For those who didn’t know, I am huge Destiny fan! I put hundreds of hours into Destiny 1 and loved every minute of it. It didn’t matter if it was PvP or PvE, going online with friends and blasting some aliens back to where they came from was part of my daily routine.
Destiny 1 had its faults but developer Bungie did their best solving them, new improvements were introduced with every expansion. The Taken King and Rise of Iron especially fixed a lot of what was wrong with the game.
So when Destiny 2 was announced anticipation was very high. Bungie was aware of the things they needed to fix and addressed them accordingly. Destiny 2 was supposed to be a clean break from everything that was wrong with the first Destiny and they promised that it would be better in every way.
The first signs were very promising, the first playable mission “Homecoming” was a spectacular introduction. There was more narrative, a good story, more cut scenes, everything that was missing in Destiny 1. Bungie also introduced a better balanced PvP environment. Everything pointed to a sequel that would out do the original.
Bungie went on promising players a better gaming experience with always having something exciting to do. With Destiny 1 there were long periods between expansions where the players had played through all the content and were just grinding the same events over and over again.
Grinding the Vault of Glass Raid.....Priceless!
But…….then Destiny 2 dropped. At first it looked like Bungie had delivered on their promise. Destiny felt “kinda” fresh and “somewhat” improved but Destiny is the kind of game that you play for years, grinding, collecting loot, taking on challenges. What you don’t need in a game like this is shallow gameplay and that is where Bungie dropped the ball.
On the surface Destiny looks like an improvement over the original and this may be true for the graphics but as far as gameplay goes Destiny 1 tops Destiny 2 in every way...........You see, Bungie made a couple of mistakes.
Target audience
The people who play Destiny are hardcore gamers, people willing to play the game several hours a day, who like to do all the events with all of their 3 characters. Gamers who are willing to waste hours...no days beating rock hard Raids and gruesome PvP events. But with Destiny 2 Bungie also tried to cater to the more casual gamer and in hindsight this was a big mistake.
In Destiny 1 it took me months to level my character, the first Strike I played left me thinking “Never again... this is almost impossible”. My first Raid (Vault of Glass) took me days to finish (even with experienced Raiders helping me) and totally blew my mind in regards of difficulty and creative puzzle mechanisms.
To this day the Vault of Glass Raid is still one of the best gaming experiences I ever had.
But with Destiny 2 I never had the thrill of completing an event that I felt was impossible to complete.
Getting your character to max level was quite easy, something that required lot of effort and dedication in Destiny 1.
A lot of players were able to finish the game (story mode) and reach the max level with their characters in a couple of days without even playing the end game events (Raids and Trials).
The most frustrating event: Trials was also made more casual-friendly taking away a lot of the challenges associated with Destiny.
A lot of gamers enjoy rock hard, nigh impossible challenging gameplay, this is why the Souls series is so popular and Destiny’s fan base just ate up the impossible-to-complete challenges.
By removing the hardcore gameplay Bungie left a lot of their hardcore fans hanging and this is one of the main reasons why Destiny 2 feels very repetitive, more than that “casual” repetitive.
Loot
Destiny had crazy loot, cool exotic items that were worth playing the game for hours on end and grinding the same events over and over again for months only to get that one exotic item that you just had to have.
Gjallarhorn, Icebreaker, Suros Regime, Hawkmoon are just some of the most sought after items that stood out from the rest of the weapons and were crazy fun to use. The game had innovative guns like Thorn, the handcannon that shoots poisoned darts and armor that had brilliant perks.
But with Destiny 2 Bungie decided to make exotics...well less exotic. Even worse instead of introducing completely new exotics, a lot of the weapons and armor from the first game made a comeback but with less features, making them less interesting. With this move Bungie made it less appealing for the players to invest hours of gaming.
Besides making exotics less special by taking away their special perks, Bungie also made it less difficult getting exotics. In Destiny 1 it took me weeks to get my first exotic and months to get the exotic weapon I really wanted (Gjallarhorn). In short everything that made exotics...exotic was stripped away in Destiny 2 and that is killing for a loot based game.
Content
If you want to keep players entertained for years and want them coming back to play your game, you will need to have some good content and a steady flow of expansions that will keep players busy for a long time. This was a big problem with Destiny 1 where there were long periods between expansions causing what the fan base called “content drought”. Bungie promised that with Destiny 2 this would not happen and that players would always have something to do and that they had a good roadmap for expansions making sure that you would never get bored.
But guess what? Things got even worse with D2, because of the lower level of difficulty and the fact that a lot of the events are similar to D1 there is little to no incentive to keep playing the game. The first expansion doesn’t feel like an expansion and adds little to nothing to the gaming experience. In fact it is clear that it is all smoke and mirrors without any depth to it.
In fact, if you look at Destiny 1, it had more worlds to visit and things to do than Destiny 2 so instead of increasing the content they took a lot of it away.
Recycling
For a lack of a better term, all Bungie seems to be doing is recycling their previous game. There is nothing exactly “new” in Destiny 2. The game has the same enemies from the first game, a lot of the same mechanics, the same events, reskins of weapons and armor. In fact one could say that it is the same game with a different story line and improved graphics.
I already wrote about the recycling of the excotics of D1 but even the “new” weapons are often reskins of the D1 weapons. Which is baffling because Bungie had years to come up with some new ideas and designs.
In the end it just felt like I was doing the same thing, playing with the same (but now nerfed) weapons, visiting the same (slightly altered) worlds like I had been doing before for the previous 3 years.
The same old enemies over and over again.....
Bungie tried to please everyone instead of doing their own “thang”. As soon as the community started complaining about something they tried to fix it instead of following their own path. Sure, Trials of the Nine was almost impossible to complete unless you were a MVP, Youtubing, XIM abusing pro-gamer but guess what? I really liked playing trials even though I knew that I had no chance in hell of ever completing it. I loved showing off my hard earned Trials gear so that people knew that I was a hardcore PvP player not afraid to take part in Destiny’s toughest PvP event. I am sure that Raiders felt exactly the same, if you saw someone in full Raid or Trials gear, you just knew that they were hardcore….
Bungie lost sight of who their fan base was and what they are about. Instead they focused on releasing a game that appealed to a casual gaming audience.
Instead of releasing a completely new game with new enemies and new world to explore they just re-used stuff from Destiny 1.
Bungie didn’t exactly lied but they also didn’t tell the complete truth and that is why a lot of Destiny fans got angry. I ignored the rants and tried to enjoy the game for what it was but boredom came fast.... really fast!
I became so bored with Destiny 2 that one day I decided to play some Destiny 1 just for nostalgia. This is when I realized that Destiny 1 is so much more fun than its sequel. Playing Destiny 1 was so much better that I had no motivation to play Destiny 2 again. I really love the game but until Bungie makes some dramatic changes I will only play Destiny 1 (for good times sake).
