Below is a short analysis of what I think went right, and what went wrong with Destiny 2. I hope that this feedback can help out someone today in there. ====== What went right? ====== - Controls -- Using both a controller and keyboard/mouse with this game feels great. There are seamless transitions when switch between a controller and keyboard on PC, and the gunplay feels great on both. Huge shout out to VV on this one - UI -- I loved the UI in Destiny 1 because it was unique and easy to do inventory management with a controller, and it is the same way in Destiny 2. Using a controller is still as good as it was before, and using a mouse is just a faster way to do it. Love the UI - Audio -- The sound effects are awesome in this game, and there is no denying that. All the guns sound awesome, the effects are exciting to hear, and they overall do a great job of letting the player know what is going on without even looking at the screen. -- The world feels a lot more open then it did in D1, with more stuff to do other than the main story missions. -- Public events are great and have a bigger impact than did before, which I personally like. I know that some people get upset that they have come to be a bit grindy, but to me they are the main attraction for the worlds. -- Daily challenges in each area are somewhat rewarding, and give me nice little bonuses when playing for a larger milestone. -- I love the additions of lost sectors and there being more world chests. These are the things that really got me exploring the worlds. Some of my favorite areas and encounters were in the Lost Sectors. Walking into some cave and having it open up into some beautifully made and designed area gets me every time. -- I find myself doing a larger variety of events then I did in Destiny 1, which to me is a good thing. I play PvP more often because of milestones and challenges, even though I’m not great at it. There is something to be said when a game can make losing not feel that bad. Good job with that. - Content -- This may be an “unpopular” opinion based on a lot of YouTube videos and stuff out there, but I think that the amount of content in this game at release was pretty good. The PvP was good, there were a lot more story missions then before, and public events were awesome. Not to mention the amount of strikes and other world events. I think that a lot of people were comparing the total amount of content in vanilla D2 to year 3 D1, which made it seem like a lot less. Now, the question of if the player was actually given incentive to play all of this content is another thing. - Clans -- Clans are much better this time around! They actually give the player a reason to join one with powerful rewards, and they feel like they are actually helping me become a better player. The management of the clan is also much more intuitive now, as well as being in game for some of the stuff. Huge improvements in this department. - Customization -- The amount of player customization in Destiny 2 is awesome. There are tons of different ships, shaders, and combat boosts to apply to your armor to make it feel completely unique. I never feel like I look exactly the same as other players like I did in Destiny 1. I know that some people complained about shaders to begin with, but the system really does work and make sense from a design standpoint. I would have liked to see some more unique armor/weapon mods, but I understand why that didn’t happen. It would have made exotics feel less special to the player. ====== What went wrong? ====== - The "Bungie" Feeling -- It would be impossible to give feedback on Destiny 2 right now without at least touching on the state of the community. To me, it feels like Destiny does not have that personal touch from other Bungie games like Halo 3, ODST, and Reach had. There are community events, but it feels like they are all incentivised by money more than actually forming a community. By this I mean that whenever there is an event, most of the stuff seems locked behind the Eververse store. I would really like to see more involvement between Bungie and the community in this respect. Maybe something like the Flaming Recon armor from Halo 3, where only the devs and certain people had it. That really made a personal connection between players and developers in-game. - Story -- The story was not very emotionally engaging to me as a player, and ultimately ignored the questions I had from the first game. To me it seems like there are just a bunch of new characters again without fleshed out stories. I would have liked to see more of the Stranger, Speaker, and other characters all from the first game actually be explained. - The Dawning winter event -- I think that the presents feel very grindy, and not very worth my time to try and unlock. Specifically the one where you need to collect the Rare version of materials on planets, because the drop rate seems very low on them. I would have much prefered to gather the regular version of the material I think that one possible solution could have been to just change the bright engrams to be the Dawning engrams, similar to how Overwatch handles their winter event. This would have given more casual players a better chance at the loot specific to the event, and make the event more prevalent in gameplay - Eververse -- Now, for Eververse. First off, I completely understand that AAA gaming budgets have only gone up, and the $60 price tag has never budged for nearly 10 years. Microtransactions and paid DLC are necessary to fund the development of resource demanding titles like Destiny 2. -- That being said, I think that Eververse was handled pretty poorly in Destiny 2. I think that the game would have benefited greatly from having a less things in the Eververse store only be available there. If more of those cool cosmetic items were available as rare drops from strikes or something like that, then it would have given me more incentive to keep playing at the end of the game. This is what I think lead a lot of players to complain about the “end game not having enough content”. It leaves the player feeling like they need to spend more money if they want to progress farther and get more customization options. ====== General gameplay feedback ====== - The world materials(i.e. Phaseglass, Alkane Dust etc) seem harder to see then they are in Destiny 1. I think it it because of the lack of a glow or outline around them. This is odd to me because it doesn’t seem like you even use the materials for anything, except for occasional faction rewards. Even with faction rewards, you get most of those points from the tokens. I think that the materials should make themselves more obvious to the player - This game runs beautifully on PC. Playing this on max settings at 60 FPS is a serious treat to my eyes. I have never had it crash (so far) and it seems very stable. I have ran it on a 21:9 monitor nd a 16:9 monitor and they both play amazingly. Great job. - For me, getting an Exotic weapon/armor drop is not nearly as exciting as it was in Destiny 1. I feel as though they are not as special as they used to be, and that they can be too easily replaced with legendary armor. The perks never really seem to be something that make me say “Wow! That’s gonna be awesome in XYZ situation!”. **Take this with a grain of salt, because I have only played Warlock in D2, so I have not experienced all the exotics** However, I have had some friends tell me the same === PC Specs === - Intel Xeon E3 - EVGA GTX 1070 SC - 16 GB DDR3 RAM ====== In Conclusion ====== I think that Destiny 2 is a good game on its own, but has had a lot of setbacks with things like communication, general community misunderstandings, and letting down certain fans. This is a good game, and you can bet your butt that this has been an invaluable learning experience for tons of people at the studios that have worked on this game. Keep up the good work at Bungie and VV, I can’t wait to see what comes next! Happy holidays, - BenjaFriend <3