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1/5/2020 7:06:03 AM
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My Destiny: 5 year review
In early October 2014, I stepped into my local GameStop (I had a gift card, don’t judge me) and purchased Destiny. I was hesitant when I heard it was an online co-op/PvP title. But the neckbeard working the counter assured me it was “like Star Wars and Halo had a baby.”
My emo-looking Awoken Hunter (again, don’t judge me) was resurrected during the first and only Queen’s Wrath event. Shortly thereafter, I found myself “forever 29“ like everyone else and got my first Vex Mythoclast right after their nerf.
My first clan was small and fun for a bit until we got too serious and blew up. Then I joined a hardcore group and learned how to scream and be screamed at during endgame content. But I got through it cause I could two phase Croat with a sword and that made me Mr. Big Dick for awhile.
It was around this time that I realized that Destiny was addictive by design and I was addicted. Danny O’Dwyer (then at Gamespot) did a great exposé on this, demonstrating how Bungie had used psychology to develop addiction in its fan base but I kept playing. Joined a clan through the100.io and that was fun until it wasn’t.
Meanwhile Skolas was a pain, WoTM was fun as hell but I was beginning lament how much I was playing. So I did something really stupid. I played more.
I was teaching, writing a dissertation, and playing Destiny. Part of the problem was personal. My wife and kids had to leave the U.S. due to immigration issues for 1.5 years, so let’s just say I was depressed. Destiny also helped tremendously by passing the time. But when my family came back, I found myself elbow deep in Bungie’s bum.
Fast forward a year. Forsaken resonated with me in a big way. I LOVE narrative. But I started noticing things. Pains in my hands from using Kontrol Freeks and Scuf controllers. Poor sleep habits. Lack of interest in things that weren’t Destiny. I started playing PvP almost exclusively which did wonders for my misanthropy.
Then one day I was baking some Fractal Rolls and thought “What the -blam!- am I doing?”
So if you’re still reading (I am judging you) you are probably wondering what the point of all this was. Well, not sure how to break it to you, but it was just for me. It was a cathartic experience. I’m not sure if I am done, but I feel like it has run it’s course. There were good times and bad times. Fantastic content and wtf content. But overall, I think it was a bit of a waste of my time. If you like it, that’s great. I am not here to tell you what to think.
I just finished RDR2 and was awestruck. Gonna fire up Death Stranding and replay TLoU and God of War again. Those were the kind of games I used to play. Immersive narratives that took you someplace other than a party chat with five other morons desperate for a quick raid clear. This FOMO fetchfest has just run its course for me.
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1 ReplyEdited by Ad1772: 1/7/2020 11:08:29 AMspent like 1500-1600 hours playing destiny 1,I've got around 800 hours into destiny 2 aswell,but I'm just done with this franchise at this point,D2 keeps disappointing me over and over again
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[quote](I had a gift card, don’t judge me)[/quote] I feel like the only one here who cares and is judging you for it is you. Don't mention it, and most people won't care. Regarding the actual content of the post, I've said in another post recently, that my idea of a perfect Destiny experience is one that starts with a strong single-player narrative, then adds co-op in. You know what I keep saying about the difference between Forsaken and Shadowkeep? Forsaken starts with a personal narrative. Something that most players have some level of care about, that isn't on some grand, cosmic scale that's hard to wrap your head around. Forsaken had a (relatively) grounded A-plot that eventually opened up into the B-plot that might have been a little hard to fully grasp the gravity of. Shadowkeep has that A-plot for about 10 minutes before going eyeballs deep in Pyramid shenanigans. It abandons all pretense of narrative, simply so it can smack you with "DUN DUN DUN PYRAMID" right away. What should have been a late-game revelation was put right at the start. How am I supposed to believe that modern Bungie cares about storytelling?
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I’ve stuck around just hoping that maybe, one day, we’ll get the Destiny we were promised in 2013.
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1 ReplyWas in the same boat. Suffered heavily addicted to the game. Now I have realised it's just a game, get on to enjoy it and turn it off when your kids want to play or you need time with your wife. Thought I needed to be in a clan and play with them constantly but in it's current state you don't get enough done tagging along with people. I play a couple of hours a night just to de stress my mind. Other than that jut enjoy the game for what it is and don't over commit yourself to things or time you waste achieving nothing.
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1 ReplyI love destiny.. But the need to play something else is strong.. Thats why after finishing fallen order I picked up skyrim again and redownloaded TLOU... I still play destiny most of the week but my hours have begun to decrease
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1 ReplyEdited by I Am The Viruss: 1/6/2020 3:28:48 PMLong Ramble Incoming I still enjoy a good old fashioned single player game. Late last year I picked up Outer Wilds, Red Dead Redemption 2, and started a Nightmare mode 100% run of Dying Light. And there's a simple reason why. I want to be immersed. And no, not the tedious survival game kind of immersion where you move for 5 seconds then recover for 5 hours. I'm talking about in setting or narrative, whether it's a character, a moment in the gameplay or the whole game's world/universe. If I'm immersed, I could ignore a lot of frustrations in a game just by how drawn in I am. But with Destiny, it's getting harder and harder to suspend my frustrations. You have to blaze through bounties, quests and content at light speed constantly, leading to you just yelling and having dumb conversations with your friends or LFGs, and it shatters my immersion hard. Allow me to share an odd story from my past in this franchise, to show you what I mean. Back in Destiny 1, especially in Year 1, when we had to LFG for 1 person for the 5th time, I'd sometimes pull out my Ghost. (Not to leave, I'm not that guy.) Instead, I would just stare at it, and it stared back, occasionally blinking it's eye. I never complained about quests, made a cheesy joke, or asked about menus or my inventory. I hardly spoke at all in those intermissions. In this white noise of gamer speak, it was just me, my Hunter and his Ghost. Me and 2 digital beings trapped in a perpetual, bizarre, yet comforting silence. Never, did I ask: "What am I doing?" There's still plenty to experience and/or enjoy in this game, and thats why I'm still here. But this is the kind of thing that I just don't get to experience anymore, and doubt I ever will if Bungie goes down this path. An experience unlike anything else. A tall tale. A story worth remembering. The crazy. The bizzare. The little silences amongst all the mayhem. The immersion. I'm too focused on getting this bounty done in time to have that. [spoiler]Cheers.[/spoiler]
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4 RepliesI can relate on several different levels, especially during the first year of D1; >almost divorced due to issues directly caused by my playtime >repeatedly calling in sick at work (I'm the managing director of a company) >loss of interest of anything non-Destiny TL;DR: I haven't played this game for about a year now and looking back I can't believe I spent so much time playing, especially D1.
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Edited by Krantzstone: 1/6/2020 2:23:03 PMWhen I quit playing, I'm going to miss all the salty cheaters who apparently want to risk federal prison time to DDoS me... in Mayhem LOL. ;) /if they can't handle getting one-shot-bodied with my Tarantula + WoL, they shouldn't be in Mayhem ;) //ooh, a drophack for one-shot-bodying them with Crooked Fang +WoL this time, lol
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1 ReplyI read your 5 year journal in Osiris’s voice. 👍
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Edited by GrifterDeMier01: 1/6/2020 12:44:45 PMGames as a service and trying to infuse mobile app games into big budget consoles games are 2 of the worst things to happen to on line video games. I can't wait for cyberpunk 2077, it's only a few months away. I just beat Jedi fallen order and that game was rediculously good. Death stranding is the next game on my list and I can't wait to play it. Single player games are where it's at. The whole live service destiny type games fad is dying out. Thankfully.
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1 ReplyIt won't be too much longer before games like this have to keep an 800 number to an addiction hotline on them. Sounds crazy, but they already had to get away from lootbox style purchases due to underage gambling. Video game addiction is recognized as an actual disorder, not long before games shown to purposely use that to their advantage for profit get called out. Casinos already have to do it, it'll happen. This game isn't good, the second you walk away from it your realize that. But why do we all keep coming back? Just like you said, they've poured heaping piles of addiction driving psychology into it.
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4 RepliesTry the witcher 3 if you haven't yet.... but don't blame if it ruins gaming for you.
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1 ReplyI think sometimes we're reluctant to walk away from stuff like this because we remember all the fond memories that were once made. It's similar to knowing you're in an unhealthy relationship, but memories of the good times keep you in it hoping for those times to come around again. For those of us considering leaving for good, it was a hell of a run though. The clan that I played with most was small, but we splintered during D2 Y1. Two years down the road it turns out our lives all drastically changed either career wise or relationship wise and it was inevitable that we would play less together anyway. This became apparent, because a some of us started playing Overwatch heavily and loved it, but schedules started getting in the way. That made the splinter feel better, because we're all doing better things in our lives than we were during the time we grinded KF and WotM. I still remember grinding out 25 strikes in one day for the Invective quest. That's the kind of time I used to have to play. I don't care to go back to those days though. Freelance life was getting old fast and I'd rather be busy at work, than be home playing Destiny anyway. To touch on one thing you mentioned. At some point I asked myself why I was spending time grinding in this game. I still play other games that have a grind like ESO, so I'm not opposed to grind. My thing was I no longer had the time to run activities at the risk of not getting anything I wanted. If you have better things going in life it's a good thing to take a step back and ask yourself "why am I doing this?". If the answer isn't fun anymore, it's time to bounce. At least with ESO, I can walk away for months, come back and continue my journey where I last stopped without the fear of losing the stuff I've grinded for becoming irrelevant. I'm so far behind on new content in ESO, but I'm in no rush, because outside of the servers going down, I have time to get through all the content at my own pace.
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3 RepliesI think the real question here, is what became of the neckbeard? Did he have a family? Is he trapped in the infinite forest? How many obelisks to free him? And finally did he ever find true love in the reef?
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2 RepliesThis isn't really a review
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Edited by Mareep: 1/6/2020 12:33:16 AMI feel you man. The game just feels dead and hollow after playing it for years. I miss the times when I treated the game more casually. That's why I've been dropping the game too. It's not that the game is too much to play. It's that the game isn't enough to play while demanding lots of play time at the same time. I fired up the Force Unleashed for the first time in years and it felt amazing. Destiny really does try to hook you on it, but it's not that great looking from the outside in. I think that FOMO season passes and pay-to-win seasonal armor stats are what finally pulled me away again. In a way I'm happy that I'm being driven away from the game
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1 ReplyThen one day I was baking fractal rolls and thought "what the -blam!- am I doing?" I absolutely lost it at that part because i uninstalled Destiny 2 after grinding and baking to get to rank 35 and asked myself the same damn thing 🤣🤔😂
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1 ReplyRDR2 online is all I’m playing at the moment.. After nuking aliens for 5 years, it’s brought me back down to earth with a bang. Bar the base game, RDR2 hasn’t cost me a single penny for updates and even the seasonal passes are obtainable through in game currency. If Destiny goes back to the old format regarding good content, strikes, raids, story missions etc with it’s dlc drops, then I’ll get back on it but I can’t see that happening anytime soon.
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2 RepliesI just miss running numberless people through VoG and Crote D1Y1. I was a full time raid Sherpa and it was a blast.
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1 ReplyWhy the negative attitude towards gamestop? Seriously curious, people don’t seem to like it where I live either. They say that the prices for used games are too high and that gamestop doesn’t give you enough money for them.
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4 RepliesPlay what you like to play buddy...no harm in that. I don't feel you are comparing games to Destiny, but the direction of this game is not what it used to be. What first caught your attention is not there anymore, if I understand you. I also understand the immigration issue and it really sucks. My gf is in Panama and cannot get a visa. I only play one character due to the same things you are saying. This game now is just a bounty festival which is not fun anymore. Has anyone actually counted how many bounties there are to do everyday?
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Heres mine. It's terrible right now.
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Damn... this about sums it up for me. Just got done grinding Steelfeather Repeater bounties all day in hopes of getting a god roll and nothin. At the end of the day I have nothing to show for around 8 hours of gameplay. Feels terrible. Had to ask myself, wtf am I doing and why do I care? No good answer. This game is almost entirely a cheap slot machine now.
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"This FOMO fetchfest has just run its course for me." And there it is, my thoughts exactly.
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[b][u]review[/u][/b] [b][u]destiny[/u][/b] Shaky start but recovered and became an amazing game by the time age of triumph happened. All the way through activities were enjoyable enough and replay able. Sometimes logging and banging out strikes for several hours was enjoyable enough or even just patrolling Raids were good and from Crota onwards had a story purpose. Even VoG was mentioned in a story mission. Speaking of which, VoG was hands down the best raid Guns were good, armour good, exotics good Crucible for me was meh mostly because I dislike pvp and when it interferes in pve I like it even less [b][u]destiny 2[/u][/b] It took away most of what made D1 great but on the plus side it added fast travel and ledge grab
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Great post! Couldn't have said it better if I tried. There has always been criticism of this game but the tone of much of the criticism of late is much different than in years past. Its as if the player base en masse is waking up and asking themselves if they've wasted the last five years of their lives playing this game. Resentful, cynical and just plain spent seems to be the general attitude of gamers when it comes to much of the gaming industry and somehow Bungie has remained above the fray. I hope this ends. Bungie has created something really insidious with Destiny and I'm glad to see so many others are starting to see this.
