To your first point about a sandbox at odds due to some things in a sandbox remaining fast while the direction of the game is slow and vice versa, I agree that it is not a good state for a game to be in. [b]I believe the devs would have to do a comprehensive update in which every single aspect of the game is visited in PvP and then slowed down for it to work.[/b] If they miss even a few things, it would only narrow down the movement meta and ultimately make loadouts even less original than they already are. Ex: They slow down the game, but Stompees and Peacekeepers remain just as fast as normal or aren't nerfed enough. I also understand what you mean about players having to relearn muscle memory. It could really set a lot of players back. At the same time I believe the novelty of a new sandbox would be exciting to learn (especially given the current hatred of our current sandbox). [b]Most likely if they were to make actual changes like the ones I want, they'd make a labs gamemode first to see how it would even feel and if players can get used to it.[/b] And to your point about synergy, it relates a bit to the point about a disconnected sandbox. Destiny 1 was an Arena shooter through and through. Objectives were map based, and so were your resources. Due to slower movement speed the games would be slower overall, but if you focused on the right things (like picking up special from chests across the map), the game would progress at the right pace. Destiny 2 in it's current state is full of gamemodes and features that are supposed to be in an Arena shooter. Control, specific heavy spawns, objective trials, you name it. [b]I think Destiny 2 should lean into what it used to be so that it can create more synergy with itself.[/b]

Its not really novel and its not really learning if its forced and most attempts to slow the game down have felt forced. They've also apparently accidentally privileged certain players that wouldn't have done anywhere near as well even with the game slowed down and without the "attempts." The people are supposed to be doing the stuff and taking a game that has had 10 years to get to where it is and trying to slow it all down just doesn't seem very easy to do, to say the least. It doesn't mean its impossible though. [quote] Most likely if they were to make actual changes like the ones I want, they'd make a labs gamemode first to see how it would even feel and if players can get used to it.[/quote] This will be cool as long as there are other movement shooter transpirings taking place somewhere. A lot of the non movement shooter directions the game took previously are why a lot of the more dedicated playerbase has only ever had a luke warm reception to most things. I don't see most of the top tier falling head over heels for a slowed down game and some of the things that has come with that in the past, regardless of whether or not they knew what was happening. [quote]I think Destiny 2 should lean into what it used to be so that it can create more synergy with itself.[/quote] Its certainly not going to be easy for them to decide what to keep from the game's more recent evolutions and what to throw out. But Destiny has been fast (or somewhat that) for as least as long as it was slower. I can't think of too many people that play the game regularly that think of the speed as a huge issue. And to your point about relearning a lot of the problem people have is that they want the game to instantly work exactly the way they think it should without them really having to learn anything. A lot of the posts lately are literally "I have played a match, let me know when you get your stuff together then I'll be back." There's only a certain amount that can be done for people like that and have the game still be good. Attempting to slow the game down, mostly because some people find it frustrating, is quite a big "cater" to certain people. And those are the people, that when it still doesn't work...

I'm willing to concede that maybe this game will never slow down (or slow down in a tasteful way that people enjoy). Maybe the dwindling population of sweaty PvP players and their solved loadouts should deserve to keep their movement meta the exact same as it is so at least [i]they[/i] can keep playing whilst everyone else quits. I don't condone lowering the skill floor to hell so that low skilled people can have fun or even smacking high players down to Earth with radical changes. I just think the current movement meta is well and truly unlearnable for a great majority of the playerbase. If you look at K/D statistics on DestinyTracker.com, typical player K/D is in the shitter. They've tried SBMM, they've tried checkmate, they've tried AE, and they've tried this recent overhaul yet things remain decidedly bleak. The crux of it all was the strange evolution of Destiny from a unique arena shooter into an unbalanced movement shooter. Like I said before, maybe the general playerbase should just stick to PvE and let the current dying population have their fun. But I do think Bungie has the ability to properly tune their sandbox for everyone. Even if it takes forever.

[quote]Maybe the dwindling population of sweaty PvP players and their solved loadouts should deserve to keep their movement meta the exact same as it is so at least they can keep playing whilst everyone else quits.[/quote] The thing I forgot to bring up earlier is that all those people like how fast it moves in PvE. Sometimes during the last few years the switch from PvP to PvE could be so jarring that you really started to wonder what the Bungie was really doing with itself. A lot of the times it was simply working on thangs... But that's one of those things that's really not supposed to be like that and although its never been exactly the same it started to feel like maybe a little too much "anything goes" in terms of achieving a given outcome. [quote]I don't condone lowering the skill floor to hell so that low skilled people can have fun or even smacking high players down to Earth with radical changes.[/quote] Its still hard for me to tell if most of the problem with this game hasn't been how it works for the middle in terms of people that play regularly or game regularly. It sometimes appears to take some of the most "honest" and "normal" gamers and gives them an experience that makes no sense so that some people who have yet to prove that its in any way possible for them to be satisfied can do better sometimes. Its not that a slower game would automatically be bad its just that its hard for me as a player to grasp how the stuff was developed a certain way originally and now almost every single thing is going to sync up correctly after supposedly having been retuned by humans. I don't know what is or isn't possible but there's also the fact that the game did a pretty good job of doing all that already last year. I wasn't playing during a lot of it but when I came back it appeared to be about as good as some of that kind of thing could get. I'm saying you necessarily, but with this game whenever the more pvp player way turns out to be better there's a group of people that just always want to yank that right back and, like I said I'm not talking about you, but those people are always lurking.

Bungie does their best to keep things consistent between the sandboxes. But honestly at this point, I wonder if they just made Destiny 2 PvE and PvP separate games with connected data. Way too radical to implement, but it's just that the philosophy of making a game for everyone that no one likes is quite convincing. MMOs in general try to have everything (PvP, PvE, etc) so anyone can get into that MMO, but I don't really know how other MMOs deal with balancing their sandboxes. I've only played SWTOR and from what I remember the PvP in that game is an afterthought.

Tbh, its going to be interesting to see what direction they take Marathon in. Of course, that game is going to have to have a more casual player base, but the top tier of PvP in this game can probably be convinced to play anything with the right Bungie gameplay. The PvP does need to be playable by the player base though. That's probably a good idea. If it worked right maybe some modes could be faster and some slower. Destiny is weird because there's always been a lot about it that appeared to be purposely not like other mmo's. The whole balanced everyone sharing and having specialized jobs in PvP thing just doesn't really translate well with how powerful people expect their individual characters to be. "Why is Bungie nerfing everything? I want to feel powerful. Now balance it!" Some of it just doesn't add up.

I'm so ready for Marathon to be here already. I genuinely think Bungie can make a truly phenomenal extraction game. With their community story events and worlds first races, I want to be on the front line of discovering things in a new game that Bungie is putting their full attention into. Maybe it'll be as magical as the start of D1.