Before I start this I want to say this is all a matter of my opinion and this is gonna be a very long post as I will be covering destiny from the start of D1 to now, I would love to hear thoughts and disagreements and such. I also want to say that this is not meant to be a dig at the game but rather my thoughts on where the game has gone bad for me as someone who has played this game from the start. Anyways, I have been a destiny player since D1. ever since I saw the original live-action trailer for the game years ago I have loved it. I also have been fairly active in the community and watched a good amount of YouTubers and streamers both big and small as the years went by. All that to say I have a decent idea of the destiny feel I would like to say. D1 had its issues like any game does but overall it was amazing and the best gameplay experience I had ever had playing a video game either by myself or with my friends. Jump forward to D2. We can all agree destiny 2 got off to an awful start but I am not even gonna count that into this reason for where destiny went wrong. I personally think the Devs did an amazing job bringing the game back to a good place where not only did it make the player base happy but also it actually felt like destiny. Unfortunately in my opinion from that point on is where this all went wrong. I feel like ever since they made the major changes after launch this game has been in a downward spiral and it is reaching the point where I am considering stopping playing the game in its entirety. I have taken prolonged breaks from the game in the past when I did not enjoy it and then came back at the start of new seasons and such and at the start of the new seasons with the new content or weapons or sandbox changes the game returned to a point where it felt not great but playable. I will now discuss where I think everything went from bad to disaster. Discussing these things I am gonna separate pvp and pve because they shouldn't be compared together imo. Over the years there have been new challenges or game types or just new missions altogether. From a campaign point of view, the witch queen campaign was great, but once the campaign was finished it felt like there was only a sea of repetitive content and missions waiting. It has felt like for some time now that there are one or two different types of game modes or things for PvE that are released upon the dropping of a new season and that those one or two game modes are left by themselves for the entirety of a season. For the first week or so of grinding, they are fun, but when it reaches the point where they are the only things to do they get monotonous and completely unenjoyable. After these things, there are the challenges of weekly things like raids or gm nightfalls, which as of late have been a complete letdown. Instead of new challenges or activities to challenge within a raid, it feels like the only change is the addition of more champions. I am gonna keep this brief about champions. I think that champions are a cheap and lazy excuse for making a mode more "challenging". I think to an extent they were good but now they just feel like a lazy cop-out used to release a new "challenge mode" for an activity. I won't go into detail about raids but I could in a separate post if interested. I think raids as a whole are good enough as is right now. In conclusion, I think that pve isn't in the worst state ever its just unenjoyable due to a seemingly neverending cycle of recycled content and repetitive activities. Now time to hit the big dog that is pvp. It is tough to figure out where to start. I am not looking to cause a war or choose a side as I see people either pushing for the "average casual pvp player" or the "super high skill player"(streamers and content creators or those who find themselves in the upper echelon of the skilled players). I myself am not a crazy good crucible player(I average around a 1.1-1.5 kd in trials) but I have enjoyed the competitive side of things and find those to be my favorite side of things as trials have always been my favorite game mode. I also want to state that my disses on the state of the crucible are not going to be based on the fact that people are better than me as I recognize that I am not a godly crucible player and that does not bother me. I think to start the crucible has really lost touch with what it means to be a specific archetype. In d1, the difference between titan, hunter, and warlock was extremely noticeable and as far as I remember(I could be remembering wrong) there was not a whole lot of common ground shared between them. Compare that to now and it just feels not the same. Warlocks feel more mobile than hunters. Hunters seem to have a ton of abilities or armor pieces that can heal themselves. The only thing that seems to have stayed close to that is titans, but they are their own issue which ill gets to. I don't say this to send hate to devs but it just feels like they pick and choose what pieces of armor or abilities get to go through and then use a blanket statement of not falling into the "identity" of a certain subclass despite the fact that it feels like about half the exotic armor pieces that are used are used bc they defy the identity of the respective subclass. Next are the issues with armor pieces and abilities. In d1 there were certainly armor pieces that were better than others like the ram, but they were very countable and they were certainly not ultra important to success in the crucible. However, it now has felt for the last couple of years that certain armor pieces are not just better but almost necessary for crucible success. Everyone knows them, it's the ones that you cant play a trial match without at least one or two of the players in the match having the armor on(loreley splendor). Additionally, the weapon meta in the game has gotten borderline unbearable. Also over the last couple of years, the weapon usage has gotten terrible. It feels like it has shifted from a weapon archetype(s) meta to a specific weapon meta. In the past, certain types of weapons would be better but within that weapon type(hand cannon,auto,shotgun,etc) there was a good amount of freedom within. However, the game feels like you could now only use the certain weapon that is the meta such as the piece of mind. For example, in d1, you could get a random weapon and be able to compete somewhat well in the crucible with it or at least be able to enjoy using it, but now you cannot compete using a sorrows verse. Obviously, you can use other weapons, but without the gun skill of an upper-echelon player, there seems to be a clear and obvious advantage that the devs did nothing about which caused this low use of a multitude of weapons to happen. I read the huge sandbox article they released about all the changes to the weapon system that were supposed to be coming and honestly the only change I have noticeably felt was to fusions. (I could be wrong I haven't played this new season much due to how unenjoyable I have found it). Lastly is that destiny has slowly lost its customizability which is one of the major things that is what made it so great. From the supers no longer having a huge archetype and customizability tree-like d1 or the inability to use any weapon you want bc of champions or the crucible meta and extremely excessive imbalance of weapons. it now feels like the guardian you make must be made around the specific parameters of what the game meta is and not what you want to use or be if you want to be successful in any challenging mode. That is all. Like I said at the start, this is all my opinion but I would love to hear anyone else's thoughts or disagreements on this or just opinions on the game cycle in general. I kept that broad due to the length of this thing already but id be willing to elaborate more on certain areas or things if anyone is interested. If a dev was somehow reading this and would want to chat, Id be down for a chat. Also I want to say that there have been a ton of good things the devs have done. I was just highlighting where its gone wrong for me bc the bad has outweighed the good for me.