Raids are designed to be challenging and to provide an innovative experience

Jul 31, 2014 09:34 GMT  ·  By

Destiny will have a lot more to offer than what we have just seen in the beta, and its most exciting feature will be the six-player raids designed to be the first-person shooter's end-game content.

Destiny features multiple mission types, including various cooperative story missions, called Strikes, that also include boss fights. Although these have been described by the community as raids, due to their raidy nature, Bungie actually has a lot more in mind when it mentions in-game raids.

During a recent interview with IGN, Bungie's Luke Smith has revealed a little more information on the feature, saying that raids are end-game content that he expects players to want to jump into as soon as they're done with the main story missions.

"As soon as you see the way we wrap up the sort of first piece of the adventure that we're going to tell because we want to set you back out into the world to keep going. We want to try to align your motivations as the player with the motivations of the character who you've been pushing around this world. So for us I think a bunch of the endgame starts right at level 20," Smith says.

Although Destiny is not at all your traditional massively multiplayer online game, and thus Bungie avoids using the regular terminology, the term is fitting of the upcoming adventures in the "shared-world shooter."

Story quests are similar to instances where you build a fireteam of up to three members, and raids are one of Destiny's most intriguing and mysterious elements, functioning as one of the pillars of the game.

Smith has revealed that raids are six-player, friends-only gauntlet runs that are crafted by the team to be difficult and test the communication and cooperation skills of the players, and this is the main reason why Bungie won't be supporting matchmaking for them.

The developers have pointed out that they don't want them to be played by random groups of strangers, but instead for tight-knit groups of friends to experience, especially considering the fact that, unlike Strikes, which can range in duration from 20 minutes to an hour, raids will require players to commit a couple of hours in order to complete.

"The activity is going to take you and your group of five buddies into a place that you've never been. A place that you will return to frequently. And [it will] demand of you things you've never even really been asked to do in a shooter before," Smith explains.

He also points out that, oftentimes in traditional MMO raiding, you end up battling against your addons rather than the actual bosses, clicking instead of actually fighting in an action game, and that Bungie wants to leverage all the feelings involved in raiding in traditional games and translate them into the first-person shooter realm.

Furthermore, raids are an activity that the developers don't expect you to get through on your first try, and that they are meant to allow you to evolve and gear up, building your arsenal and reacting to the situations that arise as you go through them.

Destiny is coming out on September 9, for the PS3, PS4, Xbox 360 and Xbox One systems.

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