"I f*cking hate this game. It makes me feel like an idiot, and I don't know what we're doing."
"I never know what mission we're supposed to be doing, and I just feel like a detriment to you and your friends."
"My inventory and postmaster are always full, and I shouldn't need to use a damn website to manage that."
"If you want to play any other game, let me know, but I'm done with this game"
- My dad
*Prepare yourselves for a big 'ol wall of text*
I love D2 and I was beyond excited for cross-play, because I could now play D2 with my dad and my Xbox friends at the same time. Unfortunately, I was completely unprepared for how bad the New Light experience is. Hell, I didn't know how insanely confusing the post-campaign experience would be for anyone without years of Destiny experience. I didn't expect my dad to jump in to D2 and immediately "get" it, but I thought a F2P game would do a little more hand holding for new players. Now, he's lost all interest in the game and I'm back to splitting my gaming session between Xbox and PC.
Let's get some basic backstory out of the way. My dad has been a PC gamer for the past 20+ years. He built the foundation of my gaming knowledge brick by brick starting with the Sega Genesis he bought me as a kid. More recently, we have played through Borderlands 2/3/Pre-Seq, Far Cry 4/5/6, L4D/B4B, you name it. He understands the basics of looter shooters, but inventory management is not his strong suit. We have already played through all of the old (available) D2 "campaigns", and he sits around 1270 light level. I'm not saying he's the most gaming-literate person in the world, but he does have literal decades of experience.
As soon as the sequential campaign quests ended, so did any of his interest in the game. He's in the driver seat now, because I've completed these old quests and have no idea what he needs to do to progress the story. Every time we play, I have to get screenshots of his available quests and research which quest leads to what reward with a quick google search. There is no guidance, and I'm constantly explaining which of the 2 dozen icons on his screen relate to which activity in the game.
He's constantly flooded with useless loot that piles up faster than he can delete it. All of his quests revolve around bounties and have no logical relation to the story. We spend more time flying from destination to destination than actually firing our guns. We can't do the activities that he enjoys, because they don't help his light level. Most activities force match making on us, so he's always getting pulled forward by veterans speed-running everything. He's getting destroyed in PvP/Gambit because he doesn't have good weapons/mods/masterwork materials/high stat armor/etc.
More than anything, I just want to play my favorite game with my dad. I want him to enjoy this game at his own pace, and I want him to feel rewarded for his time. I hate that he feels like he's hurting my experience, or that he's playing the game "wrong". It sucks that he feels so lost in this game that he just doesn't want to play it. If Witch Queen has a high light level requirement, then I'm screwed. My dad, and my friends that are newer to D2, are NOT going to do the light level grind, and I really don't blame them. The sad fact is that I can only recommend Destiny to people already playing it.
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I don't really know where I was going with all of this... I guess I just wanted to vent my frustrations. Hopefully Witch Queen delivers, because that is the make or break moment for my friends and family playing D2 with me.
Good luck out there Guardians!
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7 RepliesI'm roughly your dads age, and although I've played this for 7 years straight, I'm finding it overwhelming if I'm being honest. I used to love a new season, when you started at zero level with a couple of white weapons and armour, did the story to get some "better" green loot, before branching off to all the other content to collect the legendary stuff. The grind to max power was the best part of the game. Now it's just a continuation, only having to do pinnacle reward stuff to level up 10 power. And the fact that they keep adding more and more perks and mods and artifacts, and even a new subclass ( which has destroyed Destiny) makes most weapons and gunplay irrelevant. I always look forward to new seasons, but the more they add, the more is lost in game experience. Destiny has become a soap, rather than a series.