I just spent a lot of effort on Guardian Games and got basically nothing for all the work. And it was work and not much fun. Bungie has decided that we have to jump through their hoops in order to be good guardians and a lot of players are buying into that for reasons that I don't understand. There is no story - I don't call Luke Smith's wandering drivel to be story - and pve is basically dead. We are supposed to join a fire team, like it or not, or be told to find another game. Bungie's new business model is based on streamers and platforms on which people watch Destiny instead of playing Destiny. That's not for me. This morning, when Guardian Games was over I felt a sense of relief. I'm done grinding for garbage. I refuse to buy into Luke Smith's egotistical vision of "his" game. They get no more money from me and I am going to go try the many games that I've downloaded from Game Pass, but not played due to wasting my time with Destiny.

I am in the same boat OP .. I am an older guy like yourself and am pretty much isolated in game these days. I am no longer in a clan as the ones that did have members that played would often demand your time as soon as you logged on (often with invites that didn't say anything about what they want to do, just a silent invitation) and the casual ones are either dying or have members just there for the engrams. My PS4 settings are all at "No One", after some LFG experiences with what can only be described as arrogant teenage wastes of skin I stopped looking for groups. I don't accept friend requests or allow messages anymore and I haven't done one raid in Destiny 2 but completed all the D1 ones with guys who I genuinely had a laugh with. They moved on when they saw the abortion Destiny 2 was at launch and bailed. A few came back for Forsaken and loved it but when Shadowkeep with its recycled location and the Fortnite Battle Pass rocked up they again moved on. Even when you play solo I find myself in strikes or Gambit with team mates who are either speed running, just running past enemies or constantly running in front of you as if they don't trust you to shoot an enemy on your own. Add in the FOMO "get it while you can" seasons and I just cant be bothered with this game much anymore. After so long you get tired of being forced to do the same activities each week, just repeating the same stuff over and over for rubbish rewards when every arrival in an area is like deja vu with the same enemies spawning in the same locations every single time. Yay, cant wait to do three of the same strikes for some blues I don't need and some glimmer with the class Bungie dictated I have to use this so I can get a "Powerful Drop" of the same Vanguard crap we have been getting for years now. I just cant be bothered anymore. Its just generic hamster wheel lazy game design from a woke studio that I really dont want to support anymore. Everyone thought it was Activision that were the problem but can anyone blame them for bailing on this nonsensical mess ?? The other day I was playing Red Dead 2 and was just sitting on the horse at the river admiring the scenery when an Eagle swooped down and plucked a fish from the river. Having just started the game it took me aback and that moment is something that Destiny just doesn't have. Im Red Dead you can sit and watch animals behaving like well, animals. Its a word that feels real because it was designed to be full of the unexpected. Likewise in Witcher 3 I have had more than a few emotional moments during quests that are either funny, disturbing or plain hard hitting but they all mean something and that mystery is what Destiny is missing and its pretty clear that Bungie cant tell a story, they start plenty but never finish them. You just know the big story lines like Uldren and where Mara went will be hidden in their next rip off "expansion", until then we get this rinse and repeat rubbish with a storyline made to fit the content and not the other way round. In Titanfall 2 there is a story mission where you phase between timelines in the same location, its so well done and so fun to play and something that could be done in so many Destiny story lines but instead we get "Donate this stuff at 100 a pop so we can unlock this thing for an event that we were always going to unlock anyway". I am looking forward to Cyberpunk in September, I bought Shadowkeep Deluxe but Bungie are getting no more of my money. I used to spend maybe £20 a month on Silver but stopped that around October and am looking forward to the next "expansion" going up against Cyberpunk, I am willing to bet it will delayed to "allow more time in the oven" and to stop that comparison. As for bringing the magic back to Destiny ??, they have had five and a half years to do that and all they did in Destiny 2 was repeat the broken cycle of Destiny. Look at the game now after over five years of learning and player feedback and they are still running around recycling ideas unable to make any sense of the story. Destiny is a broken mess run by people who couldn't agree on the colour of poo let alone write a decent story. The people who thought Destiny up are long gone from Bungie and this game is well past its best. Its being managed by a guy who is supposed to be a journalist and yet his vision of the game reads like a mission statement from a woke teenager. Remember last time out when he said we would have to choose between Gambit and Gambit Prime ??, yeah that never happened. Now he is coming out with amazing revelations like "It suddenly struck me that their is something wrong in Destiny" .. yeah, no faeces Sherlock. You want to bring the magic back to Destiny ??, it would take an effort that Bungie are unwilling and incapable of doing. Look elsewhere is my point, so many good games and developers that deserve our time and respect (I am playing Journey just now and its amazing .. check it out) rather than the greedy lazy and downright arrogant Bungie we have now. This is basically the Destiny playerbase right now .. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dsx2vdn7gpY And it ain't going to get any better.

I feel you. In D1, sometimes you could be in the same area that a group of people were trying to open the vault. People would, rarely, send me a msg to help or ask me where something came from. Now, All is quiet. I think D2 just gutted so many people out. The mid tier part of the game is lacking badly and it caused people to leave in mass. When all those people left, people got isolated. The groups of people that were playing together, I feel, just kept to their own groups. It made regular players even more isolated. Now, like a few have said below, people are impatient. Want the completions now. Failure not an option. People, more and more, would rather have a speed run than make friends.

Bungie is dooming itself. Luke’s admission that last year he was worried about whether the company will survive at all after Activision’s withdrawal says everything. There’s no consensus about what Destiny is or should be. Bungie is stumbling around with each release and update. It’s suffering from short term thinking and seems convinced that microtransactions will sustain it between releases. Bungie has an internal company structure that has made the game a laboratory for its developers pet interests. Bungie’s internal structure has also diffused accountability - breeding inconsistencies in the player experience. Bungie’s internal structure has historically diffused responsibility for projects among multiple leads. It is not a hierarchically minded organization - it is open and collaborative - specifically so that its talent feels engaged and feels like anyone’s ideas will see daylight. Prioritizing talent retention during Bungie’s expansion made sense - or at least I can appreciate that decision to a point. Now, however, the company needs to ask itself whether privileging every pet project that bubbles up from the floor is good for customer retention. It seems like games had to be fun first, with great mechanics, back in the day when the success or failure of the publisher depended solely on release sales. Or maybe this is nostalgia from someone who remembers being drawn to innovative and more immersive games as the arcade era was overtaken by consoles and PCs. Regardless - my personal opinion is that Destiny would be great if Bungie truly relentlessly focused on this mission: create an amazing, story-driven, customizable, first person shooter that is fun playing solo and with your friends. From what we’ve seen - the company is not relentlessly focused on this. Instead we’ve been presented with WoW aspirations, MMO aspirations, RPG aspirations, FOMO, micro transactions, constant sandbox changes, half developed story arcs, game modes appearing and disappearing, maps that don’t accommodate the number of PvP players, lobbies that don’t match full teams (let alone balance them, with improvement lately), long queue times..........and a player retention mentality that assumes that players care more about chasing trinkets than about the quality of their shared experience. I’ve stuck with this game hoping that Bungie will get back to what it does best. Personally, I’m running out of hope and am not convinced that Bungie will survive as it continues to needlessly baffle and frustrate its players.

Ultimately the thing everyone fails to recognize as the biggest problem in all of this is social media. YouTube Twitch Mixer I for one, don't have any problem with streamers, content creators or youtubers etc but the necessity to get things done quickly, to review this & that hasn't helped at all with developing the game. It's about making the money (which I understand they have to) I've always been a casual gamer. Never invested my time in clans. My real friends don't play Destiny, never have, and only 1 of my friends actually plays on console; the rest have other hobbies/interests and so as a result I've never had a circle of Destiny friends. In fact, moving from Xbox to PS4 left me with even less gaming friends but it is what it is. I don't mind using Lfg to find a group, but I'm not one for using a mic. I'll listen but rarely speak. Regardless of which direction Destiny goes, I'll always have this unconditional love for it which I've had since I first stepped foot in the Cosmodrome. I've uninstalled D2 twice from my PS4, yet I reinstall it because this bug eats at me, something telling me I want to play it because despite all of the 1 hit kill abilities, cheesy weapons (LoW) and ridiculous aim assist, I can't help but enjoy playing Destiny.

Its not a Destiny issue, its a gaming culture issue in my opinion. A lot of people have nailed the issue with people wanting to be "pro gamers" or streams and all that jazz. My personal belief is that party chats (whether its on console or discord) are partially to blame. Not saying that they aren't awesome additions, but they do tend to cause your average person to isolate. A lot of the gaming crew I play with was picked up when parties weren't a thing (think Xbox/Xbox 360) and you'd be able to communicate with your team. Now its opt in to team chat in matchmade activities and mostly everyone is in their own Discord or party chat 9 times out of 10 and never even opt in. Honestly, I'm guilty of that. I've also found that almost EVERY TIME I do something through LFG or whatever I either get stuck with the worst players on the planet or absolute jerks or, even worse, a combination of the two. Its weird for sure and I feel your pain

This game is trash

It's 2020 dude, it seems everyone wants to be gaming famous, be it via streaming, or winning competitions. I check a lot of PSN profiles to see whom I'm matching regarding location (I'm UK n constantly play Russia, Middle East, Asia), and the amount of people who have twitch, mixer, YouTube, or msg for sweats in their bios is astronomical. Companies have realised the money is made from seasons, roadmaps, microtransaction live service games, they're fighting for your time because if you're into their game you've no time for anyone elses, so you're spending in their stores, no one else's. It seems every game these days is rushed out, riddled with bugs, full of lazy reskins, creativity has vanished n everyone is copying the Fortnite model. Bungies new game is apparently a hero shooter. Even single player games like borderlands released broken, after taking 7 years to build. EA are rebuilding Anthem because they want in on the looter action. Gaming isn't what it was, it feels like a normal company that's been privatised and is squeezing every penny it can from its customers, while letting quality of service go through the floor. This happens in industry, now it's hit gaming. It's a shame

I feel like you're right. Destiny has lost fun. Everything is about what competitive, what's the most min maxed load out, what needs nerfing or buffing. But nobody talks about are things fun. Is running strikes fun? How about raids? Patrol? Crucible? Sundial or menagire? If more people worried about if stuff was fun instead of all the other stuff they argue about destiny would be a much better game in my opinion.

bruv, nobody cares about your life story. you got something to say about the game, say it. Idgaf what conditions you grew up in.

Part of it is in D1 there was the idea that the game was full of hidden secrets and areas to explore. In d2 this just isn't the case. The zones are larger but far more linear. Also in D1 it became clear that there were areas to explore there weren't any secrets. And then you have strikes D1 just had more of them. Every dlc would add a few. D2 is just a much more hollow game and as such most of the truly casual players have moved on. Who can blame them