Destiny too

  In an attempt to keep up with topical topics and whatever forest fire twitter is engulfed in at the moment, I’ll offer my thoughts on the current situation of Destiny 2. Huge disclaimer, I won’t claim to offer facts in this piece, it’s more of an opinion of the current state of the game and what it would take for me to actually be hyped about it again.

So first thing first, what got me into destiny? The honest answer is nothing about the game actually ever interested me. During the Destiny 1 days, I played the game a bit, but didn’t even finish the taken king campaign and that was considered to be one of the all time great expansion years. Admittedly that was mostly due to the fact it was a console game and I absolutely hate FPS games on controllers. A topic for a different day, but that’s it. So with my personal largest barrier to entry removed with the sequel coming to PC, I essentially had no choice as almost all of my gaming friends at the time were all in on the pre-ordering, open betas, hyped up marketing, and time investments surrounding the game. While I wasn’t against playing it, I definitely didn’t see where any of the excitement surrounding the game came, especially when stuff hinted towards them dropping the ball year one like they did with the first game. I will say that playing the game on launch day with some friends is a pretty fond memory of mine. I was busy trying to actually learn how I should be building my character and my friends who were Destiny 1 Veterans were trying to figure out how similar/different the new game was. It was a time of learning for everyone involved. The red war campaign, though most definitely a vehicle to the real game, was fine and I even enjoyed watching the cutscenes. The speaker got one of the hardest lines in destiny of all time telling Ghaul to kill himself, my personal favorite moment. I remember finishing the campaign and almost immediately launching into the power grind to get raid ready since the one thing Bungie has consistently delivered on has been the endgame pve experience… well mostly consistent. The funny part is that I didn’t actually touch raids until well into year two of the game. At the start, I was a pretty anti-social player. I had gotten used to it from growing up in a house where my mom was chronically paranoid about me actually talking to the people online. Something she continues to do today, but I digress. That meant getting together with a group of six people, even friends, proved to be an insurmountable challenge and god forbid I go into an LFG group. As I grew older I kinda shed that fear and started to just LFG into raids, especially when I learned that they were going to be sunset. In there, I found that raiding was probably one of the coolest parts about destiny and kinda regretted not getting into it earlier. 

The forsaken/shadowkeep era was probably the time where I really began to find the things I enjoyed about destiny. This includes the aforementioned raiding. Because lightfall would take content out of the game, I found myself running as much of it as I could. I made memories with people who I would’ve never met had I not overcome that fear a long time ago. The amount of people I would be able to hop on with and truly play the game without any moments of salt, boredom, and disillusionment was something that was truly special. Few games have actually been able to properly capture that feeling for me and I can definitely say that Destiny was a game that kinda grew on me. Unfortunately, a very different game lies before us today. The twitter minority now slanders the game. Throwing out stuff like the game being a micro-transaction infested nightmare, the content is uninspired with the intent of keeping people playing not enjoying, and that the “good” bungie devs are all working on marathon, leaving behind some kinda skeleton crew to make sure the game limps to the finish line of the final shape. Do I think there is some truth to these statements? Sure, that is a given. Do I think the game deserves the hate it has been getting? Maybe a little bit. Is the game dying? That’s what it feels like.

As each new expansion hits, I have seen people I have grinded the game with for hundreds of hours slowly lose their will to play the game. People who I ran multiple raids in a night with would hop on to do one raid a week if they were to even hop on. Complaints about the current meta, how sloppy and silly some of the seasons are, and a general fatigue towards anything the game has put out has slowly sucked the enjoyment out of many who used to play the game. The only thing actually keeping me personally invested in the game at this point is how much I enjoy the story. Unfortunately, that can only really take everything so far. When I log in and see that maintenance gets extended by 4 hours, or if I want to get my crucible matches in and run into graviton lance or whatever busted pulses there are, then it kinda makes me wonder what is happening over there. On multiple fronts has the game failed to deliver content that makes people actually want to play the game. There have been like two new pvp maps in the last three years not counting remasters. Lightfall is very clearly two campaign missions that were forced to become an entire campaign length story. Root of Nightmares is a controversial addition when Bungie delivered the masterpiece that was Vow of the Disciple last year. All of last year's seasonal content got recycled into the vanguard ops playlist which doesn’t really count as new stuff. The seasons haven’t made me genuinely happy except the difficulty scaling from season of the seraph adding some real challenge back into the daily grind. Weapon pattern farming, thought something cool to me, has become nothing more than a list of chores I need to complete when I log on. Did I get my weekly free focus? Do I have enough keys to open chests at the end of seasonal activities? What guns do I actually want to craft vs what guns are just crafted for completionist sake? Why can’t the guns that are actually cool be craftable for once! It just all feels like filler. Even moreso they have decided to really slap us in the face and attempt to milk us dry of money. If you buy the deluxe edition, it’s $80-$100. You get the campaign, seasons, raid and dungeon access. They sweetened the deal with early access exotics and cosmetics. The issue becomes that each year of dlc is cordoned off behind their own paywalls. Individual raids and dungeons become like amusement park rides where you need to pay for each one. There is like a million dlcs on the destiny 2 store with silver packs, dlc bundles that don’t make sense, and a price hiked season that came with no additional content over the last one. It doesn’t even come with dungeon access. Found that bit about purchasing the game confusing? Cool, because that’s what it’s like helping new players figure out what they need to buy to actually get to the things they would enjoy. It’s almost like this whole year is bungie biding their time until the final shape when we will finally be able to see what they have really been working on. I won’t resent them for making a decision like this, all I can ask is why even do a filler year? If they need more time to finish the final shape, they could take their seasonal teams and have them work on fixing the game and revitalizing the core playlists and not making them feel left out. That isn’t to say they haven’t been. I think the playlist specific focusing is a very cool addition and has definitely inspired me to queue up some nightfalls or crucible a little more than I would’ve if they weren’t there. It just feels too little too late for me personally.

In an effort to bring this back to some level of positivity I’ll offer some things that bungie continues to do right in the game. The aforementioned dungeon is an experience I was really satisfied with. In fact, every dungeon that has been made for this game has proven to be a highlight for me. They’re quick and easy to run with only needing three people versus six. They have simpler mechanics and no wipe timers which leads to a greater emphasis on ad clear and execution which I think makes them really cool as a honing experience. The rewards, though consistently disappointing me with not being craftable, are all very solid with nothing that really exceeds or fails expectations. That PvE experience is something that I feel is really unique to destiny’s gameplay which few other games can offer. The next thing I’ve really enjoyed has been the stories. Now for people not into the lore, this one doesn’t really check any boxes, but I’m loving the story missions that we get to experience within the game. Planting seeds and having them come to fruition at the end of a season only for all of it to come together at the end of the year has been a treat born out of the many issues with Destiny’s seasonal model. I applaud the writing team and the voice actors for ensuring that in all of it, we get a story with an insane cast of characters that we all find some way of caring about. The payoff of seeing the guardians finding allies in our previous enemies in the face of the darkness was one of the coolest things to see last year and now with us finding our old allies as they come back from the darkness has also proven to be a treat. There’s a certain nostalgia in them bringing us back to the year one areas with some new features awakens a bit of nostalgia in me, no matter if it is recycled content or not. Is it enough to really make me believe that this year won’t see a record number of people take a break from the game? Who knows, I know some of my friends have been coming back here or there. One thing I’m certain about is that the game just needs to make it to lightfall. I can’t imagine any other reason why this year would feel so lackluster. 

Wow, kinda got more into it than I expected. It’s been really hard to sit down and play destiny without constantly finding something to complain about. I remember in a discord call we were playing and someone who hadn’t played was there. He said “man, Destiny players play the game for one minute without complaining challenge(impossible).” Of course we all laughed at that, it was pretty funny. Yet, what does that say about the current state of the game. Something to consider of course is that me any my friend group are very end game when it comes to destiny. We need this new content so that we aren’t forced to just twiddle our thumbs due to a lack of need to play the other content. For the more casual audience, I’m sure they’re having a great time. There is a lot to do in the game, just not all of it is for people like me. I don’t want to really get deep into it again, but just know that above all else, I am rooting for this game’s success. That is what makes me feel the need to complain and berate so often.

Just wanna quickly say thanks for reading this far if you did. I’m not a huge internet personality who has the ability to really change stuff. I’m just a dude who wants to say what I think on the internet because that is my right. If you agree or disagree with anything I said feel free to say something to me, I would love to hear new ideas. With that, I’m off, but I will be back tomorrow with more thoughts and ramblings!