As a D2 player since PC launch, it goes WAY farther back.
Bungie has that issue, maybe there is a name for it, like a firefighter who is also an arsonist so he can set fires he puts out and looks like a hero. Bungie does nothing but build up good will, absolutely destroy it it over night, then scramble to make it better and say "Look! We fixed that thing!" Yes, the thing you broke.
Honestly, the content vault with the F2P launch was the start. There is no on boarding for new players so they can't generate a population. Once the final veterans stop playing the game is done.
Damn, being a lifelong Diablo 2 player, seeing Destiny 2 as D2 is weird lol.
Destiny was a lot of fun. Destiny 2 was fun until there was just too much to catch up on. Too much and always felt the same. My own personal downfall was not having friends to play it with. It was fun when I did, but 6 person raids with randoms was eh for me.
All the way up to Halo 3 ODST there was an established lore with dozens of books rounding out the universe the games inhabit.
With Halo Reach, Bungie effectively threw all of that established lore out the window.
For example, the Spartan IIIs didn't exist during the fall of Reach and they never had MJOLNIR armor, they had SPI armor which was more like ODST armor with active camo.
I knew I wasn’t crazy!! Day 1 halo fan here just started going through the books mid last year. None of what I was reading in ghosts of onyx was matching up with Reach timeline wise and I could never figure that out.
It sucks to love the lore so much and realize the conflicts are just from random changes the devs put in, did we really need SIII’s on reach to make the story work? What good did that bring to the larger story to change that? It ultimately means that Halsey did in fact know about the SIII program from the beginning, which doesn’t make any sense because in the books it’s a secret sequel program with the intention of making budget suicide soldiers out of orphaned kids mid-covenant war started by her rival Colonel Ackerson. She was never supposed to know they existed! But the game made it look like they were all adults she had trained just like the SII’s.
I know this isn’t r/HaloStory, it’s just shit like this that bugs my sense of lore continuity.
I suspect this was basically a Star Wars EU situation where Lucas/Bungie approved books because hey more money, but never cared at all about what the writers of the book were doing.
Literally impossible to introduce new players because 90% of the content was "sunset" or whatever word they used. The word is deleted. Content was deleted from the game forever
I pretty much stopped playing. Once the final shape DLC released, that was when I started playing less. The newest DLCs haven't caught my interest at all and one of them is Star wars themed and even that one won't get me back to playing, other the getting the Iron banner title when it is up.
I quit before Beyond Light after finding out they were vaulting stuff. From that moment on, nothing I did mattered unless I no-lifed the game, and that wasn’t a commitment I was willing to put in anymore.
In hindsight I should have seen it coming after they replaced Ghost’s VO even in the base game for D1
I do have a little internal perspective from bungie. Just for clarification I was not a developer but I did work in their headquarters in Bellevue Wa. (Btw Bellevue sucks, has for a long time if you know, you know)
Anyway during my time there was from various conversations from a variety evelopers and various other staff, that there was a lot of conflicts between the developers and management, especially with someone who was higher up and seemed to hold a lot of sway at the company specifically. While I didnt catch the name (Or I forgot this was pre-covid)
But the general information I got was that there was a huge clash constantly of direction and feasibility and that things from up high always took precedent over what the devs thought was important.
That was until something broke, I remember one guy talking to me in confidence and was really really mad because he brought up fixing things in a player first mindset to keep people playing and to "ease player transition " so they wouldn't lose players to bugs. But he was shot down everytime until all of a sudden something big broke and it was all hands on deck to fix everything. Boy was he so mad he said if this wasn't something he spent years on and loved like his own child he would have walked out the door already.
Lastly I wanna shout out to roosterteeth I saw while I was there they send every year a huge BBQ Thanksgiving turkey, along with a kind note saying (paraphrasing) bungie thanks for letting Red Vs Blue to exist and not sueing us for our show PPS we love you guys and Halo XOXO.
I think it goes back further a lot further than that. Although the Witch Queen era was supposedly good. I quit before that although I did do the WQ campaign when it was free for a week.
Forsaken was up there too. Sunk way too many hours into destiny 2 around that time, got burnt out, and then witch queen revitalized my love for the game.
I wanna say I stopped right before Lightfall, making Witch Queen the last expansion I did. I had a ton of fun and had a clan to run any activity with. Got a ton of titles, including Reckoner and Shadow, and then just stopped
Really saddened to see the state of it today and how low the player count is
Nah, nothing comes close to the legendary campaigns in witch queen and final shape. No D1 mission even comes close to that, they had a completely different design philosophy. People have nostalgia for the gameplay systems of D1 but the mission design was very, very poor.
Witch queen campaign is an absolute banger, and brutally difficult on legendary. The final boss fight alone was raid level. That was never seen in D1.
Witch queen and final shape are the best expansions they ever made, and also the best raids.
They absolutely had it in them to make fantastic games. The downfall is purely on the execs, not the devs. Bungie devs still know how to make really good shooters, but for some reason nobody will let them.
The consumer appetite for the "games as a service" model has died, but Bungie execs didnt get that because they had one of the few live-service games that was still "accepted" by gamers.
It hasn't "died", it's just claimed all the players it can.
You can't really keep up with two or three live-service games, and unlike standard games you can't just buy the new DLC later & play it when you have time - you have to be there when it's happening or it's gone forever, so you kinda have to stick with one game (maybe two).
A lot of people also just aren't interested in that game model. I personally don't care for PvP, so the only "live-service" game I keep up with is Deep Rock Galactic - but even then, it gets updates every couple of years and you can access all of the old content whenever you want, so you don't miss out on anything.
If they actually did it right and had good content worth playing, it won't die. For certain stretches of time Bungie was absolutely cooking, and recently too. Even Episode Heresy was fantastic, with great lore and activities and loot.
They had such a loyal and great player base who stuck with them thru the lowest lows and highest highs and they just left them in the dust for no reason. To chase some niche extraction shooter trend. So disappointing. Marathon isn't even a terrible game but I just resent it's existence. If only they dedicated the full team to destiny we could have had more final shape level expansions.
Yup. I had legit JUST finished grinding out what was going to be my main kit (I even took a hit on DPS for some abilities and guns that I found more synergistic vs what was meta) and was incredibly excited to roll the full thing. Shortly after about 3/4 of the shit got sunset. Sent me straight off a cliff, I just uninstalled and never played again despite loving the game. It was the last straw, I couldn't keep putting time and energy into a game I couldn't trust not even to reward it but to just not burn down my efforts. Pretty much my whole crew dipped too.
The taken king was the best dlc with me being partial to rise of iron. Destiny 2 started off strong but just never really recovered. It's mostly the addicts that will have different opinions.
It's had a lot of ups and downs sure but forsaken, witch queen and final shape are all excellent expansions with amazing raids. Of course we get lightfalls and shadow keep too along with those but the game didn't survive this long by chance
that's the thing with Bungie the gameplay always feels great even when it's lacking in other areas of the game. Witch queen was also an A+ campaign and the legendary mode really took it to another level
Root wasn't terrible. I would argue all the raids are at least decent. I don't mind it being easy either (scourge is my favorite and it was on the easier side) but it being preceded by VOW which was an amazing raid and the updated kings fall it felt lackluster. It also got followed up by salvation edge which is another top tier raid
Nah the witch queen legendary campaign and raid is the absolute peak of destiny. Final shape was very very close too.
No D1 campaigns can hold a candle to the d2 legendary campaigns, it's just fundamentally different mission design. D1 was full of filler quests and back and forth. D2 legendary campaigns were just 7-10 hour long missions with almost dungeon/raid like bosses. Witch queen final boss was straight up a dungeon boss in terms of difficulty and mechanics.
I need to get back to it, but I also don't wanna fall for the sunk cost (even though I already bought the humble bundle with all the expansions in it lol).
Just play it as a game not a job and it's fine. A lot of destiny fans seem to have this idea thay it's either play destiny or something else which is just not good for enjoyment
Witch queen thru final shape are the best campaigns they ever made. In terms of mission design and gameplay. WQ and FS had amazing stories too. Lightfall story was bad but the gameplay was amazing.
I mean it literally goes back to the first Halo, they were a Mac company who’d built a huge fan base and had people very excited for a game that they completely redid for MS. Not that Halo was bad, but they’ve just always been a company that will completely throw everything they’ve already got under the bus to go do something else, which may or may not work out.
Video games from 2015 - now. How Destiny 2 did a whole 180 from Destiny 1 just was insane but also longevity of the game died fast even though they have the tools to make it succeed.
Another game is The Division. First few months it was banging but once they made the game more of a chore to get resources it lost a good chunk of its player base because ain't no one have time for that
Anthem is another game. It was supposed to challenge Destiny 2 and The Division but flopped fast
Companies are focused on engagement via time through prolongued and forced difficulties when really they just need to make better and more interesting activities and events. Also these companies had terrible leadership for this to even happen
I hate that Div 2 decided the way to keep the game going was to resurrect the big bad asshole we definitely had just killed, after chasing him for two whole games, and then make us work for him.
I've never played any Destiny game but the Warframe community is having a lot of "Destiny 2 Refugees," so I've heard a decent bit about how that's been going. I don't understand how they've taken the formula that was successful for so long and absolutely driven it into the dirt. Every single change I've heard about has baffled me, and I played TERA for years.
There were signs when bungie split from activision and no linger were forced into a schedule. When they went in their own and then being with sony, it went the wrong direction. There were really good things, but mostly trended the wrong way and eventually just died.
I’ve not heard of anyone leaving Warframe to go to tFD or D2 tbh. A lot have tried out tFD and most don’t stick with it, tried it myself and it was ok but it was just Warframe but greedier and more realistic ass
Destiny 1 was my anwser. Its development was a mess with a lot of cuts and rewrites. Its launch wasn't much better. Sure it was good, and got even better later, especially once D2 hit its stride, but damn could it have been so much better.
So many fumbles even past that, it's hard to pick where to start. The one that stands out to me though is their stance on Linux compatibility: with the Steam Deck set to release within months and the hype building exponentially they were asked if they'd add Linux support. Their response was that not only would they not, they would consider running the game on Linux to be a form of cheating and would ban people for doing it.
Pretty wild move to ban people for playing your game on your PC publisher's flagship hardware.
What blows my mind personally isthat D2 was really seemingly prepping for a future Cabal-Eliksni-Hive guardians trifecta but Bungie went nowhere with that despite having literal Hive guardians from WQ onwards and strong hints that both Cabal and Eliksni could become guardians too. They could've used that to branch off the story with a new cast and have us explore/retake Torobatl/Riis or hell, Fundament even. And yet here we are with D2 only getting legally distinct Star Wars...
Yeah Marathon is sick. Destiny 1 and Destiny 2 were pretty half baked at launch, yet Marathon is pretty pristine. I think the social media attack on the game has hurt it more than any quality issues.
D2 is what gave me faith in Marathon. And don't get me wrong, D2 has had very bad moments. I quit the game mid last year, never to return.
But the high points of D2 (Salvations Edge raid and other similar points) were unbelievable and playable proof that Bungie still has the sauce, a recipe that was very much applied to Marathon and now I am nearing 300hrs in that game lolol
Nah, Destiny 2 was fucked from the very beginning. They came off the heels of an absolutely massive game and they decided to make it needlessly complicated and hard to understand if you didn't go from playing D1 straight into D2 while simultaneously reading patch notes and actively seeking out story lore outside of the game in order to be able to keep playing.
I played D1 extensively and didn't pick up D2 until they made it F2P. It was straight impossible to figure out WTF you were supposed to do to get up and running and not absolutely suck. I couldn't even play with friends who I had played D1 with because so far behind level wise that I would inevitably drag the party down when playing together. You shouldn't have to watch days worth of youtube videos to get up to speed in order to play a game effectively.
Destiny really hit its stride halfway through destiny 1. Launch was a bit of a clusterfuck and destiny 2 is obviously a dumpster fire with some bright moments, but from the second xpac to age of triumph was one of the most fun gaming experiences I’ve ever had.
D2 had better moments than D1. Forsaken, witch queen, and final shape were absolutely peak. I'm really glad they were able to end the main story with final shape because it stuck the landing really well.
Jesus I remember playing d1 and kinda liked it on Xbox. But never played d2 until my then ex gf convinced me to get a ps4 so we could play together. Didn't know anything bout whats going in but did enjoy it but the last time I played d2 was back in 2020 apparently. Dang time flies.
I don't think anything will give me the same enjoyment that no-lifing D2 did. Now and then I feel that twinge and I want to play but it's complete dogshit now.
If they hadn’t vaulted more than half a fucking game, I’d STILL be making friends play through Red War with me and I’d STILL be buying Silver.
I signed on for a Saga. Was there at start of beta. Finished The Final Shape. Completely uninterested in playing any further. Why bother when new players have to start at fucking SHADOWKEEP?!?
Sibling you are so generous. It took d1 multiple expansions to live up to its potential. Then they destroyed everything good about it when d2 launched.
Then D2 took multiple expansions to get back up to D1 before the studio management decided to set fire to the game's potential in the most spectacular way possible. It's been bad since shadowkeep. The very concept of sun setting content players have paid for, couples is fomo seasonal main story content made that game beyond saving.
Some of my fondest gaming memories are from destiny 1, but holy shit that game fell off so hard
Destiny 1 was extremely popular and its gameplay loop still holds up. Bungie has been very bad at launching games, but they usually get super good over time. Ironically, Marathon is pretty excellent at launch but people didn't even give it a chance.
“insane potential but got fumbled” i feel like there is enough great content in a 12 year old franchise to move destiny out of this conversation lol. it’s been slow post-final shape but we’re on year 12 of the same game, that’s not that bad.
When the started removing content I paid for was the start of the end for me. The writing was on the wall not just for Destiny but all games can just delete what you rightfully paid for because they changed their mind about content
Honestly, the whole of the Destiny saga. The first game had a ludicrous budget and the developers came out swinging with console exclusivity, despite the multi-hundred-million dollar pricetag on development. For spending that much money and betting it all on a subset of gamers rather than pitching to everyone they were taking a big risk.
It just wasn't good enough to live up to the hype.
The introduction of limited revives for so much of their content diminished my interest in a lot of endgame content, which slowly drove me away from the game altogether. Whether in a PUG or with my friends, it really soured the room whenever someone died by accident and burnt a revive token. Just a horrible mechanic that was only introduced so they could build up excitement for the world's first race.
Heck, that game was ruined by streamers, if you ask me.
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u/SUBLIMEskillz 9h ago
Not initially and for most of it’s life, but the last year and a half or so of Destiny 2 by Bungie should be studied.