A couple of weeks ago, my regular Destiny crew stopped playing. It wasn’t some big announced event, or something we had planned. Our loss of momentum started with a confluence of other, smaller occurrences. We took a few days off, then a few more. Then we weren’t playing at all.
Once or twice, I’d be talking to my colleague and Destiny bro Jason Schreier about playing, and we’d both hem and haw and slowly realise that, to be honest, we’d rather do something else. It just wasn’t worth our time.
We could both imagine what would happen if we did play: We’d spend an hour or so running through a difficult battle, a battle we’d played through a dozen times before. At the end, we’d be bitterly rewarded with booby prizes and useless junk. Rather than go through all that, we decided to stick a pin in it and go do other things.
And just like that, Destiny lost its hold over us.
We’re not the only ones. A tide of discontent has swept the Destiny community, and many of the game’s most dedicated players are announcing planned vacations. This isn’t some grandiose, “We’re fed up and we won’t take it anymore!” thing, though that’s not an uncommon sentiment. Rather, people who have put hundreds of hours into the game are finding that, for a variety of reasons, they’re losing the motivation to play.
This development strikes me as a normal part of the progression for a game like Destiny. I was feeling it even a month ago, when I re-reviewed the game. My group was scraping up against the edges, and it was taking a toll. We were more irritable when we played, less joyful in our victories. Even our team email threads felt sharper, more weary.
Since its release last September, Destiny has performed a hopscotch dance between love and hate — it’s the game you love to play, even as you’re consciously, vocally angry at it for a number of failings. What’s changed is that lately, the game’s feet have landed more squarely on anger and irritation. It’s harder and harder to keep one’s chin up and soldier on.
The current ‘exodus,’ such as it is, is far from complete. Plenty of people are still playing and enjoying Destiny — heck, I still hop on for the occasional strike. Nor is it permanent — most of the people currently taking breaks won’t stay gone for good. But it’s a noteworthy development for one of the most talked-about games of the last six months, and represents yet another turning point for a game that’s already had several.
Not Enough Carrots
As I was partway through writing this article, I saw a thread on the Destiny subbreddit titled “Who else feels like taking a break from Destiny until the next expansion?” I’ve seen that sentiment shared more and more at the various Destiny hubs I frequent, and this particular thread captured the zeitgeist.
“I broke 800 hours of combined gameplay,” the original poster, temporarycreature, wrote, “and I’m just feeling bored and burned out. I’m not complaining. I am not threatening Bungie. I just hit a wall, and I don’t feel like doing the same things over, and over, day in, and day out.”
The thread has more than a thousand responses, many from other players who feel similarly. The whole thing boils down to carrots, basically.
“The main problem with the dangling of the carrot progression is, once you get the carrot (or enough bites of it), you really don’t feel the need to keep chasing it,” responds one player, supaloco.
“This whole thread makes me scared that Bungie will make the carrot harder to catch when [the House of Wolves expansion] comes out…” writes another player, banannabelle, in response. “I’ve minimised my playtime considerably since [Crota’s End hard mode] came out, because I’m tired of chasing the carrot.”
“Honestly, it doesn’t matter where the[y] put the carrot anymore,” a third player, Poor_cReddit, replies. “The problem is that everyone is sick of eating the carrot.”
The carrots those players are talking about are the rewards Destiny offers players for completing missions, raids, strikes, and crucible matches. Dedicated players have easily put in at least three or four hundred hours with the game, and that’s enough time to get almost every gun, upgrade, and piece of armour you could want.
Emphasis on the almost, however. Here’s my situation, which I know is far from unique: I have three alt characters, two of which are level 32, and the last one could get there if I cared to farm the shards for it. Between those three, I have almost every single good exotic and legendary weapon in the game, aside from the coveted rocket launcher Gjallarhorn. I have almost every single good exotic armour piece in the game, aside from the coveted titan helmet Helm of Saint-14. There are a few more items that I wouldn’t cry about getting, but those two exotic items are the only two I still “want” from the game.
There’s no way to earn or work my way toward getting either of those things — I’m entirely at the mercy of the random number generator. My two best chances are to complete weekly Nightfall strikes and hope one of them drops, or hope that Xur turns up selling them one weekend. Both of those things are reliant on chance, meaning that the only way I can hope to get the items I still want is to pray for fortune to smile on me.
Guess what? That’s a shitty way to play a game, especially one that rewards players as arbitrarily as Destiny does. It didn’t take much mental algebra to figure out that my chances of having a Gjallarhorn drop are low enough that I might as well just stop playing altogether, sit on my hoard of strange coins, and wait for Xur to sell it again. It doesn’t help that some exotics appear to be weighted to drop more often than others — I’ve had No Land Beyond, the worst exotic gun in the game, drop for me not once, not twice, but five times. At this point I just expect the thing to drop at the end of Nightfalls. It feels like Destiny is going out of its way to insult me.
Once more, this whole thing comes down to what I’ve already identified as Destiny‘s biggest flaw: There simply isn’t enough stuff in the game. When every hardcore player has a near-identical loadout, and every player is still grinding away in hopes of getting the same rocket launcher, that’s a sign that players have all hit the same wall. We’ve run out of things to do and rewards to earn because there simply weren’t enough there in the first place.
And suddenly, I realise…
I’ve Started Playing Destiny For The Wrong Reasons
Oh, shit, I’ve started playing Destiny for the wrong reasons. In the past, I used to hassle Jason when he’d say there was “no reason” to do some mission or other. What he meant was, there’s no useful loot we can get out of it. He was working under the assumption that we only play Destiny for the loot.
“But it will be fun!” I’d counter. This game is, after all, fundamentally very fun to play. Surely that’s enough?
Lately, my mentality has changed. I find myself performing cold mental calculations to determine the worth-itness of a given undertaking. I always did that, mind you, but nowadays, it’s my primary calculation, rather than a secondary one.
When I try to step back and understand why my feelings have shifted, I can only come back to that old Destiny problem: There’s not enough to do. I’ve played all of these levels so many times that they really just don’t feel like rewards unto themselves anymore.
Each of my three characters is sitting on a nearly-full passel of completed bounties. I have no reason to turn them in. I haven’t gotten a new weapon I wanted to level up in weeks, and all three of my characters have maxed out their armour.
Destiny‘s relentless focus on its own economy works right up until the game runs out of reasons for you to buy things. This game has many types of currency, from glimmer to strange coins to experience points themselves. But if there’s nothing worthwhile to spend it on, currency becomes meaningless.
Crota’s End Hard Mode Is A Bust
Many of us were optimistic about the high-level “hard mode” for the Crota’s End raid. It launched almost a month ago, and it only took one or two attempts for us to realise that something was off.
There were few new ideas happening; in most ways, it was the same raid. The one major difference was that the enemies had all been kicked up to level 33, one level above players’ level 32 cap, which artificially inflated the difficulty in a cheap and unenjoyable way.
Even the highest-level, most kitted-out team will have an exceptionally difficult time playing the first two sections of the raid legit (i.e. without using some sort of crafty strategy or cheese). That’s not because the challenge has been enhanced in an interesting or fun way — there aren’t, say, twice as many thralls in the abyss, or a more complicated routine at the sword bridge — it’s simply because the enemies will now one- or two-shot you, because they’re all at least one level higher than you are. Ugh.
I’ve already gone on at length about why the Vault of Glass is a better raid than Crota’s End, so instead of doing that all over again, I’ll share a story: A few weeks ago, some of my regular raid buddies and I wound up trying to beat Crota on hard. We got a pretty good group together, and had our strategy worked out.
We tried, and failed, tried and failed, tried and failed again. Often, we were defeated by bugs, inconsistent behaviour from Crota, or the old vanishing sword problem.
Other times the Swordbearer AI would act up and momentarily throw us off our game, which in Hard Mode is as good as having your whole team die.
I was running late to meet some friends for dinner, but I decided to try one more time, and we failed. So I tried again; we failed again. I finally tore myself away — I was late to dinner, and I had to let go of the notion that we were on the verge of beating Crota. I left the fireteam, and they replaced me with someone from an LFG site.
A short while later, I was away from my PS4, having a drink with my friends. I had sheepishly arrived about 20 minutes late, and we had immediately begun talking about things that were not Destiny. The game was still buzzing in my head, but the buzz was fading. I texted Jason: “Hey, if you guys beat him, let me know!” Then, a couple of hours after that: “Did you beat him?”
“Nope,” he finally responded. “The others might have. I eventually dropped out.”
I had been certain we were mere minutes from defeating Crota. I had been wrong. It turns out the group did defeat him, but only after several more hours beating their heads against it. I’ve never been so glad I left a raid early.
I found myself mildly mortified that I had been rudely late to meet my friends, all because I’d decided to stick it out in a futile attempt to defeat a buggy boss who had been specifically designed to be unfairly difficult. Maybe, I reflected, it really was time to stop playing so much Destiny.
Xür, Agent of Sadness
Weekends are an exciting time in the world of Destiny, because that’s when Xur comes. Like a sad Santa with a mostly empty sack on his shoulder, the Tentacle-Faced One arrives and, inevitably, disappoints the shit out of everyone.
I’ve talked in the past about why Xur is generally so disappointing — most players already have most of the exotic items they need, so it’s much more likely that Xur will turn up selling stuff they already have or don’t want. And of course, some of the bitterness around Xur will dissipate if he turns up next week selling Gjallarhorn, or the Heart of Praxic Fire, or the Helm of Saint-14. The Ice Breaker honeymoon lasted at least a week.
Rare good days notwithstanding, Xur’s stock has been so consistently lackluster that it’s hard to fully wash away the sour odour he’s left in his various corners of the Tower. Bungie has been notoriously vague about the algorithm that determines what he sells each week, but while I believe them that it’s randomly generated, it would appear that some items are weighted much more heavily than others. Oh look, he’s selling No Land Beyond again. Oh hey, it’s Plan C. Oh neat, Sunbreakers.
At the cusp of every Friday, 1AM Pacific, I visit the Tower to witness an event I like to think of as “The Running of the Xur.” A bunch of guardians all arrive at once and begin tearing around the Tower like kids playing hide-and-seek, looking for Xur in his new weekly hiding spot. It’s a great deal of fun, and one of my favourite activities in Destiny. But Xur’s stock has been so roundly disappointing, so many times in a row, that I’m probably going to stop. I’d rather sleep than stay up late just to be let down.
One of the biggest problems with Xur’s inventory hasn’t been his weapons or his armour, it’s been the fact that he hasn’t been consistently selling heavy weapon ammo. That’s because…
The Heavy Ammo Bug is a Bigger Deal Than You’d Think
Of all the bugs in Destiny — and there are a lot of bugs in Destiny — one stands apart in the minds of players: The heavy ammo bug. In the game, if you die while wearing a piece of armour that increases your heavy ammo capacity, you actually lose some ammo. Maybe one or two rockets, or some heavy machine-gun rounds. Die multiple times, and your stock of seven rockets will be reduced to one or two.
This wouldn’t ordinarily be all that big a deal, but several factors stack on top of one another and make it into a much bigger problem than it first seems.
- Heavy ammo is crucial for Crota’s End. Defeating Crota requires everyone to use a lot of heavy ammo with precision timing, and if someone on your team runs out of rockets, it can blow the run for everyone.
- Fighting Crota also requires a lot of trial and error, meaning that teams will frequently need to “wipe,” or all die so that they can restart.
- The raid armour that lets you get to level 32 has a perk that raises your heavy ammo, meaning that the raid armour — specifically, the leg armour — triggers the heavy ammo bug. Every time you wipe while wearing raid armour (which almost everyone wears during a hard mode raid), every person on your team will lose some of their heavy ammo.
- Heavy ammo is relatively difficult to find in the field, meaning that the most sure-fire way to get it is to use heavy ammo “synths,” or single-use packs you can buy that replenish all of your heavy ammo in the field.
- It’s possible to pop a heavy ammo pack, then have your team wipe several times and lose all of the ammo you just got, not because you used it, but because the bug drained it away.
- A heavy ammo pack costs nearly 1,000 glimmer at the gunsmith, so if you run out of heavy ammo packs and want to go raiding, first you’ll have to spend a big chunk of time mindlessly grinding glimmer at the exclusion zone.
- Xur sells heavy ammo packs for relatively cheap, so when he has them in stock, it’s a great way for hardcore raiders to stock up. The problem is that he hasn’t sold heavy ammo packs for several weeks now, meaning that anyone who’s been farming Crota’s End Hard Mode has probably run out of heavy ammo packs and has been forced to farm the Exclusion Zone multiple times when they’d rather be off playing the raid.
In other words, players need heavy ammo to beat Crota, but Crota frequently kills the entire team, and the bug drains them of their heavy ammo as they die. Xur hasn’t sold heavy ammo in a while, so players need to go and perform thankless grinding in order to get more heavy ammo so they can go fight Crota again. And on, and on, and on.
The whole thing creates a nasty circle of blame between players, Bungie, and Bungie’s proxy, Xur. How frustrating, then, that Bungie would abdicate responsibility for a legitimate player grievance, throwing up their hands and saying, “Hey, we don’t control Xur! Be mad at him, not us!” Give me a break.
At the heart of the problem, of course, is the fact that the heavy ammo bug exists in the first place, and that it’s been allowed to persist for so long. Bungie says they’re going to patch the bug sometime this month — they have said it’s difficult to fix, and I’ll have to take their word for it. But in the meantime, players (justly) feel that the least the game’s creators could do would be to ensure that Xur carries heavy ammo until the bug is fixed.
It’s an understandable request, and so it’s all the more irritating when Xur turns up for yet another weekend with no heavy ammo packs. The cycle repeats, and players who are already feeling the gnaw of the time-sink must spend many more hours mindlessly grinding for glimmer. It’s enough to make even the most dedicated player consider throwing in the towel.
Bungie Keeps Fixing The ‘Wrong’ Things
Meanwhile, Bungie continues to tweak and fine-tune their game, but they’re changing things players don’t want changed while leaving in things players hate. To put it another way: They’re addressing and correcting bugs that favour players, while leaving in bugs that work against players. That approach is certainly not helped by the smarmy, “wink-wink, you know you love us” tone of the Bungie Weekly Update, which frequently shares a bushel of bad news while playfully punching us in the arm about it.
The next announced change will introduce a bevy of minor tweaks to the game’s arsenal, many of which will lower the range and utility of the most popular weapons in the game. (The chart above is via Bungie and tracks gun usage.) The loudest grumbles from players aren’t necessarily from people who don’t think Bungie should address balance issues in the game’s weapons — particularly for PvP play, where balance is crucial — they come from people who would like to feel that Bungie is more actively addressing players’ complaints, rather than fixating on some internal concept of how the game “should” play.
An Unusual Forum Post
A couple weeks ago, Bungie designer Luke Smith sounded off on NeoGAF in the middle of the night with a clear, no-bullshit post about the lessons learned from The Dark Below, the new approaches they will be taking with the next expansion, and all the mistakes they won’t repeat.
Smith’s post was precisely the sort of thing Destiny players want to see, not only because it promised actual improvements, but because it was respectful of players and addressed their concerns with relative clarity. Why Bungie won’t include that sort of information in their own official updates is beyond me.
If Destiny is going to succeed in the long term, Bungie is going to have to significantly improve their communication skills. Hopefully the community’s response to Bungie’s many lousy official updates — and their single, seemingly unauthorised, good one — has been instructive.
The Next Expansion Is A Ways Off
The Destiny of today has lost some sparkle for a lot of hardcore players, so the natural inclination has been to look forward. That means talking about House of Wolves, the second of two planned expansions for 2015, before the rumoured, larger “comet” expansion hits this coming fall.
Hopes for House of Wolves are high — too high, most likely. To hear Smith tell it, it does sound as though the second expansion won’t repeat the most egregious mistakes of the first one: Vendor armour won’t immediately beat your Crota’s End armour, and exotic weapons won’t have to be re-levelled from zero. But those are two mistakes Bungie shouldn’t have made in the first place, and not repeating them should be the least we expect.
Will House of Wolves add a complex and challenging raid with a rewarding and well-designed hard mode? Will it give us more modes with which to play story missions, and some new challenges that actually feel different from the existing ones? Will it include new weapons and armour that actually, substantially change the way we play and enjoy the game? Will it add more new modes and functionality to crucible, and finally manage to coax PvE-centric players like me into playing more?
Maybe, maybe not. But no matter how good or disappointing it turns out to be, House of Wolves isn’t coming out for a good long while. Bungie said in their latest update that it will be out sometime between April and June. So, let’s say it comes out in May. There’s a long, cold couple of months between then and now, especially for anyone who already feels like they’re going through the motions. It’s only natural that some people would stop playing, at least for the time being.
This is Normal; We’ll Be Back
If all of this sounds a bit apocalyptic, rest assured, it isn’t. With every Destiny article I write, there are several people who respond by saying something like, “I never got the hype,” or, “I played for a week, then traded it in. Whatever.” I’m certain the comments below this article will be filled with many more of those folks, smilingly sharing the fact that they stopped playing long ago.
I’m not speaking for those people. I’m also not talking about newer, more relaxed players, some of whom have only recently gotten into Destiny, and who seem content to slowly chew through levels and earn new gear. Those players have probably got it best right now, partly because their restraint has led them to the least thankless way to play Destiny, and partly because grizzled veterans like me find a surprising amount of joy in taking new players through the raids and strikes and experiencing the game fresh through their uninitiated eyes.
When I talk about dedicated Destiny players leaving, I’m talking about people who, like me, fundamentally dig the heck out of Destiny. I’m talking about people who have sunk hundreds of hours into the game and are planning to be playing it off and on for the next several years at least.
For those people, this sort of ebb and flow is normal. It’s understandable that someone could put 400 hours into a game, burn out, take a break, and come back with the next expansion. That’s been the way of MMOs for years. Unlike almost every other game I play, Destiny makes me feel like my progress is “safe,” like it will be around for years to come. I can afford to take a few months off, because my three characters will be right there waiting for me when I return. We’re in this for the long haul.
But our likely return doesn’t mean that Bungie can just sit back, relax, and enjoy the downtime. They have screwed up enough things recently that we’re going to need some specific reassurance that speaks directly to our concerns and doesn’t waste our time. To that end, Bungie would be well-served by more Luke Smith-type updates, and fewer bullshitty jokes about the Cryptarch. Maybe they could even put those updates on the company blog, instead of posting to gaming forums in the dead of night. Crazy idea, I know.
With that said, it is still possible that Bungie could blow this whole thing. If they don’t eventually scrape together the game that so many of us can sense is inside of Destiny, some other studio will, and we’ll all go play that. One of Destiny‘s greatest assets has been that there isn’t anything else quite like it, and as long as that’s the case, Bungie will find it pretty easy to coax lapsed players back to the fold. But that won’t always be the case, and you can bet that there are some future competitors out there right now, testing their own prototypes and taking notes.
For my part, I’ll be back for House of Wolves. Heck, if Bungie brings back the Queen’s Wrath, or releases a significant upgrade for the Vault of Glass, I’ll go back even earlier. Failing that sort of an update, it’s likely that my Destiny playing will remain on the wane. I’d love a good reason to come back, but that’s what it will take: A good reason.
To contact the author of this post, write to kirk@kotaku.com or find him on Twitter @kirkhamilton.
Comments
45 responses to “Five Months In, Hardcore Destiny Players Are Hitting A Wall”
I’ve put 110 hours into Destiny across two main characters… and yet if you said to me “let’s play Destiny tonight” I’d probably go no thanks. I’ve enjoyed what I played, and I got value out of it, I just don’t find “optimising” a character super interesting.
It’s not like other RPGs, where playing a different class radically changes your approach- in the end, you’re shooting things in the face, and after a bit of time the differences between Destiny’s 3 classes blur.
Will I come back? maybe, and I did stick on for longer than I probably would have because I was playing with people like @masha2932. But for now, I’m moving on.
Welcome to where i was 3 months ago..
3 months is commendable. I gave in after a few weeks. I had a character deep into level 20’s as did all my friends (I played less, so they actually had multiple level 24-27 characters in the span of said weeks)
I just got to a point where I couldn’t do the same darn strike/ event AGAIN for very little (if any) reward. I’d just seen what there was to see for the most part and, when I realised that, the illusion was shattered. There just wasn’t enough variety to keep me coming back even as long as CoD has in the past (been years since I really played a CoD game though TBH, but just an example).
Still that’s not a great achievement for a game that was said to be so chock full of content before release. That’s subjective though.
I got to level 29 on my Titan, but like said elsewhere, the whole game is go here, shoot aliens in the face, repeat. I honestly thought Destiny was going to be more open world, not the corridors we got.
I gave up on Destiny almost as soon as I finished the main “story” (to use the term loosely).
Funnily enough though, I booted up Titanfall for the 1st time in a about 6 months last night.
Remember Titanfall? The other huge game of 2014 that was awesome for a few weeks….
They’ve fixed a bunch of stuff with that game and it’s pretty great.
I’ll probably do the same with Destiny in about 5 months only to find that their vision for the game was so distorted and confused that it’s still an incoherent mess. I really hope they don’t make a Destiny 2, just scrap the IP, scrap the grand vision, take the tech and make a game that’s more than a pretty looking shooter with a bunch of souless, placeholder content.
I was expecting Destiny to be a kind of Mass Effect 3 style of multiplayer/campaign game. When I found people saying that the campaign was nothing but a hollow shell I decided to steer well clear of it,
Hollow shell is right.
They should have called it Halo: Character Devolved.
Where’s the dotted line where I write, “I told you so”?
You’re only allowed to write on that line if you’ve played for 400hrs to qualify as a ‘dedicated Destiny player’ like Kirk.
He wrote a disclaimer against everyone else’s opinions and everything.
Yep this is exactly how I felt a couple months ago – Literally just stopped playing the game and moved on – Still my most hated update was the one that made single player experience the same as it is with 3 players.
This was a total d*ck move for people who were over raiding and just want to do the nightfall on their own.
Now playing the nightfall solo it feels like if I dont cheese it with Ice breaker+Heavy and get touched by an enemy its all over and wasted my time.
I would love to be able to swiftly get the nightfall done for the week and have my boost and do my quests but now its attempt do the nightfall x5 get wiped at the very end by a 1hit KO melee attack from the weakest minion give up and play a different game – Solo wipes aren’t fair compared to even just having 1 person to revive you and I don’t want to be forced to play always with people who aren’t online when I am.
I do wish the game changes.. a lot maybe too much but the damn game engine is so nice to play on…
Same thing happened prior to the Crota expansion, players will essentially do everything, drop off and play something else until the next expansion, rinse, repeat. I’ve been enjoying Evolve, waiting for The Order and have no plans to touch my 2 level 32’s again until House of Wolves or the next Iron Banner.
Neckbeard finishes game, caps out best items in game. Complains there is nothing to do.
Riiiiiiight…play something else then while you wait for the next expac.
Bullshit. The Nets game was terrible they lost in a blowout to the Wizards.
I would marathon Destiny after the first DLC dropped for a couple weeks and burned out. I will do the same when the next drops I guess.
150 hours in for me. Have a level 31 Titan and 25 Warlock. Haven’t even got a third character yet. Went through a binge of playing about 3 hours a night for about 3 weeks, then sort of got over it a bit. Probably only playing one or two nights a week now. Problem is that I’m mostly a solo player. The solo debuff on Nightfall was complete BS, I don’t even bother with it now. And I am SOOOO sick of of getting the same strike over and over again in the Vanguard playlist. I’ll probably drop off for a while but will definitely be back for the HoW DLC.
I stopped playing Destiny about a week after launch. While I found it to be a decent shooter, I just didn’t get why so many were going crazy over it. Still don’t.
Well written and echoes my thoughts about the game. They aren’t fixing the right things. It’s beyond pathetic that they still have no vote map feature or more PvP game modes.
The way Bungie is handling their game is simply mind boggling.
Bungie have gone full reverse Rare.
Get sold by MS and go completely off the rails.
Fantastic article Kirk. I really hope the senior management at Bungie read this and take it on board, especially DeeJ…
So you’re saying Destiny is an mmo?
Sort of. Only it’s not an MMO, because MMOs have at least weeks to months of unique content on launch, not two days worth. Also, usually more than a dozen other players in their ‘shared worlds’ (shared lobbies), some means beyond four gestures or leaving the application to casually communicate with people. Some noticable differences between classes, generally three to four times as many classes and not too far off the same for races, multiple factions, more than four zones, different starting zones, trading systems, player economy, crafting, non-combat activities, in-game lore… ON LAUNCH. Not after ten years. Y’know. All the stuff Destiny doesn’t have.
Well. Either not an MMO, or a very bad one.
Ive recently gotten back into running the Roc Strikes and find them enjoyable again. I get the burnout though. What it comes down to is wishing there was more content. The mechanics of the game (not RNG mechanics) but actual game mechanics are very good and it is highly enjoyable cracking alien skulls.
@jocon @distantdrop Aren’t you guys glad we dropped out while we were ahead xD It’s kind of sad to be completely honest; Destiny was a great game from a gameplay perspective but just completely imbalanced and cruel from a rewards and patching perspective. I recall the last straw for me being all the so called fixed to the VoG raid that made it impossible to clear the raid without coming across a game breaking bug at least once per run!
I was always facing Destiny with a two month timer, SoO was out for over 8 months I was on my 5th alt, I was only looking for a temporary reprieve for the elongated content of WoW.
So even if their were no glitches and we had a consistent 6/6 crew doing hard I most likely still would of left.
Yeah, fun but got a bit pointless a bit quick.
I was never in it for the long run either tho. Planned to play the base game while internet friends were. Did that, had a blast, moved on.
I hope that they take the engine and make another great FPS out of it. I wish Halo5 was going to be on this engine.
The House Of Wolves won’t magically ‘fix’ the game. It was pre-planned before all the feedback hit. Yes it’s annoying as hell they’re quick to jump on exploits and still don’t fix any bugs. The VoG raid still has bugs.
It won’t be until the big update later on, whether it comes as a new expansion or Destiny 2, we won’t see major changes about how the game plays until that hits. Hopefully there’s news on it at E3 to keep interest going, but in the meantime, I’m half interested in playing, but I’m not putting in 2-3 hours each night anymore for next to no tangible reward. The RNG is horrible, half the stuff you can get from Xur each week anyway. There’s no real incentive to keep on playing, nothing to show for hours of effort.
Well written article. It echos a lot of my personal opinions.
I think a lot of Destiny’s initial success and hype is due to TIMING. The timing of which the game was released. Back when Destiny was released, there was really nothing else to play (for me anyway). So I picked up Destiny and sunk almost 300+ hours into it.
Looking forward, I have Bloodborne and The Witcher 3 to look forward to around the HoW release window. Will I give Destiny another go when HoW come up? Maybe… if my friend is still playing then.
After 471 hours i’ve quit (as of two weeks ago). It’s just totally burnt me out since the Crota’s End DLC to the point where i’m just not having fun in the game anymore.
It feels good to be honest, I feel like I have my life back. Was way too absorbed for very little return.
I already redeemed my season my pass, so I might come back to give the Wolves a try, but even thinking about that now makes me wince…really don’t know if I can, which sucks really because it was once enjoyable.
This sounds like the WWE.
This is kind of how I felt every time I quit playing WoW, my wife and I recently unsubbed again after doing the yearly checking out of an expansion and it’s nice to feel like you have your life back again to do other things and play other games. Admittedly we’ll probably be back at it again should a great piece of content or a new expansion be released, but there’s nothing wrong with taking a long long break after becoming burnt out on a game.
“I’ve played the same game for hundreds of hours and now I’m bored of it, totally burnt out!”
I really struggle to grasp what certain people expect for their $80!
I think it’s more buying into the ‘ten year plan’ Bungie had for the game. That’s what everyone who bought the game wanted, but instead of ten years, there was a game that got repetitive after 10 days if you played for a few hours each day. While you’re right, people (me included) have gotten fantastic value for money out of Destiny, we wanted to believe that this was the big franchise of this generation and it was going to be something truly different that kept us coming back for more. As it is, people keep on playing in that hope I think, but more and more people are slowly switching over to something else because Bungie haven’t and aren’t delivering on their own hype
I cant believe all these people have sunk so many hours into the game after such a short amount of time must not have a wife and/or kid.
Or they get by on very little sleep. I had a mate who basically turned into a zombie because he would stay up all night playing WoW.
Welcome to pre-patch depression and post-patch overloads. The maniac depressional collective mood of MMO playing.
You just have to look at the sale and player subscription figures for most MMOs to see this. The average playtime for a new IP MMO is about 3 to 6 months before the players start to feel the game is stale or the grind is less rewarding especially in new IP mmos who havent gotten their new content lined up right and have been too preoccupied with bug fixes or server stability.
Worse is for paid subscription games that notice this decline in players and immediatly react by making the move to Free-2-Play like LOTRO, SWTOR, Star Trek Online etc…. the decision to go from paid to free-2-play usually involves them redesigning a major patch to the game, new mechanics to allow both business models to work, restructure and possible retrenchment at the offices… 2-3 months later when they go from announcement to free-2-play. So effectively there response to lack luster player retention due to lack of content and player depression was to ignore them for another 2-3 months while they do a major patch to make the game free2play, and act surprised that they lose so many more subscribers that way.
Look at the World of Warcraft subscription numbers over the decade and they dive bomb between patches everytime they announce a new PTR, you already see the crowd get bored and just by their time until that content is released only to repeat it again every 2-3 months of content depression. Really hard time for WoW is between the last patch of an expansion (around X.4) and the next expansion (X.0) where they keep the last raid up for so long and teasing the players with the beta content that players get frustrated and quit or find some other game to play.
“I’m only talking about the players like me. We are the break-point for what Bungie should be paying attention to, not the casuals who got bored after a measly 100-300hrs.”
Ah gotcha. Let’s play cognitive bias bingo, shall we?
No Kirk, I’m pretty sure the calls of, “Welcome to where the rest of the world was at a couple months ago,” are appropriate. Any disclaimers about being special or unique fans of the moment-to-moment gameplay is bullshit. It’s purely a measure of tolerance for the skinner box. The problems you’re complaining about are the same problems everyone else got sick of months ago. Nothing has changed, you’re just slower for it to sink in.
Agreed. I don’t know how some people can still be playing a game with so little content.
A-fucking-men! Everything about this game has disappointed me… Bungie seriously need to lose the hubris with this game. And they need to fire that snarky prick of a community manager; Deej. What a colossal douche canoe!
colossal douche canoe is going strains into my insult repertoire
You’re welcome!
Whats it like? Up on that horse?
I feel like I’ve been playing forever. But I just checked my stats and “only” have 233 hours logged. My first character will hit 32 this week and my second is 31. I haven’t had the patience to start a third one yet. I found doing the story for the second time was a major fucking grind. Worse than the end game grind.
But I’m still digging the game at this stage. I’m sure I’ll burn out at some point, but as long as my mates keep playing, I will too.
P.S. Got my second Gjallarhorn on Nightfall two nights ago. Boom. Admittedly I felt I deserved it after three straight weeks of Ascendent Shards on both characters.
You complain about Xur and his offerings…..at least his have a chance of being something people want. How about the likes of Tess Everis who has a selection of ghosts sitting on her sales counter…..none of which can be bought…….how about the Exo Weapons dealer that has quite frankly the most underpowered and least imaginative range of weapons I have ever seen. How can an arms dealer offer such an abysmal selection?
I’ll stop ranting though because the thing is I’m still playing this game. I’m not sure why – but I am. I think I’m sticking around because of all the new friends I’ve made in-game. The other thing I’ve taken to doing for the challenge is trying to solo the Raids as far as possible and solo the nightfalls. Yes the random one shot melee kills are infuriating however I just like the challenge.
There are quite a few consistant gripes that come up and some of which have been covered many times over. We all now refer to Bungie as “Bungie Fun-kill” because everytime players find something to do in the game that they enjoy, Bungie seems to erase it, or, in most cases not even entertain it in the first place. The loot-cave was one of the many examples of this. Why on earth would you keep ruining things in the game that people find fun? If people like to use auto rifles in PVP, then let them use them. But the one that is constantly discussed is loot in general, on many levels. There’s not enough of it, it’s not diverse enough and the so called “loot chests” that could be fun to search for if done correctly are now an almost complete waste of time save the odd one that you get one or two blue engrams, a couple of ammo synth packs and 12 spin metal. This is coming from a compulsive chest farmer who has actually destroyed about 2000 spin metal because of another change that Bungie Fun-Kill made which was to remove my ability to exchange it for Vanguard reputation. They also implemented a purchase system for all the whinging PvP only types to get packs of 20 resources of your choice for 10 Vanguard Marks. Way to go – remove the last remaining thing in the game that would cause you to actually go out and explore the worlds created.
SMH (I’ll still go home and play it tonight though!).
I haven’t played in a month. The only thing I miss is my clan-mates. I haven’t even played my PS4, except to start Grim Fandango. I hope The Division lives up to my expectations.
Don’t forget Ubisoft are involved, so don’t get excited…
Just started again (on 150hrs) after putting it aside for three weeks. Bam! Exotic weapon drop in the Crucible. Thank you very much. Have a feeling that the RNG drops take into consideration how long you have been absent and drop you a little nibble to keep you interested.
I just wish they would add matchmaking for the nightfalls. The ROC Strikes are cool but feel punished for not having team mates. You can keep the Raids party only but the nightfalls no need as everyone knows them inside out.
Thank you for this review. I downloaded the beta of Destiny when it first came out. I played it for 4 hrs and was bored out of my mind. It wasn’t fun at all. I was glad that I did not purchase this game or spent so much time on it. Your review after 5 months was right on with the feelings that I had with this game. I hope you will find another game that you will ‘actually’ enjoy playing.