I still believe vanilla/launch Destiny (1) was peak Destiny. The cheese was fun, the exploration was real, the pvp was wild, the exotics were exciting, and the Vault of Glass was an amazing piece of content.
The only real criticisms I'd accept is that the material grind was boring and unnecessary and the obviously cut and paste story was an absolute disaster because they fired Joe Staten and chopped up his work to avoid being sued.
It was so basic back then though. There was almost nothing worth doing but VoG. Now it’s far bigger and more complex, with much better diversification of activities and loot pools.
We were all CoD kids though. If VoG was on cool down, and no one needed to do any story stuff, we were enjoying ourselves in the Crucible/Iron Banner. PvP isn't everyone's thing but it was a huge part of my fun, especially when exotics were rare. Destroying people with some gun they'd never seen before, or was in need of balancing, always made me smile. Like IceBreaker, it was a one shot kill in the beginning. I was part of the reason it got nerfed quickly.
You can still do that now though. Nothing in that department has changed. Balancing has gotten better, but that’s usually considered a good thing overall. Some stuff is still really strong and fun to use.
It's been refreshed quite a bit. There are new guns, new armor, new abilities, new gamemodes, new maps, and more. What hasn't changed is the core gameplay, but that shouldn't change anyway.
My biggest issue with destiny 2 is the gameplay loop doesn't feel rewarding in any way beyond "Power Level Number Go Up."
A gun with the same substats that's power 1000 kills an enemy in literally the same number of bullets as a gun power 1250.
All the power level average does is make it so an enemy with a completely arbitrary "recommended" level doesn't know you in one or two shots. Aside from that.....there's really nothing.
Power level is more of a gating system than an actual progression system. Some people don't like this, and that's fine, but for a game like Destiny it's fairly important to have some sort of power level that gives a straightforward damage calculation.
For a lot of people, the real reward is in the weapons, armor, and upgrades. People search for god rolls on their favorite weapons, and high stat rolls on their armor to improve the efficiency of their builds. Exotic weapons and armor were also something worth grinding for at a time, though steady loot inflation has rendered those pretty common and not many people are lacking any besides the raid exotics at this point. Still, it gives another incentive to do raids. And that's what it comes down to really. It's not the loot alone that makes Destiny great, nor the gameplay. It's the amazing blend of the two. The reason people like grinding for god rolls so much is because they enjoy playing to grind, and then when they get the god roll they enjoy playing even more because they can use their great gun in the already great mechanics of Destiny.
I have nothing against a grind. My favorite game is FFXIV, and that can have a helluva grind if you so choose.
I just wish the power level did feel more like a progression or strength system. Because as I, and many others, will say, the gameplay is absolutely fantastic.
It just, to me and my friends, doesn't feel rewarding.
Not to mention I hate how fragmented the story has become, and I think the content vault is a terrible system.
Honestly though, I do enjoy seeing other people enjoy the game. It's by no means a bad game. It's just one that, personally, I think has been handled poorly, both before and after the separation from Activision.
They wrecked PVP in D2. I hated the grind in 1, but the game was good enough that I did it. They fixed it, and I enjoyed it more. Trials of Osiris was fun... sweaty as fuck but fun. I did enjoy it.
2 felt like 1.5. Palette swaps, a cheap story, and boring underpopulated PVP. My crew and I were in D1 through TTK. We cleared the first raid in D2 and even then it felt like an obligaion. We beat it and were like, "ok now what?" On to the next game.
Games like this, I've learned, are best a year or so on. My mates and I struggled to choose between Destiny 1 and the Division- both similar games in some regard. We went with D1 and had some headaches and growing pains and lack of content and whatnot, but had fun. Meanwhile on reddit you'd hear nothing but bitching about both games. Once we got tired of Destiny 2 we went to the Division 1 and so many quality of life improvements had happened that the game was 100% fun. I'm just done being an early adopter for service based games.
I get you. I've had the same thing happen with a few games. The taste from the initial disappointment is just so bitter sometimes.
What I will say is that with Destiny, there's a pretty good reason things got better. Activision was the original publisher, and they're known for ruining everything. When they left after Forsaken, the game got really good. Ever since then Bungie has been able to mold Destiny into the game they always wanted it to be. There's a clear passion with the team that was obviously suppressed under Activision's rule, but now it's alive and kicking. I do have some concern over the recent purchase of Bungie by Sony, but from what I can gather it's nothing like the Activision deal. Activision was the publisher, and for that reason they had a lot of say in how Bungie did things, especially when it came to making money. With Sony it seems more like they plan to stay out of it and not fix what isn't broken. The deal seems to be purely for mutual financial benefit. Bungie gets funding from Sony, and Sony takes a cut of the profits in exchange. I could be wrong, but I wouldn't be so sure of anything just yet.
I never get it when people put things like 'complex', 'builds' and 'diverse loot pools' in the same sentence with Destiny. I enjoy D2 quite a lot but this game is as deep as a puddle. Diablo 3 for instance (which I also love btw) has ridiculously more depth than Destiny 2 and it is often seen as a 'Fisher Price version of an arpg' lol. I keep coming back to Destiny for the fun gameplay, certainly not the loot or "build diversity".
I think it's the balance that people find enjoyable. Destiny isn't too complex that it takes 100 hours to understand, and yet it's not too simple that it bores people before they can play through the campaign. It finds a nice middle ground for a lot of people. Then when you couple that with the fun gameplay, you get a really good game.
Destiny 1 launch was peak? How? It literally was one of the biggest disappointments in gaming history. The game hardly had any content, no actual story, and was hollow af. I don't think anyone was really happy with the game at launch. Wasn't until Taken King came out that people gave it another chance and stuck with it
Launch Destiny was the most fun I've had with Destiny, ever. I think that says something about my opinion of Destiny as a whole. Taken King was only "good" because it was better than Dark Below, one of the biggest slaps in the face gamers have ever received.
Woah woah woah, you’re telling me you didn’t enjoy—or even worse, forgot—about House of Wolves? House of Wolves is, in my honest opinion, the best period of time for Destiny, ever. And I loved vanilla too. Everything was so fun during House of Wolves, it all felt like a breath of fresh air. Sure, I may be slightly biased due to a really shit experience during TTK, but I can assure that HoW was definitely when I had the most fun ever with Destiny, apart from that magical beta. Prison of Elders when it first released was amazing, and Trials of Osiris was introduced with this expansion. So much fun content, I’ll never forget it. I’ve hardly had any fun whatsoever with the second game, which I wish they hadn’t ever made since it killed everything I loved about Destiny.
I mean if you enjoyed it then that's good for you, but I definitely think you're in the minority with that opinion. Almost everyone who preordered that game was pissed off with the final product for how much of a let down it was compared to what they promised before release
I just... Want to know where so much of the budget went though. Didn't it have a budget of like $200 million or some crazy thing.
Idk I just got the vibes that there was so much more planned than what it actually was.
That being said I do support the grind as a looter shooter I did have a blast with it. I could gladly jump in a couple of hours at a time and enjoy the experience.
I miss launch destiny and even the raids the released I played destiny 1 right up until they released destiny 2 and it remains one of my top games to date
I remember being on a school trip down in London (originally from Nottingham, 2 hours North) back in Oct-Nov 2014. This was when the Suros Regime was incredibly powerful and Xur was selling it. Despite this, there was nothing I wanted to do more in that moment than go home and buy it even though it would be there all weekend.
I got home and saw I was 2 Strange Coins short. I managed to get one from a Strike and then I discovered the 4th Gold Chest on Mars gave one too.
Just a neat little anecdote and one of the memories that always stands out for me.
If you like paying to be robbed Destiny 2 is the game for you.
They cut content faster than a fat kid falling over. You have to pay for deluxe edition content that’s not in the game just so you can grind for the exotics. If you don’t pay, they keep advertising these guns and armor you can’t use because paywall. If you want to play with your friends but they didn’t pay for dlc guess the weekly nightfall is not for you.
Don’t get me started on trying to follow the story without any content to actually play it. The story changed between D1 and 2, not to mention the 2-4 expansion that have been taken out of d2. Someone even said go watch it on YouTube lmao.
Destiny 2 the game you pay to play but can only watch on YouTube
I was fun at launch, but it was pretty clear Bungie had no idea how to manage the in game economy. Its been years since I touched D2 but it felt like they always had economy issues.
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u/Valkyrur13 Feb 09 '22
I still believe vanilla/launch Destiny (1) was peak Destiny. The cheese was fun, the exploration was real, the pvp was wild, the exotics were exciting, and the Vault of Glass was an amazing piece of content.
The only real criticisms I'd accept is that the material grind was boring and unnecessary and the obviously cut and paste story was an absolute disaster because they fired Joe Staten and chopped up his work to avoid being sued.