Most gamers are aware of their 'addiction' and embellish it so long as it doesn't interfere with their daily lives. A good 'addictive' game model keeps players invested in a game without producing burnout or fatigue while allowing them to balance their daily lives - in my own life as long as I get the chores done and stay on top of work and classes the old lady doesn't care. Diablo III and Borderlands are excellent models of this type of addictive gameplay framework. There's always something new to do and some new piece of gear to chase, but I can put the game down after a session knowing I've accomplished something in it and I get enjoyment out of the ever-increasing valuable gear - or the increasingly cool gear appearance changes - I get in a relatively short amount of time. So why does Destiny generate so much anger, hostility and even outright hatred if it is similar to these kinds of games? The answer is that it isn't similar to these kinds of games; the aforementioned gear and activity chase can be called 'carrot-on-a-stick' appeal. Destiny's main problems lie in the fact that there is no carrot at a certain point. There is a wall, and after the wall the carrot, if you will, is gone, even as we keep searching for it. Vendor/faction gear is largely the same, save for a few instances. the levels reached by raid gear are only applicable to the raid. There are only a few Exotics worth having, and even if you want to collect them all there aren't very many. Beyond that, there is no customization - shaders are notoriously difficult to come by, whereas in other games the option to make your gear the color you want comes standard, and if it doesn't, the supplies needed to change the color are easy to come by. This is a genuinely frustrating experience. The psychologist that Bungie hired even wrote extensively on this topic. When the metaphorical pigeon doesn't get any more rewards, it takes to abusing nearby pigeons. This has happened with Bungie and their community: we're not being fed anymore carrots, and so we've taken to being toxic on the forums and a Bungie employee was even swatted. I've been following Destiny closely in the news and you can spot something interesting: over time, Bungie employees in the public light look increasingly haggard. This is not uncommon to see in Presidents: you can observe graying hair, stooped posture, wrinkles and other markers of stress on them as time goes by. So the psychologist was right and the community has taken to abusing what they register is the cause of their dismay. But all of this can be easily fixed. There are countless carrot-on-a-stick models for Bungie to choose from. They've been brought up a hundred times and I won't bring them up now. Answers were available from the very start of the game: players took to loot caves for a reason. It was indicative of the kind of 'addictive' gameplay framework they were expecting. If it isn't registering yet, I'm referring to horde/survival/firefight/zombies. But the mode isn't enough: there has to be a carrot. Bungie needs to figure out what that carrot is, and how many of them to feed to players. Gjallarhorn is not that carrot: I know because I have it. The initial rush of joy from getting it is intoxicating, but it wears off until it becomes just another weapon in your ridiculously small arsenal that everyone else has. This leads me to RNG. RNG itself is not the problem, the lack of rewards and variance from RNG is the problem. RNG is fine in a game like Diablo, where loot is dropped readily because there is a lot of it, but in a game like Destiny where gear and gear options are extremely limited it doesn't make sense. The drop rates either needs to be significantly increased or another system implemented altogether. Add to this the barriers to getting the carrot: the DLC introduced yet more currencies and system that erected an artificially inflated barrier between players and gear. So now not only are players still running on the treadmill to get more gear that isn't there, they have to run harder and faster for the same amount of reward in the first place, which was never much to begin with. Again, where loot is plentiful this isn't a problem. But again, in Destiny, loot is not plentiful. To call Destiny a loot-based game would be highly inaccurate. This all leads to my final point: Bungie has made a lot of trouble for themselves. Of course all of these problems could have been avoided in the beginning but they weren't and we have to get past that. But this is troublesome for Bungie because HoW was never intended to be a major content update (and it certainly isn't an expansion). If Bungie doesn't improve their 'addictive' gameplay framework they will continue to lose players and will continue to receive hostility from a disenfranchised community.