the hardest to actually use.  You have to be pretty close range and then when you shoot it the recoil knocks your camera up so high you can’t follow up and do anything lol.  It could just be the crappy low level shotty I have though as well.  I got some other charge electric shot gun which is interesting but I haven’t played with much yet and a few sub machine gun types which end up being what is used when I run out of ammo on the others.

For other attacks you get grenades (which are cool).  My titan has one that disorients so I can run in and destroy stuff for a few seconds without it firing.  One thing that stood out pretty odd in my eyes was melee attacks though.  You damn near one shot anything you hit in melee.  That’s probably ok if you are a warlock with force push, or maybe even a hunter with a knife, but as a titan you are strait punching stuff.  It feels odd to blast away with a gun at a creature taking 3+ shots to kill it when swinging my right hand knocks the thing dead in one shot lol.  I think some sort of explanation to this would have been cool (like your suit is so powerful to create a strong punch).  Actually a few things in the game seem to leave you to your own imagination on how it works, this also is ok since its not important as gameplay but it was a interesting decision.

One of those things is race choice.  You start out the game and class choice is easy enough (they give you plenty of description of the three).  So you get a decent idea what you are picking there.  But Race choice has no bearing on the game (only looks) which is totally fine, but there is no description what any of those things really are.  You can be human, alienish, or robot.  But why?  Maybe they reveal this stuff later but its kind of odd choosing a race and not knowing why you chose it.  Did these alien race guys fight along side humans?  Did these robot things help?  Why these three races banded together to begin with?

Story line has been ok so far.  Lots of questions but I think that’s by design.  I’ve followed it ok though and enjoyed the missions.  Had to fight a few mini boss type guys and the fights were challenging.  Died on one of them which actually was a good thing since I wouldn’t want the game to be too easy.  There were also other real people playing in the area’s im in but the game really gives me no indication why or how.  My boss fights were instanced I think, but the surface areas had others.  Oddly some were quite different level than me (12s and even 20s) so I’m not sure why they were running around in the same zone as me.  I can only guess it spawned some mobs their level I couldn’t see but that too would be odd since I wouldn’t be able to kill those mobs.  I only saw enemies around my level.

Looking forward to more group play and seeing how that goes.  One guy seemed like he was inviting me to join him but I couldn’t quickly figure out how to accept.  By the time I found the menu and invited him to my fireteam or whatever it is he was off somewhere else and I think didn’t accept.  Was cool running through a few quick parts with another player though, felt like I had a little cover at least lol.  Pvp should be fun, can’t wait to try that soon.