An image of a player who is aiming-down-sights with a destiny gun. There's fiery VFX in the air and the gun is firing a beam at an enemy combatant.

The Basics of Destiny Encounter Design

I realized that despite working on Destiny and Destiny 2 encounters for years, I’ve never really talked in any sort of detail about what goes into that. Let’s change that!

If you haven’t done it already, it’s worth reading my Fundamentals of FPS Gameplay article, which is a 5-10 minute read that I originally wrote for this Destiny article.

The same diagram again, but the two dots have moved. This time their cones are even more broken up but they do have line-of-sight to each other.

2026-06-162026-07-08Content Design

Fundamentals of FPS Gameplay

At the most basic level, FPS gameplay is the interplay of line-of-sight, movement, facing, cover, and timing between a player that can shoot what they see, and at least one opposing entity that can shoot back. Let me illustrate a little bit.