My real beef with the game is that it isn't intellectually engaging at all. The gun play and such is a 11/10. I do enjoy it. Read on for my frustrations. A few comparisons: Mass Effect (dead horse): I get to play the massive campaign at least 2 full times: Renegade and paragon to get a full range of different voice acted dialogue options. The classes are also very different. Game to game you can have a blast playing completely different ways through the same fights. Different weapons and skills. Way different experience. Guild Wars: all characters are at least on screen during cutscenes. Why am I watching a co-op mission as if I'm solo? Why isn't there a lick of dialogue inside the VoG? Can Atheon at least come out saying "Destroy. Destroy. Destroy." For fun? Last of Us: story. Cutscenes. Thought provoking scenarios. Granted there's no decision to be made until the end, it's a freaking ride and a half. The writers deserve their awards. Destiny: about 10 minutes of continuous dialogue with my character in it. No choice, just some bland uninspiring conversations about light and dark. The joke lines about "I don't have the time" and "I could tell you" are insulting. I WANT to put the controller down and be told a story. That story should make me want to kill something, or defend something. That is the intellectual stimulation I'm talking about. The story should drive the players actions (at first). Certainly you'll want to play because it's "just plain fun to kill stuff", but that story needs to be there to anchor the whole thing together. After the shock and awe settles from a well defined story, the game mechanics need to be solid enough to be replayable (many times over). Let's go back to Mass Effect 3 for a minute. The multiplayer supports the single player campaign! The multiplayer effort is taking place parallel to the main game so it makes since. Why are we fighting each other in the crucible? Training is a pretty weak answer so I hope that isn't the case...There's miles between Destiny and ME3 so I'll try to leave it alone now. Let's talk about WoW for a minute (just a quick one): Throughout the world there are hubs. Several of them in fact. Places to meet and interact (that's a key word: interact). There's an in game chat with multiple channels so interacting is pretty easy. Destiny's tower is a waste of time. Interaction is laughable. Its painful thumb-stick-clicking players, opening gamer cards to send messages, using the on screen keyboard to type "Raid?", then submitting for everyone you see (or using the screen from your menu. Either way). Warframe added a chat window. They figured it out. I'm not a big Warframe player, but that's obviously a benchmark requirement for player interaction without opening voice channels. What about borderlands, Fallout, and GTA V (also dead horses): NPCs located all over the maps. Finding new NPCs, seeing their splash screen intros, hearing their voice overs (OMG Claptrap is king) and doing their missions made the game feel more organic. Destiny defaults to a lifeless robot/chalkboard that gives you most of your post-game missions (bounties), and a phoned in boring monologue for all of the rest. New missions just open up on the map when you complete an old one. Story intros and out-tros are short monologues read off screen. We couldn't get a motion captured story intro to more than a couple missions? The Skyrim, GTA, Red Dead, and Fallout series all mastered the art of interesting patrols. Bungie should take note for Destiny 2. While cruising the maps you'll randomly encounter 1 of MANY different side quests. It's so much damn fun to just happen on an event in progress and complete it. I'm referring to the single player campaigns, but this model could still work. Each of those games had its own way of spawning random events, but they helped draw the player into the world and atmosphere. Ever stumble on a band of robbers dragging a woman away by horseback (Red Dead)? That sense of "Oh crap!" Is very real and engaging. Skyrim had exotic bounties. Ever find a stone in a cave that spoke to you? It leads you to a statue that turns into a beautiful sun sword. That quest was really cool and I just stumbled into it while roaming around. Destiny's public events and patrols try to mimic this, but it's pretty flat. Wow a tank is being dropped off!!! Oh, it happens every hour. Nothing bad happens if you skip it. Why are there no NPCs in the ENTIRE GAME WORLD to interact with? There's a crashed ship on earth, but no guardian to rescue? No refugees? No rebels or bandits that are trying to claim their own stake on Old Russia? So much potential when playing in a world with this much detail. The maps are so beautiful, but way too empty. Patrols are just poo. Dead Orbit wants stuff killed. I kill it. I get Vanguard rep... Wait what? I did the patrol FOR dead orbit. Why don't I get rep for them too? Clearly there are vanguard patrols, but the factions don't make sense. And why isn't there a story behind the factions? I should be rooting for my faction based on ideology, not colors alone. It's just 1 more reason that the game shows sign of struggle. I'm wanting depth. The current platform is just really wide and shallow. I don't think the hell mouth will be deep enough for me (no innuendo intended). Yes I've loaded tons of hours into Destiny. I will return. I'm just shelving the game for a bit. House of Wolves may see my return. Don't think of this as a whining post. Please. I'm just comparing it to some design concepts that I consider a bench mark to good story telling and open world-ish storytelling. [spoiler]Holy crap this is long. Sorry. Hope someone read it all :/[/spoiler]

I'm gonna ride this Destiny ship right into the fxcking ground with Bungie, Activision and Deej at the helm. The 3 will literally be the end of bungie. Deej, how do you look your fans in the face? "Hey Deej, tell us about the new expansion" "Well what we wanted to do with the dark below is really expand on the narrative, lie blah blah lie lie blah blah clever lie blah blah lie, we are taking in all the feed back and it is my job to lie, false truth, lie, I'm not pr, lie, clever lie, bent truth, technicality, and we want to continue to listen to the community and implement lie, bullshxt, false, tease, clever tease, lie, cough, bounty, cough, will tell stories, cough."

I'm just reaching the point where I wonder why I continue to play this game anymore. Over 3 characters I've played almost 200 strikes, and I've never had a legendary item or engram drop from any of them. Meanwhile I have a friend jump on who has played 5 strikes and he gets a Suros Regime the first one we run together. I've been playing the game since day 1 and I can count the number of legendary engrams I've received from drops on one hand. The off chance I get in the top-3 in the crucible I get nothing while the guy who got a .28 k/d and dragged down the team gets a Thunderlord. I love strikes and consider myself pretty good at them, I'm often #1 in kills and assists and orbs generated along with revives. Last night is just the norm, run a strike with a friend, both of us had 100+ kills and we get 1 piece of crappy level 17 rare armor we can't use, meanwhile the guy who joined towards the end and had 12 kills and 4 deaths gets a strange coin and a legendary engram. The rewards just are not worth the effort with the hideous RNG and I ask myself every day why I continue to keep grinding when there really is no reward at the end. At least in an MMO you have a path to grind and a nice shiny item or reward waiting for you at the end of that path. SWTOR just launched their new expansion and added in a ton of content plus a big level cap raise so I may just go back to playing that. At least Bioware doesn't skimp on story, even if they did sell out to EA. That having been said, the IGN guy bases his entire argument on a fallacy. Destiny never claimed to be an MMO. Bungie in fact said it was not an MMO several months before release, so his whole argument about it trying to be a wide sweeping MMO, etc. is kind of just invalid. From 2013 forward, pretty much everything Bungie said about the game made you feel like it would be a mix up of Halo shooter mechanics with a story like Mass Effect. I do agree with him that the game doesn't know what it wants to be and that is one of its main issues, but I'm really tired of everyone beating the MMO dead horse when this game was never marketed as such and even Bungie said it wasn't an MMO.

This article is nowhere NEAR spot on. #1 - "This is an MMO" argument ad nauseum Destiny is NOT an MMO. How many times do we have to repeat this? IT IS NOT AN MMO! Stop trying to pin expectations of MMO-like content on game that's NOT AN MMO! #2 - Expectations of new areas This guy fails to realize how the game is designed. The primary force in the game is gear and therefore there's multiple ways to get that. No matter how many planets they add to the game, it's pointless if it doesn't drive the primary force. You all have to accept that the endgame has, and always will be, raiding and PvP. They're not going to add planets for new single player story missions and bounties. When they release a new planet, they'll have to create a brand new story branch, new open world, bounties, PVP map styled after the new world, endgame raid to tie up all loose ends of the story in that world and finally, items to go along all of this. #4 - True "expansions" Again with the MMO. With an MMO expansion, you're paying 50 dollars and generally what you get with that 50 bucks are new quests, zones, raids, etc. Keep in mind though, that 50 bucks isn't all you'll be paying. You're also paying 14.99 a month to play it, therefore the size and scope of MMO expansions are simply not possible on a console title that's NOT AN MMO. The author mentioned Diablo in that same paragraph. Diablo 3 is most similar when compared to Destiny (Diablo is a true Action RPG while Destiny's major concept points heavily borrow from Action RPG's). In Diablo 3's expansion, Reaper of Souls, you only get one act, Act 5, which can be cleared in under an hour. The real gameplay time, and meat of the game, comes from the items and the item grind. SOUND FAMILIAR? The only difference is, Destiny revolves around co-op to earn those items as opposed to Diablo 3 where co-op is optional (but favorable). How much did this "expansion" cost? 40 dollars. Highway robbery for 1 new act, some modes and slew of items. Bungie gave you MORE for 20. #5 - Story Actually, all said and done, the story was well put together (more well put together than the original game). I love how Dark Below creates a creepy almost terrifying atmosphere that comes with going into a place that dark with the kind of monsters that inhabit it. That said, the story itself is NOT JUST the single player stuff. The raid is the centerpiece of it all. All of this complaining about not enough content and waste of money stems from the fact that you're not Level 30 and you're not doing the raid. In reality, if you did the raid, the story for the Dark Below comes together quite nicely. If you want to bring the MMO parallel back (cause apparently people only want to use MMO as a talking point when it suits their narrative), you've always had to clear the raid in order to finish the story line that was started outside the raid (such as Black Temple with Illidan). #6 - Value if you remove expectations, such as wanting MMO-type levels of content, the value in what you get with 20 dollars is actually pretty good. The game time you'll get out of any activity justifies the cost alone. If you're a single player, you're going to be upgrading all your gear to level 31 and do all the strikes, story missions and bounties. If you're a PVP'er, you'll PVP for packages and marks to update your gear. If you're a raider, you'll do the same stuff as single player but progress in the raid on top of that to attempt to get the best items in the game. Whatever activity you choose,you're going to be spending a lot of time with the game. Leave MMO expectations for MMO. You're not paying 50 bucks + 14.99/mo for the game, so don't expect bells and whistles to come with spending 20 bucks worth of content. For what you get with that 20 bucks, it's actually a really good value.

My friend make YouTube videos about destiny

We got new maps that are pretty -blam!-ing good, a new raid, New strikes, and a few story missions, oh and tons of new gear.. The author isnt into PvP or raids so ya if you only care about story missions and strikes then it's not a lot, but that's cuz you arent playing half the game.. The half that makes the game so addictive.

I've seen a lot of complaints about the DLC, most of them are valid but I want to address Bungie's most atrocious mistake here. That is: the cloak hunters get from Eris for completing her bounties. It looks like someone took a dirty diaper and stapled a homeless scarf to it. I demand a full refund

First off, destiny is addicting as hell. What other game is out right now that you can spend your entire day playing and come back the next day for more? Nothing I can think of. Advanced warfare is good but I don't play it everyday. Dragon age 3 is great but I don't play it everyday. The evil within is good but I don't run back to it everyday. There's something about destiny as a whole that keeps players investing time into it. That's where this game succeeds. You can bash all you want, bungie and activision are making BANK off this game. Why? Because of all the people buying their content. No matter what negative things are said about it. Yes the story is not there yet, it's repetitive, it's limited, sometimes unfair, has plenty of flaws, etc... At the end of the day, everyone on this forum continues to play destiny. It's addicting. The hope for getting that next exotic, the joy of killing mobs of creatures with friends and seeing those blue engrams pop up. Getting a legendary engram after a strike. I personally asked for suros since November and just got it last week in a nightfall strike. Destiny will last a very long time. It can only get better with each dlc release. The Dark Below isn't even that bad. The main flaw is the 2 and a half story missions. Bungie will learn from this and they will succeed. House of Wolves is next.

Excellent article. Point blank with a fusion rifle to the face. The game sucks. I'll play the "House of Wolves" .... Expansion or not (cause I already paid for it...then that will pretty much be it. Good "regular game" but not worth it. Just glad I only focused on one race. On to bigger and better games soon to come :)

There are 3 story missions in this DLC, but only 2 are replayable. DLC content has even less replayability as you cannot replay the 1st eris mission

The biggest problem I have with this Forbes author is how he is limiting his scope to the solo version if the game. He has stated in other articles how he doesn't play much pvp and that he doesn't do raids for various reasons. If u look at this expansion from only that standpoint then yeah it might seem underwhelming. However if u actually play the whole game then this expansion is totally worth it. Imo

Sorry, but I don't count gaming articles from Forbes magazine as the definitive voice of gaming.

Edit 3 would only benefit them if there are actually plans to expand the playable world in House of Wolves. If there aren't, it could only hurt them to come out and say in no uncertain terms that this is all the explorable geometry we're getting until Destiny 2. That said, I have a feeling "Destiny 2" will be a sequel in the same sense that Burning Crusade was a sequel to WoW. If my hunch is correct, it [i]would[/i] benefit them immensely to clarify that the "expansions" are glorified map packs and the "sequels" are actual expansions.

They need to stop calling it an expansion too. It's really annoying. An expansion would have added a new planet or something