Your Destiny Is Always Online
The developers of Destiny have gone out of their way to assure fans of traditional single player campaigns that the story here can be completed without teaming up with other players. Despite this, it seems that the game requires an internet connection to play the campaign.
There are a number of possible reasons for this. Seeing that the game features a loot system, requiring an internet connection could be an attempt to prevent players from duplicating rare weapon drops by editing their save files. Or perhaps the developers might be simply attempting to encourage online play.
And while there are advantages to an always online system, there’s no denying that there are also disadvantages. Any game with a mandatory internet connection includes three possible points of failure: the game’s network, the console platform’s network, and your own internet provider. If issues arise with any of these data providers, you can’t play your game.
While Bungie should be commended for their alpha and beta tests, and while they do seem to be taking online performance very seriously, the idea of not being able to play a single player campaign offline will be a questionable decision for some players. The concept of a shared world shooter sounds like a lot of fun, but so far I don’t feel that the developers have done the best job of explaining why that shared world should be mandatory rather than optional. If you can see other players in the game world and choose to ignore them without consequence, as Bungie claims, then why do those other players need to exist in your single player campaign in the first place? Why shouldn’t it be a choice, instead of a requirement?
