I had this coming a long time, and now that I read an article about how the game is not the problem, but the players who still play the game are, I knew it's time to write about this. Some might know which article I'm talking about, given the title of mine, but since I'm not doing this to "shit" on anybody, I won’t link the article here. There was just a lot in that article that is misleading or simply not correct. And everyone can have their opinion on how a company runs their live service, BUT blaming the player base that pays up to $100 a year to play a game is simply wrong.
State of the Game
One of the first points of that article was that " since the launch of the original Destiny in 2014, the game’s format has shifted to allow for the scale of its offerings, both on a technical level and in terms of its monetization."
In terms of the technical level, Destiny has never been in a worse spot than it is now. The servers are constantly cutting off, the game experiences constant downtime, yes, some of it is scheduled, and that's ok for a live service game, and in-game items, such as exotics and armor mods, get disabled constantly to a point where your whole build is unusable. This happens pretty much every time there is a new update coming, and it has become a meme in the Destiny community. In PvP, you encounter cheaters on a regular basis, even in the one game mode that is locked behind a paywall (Trials of Osiris). So yeah, safe to say the format shifted on a technical level.
When it comes to microtransactions, it has to be said that almost no long-time Destiny player has a problem that they are in the game, but the sheer amount they cost and what they offer compared to what you get in-game. We already pay for every DLC and season, the ones that have a new dungeon release with it, we pay even more, since Dungeons don't come included.
And talking about the free-to-play experience is completely beside the point, although Destiny is labeled a free-to-play game, it really is free to try. At first glance, it might seem that the free version offers a lot of content, and this is not wrong, but really all the content that makes the game shine and is up to date is locked behind a paywall. And most importantly, Destiny is a game that is absolutely best played in a group/with friends.
So, if your friends play the new DLC, you won't be able to play anything with them.
Stuff like the Guardian Rank system, which really does nothing for the game other than acting as a light guide through progression (and some people like to flex their progression), up to a point where you have to complete content that has to be purchased, is also nothing to brag about in a free-to-play game. The so-called new light experience (people starting the game in the current free-to-play version) as a whole is hard to recommend to anyone and should be reworked. If you start playing Destiny nowadays without people that show you around, I can almost guarantee you, you will quit within a few days. The interface and quest logs need a lot of getting used to and are not really structured very well. A mix between constant annoying pop-ups and bad UI makes it really tough for newcomers to find their way through.
Monetization
Next, the article goes on, quote:
"So, in short, I can’t see how the problem lies within Bungie’s monetization methods."
Well, let me explain. It is really frustrating to play a game for hundreds or even thousands of hours where you get the best-looking cosmetic items for a whopping $20, only to be usable on one of your three characters, when you already pay up to $100 a year, while the armor sets we get with the season look a fraction as good as the paid ones do.
An example of armor sets in Destiny, on the left what we get to earn in-game vs. on the right what the store has to offer.
Yes, those are only cosmetics. But Destiny is a looter. Loot is a core mechanic of this game, next to gameplay. And we don't really have ways to earn cool gear other than Raids and Dungeons. Because of this, the best-looking gear being in the store and not in these end game activities, is really frustrating.
What the in-game shop has to offer in Destiny is sometimes simply staggering: Armor sets for up to $20 (twice the price of a whole season), emotes for up to $12, and weapon ornaments for $7 apiece. By the way, there are around 180 different weapon ornaments in the store; obviously, you don't need them to play the game, but saying that Destiny has become Microtransactions Hell is, in my opinion, more than fair.
And who who’d have guessed it, those items are all paid with its own currency, and most of the time you won't be able to buy the exact amount, so you end up spending even more than I write here. So, saying "I'll just wait until I can buy them with bright dust" is definitely not the answer. Sometimes there is just one item in the store, sometimes there is no armor at all, and they rotate on a weekly basis, so good luck with that.
As if that was not enough, Bungie now went as far as to put certain items (Deepsight harmonizer), that give you a real benefit in the game, beyond being cosmetics, in the season pass, where of course you can buy your tiers with real money. Some people might argue that this doesn't matter because you can just play enough and still earn it. And here is the issue with this: while this is already a problem since you could have a benefit over people that don't pay for this, this is just the beginning. Every aspect of monetization just got worse over the years. So, what says that it will be different here.
Sunsetting Content
We then go on to sunsetting. For those that don't know what they mean with that, sunsetting simply put is taking older content out of the game to make space for new content. Bungie justifies this with the game will become too large. As of the writing of this, Destiny is at 94.47GB in my steam library, while other games such as Call of Duty with a fraction of the content of Destiny are closer to 200GB. So, for me, there have to be way more significant reasons to justify taking content away from us that we paid for and then feeding it to us in later seasons as "new content." To be fair, the article agrees that sunsetting is a frustrating matter (I think frustrating is not the right word, but that's a matter of opinion), to then go on and say Bungie also brings us old content back in the form of the Vault of Glass and King's Fall raids, both of them being old Destiny 1 raids.
Gameplay, Story, and Seasons
The next point in the article is the question of whether the gameplay loop is the issue. It discusses the seasonal model and how Bungie killed off a beloved character and adding new context to the Lightfall campaign. It's essential to note here that this additional context comes in the form of seasonal story, which, as mentioned before, must be purchased separately from the DLC, resulting in incomplete storytelling and lore in the case of the most recent DLC, Lightfall.
I'm not a big lore guy myself, although I am very aware that Destiny always had very deep and rich lore. There are literally people on YouTube making a living with the lore of Destiny, such as My name is Byf or Myelin Games. Even people like them and their following were upset at how Bungie handled the storytelling here. Adding to the story of a DLC is one thing, but completing an unfinished story with the seasonal model to monetize it again is a whole other story.
The real problem with season is that the baseline of this content always feels very similar; it feels the exact same just in another location. Obviously, there are a few exceptions, such as the newest activity called the Deep Dives, where Bungie delivered something new and fresh, I would say.
One point I cannot understand at all, though, is as follows: "’The fact that Bungie is providing a new raid or dungeon every three months, and has done so for over a year now, still doesn’t seem to be enough."
This is yet another quote from this article.
In my little over 2300 hours of Destiny 2, I have never heard anyone complaining about this. It's all of the above that pisses players off. Yes, maybe PvP players that don't get any attention whatsoever. At one Point there was no new PvP map added for over 2 years.
Other than that, the real issues are all of the above and not that we get 2 raids and 2 dungeons a year. And, of course, it's not the gameplay itself; that's the reason people play for thousands of hours while the rest goes down the drain.
And the last part I want to point out is as follows:
"So it then poses the question: if we feel that way, why don’t they just stop playing?
The answer is that, deep down, we Destiny 2 fans know these complaints pale in comparison to the good that Bungie does. We know that Destiny 2 is as massive as it is because the gunplay is unrivaled, the character-building and adventures are deeply engaging, and the sheer amount of looting and shooting on offer is astronomical. As we draw closer to the Final Shape release date, and the end of the Light and Dark saga, we should know how lucky we’ve been to see this sprawling epic through, yet right now some of us just don’t know when to sit back and enjoy it."
Here is the thing, we pretty much all know how lucky we have been, but we also see that it gets worse over time. And we want to keep playing and especially enjoying the game we all love. But sometimes it's hard as it is right now. And sometimes it feels like Bungie doesn't know how lucky they have been, having such a loyal player base, making Destiny yet to this day being in the top 20 most played games on Steam. But it's always so easy to say: "just move on and don't play. Hey, you found a game that you love and it gets worse over time? No, don't complain and give feedback. Just move on."
Complaining about all the stuff that goes on is not something we do just for the sake of complaining. We love Destiny, and we want it to be the best it can be.
So then calling the player base the problem of all this is just wrong, in my opinion.
But other than that, what do you think? Do you still play Destiny? Did you quit? Or are you planning on starting to play?
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