Can Destiny 2 be saved?

[Darmok N Jalad]

As the title suggests, I was looking for your opinion on Destiny 2. If you weren't following, the game looks to be in trouble, with a very sharp drop in player interest. Then they threw gas on the fire by introducing more micro-transactions (which they then pulled). The latest news says the game is starting to get dropped in the streaming communities. Can Bungie save this one?

I was a big fan of the original, despite its flaws. Destiny 2 isn't all bad. The game is beautiful, and the mechanics are still good, but the game lacks in reward. I don't care for the changes to the weapon categories, and there doesn't feel like there's enough content to keep grinding. It was way too easy to max out the character abilities. The first expansion was a bit of a miss, too. Mercury looks cool, but it's not much for exploring (infinite forest). The original Destiny also started out of the gate a little poorly, and the expansion packs really helped bring the game around, but the core of the old game was a good base to build on.

So I dunno. I've already paid for the extra content, so they have me for that long. I wonder how many others are thinking the same thing. Can Bungie salvage this game beyond that? I made a poll if you care to vote!

 

[cyclingplatypus]

Bungie can do one thing that would absolutely bring players back and it is something that should have been there from day one - there is no reason why the original map set couldn't be included for exploration and weekly milestones.

That and stop doing flashpoint on Titan.

I enjoy the game but right now it is literally the same grinding over and over - I played the same heroic strikes last week, the exact same heroic strike for the 3 heroic strike milestone and they were played consecutively.

 

[Darmok N Jalad]

Bungie can do one thing that would absolutely bring players back and it is something that should have been there from day one - there is no reason why the original map set couldn't be included for exploration and weekly milestones.

That and stop doing flashpoint on Titan.

I enjoy the game but right now it is literally the same grinding over and over - I played the same heroic strikes last week, the exact same heroic strike for the 3 heroic strike milestone and they were played consecutively.

Yeah, that was another thing I really miss. On strikes, you don’t stay paired if you go in with a random fire team. Instead, it appears to dump the team each time and start over, so you are more likely to get stuck with the same strike over and over as opposed to going through the list of available strikes. That one is really surprising.

 

[maflynn]

I hate to sound like a noob, but what's wrong with destiny 2? No in my defense, I don't enjoy playing online games, I'm more of a solo player so I've not really kept up on Destiny 2.

 

[Darmok N Jalad]

I hate to sound like a noob, but what's wrong with destiny 2? No in my defense, I don't enjoy playing online games, I'm more of a solo player so I've not really kept up on Destiny 2.

I’m actually mostly a solo player, but what was nice with Destiny was that you can do a lot in the game as a solo player. There is some multiplayer component, from coop to classic deathmatch (Crucible), but you don’t have to do all of it to get value from the game. I personally don’t care for DM, but I really enjoyed the co-op. If you like quests, the game had something for you.

Destiny 2 continues these concepts, but rather than improving on them, the game has lost some of the original’s “feel,” and player interest has reportedly dropped substantially in a short amount of time after release. This is a big deal on a game that depends on a large player base and expansion packs. Bungie has been slow to answer these concerns on top of it all. At least to me it makes me wonder about a the game’s future success.

 

[cyclingplatypus]

I think Destiny was the first game that did multiplayer right by giving you the option to go solo or just co-op as you want too. I miss having the option to stay with members of a fire team when it auto pairs you, I guess this is how they encourage fire teams.

I will say this about D2, the clan incorporation is nice.

 

[JohnGrey]

I hate to sound like a noob, but what's wrong with destiny 2? No in my defense, I don't enjoy playing online games, I'm more of a solo player so I've not really kept up on Destiny 2.

What's wrong with Destiny is that it was developed by the soulless husk of Bungie at the behest (lashings) of its corporate overlord Activision. The original launched with a dearth of content, to the point of functionally having no story, that took two years and four expansions to even approach legibility, and that's disregarding the need to scour online and supplementary resources to have anything approaching an actual narrative. Cut to the present day and not only does the sequel remain the narrative equivalent of Crystal Light, they retconned several major points of lore, in reality the game exists solely as the candy-coated shell of the poison pill that is the Eververse. Bungie was caught redhanded engaged in blatant anti-gamer practices such as throttling XP without notification, doubling XP-to-engram requirments when they were caught, running seasonal events where the amount of engrams that could be generated through activities was a fraction of what would be required to gain the limited items that were available during the event (in essence necessitating that you pay money for even the chance to get everything), and then locked content and achievements that were available from launch behind the paywall of the expansion when it was released.

Bungie/Activision has turned Destiny 2 from a second chance to what rightfully ought to be a coffin nail for the dev.

 

[b_scott]

Destiny 1 pretended to be an MMO when it was just a grindy shooter. D2 left most of the interesting stuff out from D1 and boiled it down even more. It's dead, Jim.

 

[gkarris]

Just got it on sale used with a GS coupon ended up $22...

Good enough at that price...

FOR THE PUPPIES!!!

 

[Apple fanboy]

I never much cared for Destiny 1. I had high hopes for it, but never really liked it.

 

[lpolarityl]

IMO, the game is dying and really can't be saved. Unless the next DLC is basically another game entirely, as in, fixes literally everything wrong in D2, I don't think its going back to its glory days that were year 2.5 Destiny.

 

[Darmok N Jalad]

IMO, the game is dying and really can't be saved. Unless the next DLC is basically another game entirely, as in, fixes literally everything wrong in D2, I don't think its going back to its glory days that were year 2.5 Destiny.

As of right now, the poll has it 50/50, but that may not mean much from the lack of votes!

I'm still on there playing, but it really doesn't have the same excitement. I keep getting the same weapon drops. Just yesterday I finally got something interesting, a new light armor helmet.

 

[cyclingplatypus]

What I don't get is you have a fairly impressive assortment of armor/weapons but when you get an engram decoded it is from the same rotation of stock that has been there from day one - the cryptarch's assortment is the absolute worst. This is the one place you should be able to decrypt an engram and get anything instead of the same six pieces of armor.

 

[c8rlo]

This is the one place you should be able to decrypt an engram and get anything instead of the same six pieces of armor.

this is a fix they are working on, it's one of MANY that players are not happy with.

 

[Khalanad75]

I think the thing that got to me over time, and I guess it was the same in Destiny 1, I just didn't notice it as much, was the progressive leveling.

If the mobs level along with me, why even have levels at all. If the same mob that at level 1 took 4 body shots or 2 headshots to take out, takes the exact same amount of hits to take out at leevl 25 300+ light, have I really leveled at all?

 

[b_scott]

I think the thing that got to me over time, and I guess it was the same in Destiny 1, I just didn't notice it as much, was the progressive leveling.

If the mobs level along with me, why even have levels at all. If the same mob that at level 1 took 4 body shots or 2 headshots to take out, takes the exact same amount of hits to take out at leevl 25 300+ light, have I really leveled at all?

Yup. And was the same in D1. It's a manufactured gating system.

 

[Tsuchiya]

My issue is that you need to really know how to pace yourself enjoy it. Going into it once or even twice a week to hit all your milestones is an absolute grind, but play it too much and you quickly hit the games level and power caps and you lose incentive to do much until more content drops.

I find it mechanically excellent, and on release I played the hell out of it to keep up with some other clan members who were more experienced and wanted to raid and do trials. Then there was a lull until Curse of Osiris, but by that point there was so many other games to play and apart from two members of the clan, everyone else dropped off.

 

[gkarris]

Just got it on sale used with a GS coupon ended up $22...

Good enough at that price...

FOR THE PUPPIES!!!

I started playing finally - the Single Player. Love it - my kind of game. I did play through some of it already with the preview a long time ago, but now I get to create my own character.

It is great - for $22 (with tax). Gonna just play it through as much as I can and not buy anything else in it.

This may be one of the last "Video Game" I play (well, will get Battlefront II when it is $20).

There will not be any more "AAA Videogames" anymore - they will be "Live Services"...

No thanks...

 

[Darmok N Jalad]

I started playing finally - the Single Player. Love it - my kind of game. I did play through some of it already with the preview a long time ago, but now I get to create my own character.

It is great - for $22 (with tax). Gonna just play it through as much as I can and not buy anything else in it.

This may be one of the last "Video Game" I play (well, will get Battlefront II when it is $20).

There will not be any more "AAA Videogames" anymore - they will be "Live Services"...

No thanks...

The expansion packs are often necessary to really continue playing it, but you certainly don't need to dump money into Eververse. Fortunately, the expansions do bring new areas to explore and additional strikes and raids, and sometimes they even bring significant improvements to the game's overall replay value. The original Destiny was lacking, but a few expansion packs in really took the game to a better place. I really hope Destiny 2 sees a similar path. I haven't jumped into the game in a few weeks now.

 

[maflynn]

There will not be any more "AAA Videogames" anymore - they will be "Live Services"...

Yeah, that sort of genre, is not to my liking and I'll not be partaking. I think they (video game publishers) see the success of software subscriptions and are trying to change to embrace that business model.

 

[Darmok N Jalad]

Yeah, that sort of genre, is not to my liking and I'll not be partaking. I think they (video game publishers) see the success of software subscriptions and are trying to change to embrace that business model.

My concern is that everything is a subscription now. It seems more and more companies just want you to lease things and have nothing to show for it when your monthly payments stop. The list is becoming endless. Cloud, software, games, music, television, movies, etc. Seems like an unsustainable concept, as you can lose customers just as fast as you gain them, and there’s only so much money to go around. I’m glad there are still developers that believe in the “buy it once” idea.

 

[maflynn]

My concern is that everything is a subscription now.

I think that's a valid concern. Personally, I'm trying to reduce my list of subscriptions, and yet I seem to have more today then I did 6 months ago.
icloud, apple music, office. I was successful in not renewing Lightroom, and I'm taking aim at MS office. Video games for me are a nice diversion, I play a handful of games (sometimes hours on end) to blow off steam and relax.

I certainly do not want consider feeling required to play, to keep some sort of incentive for rolling in. iOS games do this, for instance you are rewarded for the consecutive days you play Fallout Shelter. I certainly will not get sucked into a game on my PS4 that starts behaving that way, or needing to buy loot boxes to continue.

 

[mdhwoods]

I was big into D1, and was very excited for D2. I have not booted it up in months and I have been a player since the beginning. Its dying. A lot of the hard core players I played with are also barley playing it now. There isn't much that would bring me back.

 

[cyclingplatypus]

I was big into D1, and was very excited for D2. I have not booted it up in months and I have been a player since the beginning. Its dying. A lot of the hard core players I played with are also barley playing it now. There isn't much that would bring me back.

I think D2 is far more repetitive that D1 was - Bungie talks a lot about what they are going to do 'to fix' the problems with absolutely no actual fixing of the problems.

 

[chelseaglenn]

I've been a Day 1 Destiny Guardian and really to put down in this post just how much I feel is wrong, would take MUCH more time than I have at present.

As many have already mentioned across the globe, everything and I mean everything I loved about D1 had gone. The endless end game grind, the collections, the grimoire, the special weapons, the random weapon roles. The list is endless.

And yet still I play. Addicted to the format, and there are no other games similar to take my interest on.

Even the latest addition, a grind for emblems! Come on now, really?!

For me, if this is the kind of repair to the damage they are implementing, then the game is destroyed. No matter how much they try to role back to D1 the damage is too great.

I feel totally let down, lost and angry to be fair.

Just my thoughts.

Thanks

Glenn