Dear Bungie, I realize this post will probably be lost in the forums before it's ever realized, but I wanted to lay down my thoughts on Destiny before I put my gun on the rack and walked away. So who am I? My online alias is Aeirou. I use that for pretty much every gaming console and in-game character name for any game I'll ever play. I am a trophy hunter. For those of you who don't know what that means, a trophy hunter is a person who strives to earn every trophy in a game before moving on to the next game. While I don't earn every trophy in every single game I pick up, I am sitting around 171 platinum trophies on the PS3 and Destiny is among them. I bought Destiny and logged in for the first time on release day as a Titan. I have completed the full Vault of Glass raid a total of 36 times, but I've run from checkpoints and assisted with killing Atheon well over that. I've consistently run the hard raid on a weekly basis, I've completed Crota's End during the first week without looking up other players experience with the raid or cheap ways to get through such and such area. I believe I have taken a step into every area of the game that is currently playable and I've come out with a victory in one form or another. Enough about me though. The background wasn't to merit my opinion above others. No, it was just to give you an idea of what kind of gamer I am so you can see where I'm coming from with my feedback. While I post here the things that bothered me, I can assure you that there will also be things I leave out. This doesn't make them any less important. I just didn't have them in mind as I posted here. When I played the Beta, I was weary of the story. I play most of my games for the story and I gave Destiny the benefit of the doubt thinking I was only seeing a small piece of a much larger experience... but I was proven wrong. The Destiny story was so convoluted that even after hundreds of hours, not only can I only name maybe three characters off hand, but I couldn't tell you more then the worst general summary of what might be a story line that you've ever heard. This is not new feedback though... what I will say that is new is that the Expansion Pack that was suppose to do a better job at telling a story, wasn't presented well either. Interactions with characters in the game seem very hollow and impersonal. Usually the silent hero has personalize experiences with story characters that drive a story on, but because Destiny chooses to tell the story through audio on your headset during a mission, most of it is either missed or just doesn't make sense. Eris was the sole survivor of a failed attempt to stop Crota... and the new missions are more difficult then those in the vanilla game, but I'm not given enough background to care about the story of the effects. I hear Eris screaming, but I don't care that the world is ending because I don't feel the threat of death or destruction. I can't fail... literally, She's screaming and dying checkpoints me immediately so I don't feel the effects of failure because there is no punishment. When I walk into an area and there are Fallen enemies there... an NPC says "they're invading" but for me, those enemies are spawned there. Failure and an impersonal way of storytelling make the story fall flat and lack emotion. I don't care about Crucible much, but from the time I have spent there I can tell you it's all about who can one shot kill who first. Fusion Rifle, Shotguns, Rockets, Super, Shoulder Charge, Grenades, Vex. I will say that some of the control point changes have turned at least two of the maps into a match that depends on who has the better spawn to start... then it's just playing good defense for the rest of the game. Control was my favorite gametype before the changes, afterwords I stopped playing control. The Strikes are fun but repetitive. Most people leave if you put the game one in a row as well, so it should be set to where you vote for 1 out of 2 or 3 choices, or at least set up so you don't repeat the same strike more than once in a row. The Raid. Vault of Glass was amazingly fun. I felt like my team needed to work together to succeed. Success always felt good, and that kind of team coordination left me feeling pleased. I did the raid even if I didn't get drops just because I loved the content. I should say straight up that I never pushed Atheon off the edge, but I did push Templar after that was found out simply to see if it was a real thing. Even with the glitches in the raid, it was still a game making experience. Crota's end is more difficult for the final boss but just as unrewarding as far as gear goes. Which brings me to my next bit... RNG sucks. It took me 7 weeks across three characters to get all the gear I needed to be level 30. I only had two pieces of gear before that dry run. It left me with a 200+ store of shards and energies that I still haven't depleted even leveling up all my near gear. Nightfall has literally given me nothing across 3 characters for 9 weeks. I either get new monarchy weapons or 5-7 strange coins. Nightfall is suppose to be the hardest content outside the raid, so why is it possible for you to get LESS of a reward then the weekly strike? If it wasn't for Xur, I'd be totally screwed as far as gear goes. For loot based games like Destiny, expansions are pretty commonplace. I was extremely upset to find that my maxed out raid gear in vanilla Destiny was replaceable on day one to Vanguard armor. I assumed we'd be able to enter raid with a fighting chance in full raid gear, but it's near impossible to complete Crota's End with a full group of 30s. It's already widely accepted that the sword bearer in the final encounter needs to be level 31. In order to get that level, you need full vanguard armor, or 2 pieces and an exotic. This is not the way expansion releases should operate and it felt as though Bungie was trying to increase the shelf life of their content by artificially increasing the grind. In the immediate present, you made Vault of Glass completely and totally useless. It's more beneficial to farm Vanguard Roc now then run VoG. These sorts of artificial grinds look good on paper as far as hours spent goes, but the players do the same meaningless task a fourth time and think... this is pretty senseless just to get 37 more damage on a weapon. It's not like that task is sped up over the course of a day or two either, no. These tasks are timelocked into daily or weekly restrictions so that players wont progress too quickly. This makes it feel forced. Several days I've wanted to play something else, but logged into Destiny to do the daily mission or bounties... not because it was fun to do, but because I felt like I had to in order to keep pace with the general progression of the Destiny community. That's not how a video game should make a person feel. I wanted to get the best gear, and I wanted to earn it.. I paid for your expansion so that I could stick with my team... but after the second week of moon raid giving me materials for weapons and armor I didn't even own yet, I knew what I was in for... those 6 to 9 weeks I mentioned earlier. I don't want to go through the disappointment of bad loot drops for weeks or months when I could get more satisfaction and enjoyment playing other games with friends that aren't nearly as stressful. So for the last three days I have been considering quitting Destiny.. a week after dropping 20 dollars on the expansion. The only thing keeping me from leaving immediately was not wanting to let my raid team down. After talking to them about how I'm feeling about the game, I found that a lot of them share my disappointment and my reasons for sticking around. I think tonight.... tonight I decided to quit. What ended it for me? I was teetering on the edge of that RNG disappointment and I was relaunching the "Fist of Crota" mission for the 30th time to kill the blade of crota for a chance at the Husk of the Pit weapon, that is suppose to be a common drop. I was farming the mission with one friend of mine. After about nine runs, another friend joined us and ended up getting the weapon in about 5-6 loads in. That friend left our group and me and this other guy continued to grind the mission for the next 2 hours... just trying to get this weapon. It didn't drop for either of us and I was tired of trying. I was fed up... yesterday I got 6 strange coins from Nightfall and Radiant Shards and Energies from Crota's End that are useless to me because I don't have the weapons and armor from the raid yet. Today I try to get a weapon that starts as a common and not only do I not get it in 30+ attempts, but someone joins me and gets it in less than 6. I want to leave off with a closing comment though. I started Destiny in September and I've played until today, December 17th. I'm not the kind of gamer that sticks around a single game like this too often. I usually clear games in 2-4 days. That's not to say I haven't endured longer. I also Platinum'd Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn with a 15 dollar monthly subscription and a 6 month minimum of gametype to platinum... I can grind if it's fun. Anyway, to the point... in the last three or four months of playing Destiny, I never once steered someone to purchase the game. I feel like Destiny is a game that you either take or leave.. love or hate. I have a hard time telling someone to take a chance and spend the money when the good barely... if ever... outweighs the bad. Thank you for those who took the time to read this long winded post. I know some Destiny advocates will defend the game to the bitter end. I'm not here to argue. Your experience with the game isn't going to change my experience with the game.