I did love this game, I truly did. I played no other games for 11 months after launch. And after 1803 hours of playtime, it's the most time I've ever spent on a single game.
I'm going to air the merits both good and bad as I see
This post is going to be rather lengthy and detailed so please no trolls, h8ters, crucibabies or noobs beyond this point.
I'm 37, my first console was an Intelivision.
I have always been a gamer and always will be. I work fulltime in the oil/gas industry and played Destiny 2-5 hours a day, everyday since launch.
Destiny was the FPS that I always wanted to play. Part FPS, part MMO, with a hint of RPG.
A platform of social shooters, interesting events and a way to meet likeminded people from all over the world.
Meet enough people and form a clan, attempt raids, Iron Banner and Trails. Bringing people together the likes of which I had not experienced before, it was awesome.
Even with all the bugs, glitches and exploits that plagued Destiny at launch, the base platform for something amazing was there. No other game was like Destiny.
But... You decided to use a game engine that offered great visuals and solid mechanics, but is very susceptible to bugs and glitches and is a nightmare to work on. Seemingly simple fixes would take months, and some over a year to fix. (The can't sprint bug)
I understand that a new engine is going to be problematic and will take time to learn its limits and abilities, but after 1803 hours of gameplay time across PS3 and PS4, maybe the decision not to use a more user friendly and proven engine was a mistake. It would have saved both code writers and players alike countless hours of frustration.
Grimoire... The decision to take the vast majority of the lore out of Destiny and make it only available outside the game and in text form was a total mistake. The lore itself is amazing but why a player can't access it in game boggles the mind. I can't think of any other game that forces players to go to another source outside the game to learn more about the game itself. Bad call. Make the grimoire available in game.
Progression. The light level system is not a good system. Denying players that paid the same amount of money that all other players paid but denying them the ability to achieve end game top level unless 6 player raids were completed wasn't fair to the vast majority of the community.
Allow the "filthy casual" to get to max level, but make the gear the unique selling feature with awesome perks for their respective roles aka PVE or PvP.
While I am not a proponent of In game matchmaking for End game activities, the current elitist LFG sites are a toxic reminder of what happens when you make end game
Activities dependant on weapons and experience ONLY. "Must have ToM and Black spindle, 315 light and completion emblem" in order to join a group is unacceptable. You can only get those items by doing the raid, but very very few people will "carry" inexperienced players through it. (Big thanks to the Sherpas who do carry players).
Give casual players a means to get high light levels so they will be more accepted into raid groups. Make the gear/rewards special, not the light, for their respective activities. (See Etheric light discussion near the end of post)
Nerfs and buffs. This is possibility the most difficult thing for a game developer to get right. If the guns just had stats, it would be almost balanced from day 1, but adding the unique perks for each weapon type compounds the problem for all types to be viable. I think most of the changes are a way to collect data from whichever meta is currently used and eventually it will be sorted out.
However... For a game that the majority of player base is focused on PVE and the minority on players focused on PVP, is almost like the separation of church and state where the state is PVE and the PVP players are religious fanatics!!!
Any given day the forums are plagued with toxic posts about certain guns, classes and abilities being "OP" or unfair. And 99% of those posts are from the minority of the player base that focus on PVP. As a game developer, why are you allowing the minority of the player base dictate how the game should be experienced for the all players???
I never heard the Vex or Hive complaining about Thorn or TLW, yet due to their overuse in PVP, they were nerfed. Now for those players who never play PVP but enjoyed using those guns on strikes, patrols and raids, those guns now became far less effective, and the PVE players are being punished for PVP players choices is a totally seperate activity. And due to the nature of your engine, you can adjust the amount of damage the guns deal separately for PVE and PVP , you can't adjust how they handle/behave. With the recent nerf of shotguns, (again due to overuse in PVP). The PVE player is being punished for things they had nothing to do with and no say in
Keep the base abilities and handling characteristics mostly unchanged in PVE. Giving a slight damage buff is a lazy way of trying to make a menses for the PvP fanatics crying out for changes that they are the cause of and definitely not the solution too.
The Taken King. A much needed expansion with economy fixes , meaningful progression and relative content. It was awesome.
But the decision to block players from content that they had previously payed for and forcing your player base to purchase TTK in order to resume the ability to play those activities is without a doubt the most disrespectful and downright shady business decision I've ever seen in gaming. A "pay to win" model is bad enough, but a "pay again to be able to do what you already paid for" model" is simple greed. I don't know for certain if it was Bungie or Activision that made this decision (leaning towards Activision) but they should hang their corporate heads in shame.
Please show me 1 other example in gaming of such a practice where you have to repay for content. I'll wait...
The final straw that broke my back and will to play was the recent update and announcements. You hyped up to keep our materials and Etheric light. Some even started to stockpile the stuff, in the hopes of making it worthwhile to grind.
The faction rep increase for the amount of materials isn't worth it at all, and Etheric light for Petra rep that doesn't matter anymore in TTK??You dropped the ball on that one.
You could have easily made Etheric light relevant again simply but making it give 1 light point bonus to weapons and gear that you currently own. It would have been a game saving decision.
Those players being shut out of endgame activities would have had a means to slowly build up their characters to a level where LFG groups would accept them in and be able to experience the raid and get the endgame loot. It makes Prison of Elders something worthwhile to do again, only takes 3 players and possibility match made since it is relative easier now than before, while still only getting 2 Etheric light per week per character.
But no, you shut out all players who didn't buy TTK from content and made all Y1 content irreverent. Are you ashamed of Y1?
Are you hoping to sweep all the mistakes Y1 had under the carpet and starting anew with TTK saying this is how it should have been? After we all played for 100's and 1000's of hours?
And now, announcing that there will be no new DLC type content released until "Destiny 2". Instead giving us event based content for what could potentially be a 9 month waiting period, and while the events are awesome is scope and fun to play, the micro transactions model for making profit during this period is not what the majority of players want.
Forcing players to pay $10 for a record book to keep track of their stats during a limited time event? No thanks
Making emotes that players had to pay for available as nightfall rewards. Are you going to refund those players who paid for that particular emote and then get it as a nightfall reward? Did all sense of reason and respect for players money spent just get thrown out the window instead of at the screen?
No Bungie, you had my love and respect for 12 solid months. Ask any of my clan mates, I stood up for you, defended some of the poor decisions you made with "don't worry, just hang in their and they will fix it". Always trying to see the positive side of the decisions you made ingame.
But with the current and future model, shady micro transactions and lack of content, I can no longer justify 2-5 hours a night on your current game.
If my clan mates need me for something I will so oblige but, I'm not doing it cause I enjoy it, or for personal progression and especially not for you, the only reason I'll play is for them. The ones you've forgotten, the ones you've let down and repeatedly disappointed, the ones you don't listen to anymore.
If you can make a loyal Guardian such as myself stop playing, take it as a sign of things to come. Learn from your mistakes both inside and outside the game. Over 25,000,000 guardians deserve better than this.
Edit1: Trending? Wow thanks guys. Most replies have been awesome, can't avoid a few trolls and fanboys but meh.. I'm leaving anyway due in part because of them.
Edit2: 300 replies !!! I'm going out with BANG!!!
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I agree with 99.99% of what you said (hey .01% mistakes are allowed:) but I share the same experience and am holding back on RoI rather than jumping on pre-order bandwagon. I might still do it but a lot of my friends (250+) have stopped playing Destiny due to one or more reasons from your list. Bungie will always get new users so cash flow won't be an issue and you and me are already dead accounts for them as there isn't much love for y1 players any more. The things we loved are almost gone and outdated in this game. New DLC is new content/game and deserves the price to be paid but I should not be forced to think different of something I have purchased in the past. There is little of no respect for PvE and community driven decisions (nerf Gally because everyone wanted Gally, wth?) makes you guess who is in the driving seat here. I started my XBL subscription with Destiny and my first friend for Destiny who back in Jan '15 helped me with raids and casual missions to level up. The community has gone from helpers and sherpas to streamers and elitist driven now. Same people have left to play inferior games as there is less frustration in them. Bungie has same "selective hearing" issues as many 5yo who always annoy someone. I find it hard to believe that a game owned by 25 million is changed by the voices for 2-3000 likes on an elitist post or rant or by data which is "true" representation of all the 25 million players of this game. I may or may not play Destiny for long as times are changing and if Bungie doesn't change with time, this amazing game will go down in the history as another MW/COD comparable crap in future and believe me when I say that "No one over here wants this to happen!". Bungie, you are a great game development company and I know it as a fact as you have given some great gaming years in the past so don't ruin this amazing game you have made by silly mistakes that could be avoided.
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Damn, wish bungie would listen to you
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I'm a little late to this one...but yeah man, you make good points. I'm in the same boat. I loved destiny. Got my friends into it. Defended dumb decisions from time to time; but now I just jump into the occasional raid from time to time.
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Edited by Leif Oryxson: 12/14/2015 6:44:46 AMWell I mean I could get into details but for now I will try and keep it as a summary of my response 1) TTK is not needed for any year 1 content. 2) Due to the amount of devs that bungie actually has, they simply cant create content fast enough to uphold the year 1 standard of content cycles. 3) Bungie CONFIRMED that a bigger 'dlc' type thing was coming early 2016 with "Changes coming to the director (in other words new story and/or strikes and/or raid)" (im sorry I would cite this but again its 12:30 and I need to be up by 5:30) 4) Weapon balancing is meh at best and the engine is partially to blame so yeah I give you that. 5) While yes in the grand scheme of things PvE players are the 'majority' of players, they do not often stick around as long between content cycles. During the intermissions of content drops it is really mostly the PvP crowd that is still playing the game at any kind of consistency. While I do think that some separation of PvP and PvE is needed, overall it is PvP that needs rebalancing over PvE. Sorry its not very specific but I was just browsing this forum before sleeping. Have fun playing other games (which by the way is in no means a crime and truthfully I would recommend doing so as to not get burnt out on any 1 game) and hope to see you back when that piece of content drops early 2016! Edit 1: 6) Most people (including myself) who paid for emotes that I have talked to are really not mad about them being released now because we had them for a while before they did. Its not even a guaranteed drop anyways and the rng is very high that you wont get the emote you are looking for soooo yeah (and yes I made the edit like a minute after posting bite me :P)
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Good read. Thanks. I only wish Bungie would read it ... And take it to heart.
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Only 1803. Lol
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That's a perfect post
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Id rather have them come out with new (free) stuff thats payed for by microtransactions than have to spend another $40 on two not so great expansions in yr 2 Seems like an obvious win to me This way also the playerbase isnt segmented with each new things that comes out And they wont feel pressured into buying the newest dlc with content lockouts I hope they never do expansions again like DB and HoW
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Good post mate
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Posted this on Reddit... I thought these forums were brutal, those guys were just plain assholes lol
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Great post and 100% agreed on all points.
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May the strength of the pack be with you always Guardian! I too stopped playing Destiny weeks ago after playing it daily since launch. Only came back to try out the SRL, which I rather enjoy. But the micro-transaction business is something I really hate. I have great memories and met a lot of awesome people, for that I am thankful. But I don't think I will be buying Destiny 2.
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Awesome post mate. I agree with you 100%! I especially really like your idea for the use of Etheric Light. That would've got me and my friends back into PoE a couple of times a week!
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Edited by eeeen321: 12/13/2015 12:34:15 PMI agree with every word. Every. Single. Word. Well written post with so many great points. Not one bad point. No obvious bias. I stopped playing a month or two ago, because of [insert your entire feedback segment here] ... You took the words out of my mouth from start to finish.... Except the bit about your age and profession. LoL. I'm 32 and am a fisheries manager. Other than the personal stuff, from the start to the finish of your post I am with you 100% , with the good and the bad. At this point, I really dislike the direction they are going w/ Destiny, I'm going to be a hard customer to win back. Distrusting and frustrated is how I left Destiny, and it hasn't changed. Later! Have fun with your next game. When I left Destiny, I jumped back into FO3 and FO:nv before I get FO4. Haven't looked back.
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Also technically they didn't take out any content you paid for. Although I see your point the main thing is you can still play any strike or story mission from year 1. You just aren't able to do nightfall anymore. The nightfall isn't content. Content would be the strike. Nightfall is just a difficulty
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I really like the post except for the part about pvp. I like both. I play a lot of pvp now because the raid got boring. It's the only thing keeping me and many others coming back. I know you ultimately put most the blame on bungie but it just sorta seemed like you blamed pvp players a lot for the nerfs. I just want a balanced pvp because I play it a lot. I don't really appreciate it being called crying every time someone who plays pvp asks for a balance on something out of balanced ya know? It's what they play they want balance and bungie wants the feedback. I do not ever want any of the nerfs to effect pve tho. It's 100 percent bungies fault they can't separate pvp nerfs from pve not even 1% pvp players fault. Just throwing that out there.
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I think the most frustrating thing to me about this most recent update, is their changing of the Crucible fireteam options in Rumble. Seriously, I joined Destiny simply because my friends played, and because I could play Rumble with them as the [i]only[/i] game that I could play against my friends online without hassle. Mayhem Rumble was, hands-down, the most fun experience Destiny had to offer because I could play with my friends. I could take a break from the serious nature of the Crucible, and enjoy it while laughing. With the removal of being able to form a fireteam for Rumble playlists such as Mayhem and Inferno, nearly all of the fun that was once present in Destiny has been all but removed entirely. Sure, I can participate in the Classic playlists, but then I am just catering to Bungie by blatantly rubbing my content in the faces of people who don't have Taken King after wasting so much time in matchmaking. I have to deal with people asking if I can 'Game Share' with them, or insulting me for what Bungie forces me to do, just to play against my friends to have [i]fun[/i]. It isn't fair to players trying to actually enjoy Crucible, and it isn't fair for the people who don't have Taken King if we want to kick the crap out of our friends in a pure chaos free-for-all. All of my friends are moving on to Next Generation consoles, playing Next Gen games; consoles I can't afford, and games that are just tireless rehashes with very little originality. I have been sitting complacently, silently ignoring the ridiculous changes that have been taking place simply because we aren't using something the way Bungie wants us to. With this recent update, I feel almost as if--despite paying for their extra content--I am being told by Bungie I am not allowed to play their new content against my friends in a way that makes their game enjoyable despite its massive shortcomings, simply because it isn't how they had intended it to be played despite it being unchanged until now. I've been a tentative supporter of Destiny until now, but since I no longer have an enjoyable game to play with my friends and have to hunt again for one that [i]is[/i] to me that my friends also have, I feel it is time at least for me to let Destiny go. If I can't play the only fun Crucible type with my friends, I think I will move on and find a better game.
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Edited by MorgueWolf: 12/12/2015 9:30:52 AMI'm gonna respond to quite a bit of this. First of all there will be more dlc coming out so you probably need to edit that part. I agree about the difficulty of being able to raid and such and the community not being friendly, sherpas seriously need to be rewarded somehow that'd be amazing. BUT you can just wait for iron banner and play the crap out of it and get high level light gear and your set You talk about how pvp is the minority and I highly disagree that's honestly just your opinion, man. As a fact I would say competitive multiplayer is what generally keeps a game relevant after it's release. Like destiny is very mmo esque so people keep moving through the progression system with the raid and such, but once everyone has all the guns, beats all the strikes/raids, and is at max level (which I know is crazy to think about) but what would be left to do? Well, play multiplayer. And just in general multiplayer is quite fun and needs to be considered and is part of what makes this game great and dynamic and give it variety. I can understand where your frustration comes from with weapon nerfs but in your examples you talked about using the last word and thorn in pve... The last word has ALWAYS been garbage in pve so it doesn't matter, it's a pvp gun. And thorn actually got a net damage buff in pve so if it was a year 2 exotic it would actually be better. I think they do a great job in this respect. I agree on the grimoire point. As for locking out of content. This isn't really entirely true because at the end of the day you can still play all those strikes, patrol areas, bounties, raids, story missions, ect. So I find it hard to sympathize, that being said I see issues with what happened. Destiny releases work in a 2 year process, where buy the base game for year 1 and you have to buy the expansion for year 2. The thing is people didn't know that. I think the system could have been designed in a way that year 1 players could have had access to more things, like, you already bought the base game that should entitle you to the games life cycle. Look at how the game functioned if you didn't have the dark below, you just couldn't do certain things but you were still brought along in the economy and level system. It really ought to work the same. And that would still be a dick move like there wouldn't be a lot to do, but you could still play the game to an extent. Like I think they could have locked you out of all events which would've maybe incentivized you to pay. Idk overall it wasn't handled well, i do understand that they couldn't design two coexisting endgames, but they could have brought up year 1 players just a little more, tease them with the expansion in the game make them want new things. Destiny 2 will be a different game and destiny 1 will likely remain as it is at the end of year 2 so that's where the madness stops and starts again. I truly hope they find a better solution to this because it doesn't do well for their image and it could actually help them quite a bit. Like maybe their could be a price incentive for opting into both years at the getgo. OR you could save money for only opting into year 3. Either way, at the end of it you buy a full game I feel like you're entitled to certain things. Also your etheric light idea sounds like a cool idea! But I don't think that means this game is bad just because that would be a useful way for you to continue the progression system, there still are ways, like I said, iron banner. Also the microtransactions are purely optional cosmetics that don't effect the game and seem to be what provide funding for live events like festival of the lost and srl. So i can't understand why people complain. I DO however take an issue that now you can get them with the nightfall, like... If I had known that yeah I wouldn't have bought any because I wouldn't want to waste my money. They should've announced that.
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Good long post that tells it like it is. Us year ones that were loyal and dedicated to the game, defending it and sticking with it over the many bugs, flaws, and evil rng, are finally done with bungie's antics. A vast majority of my destiny friends and clan mates have left for good. And the truly loyal are spending much more time on fallout. Which I'll be playing as soon as the wrapping paper comes off in two weeks. The path that bungie is now taking is not one I will follow. I don't plan on pre-ordering destiny again. I will wait and see. But I have little hope as much of bungie's efforts seen to lie with pvp and crucible. I feel pve players were grossly baited and switched and repeatedly mistreated. I don't believe they've earned my future dollars. But we'll see in a year. Who knows, maybe they'll surprise everyone. But I doubt it.
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Edited by FightinFinn 2-7: 12/12/2015 6:34:17 PMI agree with you 110%. If they would listen to you, I might actually pick this game back up. But we both know that won't happen.
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You deserve to go out with a bang, there is not one thing in your post I cannot agree with (up to TTK drop) I never bought it, for the EXACT thing you wrote about, great post, very well written.
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This is what feedback should look like!