I still remember how I got into this franchise. I was never terribly interested in MMOs, but towards the end of Destiny’s lifespan, I began hearing only good things about the game and thought “F- it!”. I bought “Destiny: The Collection” shortly before Destiny 2’s release and absolutely loved it. No life’d that game so hard you can’t even imagine. And while the first year of D2 was… shall we say “not without issues”, I was initially glad I stayed as I massively enjoyed Forsaken as well as year 2. However, this past year has made obvious what Bungie wants this franchise to be, and I have to say, it is not a ride I want to stay on any longer. Allow me to explain: [b]Grind[/b] Every season we have to grind first to the hard cap with powerful rewards, and then rely entirely on Pinnacle drop RNG if we want to enjoy certain challenging endgame activities, while also grinding that artifact. And we have to do so by playing the same old activities week after week after week, the same stuff that’s been in the game for years on end. Every. Three. Months. And all the regular activities drop nothing useful. No regular Strike, Gambit or Crucible match gives me anything I would be excited for, but I have to do it anyway if I want to enjoy endgame content, because they reset us every 3 months. I don’t know if I have made that clear, but resetting people every 3 months is absolute garbage. Got that yet, Bungie? It feels like a job, and this is supposed to be an escape from reality, not a chore-simulator. [b]Sunsetting[/b] For all the excuses made for sunsetting, literally none of them hold up when it has become increasingly obvious that Bungie can’t produce enough content to keep up with the gear they are retiring. It has become obvious that it has only ever been excuses so they can sell us the same gear back, just with different expiration dates. Lots of re-releases and re-skins instead of enough “cool new gear” to make up for losing 90 % of the stuff you grinded for. And they nerf the weapons that get too powerful anyway, removing the need to get them out of the sandbox. Oh, and if power-creep was an actual reason and not an excuse, why do they need to sunset armor as well? Weird how that was never explained. No, sorry, but sunsetting is not happening for the proclaimed reasons, it’s just so Bungie can sell us less content for more money. Speaking of less content… [b]Vaulting[/b] Look, I get why removing content is happening. I actually believe them (for once) that there’s a good reason for this. The game has become too big with the old engine not being able to handle it all. That, however, doesn’t make it acceptable. Bungie should’ve simply made Destiny 3 instead of literally deleting content which I paid for. I PAID for the stuff that’s being removed! Yes, in a live service, you should expect change, but not half the game being removed, for -blam!-’s sake! No other company does this, not on this scale! And while Bungie can get away with it legally, it is unbelievably anti-consumer. While sunsetting shows they have no respect for our time-investment, this shows they don’t respect our monetary investment as well. They should’ve picked literally any option other than this middle finger to paying customers. [b]Live-service[/b] Luke Smith recently revealed that in their transition to an independent studio, they lost about half the workforce (of other Activision studios) to develop the game. This wouldn’t be a problem if the game was scaled down accordingly. Instead, however, they try to continue developing the same game as they did in year 2, but somehow even more spread out than before. Every other week something has to happen, some disposable content has to be delivered so people won’t leave. Instead of working on quality releases once or twice a year, Bungie is now trying desperately to keep people engaged all year round and… it just doesn’t work. Creating disposable content only for it to be removed season after season doesn’t work. Forcing people to come back through pressure and FOMO doesn’t work. Of course only as long as your intention is to make a good game. Well… [b]Eververse[/b] Ah, now we get to the reason all this is happening. In the transition to a F2P live-service game, Bungie now wants nothing other than people buying stuff from their garbage microtransaction storefront. Multiple times every year that store is refreshed, while the much requested vendor refresh is either postponed another year or done half-heartedly. Every season, every “event” (that’s been the same for 2 years now or utter trash like Guardian Games) and after every new exotic release, Bungie pushes the Eververse into our faces. This game doesn’t exist to have you play enjoyable content anymore, it exists to keep you engaged week after week with disposable meaningless nonsense and grind while stocking the Eververse to the fullest. All while we still pay for the same expansions as we always have, which just keep getting smaller and worse but also more expensive over time. Oh and the season passes as well, can’t forget those! [b]Conclusion[/b] There’s two basic philosophies for making a massively successful game. You can either just focus on making a good game, and then worry about selling that, worry about monetizing that afterwards. Because good games (especially by huge well-known studios) tend to sell well. Because people generally like to buy good games. Because good games are fun to play. I know, rocket science. There’s however also the other way, the way which many AAA-studios have taken these days. Which is to make continuously updated mediocre live-service games, trying desperately to keep people engaged by any means necessary. Who cares about actually making a good game when you can sink your claws into people’s psyche and keep them coming back with FOMO, with throwaway “events”, with content that stays for just a few weeks? And the truly tragic thing is that Destiny didn’t start out like the second example here. Destiny 1 worked. Destiny 1 had one or two bigger updates a year and it was all quality. But now Bungie tries to draw all that content out over an entire year with half the workforce to keep you continuously [i]engaged[/i]. It’s all about the [i]engagement[/i] now, that “recurrent user spending” (at the Eververse). Destiny isn’t developed as game anymore, it’s designed purely as a structure to sell you shit. And around that structure Bungie is desperately trying to stretch their live-service game. And it just doesn’t work. Because Destiny was never designed to work that way. Because not having the resources to update your game multiple times a year but then doing it anyway doesn’t work. It’s why we have to play so much disposable content which gets removed that same year. It’s why there’s so much grind but we have to play the same activities season after season after season. Just so we’re [i]engaged[/i] and don’t ever think about leaving. And if we ever feel frustrated playing such an unrewarding mess of a game, we can always pay a few bucks and feel rewarded that way! ;) __________________________________________________________________________________ [b]A Thank You…[/b] Just for the sake of fairness I also want to mention how this really isn’t the fault of the dev-team. I’m sure they’re all doing their best. Whenever Destiny is allowed to be good, it still shines. All the end-game content is excellent. All the *proper* story missions are captivating. The gunplay, sound-design, music and general atmosphere are second to none in the industry. But not even the best dev-team in the entire world could pump out content beyond their capacity and have that content still be good. You can’t push out seasonal content on this scale and with this frequency and have it not be sub-par. It’s just not possible for most of Destiny to be good anymore, and that’s ok for the execs and shareholders at Bungie so long as people still spend money. Still, I wanted to thank all the hardworking people for giving me so much joy over the past 3 years, even if it is now coming to an unfortunate end. So much of the content that is being removed now (as well as some that stays) has been utterly excellent, and I will never forget the thousands of hours I have spent playing it. [b]…and a Goodbye[/b] After I have seen over the course of the last year what Bungie wants this series to become, how they have planned the next 3 years out to be full of disposable, meaningless, constantly disappearing content, how they’re turning this game into some Frankenstein’s monster of stitched-together storylines that don’t make any sense as old content gets continuously removed, it’s time to call it quits. I have already observed how the love I once had for this game has slowly but surely been warped into bitterness and sadness over what potential it has always had. Over the potential – as it has been made clear now – it will never realize. And honestly, I would rather remember this game fondly than slowly beginning to hate it over time. It's been one hell of a ride, but sadly, this Monday will be my last day in this world which has been a part of my life for a very long time now. I honestly don’t know if I’ll ever check back to see if things have improved, as I don’t really have much hope for that. And as I realize this, I too realize once again that it is the right decision to say: After 3 years and over 3000 hours… this is it for me. Goodbye Destiny.