Several things look likely to end my stint on Destiny. I will certainly not purchase this DLC ahead of its release; rather, I will wait for some friends (who pre-ordered and share my most of my views) to review it for me. Before we go down this rabbit hole, though, I'd like to get the obvious out of the way: I've spent a lot of time playing this game and find the core shooter mechanic applied to a sci fi theme to be extremely enjoyable. Anyhow, here they are put forth in what I hope is a constructive light (hah): 1) Disrespect of player time. Re-leveling exotics is the most obvious offender particularly in the face of few new and no interesting new additions. So many decisions made during this first DLC were blatant attempts at extending play time by forcing us through the same old hoops because there is a... 2) General lack of new content delivered with this DLC. Even the new strikes, etc., used 80-100% recycled maps. 3) Crota's End is a lackluster raid compared to VoG. Clearly, that is an opinion. Here is the basis for said opinion: a) It has been extraordinarily buggy. b) I'm not sure how to quickly articulate this but, suffice it to say, I think that VoG required more careful execution. Player failure caused wipes. Poor strategy caused wipes. In CE, it just seems to me that bugs on Crota cause most of our issues. On that note, the Crota fight on hard is the only challenging fight; again, most due to latency issues and buggy performance. We've been using the same strategy since day 1 and, when Crota doesn't do something silly, we take him down. c) The Crota fight mechanic is really exciting... for one player. Atheon did a much better job of involving the whole raid. It is also a departure of VoG's methodology of involving the entire raid. Now, we just pick one sword bearer. Sometimes, we even trade when it gets too boring. d) It is smallish both in terms of encounter quantity and map size as compared to VoG. 4) Still poor support for match making. I can solo NightFalls but I really would prefer to have a teammate or two; even a random one. The NF queue next to Vanguard Roc only ever loads me in solo. I would also enjoy match support for raids even if only to flesh out the last person or two. Why do we need to go to destinylfg to facilitate match making? This is your game to support. 5) Substantially poor inventory management system: a) Shaders and ships take up space. They should just be unlocked at the account level. b) Items like Ether Seeds should just be shared at the account level. This should be less egregious if we could actually split stacks. c) Can't split stacks. d) Addition of new upgrade mats without truly phasing out the older ones. This is a net loss of already taxed inventory space. e) Glimmer cap of 25k. This is a minor annoyance that can be worked around. Sadly, the work around involves banking Network Keys, etc., which ends up in a net loss of 4 more inventory spaces. f) Other arbitrary caps (e.g., Vanguard Marks). 6) Extremely poor flow from mission to tower to mission. There's just so much loading. It's worse when you include multiple characters. a) Wish they would allow access to mission plotting from the tower. b) Wish they would allow access to inventory management from orbit. c) Wish they would allow access to bounties from orbit. d) Wish I could view rep from orbit or options menu. e) Not really sure why we the tower as a social hub in a game where we... can't really socialize... I guess they just haven't figured out how to radio back home yet to get info on that next bounty. Shame. 7) My ship: a) Is a glorified loading screen. b) Is only ever so slightly different from my three of my other ships. Consider Aspect of Glass and Glass Minuet. Both from VoG. The difference? A racing stripe. I assume that makes it faster but, unfortunately, this has no net effect on the amount of time I spend loading (read: not actually playing) this game. 8) Xur. Has sold sun breakers about 13 times. gHorn once. I just substantially dislike his mechanic; particularly the two days a week thing. 9) Bounties: a) Are the same for every character. Want to do your bounties on more than one? Get ready to do the exact same things again and again. b) Can only be carried ten at a time. A more commonly employed quest log approach would be lovely; let's take more from MMO's than just the grind. c) Often cannot be accomplished during the normal course of play. What I mean by that is that they require a player to go out of their way in order to perform highly repetitive tasks. Take, for example, killing three of the Sword Knights that the DLC introduced. The only way to make this task efficient in terms of effort/experience is to repeatedly load the Fist of Crota mission on Earth. At the absolute maximum, I've only ever generically stumbled upon one of these guys during the normal course of play (even including doing other bounties such as patrolling). The only other way to encounter them is to do some other non-productive activity alongside it like patrolling without a quest or waiting around for public events. 10) The general strategy of limiting activity to once a day/week/whatever compounded with the arbitrary rep/currency/inventory systems forces a player to use multiple characters but doesn't really capitalize on making that an interesting experience. Rather, it just forces highly duplicative activity for a player who wants to do more bounties/raids/whatever. 11) This game has an incredible setting/theme/story/etc. You would never know from playing it, though. To learn this, I had to: a) Read the Grimoire which is not part of the game. Sorry but, technically, it is part of your website. Hard to argue that, eh? b) Read destinypedia. c) Watch YouTube videos from people who have done the same. 12) I did not but should have realized the depth of this game's setting through cutscenes which: d) Cannot be skipped (O.M.G. Seriously? See comment #1 about respecting player's time.) e) Contain terrible voice acting. f) Don't actually explain anything. "I don't even have time to explain why I don't have time to explain" anyone? This game openly admits to a whole lot to not explaining, actually. The bounties do the same. "Hey guardians, I need you to... aww heck. Just ask your ghost." What, you mean that annoying little thing that I can't re-skin and manages to trigger an alarm on every lock possible? *A side note on 11 and 12 here. I understand that the Souls series is a substantial influence on this game's design. What Souls accomplished so amazingly was delivering an incredibly story that was told almost entirely by its setting. They didn't talk because you were cut off and alone. They didn't display huge journal entries. They didn't have cut scenes. They created a world that told a story simply through exploring it, through encountering its inhabitants, and (this one is key) getting the player's imagination to fill in the details. Destiny did not delivery anything resembling the narrative mastery of the Souls series. This is partly due to simply scrapping their format and not seeming to really understand it in the first place. This also appears to be partly due to some marketing nonsense where, instead of delivering your own take on this successful approach, you added in a bunch of highly recognizable voices saying a bunch of extremely forgettable things. The written version of your setting/story/lore/whatever absolutely could have achieved so much more than what it did. Don't get me wrong, I think that Destiny's backbone is a rock-solid and entertaining gameplay experience. I just wish that, every time I encountered your story, I did so on purpose (rather than by forgetting to hold triangle for 35 seconds to go back to orbit) and I that I actually took something away from it. As it stands, encounters with the story are simply an annoyance which, usually, result in me going back to character select in order to spend yet more time loading this game.

I already got both dlcs with the digital download so ill at least experience the raid before I move on to dark souls 2 or evolve

If all we get is a few more missions plus the raid, that will be the reason for me quitting. Also Battlefield and The Order

I would be ok with advancing my current level 30 gear to lvl 32 status. But making my favorite weapon amd gear obsolete is trash. Im done with the destiny franchise after my 'dlc preorder' is up. Im not giving them 100 dollars a year for this crappy grind.

NEXT...

Probably quitting after it either way, as I would've then got the "expansions" I had paid for when I had bought the Digital Guardian Edition, expecting this game to be good since it was in development before Bungie went to shit. Unfortunately it has been a letdown in every way and I can't justify any of it. Might hop on every now and again just because friends will drag me into raids and weeklies, but not going to play anywhere near a regular amount.

Not really, after the first week of the crying omnigul below I was 31 on all my character's. The new and re level weapons took very little time to level them.

get ready to quit, because it will happen most likely.

Probably won't be re-levelling exotics again

Its not hard....

How will be EXACTLY like TDB. If you're expecting more, don't.

I feel like House of Wolves will be more of the same as TDB. It's been planned and they'll release it regardless. I think the expansion after that gives them their first opportunity to [i]seriously[/i] address the issues raised (repetitive missions etc.). If [i]that[/i] is more of the same, then yes, my relationship with Destiny will likely (and unfortunately) come to and end.