Hello Bungie I have been an avid gamer since the Atari 2600. In those days Activision was THE brand name everyone trusted for a quality gaming experience . As systems came and went so did other trusted companies like Rare, Capcom, Square, Neversoft, Epic ETC....(Too many to list). All seemed to have fallen off for the same reasons Corporate Interference and flash over function. Their games became these things based on demographics ,pie charts , focus groups and all about marketing hype. Their games became Shit . Pretty and well advertised at the target audience but still Shit. The thing I have always loved about Bungie games is they always brought the flash and the function always surpassed expectations. Your games have always been a visual feast ,the controls are always second to none and the multitude of in game options were staggering . Level Creation , every option imaginable for matchmaking , character customization to name a few. The Balance of PVP and PVE was nearly perfect. As you improved in skill you could feel it. And the rewards for playing efficiently and hard showed. When you went into a multilayer game of halo 3 wearing your Hayabusa armor with a Katana strapped to your back you felt like a bad ass and everyone around you knew you were a serious player.. And if you ventured onto the Bungie website and signed up you found an amazing companion to your game . You could see information that you couldn't have dreamed of for a console game (The heat maps come to mind). So after the years of rumors and speculation on what Bungie was working on Destiny was finally announced and I couldn't wait. Watching interviews and reading articles and listening to podcasts like Guardian Radio only added to my anticipation (I almost bought a ps4 just to play the Alpha) but I waited to buy a next gen console to see who had the Destiny edition. So when I played the beta on PS3 I was amazed. This is the game Ive been waiting for, mix the game play I am experiencing with the amount of content Bungie packs into a game and this is going to be the greatest game out there. So now I have played this game since day one and the only word to describe it is - Disappointed. Lets start with the Visuals - Outstanding , unbelievably beautiful and extremely detailed with endless hours of visual exploration with invisible walls in locations that make no sense. (most of the moon) Sound - Superb (As always) The guns sound great. The music is good . The sound effects are great . I even like Peter Dinklages voice acting. Balance - Weird....... I'm sorry i just don't get it. Ive gone into the crucible with legendary guns, exotic guns, and the first gun you get in the game with the same character at level 30 with little difference. if there is a system in place to balance all guns in the crucible why the level system. If the level one Khvostov 7G-02 auto rifle is only slightly less effective as the Legendary Vanquisher-viii or the Exotic Suros Regime what is the point. If its just the perks making the difference then why the levels? I miss the feeling of pulling out a weapon that makes people run for cover , Or the feeling of your team panicking when the other team has it. I liked the system that a really powerful weapon had limits and was hard to use and you had to be good with it to be a threat. Now you jump into Destiny and a sliding scale sets your guns to be more even It doesn't feel like balance it feels like being neutered. Reward System - PVE What ???? I can play all the way thru the level 30 nightfall strike on my own without dying once getting all critical hits or headshots never missing at all and two seconds before I kill the final boss a friend can join me without firing a single shot and he or she has the exact same chance when it comes to the reward?????? Skill doesn't matter ? How you beat the level makes no difference? OK now instead of trying to improve your skills your just racing to the end of the level to role the dice to see if you get anything useful which 99% of the time is a big fat zero. At the start of the game when you are leveling up the reward was pretty balanced with a chance at something out of reach. Then you get to level 28 and your getting green equipment ? So is this game about grinding ? Grinding to me has always meant defeating enemies with a calculated risk to benefit ratio with bonus modifiers based on skill . It was simple, how well you did equaled how good the reward was. This seams to be the same roll of the dice no matter what you do. And they feel like loaded dice! I'm not even going to talk about the Cryptarch but I do have a question: Why the levels? I understand having levels with the Factions the Crucible Quartermaster ETC.... you have to earn the right to purchase items at a certain level, got it. But the Cryptarch?? My one character was getting legendary gear out of blues at level 3 with the Cryptarch while at the same time my main character is level 20+ with the Cryptarch and has only seen that once since launch!!! So why the levels??? Rewards for PVP is worse Ive played games where one of our teammates destroyed on the feild and got nothing at the end of the match while the second to last player got an exotic! It seams to be more chance than balance and it is watering down the whole experience. If the game is loot driven then why is the loot so random? Matchmaking - What matchmaking? From the company that defined what multilayer could be on a console. Story - What story? Just when it began to get interesting it was over. I focused on maxing out all of my gear before the first expansion ( that was supposed to resolve a lot of peoples gripes with the game including my own) And in the following weeks we saw updates that seem to refine this and fix that but no content was added, You had talked about adding content to this ever evolving environment. The only content that Ive seen (that I didn't pay for) is a pile of bones in the loot cave . And even thou you took away a lot of peoples favorite toy it was still cool to see that you had that ability. But still the exact same game . Then The Dark Below - Awesome levels ....Wait a minute......What do you mean all of the gear that I maxed out is now obsolete I cant bring anything up to date?? Oh I can Bring the exotics up to date....OK...Wait you mean to tell me i have to pay Xur a large amount of glimmer and buy an exotic shard not to upgrade but to start over with my current maxed out exotics only if he has that one in his inventory that week?? So all the work we did getting ready for the expansion meant nothing .What was the point of updating our gear in the first place? Just for Vault of Glass ??? Just for crucible?? Thank You So Much. Where is the story ? Oh we can read about it on the website. No cut-scenes (unless you count the ad stuck in the middle of our map) After the expansion launch my friends and I focused on getting our gear up to par. That's when all the cheese started and we jumped in to get our gear back up. To those of us in my circle that care as much or more about PVE than PVP. It felt like we were robbed of what we had done. Most of my friends and I have crazy schedules and its hard enough getting three of us on at the same time let alone take the time to get six people together on a raid so cheesing was a way of getting ready to do the raids with the gear we already had. To get it up to snuff. Then Bungie started cracking down on that. Most of it I totally understand. The loot cave , Atheon , Crota all understood. others not so much. Finding exploits is as old as gaming , Where would any respectable Mario Bros player be without the turtle hop on World 3-1.. Or the up,up,down,down,left,right,left,right,B,A Konami code That HAS become legend. Bungies focus seems to have gone from giving us an unbelievable game to making sure we are playing it the way Bungie or Activision wants us to. This is feeling less like a Bungie game all the time. It feels like a game Launched by Bungie but run by someone else. No matchmaking? No custom games? No map making ? Doesn't sound like Bungie. Martin O'Donnell is replaced by Paul Mccartney ? That doesn't make any sense. Sounds like something a corporation would come up with. Joe Staten leaves what the hell is going to happen to the story? It is fair to say I AM a Bungie fan . I have only pre-orderd five games in my life. 1st - Halo 2 Special edition 2nd - Halo 3 Legendary 3rd - Halo ODST 4th - Halo Reach legendary 5th - Destiny PS4 Special Edition console. I guess you can count the 360 Ghost edition as my sixth, I know People are going to say THIS ISN'T HALO!!!!! I know that .This is Bungie!!!! I have 8 Games for the PS4 I have played the first part of three of them. The rest of my gaming time is spent on Destiny. I love this game but its starting to feel like a downhill slide from grinding into boring repetition. With no clear way of how to "Become Legend" If the distribution of rewards for PVE and PVP are based on chance and everything is made even in the crucible then everyone becomes Legend. And if everyone is Legend no one is. If House of Wolves Is more of the same I think I'm done