Destiny Competitive Multiplayer Locked

In most cases, the idea of gating content is typically met with vehement disapproval from gamers. After all, they've paid up to $60 for a game and they want to access any and everything right off the bat. But occasionally, these gates are put in place for good reason: to increase player enjoyment and decrease their potential frustration.

One upcoming game that we've just learned will be gating a portion of its content is Destiny, Bungie's upcoming cooperative and competitive shooter. However, while the cooperative portion will be available the second players boot up the game, the competitive section will have to be unlocked.

As Bungie's Tyson Green explains, the decision to lock off Destiny's competitive multiplayer was made to ease player frustration. What they found was that those players who booted up the game, played a mission or two, and then jumped into PvP were getting, for lack of a better term, stomped by the competition.

As a result, Bungie decided to require that players complete a few hours in the cooperative sections of Destiny, before then trying their hand at the PvP stuff. That way, players will have a full arsenal with which to do battle, and they won't be as outmatched as they might have been otherwise. It shouldn't take too long for players to unlock PvP, though; Green figures only a couple hours are required. And once players unlock PvP for one Guardian class, it will be unlocked permanently:

"So when your first character unlocks PvP, you’re a little bit further into the game. You’ve probably done one or two of the campaign missions, probably unlocked a special weapon and your super ability. And then once that’s happened we unlock it for all the characters on your account. Once you know how the game works, if you want to take a Hunter into PvP at level three, yeah, we’re okay with that. You know what the game is at that point, so that’s your decision to make."

Speaking of those special weapons and super abilities, Bungie just recently unleashed a wealth of new Destiny details including a gameplay video highlighting one of the game's Strike missions. In the video, viewers will get a better sense not just of what weapons are available in Destiny, but also how the Guardian classes' super abilities, called Focus powers, work. One Focus power, for example, allows the Guardian to toss out an energy grenade capable of taking down a large group of enemies.

Although we now know that PvP content will be locked at start-up, we actually know very little about the competitive multiplayer itself. Bungie has tiptoed around the topic, explaining how it will be different from Halo and such, but they have yet to really hammer home how exactly the option works. We expect that to change after E3 2014.

How do you feel about Bungie locking competitive multiplayer until a few hours into the game? Are you more interested in the cooperative or the competitive content in Destiny?

Destiny releases September 9, 2014 for the PS3, PS4, Xbox 360, and Xbox One.

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Source: Eurogamer