Destiny 2

www.ign.com/articles/bungie-shakes-up-marathon-leadership-removes-chris-barrett-as-game-director

Trouble in Destiny land, it seems. Rumours are that Sony wants to take over the studio, since D2 has been performing poorly lately.

I think Bungie wanted Destiny to go on after the end of the current saga, but at this point I'm not sure it will happen.

I didn't imagine saying this around WQ or so but I actually don't reckon I'm going to bother with TFS. I think my time with the game is basically done, now. I actually uninstalled it last night.

I don't think it's been any one thing, but I've been on an extended break and realised that really because the main thing I enjoy in Destiny is raiding, a lot of the rest of the game just stands as a barrier between me and that, and the way it's designed makes me feel like I *have* to engage with various things in a certain way in order to maximise my enjoyment of the parts I do enjoy.

In particular I feel like it's the way half the game seems designed around a fear that 1% of players will no life the fuck out of it and get everything in a week then complain there's no content, so you get stuff like the "3 chances at a raid to get the drop/loot a week" shit. Which just means that everyone in the server I was in is desperate to get their 3 raid clears in ASAP because by the time you get to the weekend everyone got their clears in and nobody wants to run it any more. I'd settle in for a gaming session and be like "well, I suppose before I play what I want to play, I should do some shit in Destiny".

Too much of the game designed around being repeatable out of creating a feeling of obligation that you should repeat it, rather than repeatable in the sense that you just WANT to replay it because its fun, and after several months of barely engaging with it any more I realise that I actually don't care much for jumping back in.

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I see they timegated some of the guns. They quite literally can not help themselves. Metrics, metrics, metrics.

Oh I see, yeah, half the guns can't be gotten right away, but there was some suggestion that you straight up can't get the guns after a certian point, but that's just the LE versions.

It's the whole reason I've soured so much on it. Everything in the game gets blatantly drip fed to you with the sole purpose of ticking boxes on their end because you've logged into the game on their terms.

The point of no return for me was the exposition on the nature of the veil. Something that flat out should have been included in the base Lightfall expansion, chopped up into about 6 week's worth of audio logs dropped one at a time months after the expansion had been and gone.

I look across at what the likes of Arrowhead are doing with Helldivers and think to myself, maybe Sony taking total control isn't such a bad thing because Bungie's goose was cooked a long time ago.

Yeah, too much of the game is either designed around a fear that people will no life it and complain there's nothing to do afterward, or designed around ensuring people come back every week.

The latter is fine, except they do it in the most annoying way instead of just making something so fun that people want to keep playing. And often it clashes in a way that makes it less fun.

Weird to think that I'm around 70/30 atm on simply not bothering with the final shape.

I've officially beaten my addiction. I've not even preordered.

Yeah I haven't pre ordered but I'm planning on buying on launch day minus all the season passes and whatnot. I haven't bothered doing any prep and I'm pretty much out as soon as I've seen what happens after the raid is cleared. I've watched like the last 3 seasons worth of story stuff on YouTube as I simply can not be bothered playing it.

Launch day was actually pretty smooth for once. I was able to log in about 15 minutes after launch, and then played until now... gave up because I started getting server errors, and well, because it's pretty late actually.

Managed to get 4 missions (legendary campaign) done. So far it feels like the missions all felt like greatest hits from past content. I'm not sure I'm into the story just yet, but it sure feels and plays a lot better than Lightfall already. There are quite a few new enemies too. Not really getting on with the Prismatic class, at least until I've unlocked all of the aspects, so I'm just going with the usual Sentinel.

Don't know how many missions it is, but I hope I can get them cleared before the raid hits.

That's short. There are 34 quest steps, and with each mission having a talk with Ghost and a radio chatter, I thought it would be at least 9 missions.

Well, that might be for the best. I was getting worried about spoilers while watching the raid, if I couldn't finish the campaign in time.

I'm only missing the final mission now.

Campaign has ben good so far (just need to hope it won't have a horrible final boss like Calus), but it could have used more checkpoints. Battles in darkness zones have been a tad too long. Anyway, it's an improvement on Lightfall including the tone. But like you, I don't think I'll play muc more once the post-final mission is done. I dn't feel like grinding.

I do want to see what episodes are like. Since I did set aside the Silver for them, at this point I might as well, and it seems there should be a big content drop every six weeks.

Holy crap, this damn final boss.

It... doesn't *quite* feel as unfair as Calus, because at least you do get some cover. But it's still hard as hell.



Tell you what, I'm gonna get some help, or just give up and play on regular difficulty.

Yeah that was a bit of a mad difficulty spike but not quite Calus levels of bullshit.

I get the feeling a lot of the campaign was not so subtle raid mechanic introductions to try and get more player engagement when it launches. I was hoping it would be something akin to Last Wish but now I suspect people will have it cleared within 3 hours or so. Especially with some of the busted shit Prismatic has allowed access to like putting Getaway Artists on with Bleak Watchers.