14 DAY TRIAL // Bungie has talked a bit more about the Crucible competitive mode in its upcoming Destiny online shooter, emphasizing that the fast-paced nature of the gameplay and the lethal abilities of the Guardians are intended, as the studio envisioned a really intense PvP experience for players.
In Destiny, players take control of Guardians, powerful beings of different races and genres that explore the universe in order to defeat the forces of darkness and quite a lot of different enemy races.
While most of the experience is a PvE (Player-versus-Environment) one, in which players – either solo or in a Fireteam – take on AI-controlled enemies, there's also a special competitive Crucible mode in which Guardians go head-to-head.
In this experience, expect to die a lot and be constantly on the move. This sudden change from the regular gameplay caused PS4 alpha participants to complain about unbalanced abilities and other such things.
However, Destiny developer Bungie intended to provide a lethal experience that showed the power of a Guardian.
"We definitely wanted a faster-paced game. We definitely wanted a game where people felt more instantly powerful. And in many ways the Crucible performs exactly as we intended. For some of the players of our legacy experiences, that will represent an evolution," Bungie's David Dague tells Eurogamer.
"It will represent something to adapt to. But that is the overall player experience of Destiny. You'll always be evolving as a character and adapting to new threats. This is just the first step in that process."
According to the developer, the Crucible experience is intended to be one with depth for its mechanics and strategies. Players will have to start honing their skills and using the environment if they want to perform great feats.
"In embarking on this adventure and creating the new Destiny sandbox and deciding how Guardians would behave in that environment, we did want to design a game with higher lethality. Destiny is an experience that is nuanced and will become refined in many different directions."
"As Guardians become more powerful, as they become more familiar with the maps and how to truly use their vertical movement mode to evade combat or slide out of the way of danger, people will find new ways of countering these attacks."
As such, until the full game is released this September, Destiny fans should start practicing their Crucible skills in the current beta stage that's already live on PS4 and PS3 and will go up on the Xbox One and Xbox 360 next week.