This is just a partial list of some of the changes D2 has made compared to the current state of its predecessor and my overall opinion on them. These are just my personal opinions, but feel free to add your own in the comments. I'll start with the changes made in Destiny 2 that I [b]LIKE[/b] compared to its predecessor: * Including lore in triumphs and items in the game (sparrows, ships, armor, weapons, etc.). * [u]Applying shaders to more than just our armor.[/u] It's so nice to have equipment with matching colors and to be able to apply different shaders to different armor pieces. * [u]Warp points[/u] were a must in these large, expansive worlds, and Bungie tackled it. * [u]Being able to amass (practically) unlimited legendary shards[/u] was a big step up from the 200 legendary mark cap in D1. * [u]Automatic decryption Rare and Legendary engrams picked up on the field[/u] means less time going back and forth between activities and the cryptarch. In D1, you could only farm Archon's Forge for roughly an hour before having to go back to the Tower to decrypt all the blue and purple engrams you got and clear out the engrams in your Postmaster. * [u]Gambit.[/u] I. -blam!-ING. LOVE(D) IT! I was hoping to see Bungie come up with some kind of PvP/PvE hybrid to add more variety to the game after the Red War campaign, and it did. (I loved invading.) * [u]Obtaining bright engrams from leveling up[/u] past the maximum base level was a huge step up from 3 weekly Treasure of Ages packages in D1. It's the one thing that made grinding somewhat tolerable for me. * [u]Weapon ornaments being permanently unlocked after acquiring them[/u] is much better than just hoarding them or waiting until you get the exotic that the ornament applies to. I would have added more to my list of likes, but there is a character limit to forum posts and I feel that more of the negative changes need more attention. Now, for the changes I [b]LOATHE[/b]: * [u]There is too much to grind for.[/u] RNG was obnoxious in D1, but you can't even keep up with a single character in D2 without sacrificing all of your free time and/or skipping through a large bulk of the content. * [u]Eververse items cost too much Silver.[/u] In D1, most emotes only costed $3, but now ugly weapon ornaments cost $10 each. * [u]Seasons and seasonal rewards are bullshit.[/u] Nobody holds that much sentimentality towards this game to warrant seasonal exclusives, and it pisses off more people to say "you should have been there" rather than making seasonal engram rewards available forever. * [u][b]Exotic farming is a joke.[/b][/u] Despite the issue of duplicates and terrible drop rates of exotic engrams, Bungie removed Three of Coins for some reason when they are extremely beneficial to players. * [u]The weapon system is a little too chaotic.[/u] I don't mean to complain, but I'm just saying... what was wrong with D1's weapon system? - Regarding lore, Arbalest shouldn't even exist as a [i]kinetic[/i] linear [b]fusion rifle[/b] due to contradicting lore about fusion rifles being dubbed as "stable, field-ready [b][u]energy[/u][/b]-based weaponry". (This is actually stated in the Grimoire card called [url=https://db.destinytracker.com/d1/grimoire/inventory/special-weapons/fusion-rifles]Fusion Rifles[/url]!) * [u]Every quest feels like it requires 10x more effort and has 5x more steps than D1 quests.[/u] * [u]Crucible is not fun at all.[/u] Seeing my Glory/Valor rank adjust at the end screen of a match only reminds me of how cumbersome their ranking system is. I'll usually get a team of low power levels vs a team of Legend ranks and the next match is the complete opposite. D1 was hardly this bad. - On PC, you'll usually encounter players that use AFK bots/scripts to farm Crucible matches. I find at least 2 in every Rumble match. People could only do so much with a controller to prevent getting kicked to orbit in D1. * [u]The main story of the game was written so shoddily and includes several [b]plotholes[/b][/u], only to establish different narratives for the game and its DLCs. - Overall, it the main story feels like something out of a MARVEL comic book with too much cheesy dialogue. - Ana Bray, presumed dead after the Battle of Twilight Gap, didn't even bother telling anyone she was just chilling on Mars with Rasputin, who was established as the warmind of [i]Earth[/i] in D1. I really hope Bungie just decides to cast D2's story off as some kind of arc that isn't relevant to the main plot of the franchise (like a parallel dimension or something) and make D3 the official continuation of the D1 story because that's how disconnected the two games feel. - When we lost our Light in the Red War campaign, Ghaul kicked us off his ship, which was at least a couple [i]thousand feet[/i] in the air. We can't survive a fall from halfway up Felwinter's Peak, so how were we able to survive both getting kicked by Ghaul and falling from a flying ship after losing our Light? Also, our ghost shouldn't have been in pieces after that fall, but it still survived anyway (much to our dismay). * [u]Bungie introduced a lot of content but way too late in the game.[/u] Some of that annual pass content should have been released [i]before[/i] Forsaken and/or dispersed more evenly throughout their content timeline. - The Expansion Pass content was extremely lackluster, so doing something like Vanilla D2 -> Annual Pass Content #1 -> Curse of Osiris -> Annual Pass Content #2 -> Warmind -> Annual Pass Content #3 -> Forsaken would have been more feasible, rather than just throwing all of the annual pass content at our faces a year later and giving us only a few months to grind through it all. * [u][b]Clans were better off having no relevance in the actual game world.[/b][/u] Clans are all about competition in D2, and pushing for more clan rewards. It seems cool... until they're all you see in the Crucible and Gambit now. * [u]Bungie has some weird fetish for teamwork[/u] and they need to keep it out of the game. There were only a few quests in D1 that required assembling a group of players, but roughly 30% of the triumphs, quests, activities, and bounties in D2 either require or recommend a fireteam, which is discouraging to solo players. * [u]Some of the environments in D2 feel too cartoonish[/u] or stark in contrast to the environments of various worlds in D1 and make the game feel less like it takes place in a dystopian future and more like we're playing a deep space exploration game while killing enemies. * [u][b]The premise of the game seems to contradict the premise of D1[/b][/u], which was that humanity was cornered in the Last City and we were its last defenders. - However, most of the NPCs in D2 show us NO recognition, much less gratitude, for slaying D1 enemies such as Oryx, Crota, and Aksis. (I don't even think they comment on our victories against any of the D2 bosses.) The game lacks any kind of remembrance towards our past accomplishments, apart from an ugly common emblem that nobody wears. Even D1 had updated dialogue for vendors commenting on our triumphs over Oryx. * [u][b]Too many compelling characters have died.[/b][/u] It looks like Bungie will kill off characters for just about anything now. - The Speaker was a wealth of knowledge about the events prior to our resurrection, and he dies a pathetic, unexplained death after getting captured by Ghaul, and no one seems to care after the Red War campaign is over. - Instead of letting Nolan North continue voicing Cayde-6 after Nathan Fillion's disappearance (for lack of a better word), Bungie just kills off the greatest character in the game, even though Nolan's performance warranted Fillion's continued replacement. - Master Ives (the cryptarch of the Reef in D1) died just to advance the 2018 Festival of the Lost quest that brought us back to the Cosmodrome to retrieve Thunderlord. * [u][b]Armor and weapon upgrades have become way too complex.[/b][/u] D1 was simpler in the sense that you could just grind specific activities to get weapons and armor with the randomly generated rolls you wanted and increase their Light level with materials that are easy to acquire. - Masterworking is too much of a hassle when we're probably just going to scrap our weapons anyway. - Catalysts only serve to extend playtime by telling us we have to do even MORE grinding to [i]fully[/i] unlock an exotic weapon's true potential. Oh, and RNG still applies to obtaining most of them. - Mods were a neat idea in retrospect, but it seems like there was hesitancy in its implementation and probably should have been abandoned altogether. - Armor affinities are a failed system that looks like it was half-assed. * [u][b]Bungie has gone too far with the time-gating[/b][/u]. It was never this bad in D1. - Whisper of the Worm portal, Shattered Throne, EP, and ascendant planes for getting eggs and completing triumphs are just a few examples. * [u][b]Limiting material stacks to prevent players from stockpiling.[/b][/u] In D1, the worst Bungie did was limit the number of Skeleton Keys to stacks of 5, but you couldn't keep more than 1 Decrypted Cache key per week for EP.