D2 might kill the franchise.

I want to preface this by saying that I have nearly 2000 hours logged on D1, the larger chunk of those spent in PvE endgame content. I have been playing consistently since the midnight release in 2014, and I have always been a huge fan, though I try to stay away from gaming online communities, as a rule, because it feels like it's way too easy to get overhyped or to drown in incessant hate in many of those. That said, I have two pre-orders (for me and the bf), and I've been eager to play the beta. I am not really disappointed, but it's hard not to be a bit underwhelmed. Pros: + The story mission is solid. It features multiple locations, shows you characters you've seen for years as simply vendors finally in action, and does a great job of introducing the plot setup. + Visually, things look great while retaining enough of the original art design not to be jarring. + I am yet to encounter any sort of meaningful bug. + I love the third ability, particularly the Warlock's, as it gives the class strategic value, now that it doesn't have self-res. Neutrals: +/- Nothing about this game feels new. Changes are mostly cosmetic, even the graphics aren't that different from three years ago (or if they are, the effect isn't terribly visible). Now, I personally love continuation, and having spent three years in the same world, I don't want to feel completely disconnected from it. +/- New weapon categories. I need to play the full game to decide how I feel about this. For now, I'm tentatively ok with it, but it does become hard to differentiate. Negatives: - Weapons are WEAK! Someone in a neighbor topic said that he is happy the snipers and shotguns are "heavies" now, since that's where one-hit-kill weapons should be. But neither snipers, nor shotguns ARE one-hit-kills here. And since purple bricks seem to drop even less frequently than in D1, that means that the third category is practically unusable. - Abilities are WEAK! Grenades and melee seem drastically underpowered in PvP, and even in PvE rarely kill anything outright. Supers are... sad. They look devastating, and do nothing. I emptied an entire Golden Gun into a yellow enemy, and took ONE BAR from his health. From point blank. - But to compensate for the underwhelming power level, abilities charge literally twice as slow as in D1. - Character running and jumping speed is awful. After the feeling of freedom of movement I've had for three years, I really am not looking forward to getting used to this crawl. --------------------- The general sense in PvE is that you are incredibly weak and slow. There are plenty of ways to make a game challenging, and weakening weapons and powers is literally the laziest. Making every enemy into a bullet sponge does nothing but slow the gameplay. I mean, remember how challenging Vault of Glass was (before we all memorized it, I mean)? NOTHING about the difficulty level there was due to weak weapons and enemies taking forever to kill. If that raid had the power levels of the D2 beta, it would be unplayable. That said, I recognize this isn't a demo, but an incomplete product, which has probably also been censored from existing skills and perks. Or at least I hope so, because if THIS is the variety of weapon and armor customization choices and if this is the entire skill tree, I'm going to be done with this game in less than a week.

Why does bungie hate the hunter so much? I don't see any point of playing it. The dodge is weak if you compare it to the other abilities. The reload part is fine but the titan can do the same and he builds a WALL.

PvP feels fantastic to me and I am not a PvP player on the whole. PvE frightened me. ALL of the abilities charge WAY too slow. And ALL of the enemies are bullet sponges, the Yellow bars are ridiculous . My buddies and I went off exploring during the strike and I have to say I was impressed with the world but can't make a good enough conclusion about it because it was virtually empty. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't a little worried. PvP can't carry this game. According to the beta, PvE isn't even close to being finished. But how would I really know that? I've only been given the smallest glimpse. I hope the patrol servers don't break on day one because let's face it, they will never have been properly tested. I'm still holding out hope.

I find it funny when Cayde gets on the coms and says he's running out of ammo because that's EXACTLY what happens during pve. I ran out so many times during that snoozefest strike I had to kill myself to spawn with some.

[b]Just want to say thanks to the [i]honest [/i]feedback from many people. Been reading lots of the posts on this thread. Please keep it coming.[/b] Unfortunately, the feedback has been largely negative about the gameplay changes. I am not surprised, but I was really hoping for better news. I'll have to wait until the open beta begins to try it out for myself, because I've been on the fence about buying D2, given the almost bait-and-switch tactics of D1. I certainly wasn't going to pre-buy anything from Bungie without actual proof this time. The irony is that I am seeing buyer's remorse from those who have tried the beta and I've been waiting for the beta to convince me to buy the game. Obviously, the situation doesn't look promising.

I agree with the consensus that PVP isn't bad; PVE balancing really needs work. 2 shotgun hits to kill a relatively low level enemy?! Running out of even primary ammo frequently?The fact snipers feel like they deal as much damage as in D1 but can take the place of a rocket launcher makes me hope PVE balancing will be a major focus this last month at Bungie. Nothing an update wouldn't be able to fix but still.

Arcstrider is too sluggish and slow and in a crucible game by the time the game is over your just now getting ur super everything else seems alright for now for me

[b]Strike[/b] The only thing I enjoyed about the boss stage in the new strike was the Multi-teared fighting experience. Like there was finally something happening as a result of blowing stuff up and smashing through 'bosses.' In the strike itself I liked the new challenges with moving environments, we have had very little of that, since maybe the 'super mario maze' in aethon's temple and lava in the siva infected zone? But again, they just re-skinned a lot of things vex wise. You fight the boss in the Nexus lab...again! For the third time! I mean recycle much? Wouldn't the alien species being uprooted and thrown halfway across the universe to fight an unknown darkness and 'weak puny humanity' be able to do better than that? [b]Story[/b] Plus nobody mentioned how we are going backward in the number of bad guys. No fallen, no hive, the dreadnought is gone, and we still have yet to see what 'the darkness' even is...we are still hung up on 'the traveler' who doesn't last...however long it took you to finish the opening credits montage where you got to shoot three times. and you apparently get your ghost back anyway seeing as how...it's with you in the strike...? yeesh. I would just like two things: 1: Time travel for real, in the story, affecting the future events. Not just beating up one vex dude from long ago, with no real consequences. 2: Expansion packs that ACTUALLY expand the story, not the pay-to-play themed-item booths, or the "collect this weapon this-day-only" event so it can be the only thing you touch in crucible till the next 'only gun people use' comes out. Sadly every game genre is becoming formulaic and micro-transactionized, from free-roam to fps. money to be made from helping people get what they won't need tomorrow, today.

My biggest issue thus far is that the Nova Bomb is way to slow for PvP. It works fine in PvE because the enemies stop moving periodically. In PvP though, I can only run up on guardians and basically touch them with it and that has killed me several times.

This is my mindset whenever read I a complaint that gives no helpful suggestions or improvements.