Destiny developer Bungie has come forward to better explain its shooter’s modes of play, following the leak of alpha gameplay footage.
The leaked Destiny alpha footage appeared on NeoGAF, and was quickly discussed by members of the community. To avoid misconceptions, Destiny’s lead game designer Luke Smith has since posted in the same thread to explain what was seen.
He said:
There’s a lot of confusion here, and we haven’t done the best job ever of explaining the game or its structure.
I’m Luke, and I’m one of the lead designers on Destiny.
First, Destiny is structured into Activities.
We’ve attempted to build a suite of activities that can suit a variety of moods (I want something challenging! I want to chill out with my friends! I want to see where the story goes next! I want to shoot other players!, I want the game to be a cruel dominatrix! et cetera)
These activities come in a bunch of flavors:
- Story missions – soloable activities (you can still play them in groups of up to 3!), often with ties to the main story arc of Destiny (the campaign). These activities appear at various Levels (numerical, relative to the player) and choosing a higher level (relative to you) means you’re opting in for some additional challenge.
- Strikes – 3 player activities, with bosses and loot at the end. Their goal is a highly replayable activity that will – at higher levels – lead you into the loot game.
- Explore – cruise around the surface of a planet in Fireteams of up to 3, taking odd jobs and tasks for the City. You can find minerals and resources out in the world that you’ll have some use for as you find weapons in Destiny that you want to stick with. This is a lower intensity activity
- Raids – 6 player, cooperative required, communication required gameplay. High challenge. We haven’t talked much about this yet and I’m not going start that conversation here on NeoGAF
- Multiplayer This is for the “shoot other players” mood.
