I like it... Bungie your thoughts? (cough) PS I do also agree with some of the comments below leave politics out

Not even a TLDR as if you think people want to read all of this shitty rant

Serious talk sols, Can you please make a tldr on the bottom thx :) And without the casual gamer there would be no destiny in the first place!!!

Bottom line is any game dev who builds the game around the top 1% of players does so at their peril. Now about your bigotry........ :-(

The game is ruined by bungie simply not knowing who is really playing the game. I mean they know datto and Gladd do. But the masses who just want to engage the activity without too much fuss and do it with friends. So instead of finding ways for all.players to engage in activities and provide challenges so Gladd and datto have carrots to chase... They put all sorts of bad idea barriers in front of the base and call it engaging end game content...right...that's what having to equip a seasonal or shield break or barrier mod is... Anyway. I won't harp on all the way bungie keeps the wide base from enjoying all the content available in the game..I'll just say...there is no reason why every player has not raided. If you are a guardian that believes any content should be out of the range of any person that paid for this game...well you are the problem.

Well said. I would add one point about clans... Bungie should do more to reward clan play overall. Maybe some pinnale gear each week when full clan team does events or challenges not just end game tasks. For a social game... Encouraging clan should be a bigger priority than it is now IMHO.

"The game that exists today is massively a product of their criticisms and complaints and it's garbage that they pretend that they're not culpable for where things stand." This right here says it ALL... Well done.

YEP "Casuals" ie Solo Players, literally cant do end game content because of how most people are used to playing Solo online. No Matchmaking means No Solo Players. The content grind was designed for streamers to fill time and tout achievements.

[quote]So I've been seeing a lot of "casuals are ruining (insert activity) in Destiny" takes again the last week or two and then yesterday I saw the latest Forbes article from Tassi on the subject and think it's time to point out a few things. To start, for anyone who didn't read it, I'm not linking it, look out up if you want, but the gist of it was whether or not Destiny is being catered too much towards "casuals" (and he chose to say "again"), as well as bringing up a tweet thread by Gladd complaining about the same thing and how the game needs to be more hardcore because poor Gladd isn't able to make enough content. This pile is deep. I'm going to start with wondering why a Forbes writer is posting a tale of woe about a dude who is one of the raunchiest members of the community and the streamer equivalent of a 90's shock-jock radio host, with content about violating himself with hamsters and posting from his Summit visit about swinging his junk in his hotel window. Real classy dude that totally we should feel bad the game is too easy for him. But beyond that, the whole "casual" as a slur garbage is the gaming equivalent of classism and grade school indoctrination into right wing hate culture. Playing a game for a living doesn't make anyone more "hard core" or more of a "gamer" than someone who can only play when life lets them throughout the week and this constant use of "casuals" to demean and dismiss, as well as blame all the game's "problems" is a load of crap. Then there's the fact that, I don't know about anyone else, but I know I'm tired of listening to the Gladds and Gothalions of the community always ripping "casuals", the game and Bungie the second everything isn't 100% about them when the high profile influencers have driven the lion's share of development feedback the last 4 years. The game that exists today is massively a product of their criticisms and complaints and it's garbage that they pretend that they're not culpable for where things stand. So let's backtrack -again-, because it seems like history gets rewritten a lot. Destiny 1 was a great game, but one that Bungie felt needed a fresh start and a new game for D2 and despite all the negative takes that piled on after the first month of vanilla D2, it did get a lot right, starting with investment. It was a game that allowed players to come and go and not feel left behind, and also allowed us to play multiple characters with ease and constantly change not only characters, but loadouts and play styles. It also had true endgame difficulty content that was deeply challenging with prestige difficulty raids and a sandbox that made content much more challenging overall than we have now. Certainly the game was not perfect, and both PvP and PvE needed to be better overall, but there was a really good foundation there that ultimately never got a chance to hit it's stride because a month in, all the big name content creators and high level PvP players went completely toxic on the game and started all the "dead game" crap and making anti-Destiny/Bungie content because it got easy likes and views. So let's look at where the game is today with the complaints about not enough or drip-fed content, and underwhelming exotic quests and look back at what that massive backlash led to, which was the studio basically stopping development on a lot of future content and moving essentially the entire studio to making massive changes and rebooting a game that was itself a reboot. The massive changes to the sandbox, leveling, investment, economy, etc came at a cost. Instead of building onto what existed and adding more weapons, armor, strikes, missions, etc, resources went to the reboot; and certainly there was still the content that had already been started and was in the pipeline with Gambit, Warmind and Forsaken, but there's no doubt that the deeper we got into year 2, the more we caught up to the effects of diverted resources year 1. Then we had year 2 itself which was the baby of all that hate and toxicity from the "hard core" and influencer crowd. It was ultra punishing in leveling, in investment, in grinding, in RNG and in PvP as well with the high profile PvP influencers pressuring Bungie into removing skill from matchmaking. And all the big names patted themselves on the back because they had "saved Destiny". Until around Season of the Drifter when everyone else checked out of PvE and PvP because we couldn't take it anymore and wanted a game, not another job. Oh, and another casualty of overall lack of development resources in year 2 was hard mode raids. I could be wrong, but I would be shocked if the decision to go with one difficulty wasn't affected by trying to catch up elsewhere. So then what happened? Bungie not only had to use more resources to once more make big changes to PvP, investment, economy, armor, etc, but they also split with Activision due to friction from the way year 2 devolved. So here we are in year 3 and Bungie have tried to keep the content structure that the community and the big names have said they like with seasonal content and new things every few weeks/months. We've also seen new arena after new arena instead of strikes and updates to older content like planet vendors, because this was also feedback that was given on what the "community" wanted more of. So here we are in year 3 with Bungie still playing catch-up and trying to get to the point where they can just build forward without constantly having to backtrack and reboot and it's not surprising that content is light at this point when you look at the big picture and how much development time was lost that could/should have been more new content we're getting now instead of what was spent on rebuilding then. Does anyone believe that Bungie doesn't want factions back in the game? The fact that we have nothing yet regarding them speaks volumes to how big a game of catch-up Bungie is playing, and certainly that is on the decision makers at the studio as well, and there have been calls that missed the mark, but there's also still been a lot of good and at some point the studio needs to say this is the game we believe in and stick to their vision. The game isn't too "casual". It certainly could use more legitimate endgame, but that doesn't mean the game shouldn't be accessible, and even the raids that exist are now leveling content vs true endgame because of the worlds first races. So once more content that could be more challenging that isn't has nothing to do with "casual" players and everything to do with the high profile players. The game needs a lot, but at this point what it needs is new weapons and armor, new strikes, factions, more actual story, etc, and hard modes for existing content like raids. What it doesn't need is Paul Tassi, Gladd, Gothalion or other big names pressuring Bungie into once more making infrastructure changes to make the game more "hard core". We literally went through this with vanilla D2 into Forsaken and I honestly can't believe we're seeing the same garbage now. Crapping on regular players to make the game better for content creators didn't work the first time, let's not keep making the same mistakes. The game can have content for those players without sacrificing everyone else and if players are willing to take a deep breath and give Bungie time to just build forward, I think we'll see a game that everyone can be happy with and love.[/quote] Excellent post. Agree with everything you said. This cult of personality BS has to stop. Let's face it, we all paid money for this game it's time Bungie realised that they have other customers of differing ages, skills and disabilities. It's basically discrimination, but the "content creators" and Bungie are too stupid to realise this. People by a product and because of, let's call it what it is, bullying by a small group of people because they think anyone who isnt on par with them is scum that should be playing the game, and Bungie enable them. Honestly out side of destiny I wouldn't touch Bungies products with a dirty barge pole.

You have some good points but you are also so wrong. D2Y1 sucked not because it catered to casuals or didn’t feel like job. Both of those are great things and a game should be fun and not feel like a job, however D2Y1 WAS NOT REWARDING AT ALL. A problem the game is currently suffering from. What was the point of doing trials? Leviathan? You didn’t have to complete them to earn the shader and stand out amongst the masses, there were a couple solid weapons but mostly just mediocre loot that didn’t make your efforts feel worth while. Even casual players had the best guns by the end of week 2 making it pointless to play anything except for fun, but everything didn’t feel fun. Team shooting was the only PvP meta and if your teammates died it was a 90% chance you would die too cause you had nerf balls for grenades, shoulder pads to protect your foes from your shouldercharges, and 0 special because it was locked in the heavy slot. D2Y1 was horrible for casuals and only hardcore players stuck around because we had been brainwashed by playing 20-40 hrs a week of destiny for the past 3 years. The end of Y3 in D1 was the best balance bungie has struck where you didn’t have to grind meaningless stuff for anything, every activity in the game was relevant, challenging activities rewarded you EACH TIME YOU COMPLETED THEM, all the cool ornaments and gear was rewarded IN GAME instead of behind a pay wall in eververse, special ammo was addressed in PvP so we felt powerful but still had reasons to use primaries, trials was balanced and rewarding both for simply playing and for going flawless (and without breaking balance by giving the best players the best weapons like D2 started doing towards the middle/end of Y1). You could be casual or hardcore and enjoy any activity you participated in. Sure it still had some issues and not everyone enjoyed it but you will always find someone to complain regardless of the state of the game. Bungie should be listening to all their players, the casuals as much as the hardcore, including streamers and social media icons. They shouldn’t cater to them specifically but they should be looking for common complaints like “elemental affinity sucks” and address accordingly. The reason the game is in its current state has nothing to do with casuals or hardcore, it has to do with 2 things, bungie making a profit (the eververse bs we are dealing with that affects how rewarding the game is), and the larger part of the studio working on a future release leading to a lack of content and long wait times to fix game issues. Anyway, I do agree that there should be less discrimination between players and how many hours they log

I am a hardcore longtime player and I would definitely not say that its tuned to the casual players. A casual player comes on and plays a little every week or two and is done for a while. Then maybe a month will go by before they come back. But it is definitely not made for hardcore players either, except for maybe the lore part and the completionist in the hardcore community. If you have OCD?, I bet your going frigging nuts right now. No, Destiny is currently being pushed to new players. Newlight players are getting a treat by being brought into a huge world with tons of new things to do and lots of rewards. Those that get into the grind and play alot get rewarded alot. Plus they are the main target of the EVERVERSE campaign. Newlight players see me riding around on my hellriders bike or flying some fantastic spaceship want it and have to go and keep an eye on eververse to maybe buy one when its available. What has really killed the game for many hardcore players is Bungies obsessive control freak attitude with balance. They want everything to be fair and balanced for everyone, regardless of your power level, light level, gear level, or what weapons you have. Nothing can be too much fun or it gets nerfed. This is what has mainly killed my desire to play the game now. Most of this season I have made it my goal to drain as much bright dust as I can from Eva's old dried up oven. Does that make me a gigolo? You know something, that should really be a title I can earn in game.

🤔 bungie has been catering to the casual player base since the back half of the taken king when they said they cannot make content harder then what it already is or some people won't be able to complete it.... then move forward to D2 where luke smiths little kid is supposed to be able to pick the game up and be able to complete things in game........ where in there do you see anything hardcore? This game has so many training wheels along with holds your hand through everything lol. I wish they would take the training wheels off for once and release some actually challenging content. They've literally never done that. Raid challenges? Those were cake.

Casual...🤮

If you think the game isnt being developed for the casuals you clearly havent played, there is no content for anyone who is active in any semi hardcore activity atm, the hardest thing to do this season was bake 500 cookies or whatever for the sparrow, boy what great content. We have to make shit harder for ourselves and figure out how to two man or solo raids, so tell me what did this game bring for the hardcore community, not a damn thing. So it's ok to make an exception about the casual play but to alienate the hardcore community isnt that hypocritical to your whole post?

[quote]Playing a game for a living doesn't make anyone more "hard core" or more of a "gamer" than someone who can only play when life lets them throughout the week and this constant use of "casuals" to demean and dismiss, as well as blame all the game's "problems" is a load of crap.[/quote]

Just cause you use big words doesn’t mean you’re right lmfao. D2 went free to play on entry so of course from a business perspective their focus has shifted to the casual player. It doesn’t take a rocket surgeon to see that. Everything bungie does with D2 has a psychological core to it. They want more new players. Statistically players that have been playing since D1 or beginning of D2 are less likely to spend money on eververse and bungie doesn’t want that. They want every new player they can get to buy the season, then buy shadowkeep, then buy forsaken, then spend tons on eververse, then realize this game has 0 end game, no difficulty, nothing to actually do other than a ton of busy work and drop it. Then it’s onto the next sucker

I agree with much of what you’ve said here, however I don’t think D2 vanilla was good at all and in many ways, was an answer to those who complained the loudest about special weapons/heavy weapons/abilities/etc. ruining pvp. The 4v4 concept was introduced as a way to improve stability in matches and reduce lag. None of these things worked and heft the game feeling flat and un-fun for both PvE and PvP. I don’t think they swung too hard the other way in some ways with Forsaken, and players like me who only played a few nights a week had no hope of keeping up. I feel like Y3 is more of the same but with the addition of FOMO and lack of deeply invested story content. So much so that I’ve stopped playing. It sucks. I miss this game fir what I thought it was and what it could have been.