I've put so many hours into D1 and D2 that it scares me to even look at the actual number. This franchise has meant a ton to me and is the most invested I have ever been in a game. Even through the bad times I've kept on with it because there is no way Bungie doesn't fulfill the endless amounts of potential that this game has right? After vanilla D1 i was like "The expansions will fix it!" ehh i was off there, but still had fun. There were those moments in the vanilla version and the DLC's that showed off flashes. I mean VOG was great and so was the TOO. Ok, so then Taken King comes out and boom...Easily the best (at least to me, if you think another time in D1 was better to each his own) Destiny has been. I have never had as much fun with a space in this game as I had with The Dreadnaught. Exploring all of its nooks and crannies in order to level up and find secrets. It was supremely cool. There was variety in the crucible, or at least as much as there has ever been. You could use a pulse, a scout--there was one from banshee that was amazing, DIS-47 i believe--a hand cannon, Mainly TLW but still, Pea-Shooters were good!!! you could use snipers, shot guns, most of the subclasses offered you something really good. Original Sunbreaker everything was good lol, Striker was still arguably the king panic button and lighting grenades, stormcaller had incredible melee and the super with ionic blink wasn't to shabby, sunsinger...firebolts that is all that needs be said, Nova Bomb was a great oh no you don't class, I forgot no fun police on the titan, Nightstalkers with their wombos and shade step, Golden gun might've been one of the best roaming supers plus if you were good with throwing knives oh how rewarding that was, and blade dancer you had Quickdraw and kneepads built in the to subclass. What a time to be a guardian. was it perfect? No. there were still some story issues, some guns were still not very good. But the potential of the game was starting to be realized. Amazing right, or close to it anyway. As close as this game has ever been. Yet here i sit almost 3 years from Pax Destiny still feeling maddeningly unsatisfied and i feel others are as well. I mean bungie: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mYvLWHohOlY How can the guys who made VOG, TOO, the taken king, and i'll even throw in ROI be so far off currently? I have a few ideas for the question of what happened. In no way are they official and they're just one players opinions, but they are opinions that consume me when i play this game i so desperately want to be great. First reason is i think bungie just got plain cocky. They'll claim they aren't but i believe they pulled a microsoft with the Xbox One and thought they could put whatever they wanted into D2 and it would be played. I kinda think the COO IB chest ornament lends itself to this argument. It took something like 200 grenade and melee kills to get it...200 ability kills in D1 would be no promblem...D2...ehhh that's alot of play time. Alot. I'm sure there are some people who had a setup that got them there quicker than most but this goal was, i think, set up for you to do over the course of season 2 and shows they thought no one would put their game down regardless of the issues. Re-inventing the wheel when it doesn't need to be. What i mean by this is they had a working formula and for what ever reason they thought because there was a god damn 2 next to the game they had to change it all so they could justify it having a 2 instead of it just being a DLC. Plenty of games have done sequels without changing their whole game model. I personally think certain people in the company used D2 as vessel to make the game how they thought D1 should've looked. I think people wanted similar gameplay to the taken king days but just with a new story, improved graphics and new loot to earn. Sure new sub-classes are also welcome but there was no need to dumb down the subclass trees. Were there people saying the subclass perk selection was to complicated? That's a serious question if there was i would like to know. Lack of Loot depth. This one is an already well known topic. As far as armor goes, Josh Hammerick striaght up said that they chose fashion over function when it came to armor when he was a recent guest on the DCP. I appreciate his honesty here, and he and John Weinewski were both pretty frank on some hot topics and it was a solid watch. But this also ties in a bit to re-inventing the wheel. I mean part of the grind of D1 was finding armor that did what you want and looked cool. They both intertwined and by taking one away you took depth out of your loot system. I also don't recall many people saying this was a huge issue for them. I'm sure there were some but if they were that invested in playing the game to where they cared about both perks and looks then they were down for the grind and that grind i think would keep them coming back to game. As for weapons... I mean getting that god roll weapon or that meme roll was part of what made D1 fun. What makes it even more frustrating was that the fixed rolls issue was addressed by a certain person before the game launched...BEFORE D2 EVEN LAUNCHED! and masterworks didn't come out until COO. I have told my friends that i play with that I was actually not against the fixed rolls at first as long as there were a ton of weapons to play around with...there wasn't with the vanilla game and they knew there wasn't and they still released an unpopular feature with the game. I mean come on! come one guys! Oh before i forget it also didn't help with armor that with mobility and Resilience that there wasn't as noticeable a difference as there was with recovery. To go on top of loot we found ourselves at the raid rewards. Back in D1 we had a set of weapons of armor for VOG, CE, POE, KF, and WOM. for kings fall you had two sets. You also had two sets for wrath. You had weapons you could only get in hard mode. D2...we have four raid encounters. Two raid armor sets that were re-skinned and one weapon set that was drip fed to us over a year. Shit prestige Leviathan only gives armor, the same armor set as normal but with a weird glow. Ohhhh ahhhh fancy! People grinded Hard vog for Fatebringer and vex, people did CE hard mode for weapons and the crux, they did wrath hard mode for the sniper. Kings fall was a little less worth it but i'll get to that, and it still none the less had two weapon sets for you to earn. Again, 2 raids, 2 raid lairs...really only two raid armor sets and one weapon set...really...like...please. This is a joke right. The great nerfing. Look i get it abilities were a bit out of control towards the end of D1 but that was due to a number of factors the most great of which was the change to special ammo economy. That was done due to shotguns running rampant. I'm not going to get anti-shotgun on you if you've made it this far. I actually believe the shotgun issue was a bit blown out of proportion. a couple things happened. Bungie nerfed some of the best anti shotgun weapons, the Doctrine and TLW, and released a shotgun friendly mode with ROI, supremacy, and over the course of two DLC's, TTK and ROI, gave all players a free powerful shotgun in the matador and conspiracy theory d. I believe that if they had kept the anti-shotgun primaries up in power we could've seen this as less of an issue, which might not of led to a special ammo economy change and then led us into the great nerfing of 2017. I also wanna say hindsight is always 20/20 but you could, if you look back, see this great nerfing coming simply by looking at who was in charge of D2. For all the good that came with TTK there was also the removing of some tools from our toolboxes, such as elemental primaries. I mentioned there was wide balance for the most part in TTK but that also came with a lessening of our power. This wasn't as drastic as it was with D2. Overall a great nerfing wasn't the proper answer. And neither was changing weapon slots. This ties into the re-inventing the wheel. Did anyone actually run around thinking " You know what would make this warpriest fight even better? If i could equip two sidearms." This situation also ties into the great nerfing and was an attempt to simplify the speacial ammo economy from D1, and was also their attempt to make legendary elemental primaries a thing again. I've never quite grasped why they were so against elemental primaries. They seemed to be upset that in PVE people were only using the raid weapons and not some of the kinetic primaries. Umm yeah they were raid weapons, they were powerful AF and should be better that jim bobs handcannon that the vanguard robot had. I've also seen people accusing streamers of being responsible for this and i don't think they are. go back and watch the first Destiny gameplay demo. homie has a scout and a handcannon on. I think this was an idea they scrapped with D1 and then went back to to help them solve a problem that wasn't really a problem. On Crucible. I'm not the best at crucible so won't go to much into it, but the whole you can't pick what mode you wanna play is just absurd. again was anyone complaining that 6v6 was to much and 3v3 to little? Not to mention their goal for time to kills in the game is for whatever reason based around team shooting. They want to force you to play a certain way and with the playlist set up i guess they were upset that people weren't populating certain game modes so they lumped them all into one list so you couldn't avoid them. Is that really the right solution instead of asking yourself why people aren't playing certain game modes and then finding a proper fix. People should pick the game mode because it is fun not be forced into because you're ego got hurt that not a lot of people like a certain mode. I m not qualified at all to talk about trials but from what i have read people aren't the biggest fan of it.