Recent reviews by SliPs

I'll preface this by saying I had put hundreds of hours into Destiny 2 since Forsaken and had stopped playing right before Beyond Light dropped. Although the base game had issues that Forsaken mostly fixed (A campaign that is no longer available, by the way), I had hopped that Bungie would continue the trend and keep improving. Once Scarlet Keep dropped and the commitment to the seasonal model became prevalent, I realized that I can no longer recommend this game, or rather this developer, in good faith. This is going to be a long one, but please read it all.

My major reason for dropping this game about three years ago just to come back, purchase Beyond Light and Witch Queen and find it in an even worse state than before was because of the seasonal model involving sunsetting story missions and weapons/ armor. Although I can understand sunsetting weapons/ armor to prevent power creep and try to keep the game relatively balanced, removing entire portions of the story because it "Takes up too much space" and then further removing story as a season progresses and new DLC is released feels scummy at best. Not only does this completely remove any real incentive for new or returning players to keep playing the game, but it encourages weak-willed or addicted people to keep coming back and treat the game as a second job if you don't want to miss something, a tactic which no other game (Other than mobile games) has actually tried because no one would bother sticking around after having parts of the game they loved being axed. The only reason I believe this has worked for Bungie is because of the Sunk Cost Fallacy: A thinking error that makes us stick with a losing or failed plan because of how much we have already invested in it. Players have already put so much time and money into the game that they feel backing out now would be a waste, despite the fact that many players also seem to think that the game is in a very, VERY poor state and has been for years now.
However, even if I were to ignore the odd choices in regards to removing payed content from players that, as far as I am aware, no game has ever done to the degree that Bungie has with this one, there is one glaring issue that I have recently learned about that has apparently been happening for years now:
Bungie no longer cares about delivering quality content to their playerbase and their business model has changed from "We make games we want to play" to "Being a service is about being FAST". This is a direct quote from Destiny 2's general manager Justin Truman that can be found and read in Bungie's 2022 presentation in the GDC vault here: GDC Vault
(Otherwise search for "box products to live service Bungie GDC" on Google and find the GDC vault, page 26-30 of the 84 page document. I would HIGHLY recommend you read the entire document to get an idea as to how Bungie believes it should conduct its business. If you have played the game before, many of the points he makes are OBVIOUS in their design of the game and why it's been becoming so poor.)
He essentially states that Bungie only cares about getting out content "FAST" regardless of whether or not its actually good.
He states on page 33, "A MUCH more important question is what your roadmap and release tools will look like for the first year AFTER launch." This is another way of saying, "It's okay if the content of your live service game is subpar or even broken, so long as you kind of fix it over the course of an entire year."
Not only that, but he also states on page 70 of the GDC document that "Overdelivery is actually DANGEROUS... With every release you're setting a pattern for your community and your players. If we release an Expansion with 2 Raids - the next year folks will be UPSET if there is only 1 Raid.... It is HARD to tell a team, that has extra cycles and energy and want to do something amazing - that totally would be amazing and awesome for the game - to tell them 'We should not ship this, because it is an overdelivery that will set us up for failure on future trains.'" If I were to paraphrase this whole paragraph, it would instead say "Don't give the players anything that's TOO good. We don't want them expecting more good things from us. Instead we should give them the bare minimum so they won't be able to complain when the next thing we give them is also sub par." Bungie is treating its fanbase like dogs by essentially "training" them to expect less and not complain when they get the same sub par content every single year.
He uses the train analogy to say that Bungie is now less like a train and more like a train station, and that delivering too little or too much can be a problem. While that makes sense on paper, game development is not a train or a train station. You can deliver good, quality content (And according to him that is what the developers actually WANT TO DO) and still not screw over your players by giving them less and less while charging them the same or, in some cases, even more for a product that you purposefully released in a worse state than it could have been. If any other company had essentially told its fanbase "Hey, we COULD give you better content, but instead we are going to charge you more and give you less... Enjoy!" that company would last about a year at most before going bankrupt because no one wants to be told they are basically being robbed. For some reason, Bungie gets a pass because people are either unhealthily addicted to the game, they don't care, or they simply haven't heard about all of this.

What this says to me and many others (Look at the number of videos on Youtube, especially a video titled "Bungie GDC: 'Why Destiny Will NEVER Be GOOD, Stop Expecting It.'" made by DarkSide Royalty) is that Bungie simply does not care about delivering quality content that will last for years to come, but they would instead rather nickel and dime their dedicated fanbase to get as much money out of them as possible. A prime example is Griffin Bennett, a Senior social media manager at Bungie who tweeted to a disappointed fan "Curious: What difference what that have made when you have, I assume, already purchased the season." in response to a player wishing for something to hype up a trailer for Destiny 2.

What this all shows me is that so long as the people in charge at Bungie have already gotten your money, they don't care about what they put out, so long as the content is sub par so you won't expect too much of them and as long as they get it out as quickly as possible so their profits can go up while giving you, as a customer, less. The people in charge at Bungie simply don't care about the game anymore. They will take your money, give you less and less than what it's worth, eventually remove the content anyways, and expect you to keep paying them. If you want an online game that's actually GOOD, I've heard many good things about Final Fantasy XIV. At least SquareEnix seems to actually care about its fanbase and is willing to admit when they've made a mistake, something Bungie seems incapable of. If I could give any recommendation as to whether or not to try this game, I would advise that you steer clear of anything Bungie releases and wait to see if they can get themselves together and produce quality content like they have proven they are capable of before. In the mean time, go spend your money somewhere else on someone who actually gives so much as a modicum of interest in keeping you around, because Bungie is obviously not in the business of making fun games that stand the test of time anymore. They are about turning a profit and finding the easiest and least arduous way of doing it, and I cannot give money to a company that tells its fanbase "You'll take our mediocre content and like it because you have no other options."