[u][b]Welcome to My TED Talk:[/b][/u]
First I want to start this off by saying this is going to be long and broken into a couple of phases about my experience with Destiny and the sad reality that is the game has lost its identity. I write this in the hope that community manager, executive, or just someone from bungie who cares will read it. If not at least this will be memorialized eventually in the lost logs of Bungie.
[u][b]WARNING:[/u]THIS IS MY OPINION![/b] I am not stating that everything I speak on is feasible or to be viewed as gospel. This is strictly a written out version of my thoughts on destiny after almost 10 years of playing. I respect the developers for their efforts, and by no means am I really targeting them with this post. This is mainly against those steering the ship.
[u][b]Destiny:[/b][/u]
Like most of you, I have been playing Destiny now since the beta and initial release back in Sep, 2014. I remember waiting at the midnight release with my best friend excited to spend hours of my Junior year in high school, grinding on what seemed to be the next best MMO/FPS. I was en"thrall"ed with the game and loved all aspects and the honeymoon phase was in full swing. As the years went on I spent a countless amount of time grinding for the best gear, playing PvP, playing trials, and always attempting the new raids with LFG teams. We all fell in love with the gameplay of Destiny, the story was: lets be honest Mid at best, but interesting enough to keep us engaged and always looking for the next tidbit of information that could alter the Destiny universe. We played the game because Bungie was able to make one of the BEST feeling FPS games and some of the most fun ability gameplay we had experienced up to that point. I believe this all started to go downward after the announcement of Destiny 2.
[b][u]Destiny 2 Failure:[/u][/b]
Upon initial launch, this is where destiny should have died. At this point destiny had been existing for years and was in a subjectively very good spot after Rise of Iron expansion. The Red war arc was terrible, felt shallow and instead of building on the foundation that they had created within Destiny, Destiny 2 wiped the slate clean and introduced a terrible primary weapon system with almost no loot and stat rolled weapons. PvP was in a -blam!- state, PvE lacked replay ability, and there was only 1 raid available that was, I’m my opinion, really not worth the hassle to attempt to LFG a team to even go into the raid. From there the community outrage has been up and down in waves as Bungie has been trying to establish a storyline, while trying to push destiny in the right direction. Rightfully so, the community has felt betrayed by the inconsistency that is Destiny 2 expansions, and the seasonal model that has trickle fed content for so long now that playing Destiny for the story can be done in its entirety on the last week of any season. Following this rant I'm going to go into the specifics of the current state of D2.
[u][b]Leveling:[/b][/u]
I do not even know where to start on this, but as this is my opinion here's what I believe has gone wrong. Bungie should have never gotten into the light level system, I miss when my account had an actually associated number to it. I couldn't care less if they just kept adding levels for me to grind my levels up, but I swear we'd all be at level 300 by now. For some reason I feel more pride in the thought of that than saying "Oh I'm at light level 1810 or 1815". They should have spent more time on how can I make the player feel more prideful/connected to their character, while still providing purpose to these levels. Whether that's locking new content behind a level wall or not, the game should always have some content that you need to grind for to be able to play. Doesn't mean it takes 100 hrs to get to the level but this should always be the case otherwise you'll run into what they are currently experiencing which is the inability to keep player retention long term.
[u][b]Gear:[/b][/u]
I will try to keep this one short but this one I don't see many people talking about anymore because I believe we've all given up. Why the heck do we have gear rarities when 99% of our gear is legendaries and the other 1% are the exotics we use. I feel there's no value in the gear and it's just taking on the "appearance" of a MMO by assigning it a rarity. Having a fully kitted out character should mean something more than just a power level, it should feel like you earned it and grinded for it and the excitement for leveling up and getting full rare armor should be just a stage underneath getting fully kitted out in legendary. There's no connection between the players and their gear. Therefore there's no value in a looter shooter when the loot has no purpose and is limited by only really being legendary weapons. I mean why could we not have a rare spare rations? And as we leveled we finally get one at a legendary level and we'd be ecstatic to get our favorite gun in its ultimate form. Plus, if they had a model like that in place it would feel much more like a looter, there'd be tons of loot all the time of all types of weapons and all types of gear. Besides a few really top tier items staying at legendary only, there's so many weapons that could be of value if you had implemented a proper loot system and not just a few additional legendaries each expansion/season. Loot loses it's purpose, and in turn players feel no need to play.
[u][b]Mods:[/b][/u]
I am, and always have been against the modding system. Don't get me wrong, I love that I can customize my gear to fit the activity I am playing, BUT again it ruins any sort of attachment to a specific piece of armor. Instead of mods, why couldn't we of had gear that inherently had these mods and could be crafted, or rerolled or anything but the current unlock the mod system we have in place now. Which is basically useless cause everything is available for those who have been playing and contributes to the consistent lack of emotions towards gear.
[u][b]PvE:[/b][/u]
Even as a PvP advocate, I cannot deny the fact that D2 is primarily a PvE game. The core of this game is suppose to be PvE, and can be seen by how many PvE activities there are. However, Bungie has really toed the line of replay ability. In an expansive universe such as Destiny, I would expect there to be MUCH MUCH more to the PvE content. Marketed as an "open world" game, we would expect there to be many more locations for us to explore, and find new places, lore, side quests (not just bounties), and loot. All of which fall short for a game that's suppose to be PvE first. They marketed the idea of this being an Open-world MMORPG but fail to really deliver the RPG element, or really a purpose to the open world. Let me ask you this question, when was the last time you purposely loaded into a patrol zone just to look around, explore, do public events, or to find loot, or even see how the world changed with the story? Because to be totally honest, for me it's not been since the initial release of D2. Even with the most recent failure in Lightfall, I couldn't really care about what Neomuna looked like and just grinded out the story (which was another "experimental" failure), just to unlock strand and play with the new subclass. I didn't feel a connection to the space, and I think this is where Destiny is hurting. We don't have any connections to these spaces to make them feel worth while. Besides the lack of purpose for these "open-world" spaces, everyone is tied into the dumb seasonal activity that's general copy-paste-slightly alter to fit the theme of the season. If Bungie was to have done this all right, we would see a purpose to these Open-world spaces, so if Bungie wants to sunset something, maybe sunset all the wasted data on open-world spaces and public events that nearly no one plays. (Not a wise choice for a game marketed as open world)
[u][b]LFG:[/b][/u]
Speaking on PvE, why can't we LFG for more things in game? For a game that's all about creating new friends and experiences, this is a terrible way of executing it. I am so tired of looking at a piece of content and seeing that I have to go to another website or location just to find a group to play with. (Yes I have no friends) If Bungie had properly established an LFG capability I believe that this would actually improve the replay ability of PvE content, and reduce the player drought in those areas.
-
[quote][u][b]Welcome to My TED Talk:[/b][/u][/quote] Aaaaaaaaand....ya lost me.
-
I can't believe the cat ate a whole bag of Skittles!
-
I didn't read anything past junior high / middle school. No wonder you aren't as happy my friend. You grew up. You started off as a pre--blam!- teenager and are now a full adult. Life changes. Get used to it. I say this as someone who is going on 45 early next year. I have gone from gaming on an IBM 8088 XT till my current OLED switch and everything in between. Games have gone from great to bad to great again to dead & forgotten. I have seen the gaming Glory days of the Original PS2 when gamers had the most options ever at one time to where we are now. Most games die within 2 years. The fact that you have been playing a game for over 10 years speaks volumes. Not very many games hold the title of making it this long at all. Hell, COD has undergone many title changes. Destiny has kinda stayed the course. Is it as great as it was in the beginning no, but what game ever is. It is still playable for hundreds of hours at minimal cost. I have actual 10s of thousands of dollars of games litterally sitting on shelves in boxes etc..that will never be touched again. The little we pay for such replayable content is NOT bad when put into proper prospective.
-
Cayde-7
100+ hostages held by hamas over 1 YEAR! - old
I didnt read a word and i dissprove anything you said. Just because. -
The Gear part 100% changed when they changed leveling so you can hit max without actually doing endgame. That’s the achievement build and leveling points you made in 1. In D1 when you saw someone at max you knew they were an endgamer be it raids or trials. It was the only way to max. The loot was the best and the most coveted loot in the game. Now you can get god rolls from crafting world drops and people can farm dregs to be higher level than hardcore endgamers. Those changes 1000% killed both the level and gear prestige which is essential to an MMO. A final note on that is that eververse consistently gets better gear that endgame now and that was never a problem in D1 either
-
[quote]Like most of you, I have been playing Destiny now since the beta and initial release back in Sep, 2014. I remember waiting at the midnight release with my best friend excited to spend hours of my Junior year in high school, grinding on what seemed to be the next best MMO/FPS.[/quote] Taking a shot🥃
-
[u][b]PvP:[/b][/u] Oh boy, the youtubers have been having a field day with this topic. I think people like Gladd, GrenaderJake, and Aztecross have all made good points on PvP. I know Gladd went off on PvPer's and basically said that they're wasting their time/breath and if they don't enjoy the game to move on because Bungie isn’t changing it's ways. (Not verbatim just my perspective summary). I can agree to an extent, but let me offer another perspective. PvP is a CORE function of current end game D2. I don't just mean trials or comp. I mean really when you think about it, PvP offers some of the "better" repayable content in this game for a very long time, even before dungeons or grandmasters. We all love the gameplay, and the feel, and the satisfaction of hitting that crispy 3-shot hand cannon kill. Or when we got the Vex Mythoclass for the first time and going into PvP just to cause havoc. That's what drives us to play the game is that the gunplay is amazing. But Bungie has really abandoned PvP, anti-cheat has become a failure as the uptick in cheaters continues. Barely any new maps have been added, skill based match making sucks, comp is dreadful and unrewarding, Iron banner has zero purpose, trials is dreaded by most, and the sandboxes have always been in a strange state. I feel like there's only a team of 10 developers for PvP and they just aren't getting any support from the Executives. all of us who PvP have found ourselves depressed launching the game mode. The only real fun I have had in PvP in years in when the private lobbies came out and we'd "create our own content" by doing random rolls rumble with my clan. If D2 does nothing for PvP, as it has been, this I believe will really cause a huge player base drop off. Once the lose all the pvpers, there goes those retention numbers. [u][b]Reward system:[/b][/u] To start, I understand the need for a battle pass, sure. Every possible game is doing it nowadays and I don't see Bungie changing that, but can we at least get a better rewards system? There's no real variety in vendors, and while the changes were "okay" there's so little loot that it really doesn't matter to redeem the 200+ crucible engrams I have when I'd have to spend time just to delete the useless gear while getting annoyed over it. When we had factions at least there was some kind of diversity in vendors but I find the whole current system underwhelming and frankly has no purpose besides given us a single ascendant shard a season. [u][b]Microtransaction and Events:[/b][/u] We all hate the mobile game that is D2. I mean seriously, it's turned into a game that's only a single step down from Clash of Clans or Clash Royal at this point. Why is so much time spent on development for eververse vs the game? Well because the Execs at Bungie are greedy and because players buy it. If we all boycotted this method I'm sure we could do something about it but Bungie is strictly taking advantage of consumers in this area. Aztecross did a way better deep dive into this so I will just say I align on 99% of what he's saying. Sure an argument could be made that they're a live service game and they couldn't afford anything more if they didn't use this method, but I would counter with saying that Destiny players would be much more willing to pay a monthly subscription or something of that nature to stop gatekeeping gear/ornaments behind that paywall (which may help with incorporating a paywall against cheaters, just saying). That way development time could be spent in much more needed areas such as server issues. *Looking at you the Old Tiger Engine that could* And as if it wasn't enough the yearly events are just as bad and repetitive and are another addition to the eververse store. "Buy this event gear for $20, every year and barely play the event because we did nothing new!" Wow, makes me as a player really have a want to play this game again and spend money on something I've spent hundreds of dollars on already. Thanks Bungie!