One Year Later: What Do You Think of Destiny?

It's been over a year since Destiny came out. Loads of criticism and backlash against it by the community notwithstanding, the game has continued to be popular, and Bungie has persistently supported it (albeit cynically) and improved its lot since its release.

Over a year has passed since Destiny has launched, and it is not the game today that it was back then- my question is, one year after its launch, what do you think of Destiny?

Personally, I believe Destiny is a flawed, cynical game that represents all that is wrong with the modern gaming scene. It could have been so much more- all the ingredients are there: it has a great gameplay loop, the loot system can addict players thoroughly, and it imbibes and exemplifies the modern social experience. But Destiny's insistence on extracting every last dime from the player has led to some less than optimal design decisions- content is locked away until you pay for it, game balance is compromised to favor more revenue, and players' achievements are outright undermined and negated so Bungie can get players to invest in new expansion packs, and start afresh.

It's maddening- Destiny is a game I should like, but I don't, because Bungie and Activision have ruined it with cynical decisions. It's basically the mobile game microtransaction mentality that has been translated wholesale into a console game, and it really hurts the game experience. It's a shame, because Destiny could be a great game- but it isn't.

Maybe with Destiny 2 next year.

I have spent 250 hours on Destiny. Playing only the first release + 1st expansion.

It was great for me at the start, when it was all new and fresh. before the first expansion. Because I played it with friends, and raid was fun and challenging. And I overlooked it flaws like the missing story and what not because the developer said the DLC will focus on such issues.

And when it came, it didn't improve anything. The game sucked even more. The raid was horrible, still no real story.

So I deleted the game from my PS4. Don't care how good the taken King.

It's just sort of a shittier version of Halo with a loot treadmill built in to give the illusion of longevity. It's better than 343 Halo games, but far worse than any of the Bungie ones.

Ultimately, it's safe. It's okay. It's alright. It works. It's not worth playing because it doesn't do anything new or interesting and what it does do isn't quite good enough to justify its existence.

I honestly think that there are a lot of people incapable of forming their own opinions who get overwhelmed by the hype machine of a game like this and their brains glitch out and suddenly they're convinced that they're amazing. That's what destiny feels like; a magic trick, brainwashing millions of people with a mass-media marketing blitzkrieg that managed to circumvent the critical part of their brain which would have clearly recognized that the game is just kinda okay.

I played Destiny non stop for the first two months after release, to an extent that I got burnt out, and haven't touched it again. Enough time spent with it, and you really start seeing the cracks in the foundation. Which is sad, because Destiny could have been so much more.

@charizard1605: I think the version of Destiny that was available as of The Taken Kings release is the version of Destiny that should have been the initial launch. The way the first year went was basically nickle and diming the players during an extended Beta Test. At the end of the day they want people to pay MMO pricing for the MMO grind, but do not deliver the amount of content an MMO typically does.

For early adopters, Destiny is most likely terrible and not worth the $135+ to play the whole game. For those who waited a while, The Taken King version of Destiny is probably one of the top games this gen, and well worth the $60.

LOL at anyone admitting they bought Destiny...

It's still a shitty game and I regret spending $60 on it at launch. It's probably the worst purchase I've made all gen. I stopped playing it as soon as I hit rank 25 in a week or two after launch, that's how boring and repetitive the game was.

:( *feels bad*

It's bad and Bungie should feel bad.

I gave Destiny a chance when I got it early this year. Despite having a throwaway story (or lack thereof), the gun play was crisp. I was also into the exploration aspect. After reaching level 20, I began playing the additional modes, including Strikes and the Crucible. They were fun, but you got the occasionally stupid match that shouldn't of ended the way it did. Currently, though, Destiny isn't improving on any of it's flaws. It's simply creating more.

With the Taken King available, Bungie have added some absurd things, like festive hats and dreaded free to play elements that nobody is going to use anytime soon. There's still no story, just some more grimoire lore. Variety is still hard to come by, you'll be killing the same enemies and completing the same mundane tasks over and over with no thought put into them. They've gotten rid of Peter Dinklage as the voice of your ghost, adding in some friendly sounding twerp who belongs in a Disney movie, and every other new feature seems uninspired. It leaves you wanting more. At the end of the day, Destiny is a game that needs to be played with friends. If none of your friends own a copy, you're seriously out of luck.

It's shit.

It's got some very good points; gunplay, soundtrack, visuals.

and some very bad ones; repetitive, and the MMO DLC structure is a little hard to swallow

Non-rewarding.

Insulting to one's intelligence.

Shallow.

Repetitive.

Unworthy of taking up people's time.

its alright, the community is cancer though :/

i got invited to a raid this one time... the friend of the dude who invited was PISSED because i had blue gear, then the dude who invited me proceeded to defend me by saying gear doesnt matter, that its all about skill, and that i had plenty of it, and would rekt him 1v1...

anyways, then it just turned into a dick measuring contest and everyone just ended up leaving :(

fun times

Its still a bad game.

Not to be that guy, but I think we already have a thread similar to this...

http://www.gamespot.com/forums/system-wars-314159282/so-its-been-a-yearare-you-done-with-destiny-32873422/#49

Anyways, yeah the game died quickly for me, finished the campaign and don't feel anything good about it. It was really devoid of any real fun or enjoyment imo. Maybe that's due to being already predisposed to dislike it after the reviews and impressions.

Since I only started playing this past November when I got Taken King for $36, I love it. I'll get Destiny 2 for sure whenever that comes out.

I understand they complaints what early adapter are expressing with needing to buy game in addition to original purchase. I don't agree with that.

I am glad I waited though. Usually loot based games take some time to balance and update. I look to Diablo 3 for example which I bought day 1 on PC. I still got over 100 hundred hours of game play before I hit original wall, so It didn't bother me when they came out with Reapers of Souls.

People who bought original Destiny game still had plenty to play as I've seen posters state they got 100's of hours. I know some didn't get that far and gave up.

I don't feel Bungie intentionally planned it this way, but that's my opinion.

I played the demo and found it fun but it's not really what I'm looking for, not a fan of online only games on consoles either. I can see why a lot of people like it and spend hundreds of hours in it; the gunplay is great and loot based games can be addicting.

I was hoping for more of an RPG with a strong narrative, open world, being able to solo everything with co-op being optional than the mmo-lite we got. Not a fan of having to buy the expansions either, but it looks like they're doing away with that for Destiny 2 and offering free updates instead, but are compensating with microtransactions.

Also **** Activision. They ruined both Blizzard and Bungie for me.

The beta was enough for me to know it sucked.

I have destiny + a DLC. I personally LOVE the part I've played. I like the story line, I like the free roaming, and the interaction with other plauer. BUT the game is seriously flawed in some places, and there are plenty of things I don't AGREE with. One of the big problems with the game, is the need to continue to buy and buy and buy things. I absolutely can not stand that. I bought the game to play it, not have to continue to buy things to continue to play it. That's what some updating is for. This upset me more then anything else, but I do love the game idea, though it is horribly money minupulating that is more problems with the people who made it. Rather then the game itself which is overall 7 out of 10

Just go play Warframe , a free 2 play game similar to Destiny and you can beat the shit out of it for free instead. No p2w shit , great action and graphics and a decent/good item/loot system.

Not really.

I have heard that it's better than it was last year. So I may start playing it again.

It's addictive, to a fault. Stay away if you value the ability to juggle multiple games, this one will want to take up all your time.

Myself though, I didn't like the transition to TTK, I liked it before but they didn't make the transition so smooth and left a lot of good content feeling meaningless. I felt ike I got a lot out of it myself and I didn't bother with factions, PvP, or Raids.

Every time I think of Destiny, it makes me sad... and I can't help but wonder what could have been! It has all the ingredients to be such an epic sci-fi game... but just totally missed the mark. The fact that it's a MP focused game is the biggest problem for me... imagine how awesome it would've been if it had a proper SP campaign with an epic story. Would've been sooooo cool!

Haven't played it and for good reason.

Did a strike last night with @getyeryayasout and it was Epic,

you off work? I could play some!

No offense, but I wish people stopped talking about this game.

There are more worthy titles released in 2014 to talk about like Alien Isolation and Wolfenstein TNO.

Great fun....then the DLCs starting coming out, and I realized I was getting fucked.

It was a solid game with room for improvement, but they ruined it with greed.

Fucking lame grindfest that I want nothing to do with. They really fucked up. I heard TTK expansion improved some things, but I am so disgusted by the game, I may never give the franchise another chance.

It should be absolutely clear why Microsoft was forced to hand out 800 dollar 'gift bags' to the reviewers of previous Bungie games.

The loot system is atrocious. People actually get addicted to it ? Sad times.

It's absolutely terrible. I can't stress it enough. It doesn't reward you for doing well....it's literally a terrible RNG. Not only this but any PvP or Players v E quest gets a scoreboard at the end that shows who did the most damage/kills/better player.....yet sometimes the lowest on the scoreboard gets a bloody legendary engram and top gets zip..

Loot systems should not be implemented like this... It feels like everything in the game is there to milk the players dry..

Also this might just be one of the worst grinders I've played.

From bad, it only got worst. They did nothing to improve your daily activities (open world *if you can call it that* is one of the worst ever seen in a video game, 1 new raid that was added ages ago isn't much of new things to do), same shitty n laggy Crucible servers that are running on a toaster connected to CoD servers. They announce more nerfs to things in this game than anything else. Added microtransactions with an excuse of "its for our live team!!!" but since its been added, nothing worth mentioning been added by said 'live team'. They tell you their live team is working on bigger content for 2016 but who said it'll be free? Nobody. So what's happening here is that they're currently swimming in your microtransaction monies and soon will be swimming in your $20+ DLC's which will be mediocre by default (just look at their $20 dlc's... good luck finding worst in any game). People call this game a grindfest but IF only the grind was its main problem... if


Its even more disgusting when i hear Jeff from GB saying that it got significantly better and the game is now worth recommending to others. This is so wrong that only those who've spent little amount of time in TTK would tell you that. People say that with TTK and the first two """expansions""" this is how the original game should've launched but even that isn't enough at all for "MMO" standards. The original game is a 5/10 at best. With all its dlc's it may be a 7/10 worthy shooter. Now, if you look at the original game, all its dlc's and rate it against what's available in mmo's or even co-op/instance based titles such as PSO1, PSU, PSO2, GW1 the game is a shitty 5.5/10 worthy POS. From 5/10 to a 5.5/10 with $80 of additional dlc's...


Shit's garbage. The end.

By the time Destiny 2 comes out, you'll play enough of Destiny 1 to understand what's so damn wrong with the game. So keep playing and we'll see how hyped you're gonna be for Destiny 2 in couple of months.

That shit's boring and stupid.

Waaaaaaay better than Vanilla, thats fosho. The addition of swords and sidearms were a great improvement that slightly changed gameplay (swords are awesome). Sidequests are also cool. Saying this, **** ACTIVISION AND BUNGIE for screwing over early adopters! Nowadays, if you dont buy TTK and previous expansions you get the short end of the stick cause you cant do sh*t or earning sh*t until you're level 40 wich you can only be by having TTK... This game was anti-consumer right from the start and I hate loving its gameplay cause imo, it has the best gameplay in an FPS console ever. Otherwise I would have cr4pped on this game a long time ago

@charizard1605: the year has definitely been kind to the game in my eyes.

Sure, i enjoyed the game when it first released for a few months, the gunplay is nothing less than brilliant with powerful and varied weapons, and some amazing art and world design sucked me in, but the extortionate season pass price put me off buying it and the game was too much of a grind and where was the story?

So i stopped playing Destiny shortly before the first expansion came out. Fast forward a bit and Taken King comes out, where I picked up the complete edition for £40 (just £5 more than the season pass).

Man the game is totally different now. The grind is for all intents gone, now there is a consistent and logical leveling system, some amazing story missions in taken king (and one of the other expansions has some good story too), and the inventory and quest management was overhauled completely for the better. Not only that, but the micro transactions from what i can see are near non existent, only being used to buy emotes.

The game is still flawed no doubt, there is still no matchmaking for raids (which means i still will never get to try the raids), the game is still far far better played with friends than played solo, and the loading times are still a bit too long for my liking, but now Destiny is what it should have been all along, and I recommend giving it a try.

@fierro316: those games are great, but this thread is about Destiny. Why not start a thread about those under appreciated little gems? Oh man, Wolfenstein so good...

I look at it like Diablo 3-you play the same levels/missions over and over. I dont mind, my fun comes with playing with friends. I haven't gotten bored with Diablo 3 in over 300 hours. Now I dont play it every day like when it came out, but it's still fun to go back to.

If I peak out on gear, I dont care, there still is PVP to play, make a new character, raids ect.

So Destiny is ruined because Activision and Bungie realized they want to be rich? I think the game is tight, fun, great socially. With the additions the lore and characters were fleshed out more and I haven't even dug into Taken King. I like Destiny. I like Halo more for my go to FPS but Destiny is good fun.

I played Destiny virtually every day since its release. I have play sparingly since BO3 came out and even before CoD came out in Nov, I was not playing it much anyway. I think the whole RNG thing finally pushed me away.

You need to come back, Bungievision needs you more than ever.

I'm still kind of blown away by the hate Destiny gets. Some people enjoy it, just deal with it and move on with your life.

@charizard1605: At first, I loved it and I've spent many hours playing the game, however, after investing what seemed like hours with the feeling of little to no progression, I just couldn't be bothered anymore. The gunplay in Destiny is top notch but there were things that kept taking me out of the experience when I played it prior to the first expansion.

I didn't appreciate being told to go to Bungie's website to learn about the lore and backstory of the game. That, coupled with the feeling of having to invest way too much time (and I consider myself a veteran mmo player) even by mmo standards, was enough to ruin the immersion. I haven't played it in months and I don't intend to return. Perhaps, if they change things more for the better and finally add in some matchmaking for each game mode, I may visit in the sequel. Who knows?

If anybody wants to play some missions/strikes or patrols, let me know! I have TK on PS4

I still think it's an above average game. Gamespot got it right with their review.

Failed potential.

Pretty sad game.

@Heil68: We should play some time.

Decent game, but moved on to Halo 5 for my PvP since Destiny is stuck behind a paywall despite having the first two "expansions". Stay classy Bungie and Activision.

It's one of the most popular games of this generation, it makes sense that it would be discussed more than other games.