The 6,400 word 2023 Destiny 2 State of the Game post that was published by Game Director Joe Blackburn yesterday has seemingly united disparate fans and content creators all across the playerbase.
Kind of expected this response.
I just started playing the game this month. The new player expirence is really rough, but I found a real cool clan and they’ve been awesome helping me get going. I actually enjoy the game quite a bit. The world is very interesting and the armor/guns look cool as hell. there’s a ton of stuff to do and the only money I dropped was on a few expansions.
I feel like it’s so hard to keep a community of this size happy with a game like this. People have been playing this shit for 5 years now? I don’t know how they can expect to be completely engaged with the game for that long, that’s a tall order for any dev team.
It’s insane how little effort seems to be put into the new player experience. I’m constantly telling my friends that destiny is my favorite game but no they shouldn’t try it because there isn’t a good entry point anymore and I don’t want to spend weeks guiding them.
I took a 2 year break after forsaken and when I came back pretty much everything I had played years ago was wiped from the game. I understand it’s hard to keep people happy but it’s kinda nuts that they removed so much from the game and still haven’t replaced large portions of what they took away (eg gambit and pvp maps). It feels weird knowing I paid for that content (red war and forsaken campaigns) but can’t access them anymore.
I have almost 3 thousand hours in the game, and would still be unable to explain what the fuck you’re supposed to do as a new player. I can’t even understand what to do as a veteran player, and I play this game regularly. There’s both an overwhelming amount of choice, and an illusion of it. The game throws everything at you at once, but when you understand how the pieces fit, it really just turns out that none of those pieces matter
The fact that they vaulted all the campaign missions up to Forsaken is almost unbelievable. I’m actually interested in the story/lore/world but they make it so hard to have any idea of what’s going on. They put the burden on the player to go find YouTube lore videos just to be able to follow along lol
The worst part is those campaigns were good. People hate on red war sometimes but I have fond memories of it, the almighty mission was crazy, infiltrating a solar powered Death Star beam ship near the sun. It was crazy cool.
Forsaken’s campaign and story were pretty cool too. It sucks that you have no choice but YouTube for that content. All of Destiny 1 is still playable but Destiny 2 year 1-2 is gone forever.
I’m one of the people who hated Red War. I stand by that it was a crap story after all these years. Cayde being a “haha funny robot man” wasn’t entertaining, it was annoying. Fail safe, as much as I personally found the split personality to be entertaining, it’s also annoying. I don’t even want to talk about Asher. The less I think about him, the better.
It also felt like there was no reason to care about Ghaul as a villain. On top of that, my biggest gripe was the fact that we got our abilities back two missions into the game. I thought we were going to have to do at least several things lightless but nope. Just some, admittedly beautiful moments of walking through the landscapes without our powers.
I am glad you found something enjoyable about it though. Just for me, Y1D2 was just like Y1D1, a genuine disappointment.
I get it and you don’t have to like it, but the fact that Ghaul is still popping up in seasonal stories (haunted I think?) it’s just stupid that they are referencing a story that they cut from the game. Newer players have no way of experiencing the Ghaul story but are expected to understand his role in the seasonal story?
As for the rest of year 1 Curse of Osiris was garbage. I liked warmind and wasn’t deep enough into lore to be super upset about killing a hive wormgod in a strike.
This is probably the main thing that’s stopped me ever getting back into the game. I get the reasons they’ve given for it, I just think it’s a stupid decision.
People need to realize they are allowed to play other games and go outside.
I played destiny religiously, did all my weekly stuff, told my wife we couldn’t do anything that evening, since I needed to do something before the reset, things like this. During Witch Queen I fell behind my buddies since I wanted to play the campaign on legendary as we had done during each Halo release, but they didn’t want to, since it wasn’t „economical“ to play it Legendary the first time. This was my wake up call, that something was seriously wrong.
Since I wasn’t Raid ready in time, I fell off hard as soon as VotD released and didn’t really come back. Paradoxically: Playing Witch Queen‘s campaign on legendary alone or with Randos was the most fun I had with Destiny in ages.
I’m not mad. I’m just disappointed.
In a vacuum the SOTG is not great, but it says multiple times they’re saving stuff for the showcase. I’m waiting till then before passing judgment.
If people are this mad about a video game I advise them to stop playing and go outside. Stop contributing to the ragebait machine.
This is probably the longest time since playing destiny 2 which I haven’t really been interested. The state of the game feels like the game is really on its last legs when it comes to support. Even though we know they are most likely continuing after final shape just poor reinvestment into the game that made them as big as they are
Bungie’s got my attention for at least The Final Shape, as I’m already heavily invested into the story and want to see it through to completion at this point. But with the way they’ve fumbled Lightfall so far, I don’t expect to be buying any expansions post-TFS. With Bungie spending more resources toward Marathon, I really don’t foresee Destiny keeping the same amount of love among the studio. I feel like TFS is going to be the end of Destiny’s heyday, either way, whether it’s liked or hated by the community.
I didn’t find much issue with the post per se. Why is all that backlash only coming now when the game has been having major issues for the past year at least? Technical problems galore, lackluster seasons… In fact there’s a lot of good stuff in that post like the changes to ritual activities.
The backlash came to a head due to a combination of a few things.
- Lightfall release was a mess, and not well-received. Primarily walling off lore in the paid-for seasonal content did NOT go over well at all.
- Consistent server problems (much worse since Lightfall dropped)
- Cheating in PvP (which there has been a decent crackdown by Bungie recently)
- The announcement of Marathon (where all their primary PvP devs went)
- The video by streamer Aztecross on monetization creep in the game, and subsequent responses by other streamers.
- Silence from Bungie, or updates such as this one that don’t really adequately address the message players are trying to send.
All just my opinion/feelings on this shit.
The problems have been building since last year. Plunder and Seraph were less stable and more buggy. Plunder was kinda panned as a bad season by some, but between a Showcase promising us features we’d been wanting for years (in-game Loadouts, in-game LFG, a renewed focus on the ritual playlists, probably more I’m forgetting) and Seraph’s awesome story and (imo) fun missions, some hype came back for a lot of us.
Lightfall itself was a mixed bag, but they eventually made progress on the stability issues (credit where it’s due, shit is a lot more stable for me). It had story issues, but they weren’t WORSE than previous story issues imo, just a regression. It wasn’t a GREAT place, but if they fixed stability it would be ok.
Then the SotG comes out, which says (loosely translated) “Stop asking us to make more PVP/Gambit maps, we’re never gonna do it like you want because it wouldn’t make us enough money. Also no more free armor, because y’all didn’t appreciate our basic ass armor sets as much as the ones that make you into a fucking t-rex, just pay up piggies”
If they had not said anything, it would’ve been better than posting a “We, a company purchased for billions of dollars, can’t do the #1 thing our fanbase is asking for because it wouldn’t make us enough money”.
There is some good news in there, I guess. Favoriting shaders is the kinda basic QoL stuff we should’ve seen years ago when they redid shaders, but better late than never.
There was an undertone of blaming the community throughout the SotG. YOU aren’t wearing this ugly armor with low stats so we won’t make it anymore. YOU aren’t playing this neglected game mode so we’ll abandon it. It’s full of terrible excuses with backwards logic. If they made vanguard armor that looked half as good as anything in the eververse store we’d all be wearing it but they pour 95% of the effort into microtransactions.
Credit where credit is due, the last two dungeon armor sets have been amazing, but that’s also paid content (dungeon keys). It’s been made clear that we shouldn’t expect anything decent in free activities, even when those are considered CORE to the game experience…
Yeah the way cosmetics have been tied more and more to eververse is awful when they still charge like a full price game every year plus the other 50 avenues of monetization. But not having good sets tied only to gameplay has been a thing since at least shadowkeep honestly. Them coming out and saying we didn’t appreciate them was the worst part when they were so low effort compared to the EV ones.
But if I’m honest lower efforts for crucible and gambit is good in my book, if it were up to me PvP wouldn’t be in the game at all, it brings more downsides in terms of game and tech design (anti-cheat that limits what the game can be played on, rewards like the seasonal challenges forcing you to play it) than any value they have on their own, although they did get better at balancing power separately from the main game. But maybe that’s an unpopular opinion.
After playing casually since season of the arrivals, I quit the game in December after they rolled the game back during season of the seraph, never bought lightfall and have been feeling vindicated based on everything I’ve read ever since. The backlash has been happening, just coming to a tee now with no foreseeable hope in the future.
I loved destiny all the way up to the witch queen, quit after that due to toxic elitism. But even not having spent money on Lightfall I hate seeing what it’s become. The state of the game was just sad…
I stepped away before The Witch Queen, however I did play the last season of the expansion. Essentially I stepped back about 10-12 months to get some space away from the game. Lightfall has been disappointing, and even though I’m not a consistent PvP player (I’ll periodically play IB), I have to say that the gripes from that community are legitimate.
Maps, Gambit, the ritual armor, all explanations revolve around the fact that they’re not paid for content. It’s frustrating, really. It’s frustrating that the main PvP devs from Destiny are working on Marathon instead. I stated in the other thread that it’s difficult being tossed onto Titan via RNG for three to four Gambit matches in a row (yes that’s really happened)…even before Titan came back. If Titan and Mars were canonically gone, why did we keep them as a maps instead of The Dreaming City? Why Mercury, Mars, and Titan for Crucible? I digress because it’s frustrating AF sometimes.
Overall I’ve gravitated away from the game more recently. Another Season of the Cost, where more content is locked behind another slab of silver. Granted it’s optional, but this is the state of the game now. You want something nice you have to pay for it, or wait for the chance it MIGHT show up for bright dust randomly.
But you know…I hate Destiny; I play every day.
(really I play maybe twice a week now…and that’s becoming a chore)
I bought the glowy ornaments day1 of solstice for bright dust, but actually got my flamekeeper title last night.
Either the cheaters gave up or bungie changed something because the PVP was the least frustrating it has ever been for me.
I mostly play solo or with randoms as people I used to play with just don’t play anymore so Raids and Dungeons are things I just don’t bother with at this point.
If money really is the issue (which is doubtful) and they had a separate completely optional $5 cosmetic-only pvp season pass that funded maps, id 100% pay.
I feel like this happens every year where the community is disappointed in the SOTG and is like “Bungie really needs to knock it out of the park with the showcase or the game is in big trouble” but this year more than ever I think they actually do have to have a good showcase because the stability issues this year have really nosedived community sentiment along with all the other complaints.
