I would say I'm sorry but I'm not. As hard as I try to like this game, the inherent flaws with this game take this game from what was the easiest 10/10 in my books to a 2/10 and it truly pains me to say this.


As someone who's been playing since 2014, I've stuck with the downward spiral and I think it's time that I walked away from all of the nostalgia-baiting and teasing. My only original gripes at the time of release was hoping for an interesting story, what I got were like 6 strikes and new map. The Beyond Light campaign was a total joke and I felt nothing...

I'm Going to break my thoughts on this game into sections as I feel different about particular parts as there is no one "Destiny Experience" in my opinion at this point...

This to me was both a highlight as much as it was a good distraction from the downs of the game. This is one of the reasons that it's hard to get bored with this game and an ( in my opinion ) essential part of the experience. I have little/no complaints about the PvE in this game but:

• Why does light level even exist?
  
• Why remove the contents from year 1 of Destiny 2 entirely? Destiny 2 was not free-to-play on launch and such content was paid for, why not just do something similar to the MCC PC where you can chose to uninstall a campaign or area if you don't want it but keep the essential parts in the base game such as gear?
  
• Why does difficulty-gating almost exclusively rely on the light level system? Meaning that what was supposed to be "difficult" is now a walk in the ( now hive infested ) park.

This one hurts the most for me, as I remember the MANY TWEAKS both from D1 and D2 respectively. But the main problem with "what is wrong with the meta " at this point less of a problem not saying that it is not a problem with the the actual meta of the game but instead the community's focus or lack thereof to what makes the game itself fun to play. It's been an annoying cycle that started in the late 2017's and persists to this day. I want this game to thrive so I'm going to lay this out very simply.

I genuinely feel that the state of the gunplay for Destiny is in a state of total disarray and the only true solution is a total overhaul as currently the 'shifts in meta' are on repeated loop that I call "The Cycle" and has been in a loop that has refined and repeated itself since its introduction circa Vault of Glass in D1.

'The Cycle' for Destiny's weapon sandbox is as follows

In Destiny 1

1. Take D1's Weapon Meta solid shooter meta
   
2. Insert something broken
   
3. Someone finds it/uses/abuses it
   
4. A considerable amount of broken controllers later a patch releases
   
5. Community is happy, everything seems fine for a while
   
6. Something else breaks/is introduced
   
7. Return to step 3

This was okay, it's okay to make mistakes/oversights. But it happened and D1 moved on and became fine-tuned over time despite its dark periods. If you need examples

• Vex Mythoclast
  
• Thorn
  
• Pocket Infinity
  
• Shot Package
  
• The Last Word
  
• Suros Regime
  
• Matador 64
  
• Red Death
  
• And many more...

But with time these got better acquainted to feel more competitive and less OP ( except Shot Package lol )

But with Destiny 2's launch, I felt a bit of a breather. Despite there being new abilities, it felt really good at the time to stop constantly dying to ability spam tryhards.
In Destiny 2

1. Take D2's Weapon Meta solid shooter meta
   
2. Everything is fine
   
3. Curse of Osiris drops, the ttk is slow but generally consistent.
   
4. Warmind drops, the slow burn of a power grind begins.
   
5. With Warmind came a few broken things.
   
6. A few patches and tweaks later, something else breaks.
   
7. Most complaints are either minor or bugs but
   
8. Cycle continues until Forsaken.
   
   
9. Everything changes and now everyone is experimenting.
   
10. Apparently special weapons were just thrown in as specials and not tweaked.
    
11. Someone finds something broken/abuses it until it reaches critical mass
    
12. That something looking at you OEM is generally ignored or is an oversight and breaks the entire game balance
    
13. Game balance continues to be broken and community becomes short-sighted on single item and blames the entire perceived 'meta' on a single item/class/weapon etc
    
14. Turns out that game still has broken parts everywhere and community has its focus on abusing/complaining about one particular thing that they do not like.
    
15. Game goes into PR mode and tries to appease fans, manages breaking game even more
    
16. Return to step 11

As much as I genuinely love this game, it pains me to see the community in such a state. In my opinion "Sunsetting" was
not a fix as I fear the cycle may only continue down a rabbit hole and eventually people will eventually get tired and leave as I have.
I don't want to be that person BUT, compare Destiny's current state to ANY OTHER SHOOTER and its flaws only become more apparent. I'm not saying that every other shooter is superior and I often feel when expressing this that I need to clarify so I will do so in advance. Destiny is in a state of a short-sighted community and what appears to be a feedback team of yesmen, for the sake of the game this needs to change.


I can't say too much about gambit as I genuinely find the game mode to consistently tons of fun. Gambit prime had a bit of an identity crisis with its roles and a bit of a balance issue with usefulness of said roles but is an easy 10/10 in my books even with its flaws.

As much as I hate to say it, I do love and fall for a bit of the nostalgia-bait in this game. I love the new take on the abilities and the maps/playspaces to explore around at your own will. The formula for this game is almost sandbox levels of total freedom but limited enough so that it immerses you in what I would say is well worth your time and investment.

But
I understand that funding a game is difficult. I have no problem with paying for expansions or buying silver for cosmetics ( especially event-related items ) as is an industry standard at this point...
but...
The expansions and Season-Passes in this game are disgusting and ( in my opinion ) are borderline theft. As I have spent:

• $100 for the base digital deluxe edition
  
• $80 for Forsaken Digital Deluxe Edition
  
• $70 for Beyond Light Delux Edition
  
• And only the bank knows how much in silver

$250 in total to see the base game assets just disappear is insulting when there are other (simpler) solutions. This should not be acceptable.

On another note, I genuinely do not understand the implementation of Light/Power level in Destiny as a whole. Why punish those that do not have the time to invest into the game by restricting their access to activities. In my opinion it would be a better idea to just make unlocking the activities harder to unlock and add levels of difficulty as it was in D1 year 1. Iron banner is fun and all but the whole concept of light level simply confuses me as it gates out the more casual gamers or those who simply do not have the time. I don't need to grind for hours/days/weeks to go and play Cortana on Halo 3 on legendary, I Just need to play through the campaign ( and on the console I need to play up to that point on Legendary difficulty )