I've been gaming since Atari. (Raise your hand if you played Combat.) Doom? Wolfenstein? Been there done that. I also played World of Warcraft (WoW) off and on for the decade it's been around; a game that's come a long way in that time. And it's because of this extensive experience, and personal background, that I will make references and comparisons to other games to illustrate a point. And it should be understood that they won't be for the purpose derogating this game in any way. There's a lot of things superbly done in this game. It's merely an existential truth, that people tend to be taciturn regarding what they like, and vocal about what they don't. So this post shouldn't be interpreted as an argument, through omission, that there's nothing "good" about this game. Rather, silence should be regarded, more or less, as a job well done in those aspects of the game not specifically addressed herein. The objective need no such caveat, but the objective will also concede, that not many are very objective. Upon beginning my Destiny career, what immediately struck me was what felt like an abject dearth of community. Indeed, it was one of the first things on which I remarked to a friend who'd been playing it for some time (perhaps since its release; I'm not sure). I'd erstwhile heard it referred to as an "MMO shooter," but when speaking with my friend I said, "It's the least social 'social experience' I've ever encountered in an MMO." You are often surrounded by people with which you have no means of substantively communicating at all. There's no prosaic chat apparatus for communicating with others. And for someone who's come away from years of MMO game play, which facilitated efficacious and expedient prosaic communication with other players, walking into Destiny as a new player feels like stepping into a profound void of interaction. The existing infrastructure for such is, by comparison, extremely laborious and tedious. And one is averse to engaging in a verbal dialogue with strangers over the internet. While I'm glad there's no public audio chat in places like the Tower, as it would certainly be egregiously abused, I do wish there was an optional general chat for text; ideally accommodating a computer keyboard, as opposed to the cumbersome and inefficient meandering from letter to letter via the direction arrows, or the joystick of a controller. Another thing which struck me, was the conspicuous lack of information readily available about the game's basic features and functions, and accomplishing tasks and goals within the game itself. And this, perhaps more than any other factor, has had the greatest deleterious impact upon my perception of the game. WoW was initially the same way upon release. At times achieving simple tasks was a daunting prospect. But over the course of a decade, Blizzard has nigh perfected the art of the MMO, and there's little in the game that is not articulated clearly and thoroughly. Some may argue this robs the game of mystery, but it also spares you from something far worse. You see, a paucity of information is a direct contributing factor to, if not the paramount factor in, poor decision making. When people don't have access to information, they make decisions based upon limited, and a therefore frequently incorrect assessments of what data available to them. And in order to illustrate this I will now impart an anecdote regarding my own personal experience in the game. I recently read about two other exotic Titan chests online besides the one I currently have; the Crest of Alpha Lupi. So upon seeing that Xur was selling an exotic chest engram, I spent the entire result of many days of collecting strange coins, buying these engrams in an effort to get one of these other chests. I ended up with a chest inventory section filled with exotic chest armor pieces identical to the one I already had. It wasn't until I happened to look into the interface that shows all of the exotic items you've already found, that I noticed there was only one item in the chest armor section. When I realized I had wasted more than a week's worth of strange coin collecting, in an effort to get an item that apparently did not exist, I practically wanted to quit the game. Now you could argue that this was purely the product of my own stupidity. But that's not really true. Because I had researched it online, and therefore done my due diligence prior to purchasing the engrams; indeed that research was the reason I bought the engrams in the first place. It would be completely true to say this was a product of my own ignorance however. But it must also be acknowledged that said ignorance was induced by the game itself, and that it's not exclusively an ignorance of my own creation. Example. If there's only one exotic Titan chest available in the game currently, why was Xur selling a chest engram? An engram implies (at least to me as a newbie) there is a chance for it to be one of multiple outcomes. Different stats you say? An illogical conclusion given the "Twist Fate" feature, which is arguably the cheaper and more prudent alternative to the 19 strange coins requisite to purchase the engram. It turns out the the post I read was made slightly before the Taken King was released, and between then and now Xur apparently stopped offering the other chest pieces. As a new player I was completely ignorant of this. I read a post saying people got them from Xur, and therefore I bought them hoping to get them from Xur. My point is the game in no way explicitly informed me that this purchase could only have one outcome, and all the most conspicuous information immediately available to me led me to believe there was more than one possible outcome. I had to deduce there was only one chest available on my own, through an ancillary feature I didn't even know existed for the first two weeks I was playing the game. But not before the game's vagary had induced me to utterly waste my entire stock of strange coin currency. Another example is the Iron Banner. As a new player I didn't know that was a limited time event. I got to rank four on the last day, not knowing it was the last day, and bought the pistol. I then went to go do some strikes to play with my cool new pistol for a few hours. I was about two or three hundred points away from rank five at the time. I went back a few hours later, because I wanted to buy the rifle, and the vendor was [i]GONE[/i]. Admittedly this was my fault, and I'll not argue otherwise. But I do think Bungie could have done a bit more to apprise me of this content's ephemeral nature. I didn't even buy any of the emblems or anything, because I had no idea this this guy was merely sojourning in the Tower. It really sucked. I wanted that cool looking pulse rifle too. My friend who's been playing forever never thought to tell me. Everyone who's been playing knows, and so they just assume everyone else knows. And I think the developers take it a bit for granted that people will know what they know also at times. I understand the developers may want there to be some mystery in the game, but there is in my opinion a detrimental absence of information regarding far too much in the game itself. Even researching things online often yields ambiguous or inconclusive results, and the disparity between year one and two content is often not conveyed at all, in the information your internet searches produce. And this frequently results in acute aggravation as opposed to a sense of wonder. I realize that some of this may be due to the inherent limitations of the console platform, or perhaps it's the product of a pervading "console mentality" on the part of the developers. I couldn't say. But Mass Effect 3 had current game news displayed on the character selection screen, on a virtual monitor, every time you loaded up the game. I noticed when you pull up your ghost that two of the directional arrows are unused. Perhaps one could be used to track temporary events. Hitting that button would display a timer for such events. Or maybe it would just be displayed when pulling up your ghost in any non-combat zone. Just a thought. I'm not saying Destiny should be the same as WoW; I wouldn't want it to be. I would just like to say there is wisdom in looking to the beaten path at times. WoW went from a very similar experience to the one described above at release, to an incredibly streamlined and user friendly interface today, that is amongst the pinnacle of its genre for conveying and providing access to pertinent information bar none. And there are surely lessons to be learned, and emulated, there. Where once it was a nightmare, it is now incredibly easy to find groups for exactly what you want now in that game, and it's all now incorporated into the game itself as an inherent feature. Moving on, I find there to be a lack of features in general in Destiny. For example, I would very much like to be able to set the game music and game voice volumes independently of one another. Currently, one can only set the game volume as a whole, and the party chat volume. I would like to be able to turn voices up, and music down, or vice versa if I so choose; this is a rather standard feature in any PC game. Furthermore, I would very much like to see an option to disable the aim assist in this game. This aspect of game play is arguably one of the more unpleasant, and frankly at times farcical (particularly in PVP) features subtly ensconced within the game's mechanics. While it certainly is often beneficial, it is at times egregiously detrimental, and I for one would rather be rid of it altogether. I find it harming my game play as often as it benefits it. (Continued in following post.)