It is an interesting relationship Bungie has with their streaming community. They are given substantial amounts of free silver to buy and show off cosmetics on their streams. A core group of streamers meet up with Bungie prior to new content release to test and suggest tweaks. Many of their ideas creep into gameplay there. They often have individual gripes or want something nerfed and changed, having such a close relationship with Bungie it usually happens. Are they play-testers? Part of Bungies development strategy? Or an elite tier of gamers who drive the games direction for profit? Certainly changed gaming the last few years.

Finally someone who gets it. I said the same thing, and after being screwed time and time again by Bungie’s business model, I chose to hold off on buying this expansion and I am glad I did seeing that it only caters to hardcore PC player base who belong to dedicated clans or friend groups of other hardcore players. Even solo hardcore players are being shafted. The content is too challenging, which causes frustration and leads to toxic behavior/rage quitting by impatient players. Casual players are going to abandon this game and move on to less frustrating games that are challenging, but fun. Worse thing Bungie did was to add time gated challenges to this game for normal content. Make a masters mode time gated, but leave it out of normal play.

I’m a hardcore player and I personally am not enjoying myself. Difficulty is nice a bit but it comes at the cost of replay ability. The raid and dual destiny mission are prime examples. They were fun the first time but just get tedious the next few times because they are long, repetitive, and just obnoxious. Like you said if this is the future of destiny I’m out. I miss the days when I could take an hour session and farm some loot multiple times. Now with how long content is getting that farm turns into 1 run. The only time I truly had fun this whole expansion was the 12 player activity. I enjoy power phantasy and chaotic gameplay over slow and bullet spongy gameplay. Idk why people prefer the reverse but I’m in the minority it seems.

[quote]People who see the mass whining now may roll their eyes because thats the first step. Then comes the silence. Then the panic from bungie because their numbers are tanking. Sony is looking over their shoulder wondering why the playerbase numbers are cratering. But by then its too late.[/quote] "THE SKY IS FALLING!!! THE GAME IS DYING!!!!" - 9 years ago "THE SKY IS FALLING!!! THE GAME IS DYING!!!!" - 8 years ago "THE SKY IS FALLING!!! THE GAME IS DYING!!!!" - 7 years ago "THE SKY IS FALLING!!! THE GAME IS DYING!!!!" - 6 years ago "THE SKY IS FALLING!!! THE GAME IS DYING!!!!" - 5 years ago "THE SKY IS FALLING!!! THE GAME IS DYING!!!!" - 4 years ago etcetera, etcetera... The game ain't going to die because a few bozos are feeling like its life or death to talk to someone for 20-30 minutes in a video game.

EA made a game exclusively for casual players it's called Anthem can you go check the steam charts and tell me how it's doing.

Long rant, but who cares. If I really like a game, I become a hardcore player. I LOVED D1. Played all the raids, both Normal and HM with PUGs even though majority of my friends were casual at best. After the atrocity that was D2 Y1, I left for about a year until my spouse, who I had just started dating, had discovered a love for Destiny after hearing me talk about it a lot when we were just friends. We started midway into Forsaken after she played through all the rest of the previous Destiny content to get up to speed. My absolute disappointment to see the flagship raid exotics now being locked behind sheer dumb luck again like OG Vex completely shattered my interest in playing endgame or remotely taking it seriously. The whole reason I loved TTK and Wrath was because the quests made them TRULY worthwhile with a little effort. Knowing I was helping others made me feel like I was doing my part in the community. Now my two reasons for enjoying endgame were virtually gone. Devoting so much time to luck in a video game is just insanely stupid and devoid of any logical reasoning. My spouse wasn't into endgame stuff anyway, partly due to social anxiety but also because of my lack of interest. But she loved the story and the casual content. So we stayed for the most part. We watched Lightfall and noped out after immediately noticing the lack of enthusiasm in the ViDoc. We do not regret it but played when they made it all free. We intend on getting TFS for the hell of it when it goes on sale. The current endgame design DOES NOT facilitate community engagement whatsoever. It's built SOLELY to be a masochistic E-Peen measuring contest and its so sad to watch what Destiny has become.

I'm not sure about fearing for the future of Destiny as a whole but some very valid opinions being posted on this thread. Its becoming clear now that Bungie made game design approach changes in difficulty to push raid and dungeon mechanics into wider parts of the game. Equally the social aspect was always a part of the game, they are now doubling down on making that a core part of the design too it seems - which shouldn't be a huge surprise considering the amount of Fireteam finder details and updates they've talked about in the weekly updates prior to TFS launch. What they appear to have done is limit (or in some cases remove) your options to choose wether you want to engage with these aspects now - I'm not sure 'forced' is the right word but will be limiting the ability for many players to do these things unless they can adapt to the changes. I think many are quite rightly upset as their enjoyment of the game was the natural flow of many of the activities, which has been changed with mechanics (timers/duo/comms needed etc) which could avoided before or just LFG'd casually if you needed 2 or 3 other players to complete. Equally making you always under-levelled for activities (e.g again -5 for vanguard playlist?) is also a noticeable feel in the difficulty and a shame you can't overlevel now if you put the grind in. As much as I loved the campaign and the conclusion to the story, which was fantastic - I did at times find the constant mechanics a slog at times and repetitive - I'm not huge raider but have enjoyed doing the raids when I can, just not sure they got the balance right at the moment. I've no issues with items being rewards only in raids or dungeons, nor do I have any problems with these activities being challenging with mechanics/timers/difficulty, but pushing these gameplay elements into wider parts of the game so quickly is probably why many have reacted. What is sad to see is such a divided playerbase now on what was such a high moment for the game, I was also shocked in how many of the big streamers reacted negatively toward 'solo/casual' players when many were just making valid points about the difficulty in playing Dual Destiny activity. Hopefully Bungie will look to provide an alternative option for players to obtain the exotic class item (which was marketed as a key part of the new prismatic sub-class) As strange approach overall - I'd be interested to see the data on how much of the playerbase is solo players vs fireteams/clans as we know Bungie love the data mining thing - surely that would have informed them the reaction they would get when pushing the co-op modes.

Yeah this community loves to respond to critcism with "just stop playing" I'm 37, and I've been playing videogames basically full time since I was 7. I've lost count of the amount of communities I've seen fall apart and games shut down after the bulk of community "just stopped playing." I don't argue with these people any more, they're just begging for their own downfall. Nobody ever considers this, no matter how elite you are, or how "promlg" you think you are, those casuals you like to get an atitude with, they're the only reason your achievements have any transient meaning, without them, your "skills" are nothing. But everyone always realizes too late that online games live and die by the masses, not by the 1% of the 1% of solo self found hardcore mode nightmare tier XIII players.

On higher difficulties, the game basically becomes a cover shooter, which kinda just takes away the “fun” factor.

You can’t make a game financially viable by catering to hardcore players. Not enough of them. Not enough money among them.

It’s the most well received expansion campaign of the series, and you are worried? It’s filtering out the weak. Maybe this game isn’t for you bro.

More like soygreppo. And don't forget the others in the beta bunch. Soywallahbruh (arguably the most annoying crynerf whom bungie takes advice from) Soytto (aka datto) SoykisHD Soyroar Triplesoy Evsoyze Sir Soytrious I could do on about the great gatekeepers of destiny who wish to maintain prestige for their "achievements" Suppose it's like the housing market. They got theirs so blam everyone else.

No need to worry. The game is dead. Been dead years ago. 🤣🤣🤣 Absolutely nothing here but a shamble mess of shallowness!