When the Destiny beta launched, we got to play a pretty good chunk of the game. We got to experience some story missions, a strike, some PvP, and the Patrol mode. Little did we know at the time, we had actually played nearly 1/4th of the full game.
In the final release, there is about 6-8 hours of Story mission content with some unique encounter designs. There is about 4 hours of Strike content with mostly recycled encounter and end with bosses that are big version of some other enemy you have faced. There is about 1 hour of Raid content with unique encounter designs. Majority of crucible amounts to basically 3 PvP maps for Control and Clash which are 6v6 modes.
The Dark Below "expansion" adds maybe 1 hour of Story, 30 minutes of Strike, and 30 minutes of Raid content, plus some PvP maps and loads of load screen ships.
You will be playing the above many many times over due to the gameplay, the illusion of gameplay changing if you use different classes (Titan, Hunter, Warlock) or sub-classes and or weapon combinations. But mainly you will be playing the same content over and over for the grind. The grind to get weapons/armor, the grind to get materials to upgrade weapons/armor, the grind to get XP to upgrade weapons/armor, grind to recovery from XP resets on upgrade path, grind to get drops needed to raise light level, etc.
If this was any other shooter, you might play the campaign again on harder difficulty. You might play the co-op modes on occasion with friends, and you might dabble in the PvP at your leisure or just play PvP exclusively if that was more your thing. Really no different than Halo or Call of Duty, but because of the "RPG / grind" elements, I think you will be doing those things in a very different state of mind, and you may find yourself playing this game way more than the content warrants or that you enjoy.
Ultimately, I think when you first get into it, you will enjoy it. You will be surprised at how short it is for a game that from outside looks to have a really bold scope, you will be surprised by how much loading times are there and how much time is wasted going to Tower. Eventually all the cool will be replaced with the grind mindset and you will see many players just getting more and more efficient about how they grind and you might join into that mindset, and ultimately you will just run out of reasons to grind short of Bungie artificially extending the grind by arbitrarily raising level cap and making obsolete all your past grind by adding higher level weapons/gear and putting resets on upgrade path.
You will also for each encounter learn how to do it the easy/safe way because the game design really doesn't encourage run and gun or more dynamic engaging combat. All the AI is very scripted and for each encounter, you find one of few successful way to stand and shoot, that will basically work on each subsequent time more than not. Ultimately what makes the player more successful also makes the game more boring, while straying from that strategy just makes the game frustrating, and honestly aside from trying new weapons and play styles (which will all eventually exhaust), there just isn't any good reason to keep replaying the same content over and over.
I think for me, it is time to put Destiny in the past. All my starting friends have long since moved on to other games and are happier for it. I'll maybe return for House of Wolves because I made the mistake of pre-purchasing that with the Digital Guardian Edition, but I think I have long over stayed the point where I was enjoying the game and have long been in the mode where I am just grinding the game, and otherwise getting front row seats view on just how poorly Bungie is managing the game (repetitive lazy "events", recycled locations/encounters/enemies for "expansions", etc). I hope I am wise to avoid buying any future expansions or releases of Destiny or Bungie or this type of grind design game.
Since the game doesn't provide any point of closure, and its hard to just stop with the "addictive senseless grind" without some kind of closure, and because there is a sense of belonging to Destiny community, this here will have to serve as my closure.
Farewell and good luck - Enjoy while it lasts, and try to move on before you completely sour on the overall experience
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You but over 800 hours into a game that didn't have a real story. You have to admit Bungee did something right. The issue this games has is there is no end. Your never done. From the raids to the end of the story there is never the satisfying final cut scene. The closest we get is the strangers monologue. When she says "were not done" 5times. So being able to determine when you are done with the game is important. Play the game because it's fun, if you don't like the grind what will you like when you have the weapon?? The come back during expansions and events.