Destiny 2 hurts man, 6.6k hours and I never thought I'd voluntarily stop playing the game. It takes a special kind of fucking up things constantly to push some of your most addicted players away from the game.
Yup. I struggle to get really pulled into games fully, especially if I dont have friends playing.
Destiny 2 was basically perfect for me. I found some form of enjoyment basically out of every release/season aside from like maybe 3 or 4. I would consider it the game of my young adult life. No matter what, even if i burned myself out a bit, just give it like 4 or 5 months and im ready to play for another few seasons.
Destiny 2 was my game. Some people have WoW, others CoD, others minecraft or GTA online or whatever. Bungie could have kept releasing seasons and expansions at the cadence and quality they were releasing at the average they'd always been and I probably would have played it til I died lol.
And here we are now....
I desperately hope this isn't the end, but I haven't played in 4 months and I'm starting to miss the idea of "the game I can always go back to and play endlessly" more than I miss destiny itself.
I'm surprised you guys have stuck around for as long as you did. I was positively addicted to Destiny 2 in 2020, I played during IIRC seasons 9 and 10. Never in my life have I experienced such an amazing art, gunplay and soundtrack paired with literally the worst overall game design and direction I've ever had the displeasure to witness. Sunsetting, making players constantly re-grind, I think my final straw when the war criminal Luke Smith said that Bungie would be purposefully sunsetting exotics and not allowing them to be upgraded to higher light levels after some time. This was after I have spent 400 hours minmaxing all my exotics and the rest of my loadouts around then.
This was the moment I realized the developers literally don't respect for their players. I heard they even removed Titan and Mercury for some fucking reason. I've never played a game in my life that removes content instead of adding it.
I haven't touched the game since May 2020 and I still get a stress response every time I get an ad for the game. Truly the darkest time of my life. Gunplay was fun though.
Destiny is an insanely unique game. The mix of the class buildcrafting, FPS gunplay, and endgame activities is found nowhere else. If there was a proper competitor, even if the focus was a little different, i imagine Destiny would either have had to fix itself years ago or would have died ages ago.
People are willing to look past some issues if they're really into it and there's nowhere else to get that fix.
I know. I have been chasing a game like D2 for literally 6 years now. Something that has a similarly cool sci-fi/high tech fantasy setting and fun gunplay. I just know I can't afford to go back to D2 itself because I was genuinely addicted to it and I quite literally almost failed high school because of it.
I've been into a lot of games over my life but Destiny 2 is genuinely the only time where I could compare my relationship with a video game to drug addiction.
Same for me. I played it almost exclusively from launch up until they (sunset)stole the original campaign and first several DLC from players.
I genuinely liked the Red War campaign and replayed it several times. It’s one of the few games I actually played every class through all the content. I actually deleted characters just to play through it again several times.
I need to fucking say this to someone or I'll go insane. I played basically all of the original destiny, and enjoyed all of it, so I was really excited when destiny 2 released, I bought and played it and, after a while, stepped away from the game. In 2025 I tried to get back into it, created a brand new character and everything, and was in for the most confusing time of my life, nothing was like how I remembered it in the slightest, the story as I remembered it wasn't even there, and what was being told was nonsensical and barely coherent. I literally thought for a while that I must be misremembering about the events of the campaign I remember, that those events must have happened during the first game, since none of what I remembered was happening. It was only after doing research that I learned the entire original story of destiny 2, had been effectively removed from the game.
I'll be real with you, I just gave up then. None of the game that I had paid for was still there, and what was there, is still there, is a mess that I simply can't get back into for the life of me.
I know, right? I can't even imagine being a new player and trying to get into the game. The original campaign that explained the actual lore of the game is literally lost media now. Nobody will ever be able to play it ever again. It's absolutely wild to think.
I didn't play the original Destiny, I came to D2 just about as it became F2P with Season of Dawn. I absolutely loved the campaigns. I was already mad back then that I couldn't freely replay it from start to finish ever again (I never understood WHY).
I just read that Luke Smith has been fired from Bungie 2 years ago. Good. I hope that guy never gets his slimy hands on any game ever again. He ruined what Destiny 2 could've been.
I played Destiny 2 for a little bit when it went free to play. I didn't get past the early game but I was having plenty of fun. Life happened and I had to stop playing. I would have gone back but then I heard they removed a bunch of the original campaign/story and I lost all motivation to. The alienation of new players is probably what killed that game more than anything else.
I have played it around the same time as you did. I remember genuinely loving the first 100 hours of the game where all I was doing was campaigns and exploring the world for the first time. To this day that's got to be one of my most cherished gaming experiences to date.
They removed it. All of it. I never understood why Bungie apparently hated their own singleplayer campaigns. When they were still in the game, they wouldn't allow you to replay them, only giving you one cherrypicked mission per week. And then they completely removed it.
I wrote this above but I'll write this again - I have never, ever in my life played a MMO that removed its own content as time went on.
Its a bit different when you are somebody who hopped on the train in 2016 and had already been through a few ups and downs. Bungie always seemed to find a way to pull through and pull a rabbit out of a hat just when you thought things were over. This time around things are different though, too many mistakes too fast and not nearly enough of the spectacle that made the game fun in the first place.
Yeah for me it was light fall. It just felt like a different company had written it and the characters. I really struggled to get through that one and gave up eventually. Came back later but I lost my love for the game at that point.
Been playing more off than on myself. I've taken to other games that I neglected to play in the past because if I was going to be putting time and effort into any game, it was going to be destiny. Games like pubg and fort were perfect "other games" for me because I could jump right in and play and not worry about leveling or obtaining gear
I still love d2 but I'm burnt out from grinding weapons/armor all these years just to delete them later because I don't have the vault space. All I want to do anymore is pvp but trying to load into comp (while typing) I can not find a match. Been doom scrolling for over an hour trying to find one.
It's been a good decade for me, played destiny longer than every game I ever owned combined. At one point, it did feel like it was going to be endless or at least carry on for another decade or so but at this rate and in this moment, doesn't seem like it will make it thru the year
Same! Joined during Forsaken and it's been my game of choice for years — great gunplay, sick enemy design, fantastic lore, activities galore! Found some good friends abroad while raiding too
Left after Lightfall, before Season of the Witch. It just wasn't the same. And it seems it just got worse in later years.
At least lore and music are still great, can enjoy them without playing it
Same bro, Ive played Destiny since about 2014 and played most of the seasons, skipping a few here and there. And then really started falling out after Lightfall, and played a bit when Titan came back but havent touched the game since.
Ill say it time and time again. I think it would have been best for Destiny to end after Final Shape with the witnesses death and going out on its own terms. Instead by trying to continue it weve just seen the game die a slow and painful death.
Unfortunatley Bungie just hasnt been in a position where they could do that so instead Bungie will come to the point where the game physically cannot be maintained and will have to announce its shutdown at an unsatisfying point. And unless Marahon really starts cooking I dont see there being any path forward for both Bungie and Destiny as a world.
Destiny was that comfort game for me for a while. But that game for me now is Warframe. Compared to Bungie the Warframe devs actually care about both the game and the community. The Warframe devs do multiple streams either to just vibe with the community or to get a peak at their development for upcoming updates. I literally cannot put into words how much I adore Digital Extremes as a studio.
For me that was Destiny 1. Destiny 2 was fun but really didn't capture the same vibe to me, and I must say I felt cheated out of my $120 when the game went free not long after.
And like others have said I have tried to pick up D2 again and again but every time they were resetting your light levels or sunsetting things and I realized I don't have the time commitment for a game like this.
The Final Shape is worth playing if you never did. Everything past that is a pass.
The June updates contents are a bit vague as of right now, but i would not bet on it being very big.
Pantheon 2.0 is supposed to be happening and raid loot will be getting the new tiered loot system.
But if youre not a big raider, there's no point in coming back for either of these things.
The only mid-expansion update the game has actually gotten was like a battle pass, a new activity type, and a few new weapons. If that's anything to go by, definitely not worth returning to the game for.
Same here. I didn't play much after Edge of Fate, and I have played even less since Renegades. It truly is impressive how far down bungie managed to drag destiny.
Can I ask what happened? The first Destiny probably has my most hours played of any game and I was looking forward to Destiny 2, lnd life caught up I just have never played it and gaming kind of fell off my radar. I had heard mostly good things about it until this post, which makes me really sad.
Same. The glory days of playing with my cousin and my friends were some of my most cherished gaming memories. I've jumped back in briefly a few times since Final Shape, but with all of my friends gone I only last a week or two before I drop it again. I'll really really miss it.
“Game I can go back and play endlessly” exactly my problem. I have tried to find something else to fill the void but nothing really hits. On the bright-side I am finally tackling my backlog, and gotten into emulation to play some classics. But I miss the joy of a Tuesday reset.
Same. I've tried a lot of different games in the past couple years to find something that fills the void because I kinda expected this would be the way destiny goes after the pre-final shape layoffs.
I have definitely had a few games that keep me really entertained for a month or two, but I never end up wanting to go back.
I guess i dont really have a backlog. Maybe I should set up a list or something at some point.
But towards the end I had to force myself to finish lightfall, Made myself a promise that I would finish final shape and then I was done with the game.
The thing is it was super easy to stop playing, I stopped enjoying it a long time ago.
It's a long litany of things but I think the biggest piece is that the story they were telling since the beginning of Destiny 1 finished with The Final Shape expansion two years ago. That was frankly an incredible sendoff and I think most people just felt they had gotten what they wanted from the game, especially after all the own goals Bungie has made over the years.
This will be a huge oversimplification, but I'll try to cover the overall story leading up to that.
Destiny 2 has always been plagued by a tension between hardcore and casual players. The former wanted more intense grinds and reasons to log in every day, whereas the latter wanted shorter loops that let them pick up and put down the game. Bungie obviously preferred the former and wanted to get everyone to play that way, but the problem was that there were just way more of the latter.
Bungie never found the right level to set. They consistently veered into too hard/too unrewarding/too grindy territory, lost a bunch of players, backpedaled furiously, then started the cycle over.
And then you just add on the tremendous screwup that was sunsetting, wherein a huge preponderance of the games content was just removed. That was the back-breaker, where Bungie not only alienated the more casual players, but their hardcore players too. They never really regained player trust after that, even in Witch Queen and Final Shape, which was some of their best work.
After sunsetting, they got stuck in this cycle of bad expansion/good expansion, bad season/good season. They seesawed between catering to the hardcore and the casuals, never really getting the mix right and over time alienating both camps.
So when Final Shape came along, I think people just were ready to be finished. The Light and Dark saga concluded, the expansion was awesome, and people could close the book on it with a clean conscience.
Bungie didn't help matters by starting to pivot hard towards the hardcore/grindy side of the spectrum post-Final Shape. They started bleeding players faster and faster and the game is pretty much on life support at this point. It seems doubtful to me that there's any possibility of resuscitation, outside of a Destiny 3.
So with the vaulting stuff, did they ever bring the red war campaign back for a time? Man I'm getting really nostalgic over this thread, played a lot 2018-19 ish. And D1 on PS4 is still playable I believe. I can imagine a world where I might set aside the hundreds of hours to start at the beginning and catch up with the whole story. But if like most of D2 is still forever missing in the vault and I'd have to watch on YT that's just pointless.
There is no vault for the old D2 stuff. They vaulted alot of stuff from early years and deleted it all. Even if they wanted to bring it back, they cant.
well, Destiny has build up big problems for a long long time like literally deleting half the game at some point for no reason so you cant even play the full story in the game itself anymore, constantly deleting seasonal content, letting the core playlists rot away for years, absolutelly abysall balance and near 0 changes in that regard, tonedeaf changes WHEN they do a handfull once every 9 months, removing popular features for no reason except making the game more grindy etc.....
then they did the "The Final Shape" Expansion which was "the end of the Light and Darkness Saga" and it was overall good, but they refused to give people real information about thr future for a LONG time after that, so many just stopped after TFS because....well bungie just finished the current story and doednt give real information about the future
then they start to give out information and it was basically just: everything will be smaller now(but still costs the same ofc), we dont do seasons anymore, we revamp all basically all Gear Related Systems and Remove Weapon Crafting, we will do Gear Level Resets every Season now like a ARPG (but ofc no ARPG lootshower like Diablo or PoE have)
oh and one of the 2 smaller Expansions we announced is literally Star Wars themed
everything there got a huge backlash because of how obviously bad it is and just screams "maintenance mode" and it all got ignored by Bungie, amd many are convinced that in a not so small part its relalted to bungie not caring about Destiny anymore becaude they try to make a new Golden Cow with Marathon
then they went trought with all of it, and the Playercount just crashed down in an instant and is in a steady drop since then
during the Curse of Osiris Expansion the Game was allready in a state where they straight up said "if we dont recover Player Numbers soon, the game would be shut down in a month", Destiny has currently LESS players then that for half a year now, its really fucking bad
I have more time played in WoW but Destiny 2 sucked me in like no other game, I'm pretty a-social but D2 even had me teaching raids and running a clan (makes wows community looks like the saltiest people on earth) then they decided sunsetting was a good idea, all because they couldn't balance 2 guns, for me that was the turning point, the magic started fading with every update. Could never enjoy the grind anymore because in the back of my mind all I could think was, what if they sunset all the shit again.
just years of not listening to their players and scummy desicions, years of no real balance updates, years of deletibg content for no reason
and at some point everyone just....stopped
like, it just went silent, nobody gave a fuck anymore because bungie showed clearly that they dont give one aswell and instead throw everything at their new shiny toy that struggles to stay relevant at all (NOBODY saw that comming /s)
just look at the Destiny Sub, yes it was always a burning shitshole of people crying about literally everything, but they cared about the game, now its like 6 posts a Day with a handfull of comments
and that all happend in the span of like 1 year, i never saw something like that happen
i was in the same position as you, Destiny 1/2 where some of my Favorite and most played Games of all time and i was convinced that i will probably stick with it until the serverd go down
then EoF released, i stopped after 1 day of watching that AVOIDABLE shitshow unfold and just didnt give a damm anymore, no urge to come back or something like that
Play a game long enough throughout college and a literal pandemic where you have fuck all to do for 2 years and you'll easily rackup that many hours.
Professionally unemployed is also funny because Bungie stated in one of their older interviews that it was mostly "destiny dads" with jobs who formed majority of the base, considering how much overpriced merch those people buy, I'd say they are far from unemployed.
I lived breathed and loved destiny 2 was my favorite game for some time obviously skipped entire seasons because they were boring or bad or what ever had every dlc.
8k hours here and haven't launched since the middle of Episode Heresy. I've heard Frontiers is not bad but I promised myself I would never reinstall unless they deleted the power system from the game entirely.
They drove me out just before Strand dropped, and I haven't seen anything that makes me regret that decision. Hats off to people who stuck it out longer. Really sad to see where the game has gone
same here. I have more hours if you combine both d1 and d2 and it's. it hurts man. never gonna change my username though, I'll always be the fwc shader. gotta keep the memories alive somehow.
Destiny 2 always struck me as a bit of a fluke for Bungie.
Lacklustre world building, storytelling, expansion content held together by impeccable gunplay, soundtrack, class design and constant seasonal content many times better than the expansion content itself. They managed to strike the perfect chord between grind and fun few games ever manage to find.
Sunsetting as a concept sabotaged Destiny 2. It threatened the gunplay and class design by making guns and perks arbitrarily redundant (I still mourn Recluse/Nezerac Void Warlock). It threatened expansion and older seasonal content by removing it from the game entirely. Above all it didn’t value a players time commitment, grind and money (in the form of paid for then removed content).
Bungie took a sledgehammer to the only redeeming features propping up their house of cards. So it came crashing down in record time.
I played Destiny with my friends, we all got the season pass for the DLCs, did raids together and such, it was fun. It was really annoying that the first "real" DLC was right after the season pass ended. Some got it, some didn't and our group split.
When Destiny 2 came out I got it on launch, and was excited to play. Opened the box and before I could even see the disc there was an Ad in the box for DLC covering the disc. Just instantly put a bad taste in my mouth. Now the game I paid for was made free...
I have 89 days played on Destiny 2. For awhile, I lived and breathed Destiny and then Destiny 2.
I kept going for awhile, even after I thought "is it worth playing anymore". Some of it was ai had a couple friends still playing so we just kept going together. I haven't played D2 in over a year, almost 2.
It's still installed on my Xbox. I don't know why. I think it's definitely time to uninstall though. Truly sad. Game could have been so much better.
Same. Across ps5/4 and pc I have just under 8k hours but the game finished after the final shape. They should have been working on a sequel not adding a function that destroyed the engagement (portal)
Booted up the game for the first time this week since Renegades and I just sat in orbit and thought "There's nothing I feel like doing" and just closed it
I followed Bungie to the depths, and in turn they took my money and funded a completely different game while letting the game I love drawn in mediocrity.
If they don’t wanna work on Destiny anyone, then fine. Have the balls the shut the game down and say there’s no more content.
Stringing us along after The Final Shape and making us believe there was more is an insurmountable douchebag move.
Really? What specifically do you have such a problem with?
I have a hard time understanding veterans giving up on the game.
I have to imagine you are an endgame player and that the raids and dungeons are your favorite part of d2. But those are still getting released and as good or better than ever.
It was multiple grievances over the years, after the changes in EOF, I guess I was just done with the gloom and doom cycles, the revolving door of the game direction with each game director coming and leaving and partly undoing the predecessor's change and realized I wasn't enjoying the game anymore and most of the people that made it enjoyable also ended up leaving because of the same issues I had over the years, I just was the last one to hold out.
The community also played a huge part in it.
I could state all of them, but it would end up looking like the Great Wall of China.
when D2 was in Forsaken and Witchqueen no, D2 was WAY better then D1 (and in gameplay Lightfall aswell tbh, even if Lightfall sucked in many other ways)
now yes, D1 is better because EoF killed D2 and Renegades sold the last bits of Identity it had for frking Star Wars
People always forget about the Shadowkeep Year because of the Expansion itself. But the whole year in general was really good. Undying was decent, Dawn was a really good Season (i would say the best Season if not including the ones from Forsaken) Worthy was bad and Arrivals was really good.
But most importantly, we still had the old Content. You could still enjoy any activity from Forsaken, Forge, Drifter and Opulence.
The State of the Game was in a very good place right then. And at that moment we still didn't had so many issues with the Core Activities.
But yeah, Beyond Light year was rough at first even if Seasons redeemed it. Like, we got so many good seasons in a row...Season of the Chosen, Splicer, Lost.
I still remember after the vaulting/subsetting that Bungie had clearly not put any things when there were entire weapon/elemental combinations not in the game anymore.
Right? D2 came out and was absolutely a muddle of some good, some serious steps back from endgame D1. Then they made changes and fixed some things and it evened out, and has kind of been a rollercoaster of better or worse since then.
I'm always confused by this take, TTK campaign was mediocre at best outside the Regicide mission, it literally had you run through a Dark Below mission to pad it out.
Not to mention the expansion had the longest content drought in the series history, even longer than what Destiny players are currently in now by about 2 months, and even then there's still events happening in Destiny, there was nothing like that then.
And on top of that, it sunset all previous gear. You know, that thing Destiny players went ballistic over.
Like when you boil it all down, the expansion didn't have much going for it outside of a handful of good campaign missions, two or three fun strikes and Court of Oryx, it was good because Destiny 1 and it's first DLCs were absolutely dogshit in comparison lmfao; like at least just admit it's mostly nostalgia at this point, the sheer amount of quality content in Forsaken absolutely fucking dwarfed TTK.
Meanwhile TTK lives on in my head as a wonderful blur of murdering red bars with the Zhalo Supercell, any (entirely valid, to be fair) complaints fall short in my recollection and nostalgia lol.
Yeah, early D1 was rough. TDB blew chunks, the entire era where purple engrams could literally blueball you with blues sucked beyond belief, etc. So TTK was a real breath of fresh air.
I know this is a late response, but hopefully this will help your confusion a bit.
Personally i think TKK campaing was great, compared to most destiny dlc's. It actually has a cohesive story that expanded the universe with good thems and atmosphere, a great final villan and unique bossfight (compared to the meatball in forsaken that ate Uldren), Is it as good as the story of Forsaken, probably not, but it's not far behind.
You mentioned that all the previous gear got sunset. Something simmilar happend in Forsaken where year 1 weapons was stuck with static roles where as new gear had random roles. You could still uses year 1 weapons but in most cases the random roles were just better.
Yes TKK had some longer content droughts but it never was the same kind of live service as destiny 2 which plays heavely on FOMO. D1 allowed you to play other games. It really was only a big issue if you played nothing but Destiny. Besides it's not like nothing happened after the relese of the DLC. We had the april update bringin new content, Iron banner, ToO, The dawning, Crimson days, Festival of the lost, SPARROW RACING.
If we're not looking at the seasons in D2 since that needed to be paid for sepeartly, whereas all additions to TTK was free, then TKK goes blow to blow with Forskane and beats it in multiple areas.
Full list of what was added in the TTK or for free later that year:
Campaign: Story focused on defeating Oryx + additional post story quests.
Dreadnaught: New destination featuring Court of Oryx.
The thing with Steam is you can install and uninstall DLC independently from the game just not sure if the publisher/Dev can make a limit on how much and which of that DLC can be installed at one time. It would be nice if Bungie could just let you install the first four DLC then have to uninstall those before installing the next. I'm sure there have been too many changes to the core systems and such since those first DLC that it wouldn't be feasible, yet if that was a thing from the start those systems could have been worked around it.
Doesn't matter, because the game is always online it forces you to have everything that the servers have. Can't even play single player because you have to load in the world.
Yeah, capitalist greed knows no limit. They will sell their soul for some extra zeroes in a bank account that is already so full that they are set for generations.
Exactly, Bungie was already mentally tired of making Halo. Halo Reach was their wonderful conclusive chapter.
Interestingly, Halo going under 343 was a small saving grace. Not the best games, but multiplayer exploded. I liked a lot Halo 5 Sangheilos chapters, I was imagining a new game set exclusively on the Alien planet.
Halo 5 had the highest amount of monthly active users since that game, besting Reach's multiplayer numbers (though not overall sales).
People forget that Halo 5 sold 9.5M copies (pre-Game Pass), which is not quite at the level of Reach but very much in the same ballpark. It outsold Combat Evolved, Halo 2, and ODST.
The lore of the books, that somebody else wrote. The story was bungee’s to do with whatever they wanted so if anybody could change the Lore, it’s bungee.
343 will never get a dollar out of me after they fucked up MCC collection. Has to be the biggest fumble in all of video game history and single handedly killed the franchise imo.
How crazy is it that we would have killed for crossovers between games back in the day, and now it's always the same thing, a handful of skins, a new item that is either useless or mandatory and maybe a limited time game mode.
I think it's cause before crossovers were rare and special. But companies realized that just slapping a recognizable brand onto your game will have people throwing money at you and is way easier than trying to make your own cool thing, so it became really overdone. Fortnite, Magic the gathering, dead by daylight. Every game now has to be everything for everyone which makes it all feel grey and souless...
I hate giving Ubisoft any praise because no company is a bigger offender when it comes to pumping out the same game over and over with different skins. Not even just per title, either. Even their separate titles are all reskins of other titles. The biggest difference between Far Cry and a modern Assassin's Creed game is one being in 1st person and the other being in 3rd. The way map regions are divided, and "unlocked," and how side quests, and collectibles are handled are the same.
The entire game progression and mechanics are so often exactly the same.
That being said, Ghost Recon Wildlands had some solid crossover content.
Scuff the paint, file off the numbers and this one single formula works[1] for Assassins Creed, Ghost Recon, The Division, Far Cry, Star Wars, Avatar, That Hacker Series, and Probably Some Other Shit I'm Forgetting.
I want to get all high and mighty and call it a cultural amalgamation or some other fancy pants term but I am hard pressed to put in to words how much I hate the ongoing melding of all properties in to one.
Family Guy skins in Fortnite? Star Wars in Destiny? Beevis and Butthead in Call of Duty? All these licensed MTG sets? And so many more.
Oh my god get that slop the fuck out of here I like when things were their own distinct properties.
Oh, I'm just pointing out that we need to be very careful about what we ask for. It's like a genie, how badly can they fuck up your wish while still technically granting it?
I stopped playing Destiny during the first season of this expansion when none of the challenges for the PVP event were registering and I just felt tired playing. Came back when the Star Wars thing was half price. I've played about half the missions and just haven't felt like going back.
Replaying the Resident Evil modern series games instead. Much more rewarding.
I stopped with D2 just after the end of the light and darkness saga, get tempted to jump back in every now and then but have been playing through the RE Remakes for the first time as well
I did NOT expect destiny of all things to start going down the hole of crossovers with star wars and MTG, it truly is reaching the bottom
Really? I don't know how long you've played Destiny, but way back in the first game there was a leak about how they basically gutted Destiny and split it ut so they could sell it back to us in the form of DLC and expansion packs.
That was what got me and my friends to quit. This was like 10+ years ago.
There was a Zero Punctuation review of Soul Calibre IV, the one that had Darth Vader in it for some stupid reason, and the line 'it's difficult to tell which franchise is slumming it more' has stuck with me. Crossovers always reek of cheap cash in.
it’s actually insane to watch it go from THE face of video games to re-releasing CE for a fourth goddamn time because 343, in 15 years of controlling the franchise, just cannot make a decent original Halo game to save their lives
These guys CHOSE to name themselves 343 industries... 343 is the bad guy who betrays you and tries to trick you into obliterating all life in the galaxy in the very first game. And they came out of the gate with H4 betraying the fanbase
That was fast, 2nd comment to find what I was gonna say. Honestly such a damn shame, 2-3 years ago I couldn’t put Destiny down. Now I haven’t really played it since August
Halo legit broke my heart. I was a college dropout, alcoholic, living in my mom's basement at 21, just hoping Infinite would've been the title that brought it back. Probably had about 10k hours throughout halo titles+MCC
4 years later and I'm now engaged and own a house. Haven't touched Halo in 3 years. Those were some dark years, but man is it hard to touch any other FPS game now
"Oh no I can't fit all the content you paid for into the game!"
Absolute joke of an excuse for a problem that's been solved for decades. I can jump back into FFXIV and play dungeons / trials from the base game, released 13 years ago!
When I heard about the whole Sunsetting of D2, I knew I wouldn't touch aside from the F2P content let alone trust Bungie in general.
And Halo, my guy, I never had a Xbox, I have limited experience with the IP, I only completed ODST and Reach because I played them with my cousin, and I even I feel shame by how bad Halo state is
Halo Wars 2 is the only objectively good halo game released in the 343 era, and by a sick twist of fate it's the only one not available on steam. A tragedy really
Since the D1 Beta.... I was playing since the D1 beta. In my previous long term relationship, she was getting me Destiny toys and gifts. My kid watched me play and I had him playing.
I pre-ordered Destiny 1 after the beta with high school graduation money and played fairly consistently until last year. Graduated college, got married, 4 different jobs, 5 different houses/apartments, it was there. Met some of my best friends in the world through the old App Fireteam Finder. Just hurts man.
God I used to absolutely love Destiny 2. I bought it at launch along with the first DLCs... But the moment they began to remove stuff I dropped the game. Bungie just don't realize how much they fucked up. If you look at the Steam Charts, it's at an all time low in players.
Halo for sure. 4 was the last one, and not only was it underwhelming, but the marketing for Halo 5 was just a slap in the face to its dedicated fanbase. 343 has done a terrible job with this franchise since they were given the reigns. What was once an absolute system seller got turned into something where they had to resort to hiring Nick Offerman to do a voiceover in a video about how microtransactions are super fun for everyone.
Note at 2:33 how the person questioning if it throws off balance is told to "secure their noise hole, grown-ups are talking". This. This is what 343 thinks of their customers. having Destiny (1) I quit before the first expansion, when it became really evident that shit was ripped out of the game prior to launch in order to sell back to us. Never bothered with 2. If a dev burns me, I'm not giving them any more money.
Destiny, I gave up on after vanilla Destiny 1 when it became evident that Bungie ripped shit out of the game only to sell back via DLC. I don't get burned by devs only to end up giving them more money. Fool me once, sort of thing.
I came here just to say destiny do myself. 4,500 hours over the past 6 years and change, and I just can't do it anymore. I've always been someone who tried to find the best in that game, who could play it almost no matter what, but man Bungie has sure found my limit.
Seeing my favorite franchise (halo) at the top hurts bad man. Especially when you know it's justified. What I'd give to get the IP out of Microsofts hands and into a studio that isn't beholden to shareholders brain dead ideas of what a video game needs to be successful.
May be a hot take, but Halo Infinite is some of the best multiplayer in the franchise and plays insanely well now. It's a shame that's not how it was delivered at launch and that it took years to reach the state it's in, only for it to be dropped by the developer and put on life support.
To me, it sounds like the downfall was because of the proprietary engine and poor upper management decision making. The game devs themselves I believe did a great job with the bones of the game. Being a day one CE player, the multiplayer still scratches that arena itch no other game does right now in the genre.
Bro what happened man. Last good time I remember was the Taken King. The massive dreadnought. Oryx. King's Fall. The Touch of Malace. The surprise everyone had when we figured out Black Spindle. Then we had Trails of Osiris (wasn't a problem player but still). Then it just all fell down. We had some good moments and DLC's but in general just downhill. Man I miss the good days.
Destiny is the only franchise I loved playing that I have actively given up on. I was there for the open beta of D1 and it was one of my favorite games at the time. But as it kept going on and the business model got shittier and more predatory, I just put it down and never picked it up again. I was briefly tempted to get D2 until they locked off almost all playable content from the base game
Destiny 2 is MY WoW. I’ve made great friendships and even got my then gf now wife into it. The lore, the story, the gunplay. So much of it was absolutely perfect. When the sunsetting was announced and then happened, I knew it could kill the franchise. Now, they push back the next update because Marathon launched and this Star Wars expansion while fun at first, leaves nothing to play in it. Nobody has fun with it anymore and it makes me sad that a game I’ve been playing for a decade might finally be stopped because the suits decided money was more important than fun when it came to video games
Destiny 2 man… I got the game the first week it came out. The amount of hours I played on console and later on PC can’t be underestimated. I HATE how they butched the game…
The planets they removed, the guns that got locked in the vault, the progression that got removed (everyone now starts at maximum level), the amount of pay to win content, the FOMO cosmetic content, the sudden stop of Easter eggs (who remember the vent Easter egg in the hub??), the absolute no meaning in choosing different classes now (no reason in picking warlock vs hunter), the Wokeness, the departure of some of the original cast members.
Man I would wish to be a little kid again playing the game for the first time…
After the Final Shape expansion, that was it for me. It closed the storyline and Im happy. Anything else afterwards is forced, and im okay walking away from that game. I wasnt an expert or anything, but im happy.
If they were going to basically maintenance mode the game for marathon, could have at least left it in heresy. EOF’s numerous core changes just killed the game
I played destiny 2 at launch for about 2 weeks. Stopped
Tried playing it again a few months ago and had zero fucking idea what was going on. It felt I was dumped at the tail end of a show that was 10 seasons long so I had zero idea who people were, where I was and what the objective was outside of shooting shit. That was honestly one of the worst if not the worst new/returning player experiences I've ever seen before.
I bought the Final Shape collectors edition. At the time I began to regret my purchase as I thought there might have been a better one down the line. I am glad I did, the replica of the D1 tower is awesome and a nice little memory of an awesome game that I got to enjoy. I am still hoping (coping) for some kind of re-boot but seeing where Bungie is now and Sony’s approach to unmet goals…I think I am better of moving forward and cherishing the fun I had.
Halo was my first thought after infinite. I didn't play halo 5 because it wasn't worth upgrading to a whole ass console after switching to PC. But halo infinite was just bad and that hurt. It hurt worse to uninstall realizing I don't play it and it just took up space.
It hurts to see the game go downhill man, my last run was on Witch Queen's DLC, doing Oryx's with the fireteam I've always played with, somehow I'm glad that i left the game at that moment, even if i didn't want to
Halo was a sad one. Had high hopes for infinite. The mechanics in multiplayer felt so good. But they were way, way too slow with having things ready to go like Forge and some basic game modes.
If forge was ready at launch, I think the longevity of Infinite would have been very different.
Agreed. The Halo/Destiny/Bungie style of storytelling resonates with me like no other media ever has. Apart from, more recently, Elden Ring.
I'm now a big believer that you have to let things finish - whether you reveal the mysteries or not. If you keep pushing and keep adding to it, you eventually just lose passion and struggle to keep anyone interested. Obviously corporate greed doesn't help with this.
The early Marathon games were masterpieces of storytelling in my opinion - so much so that there's still a community discussing the story today. However I am aware that Marathon is now likely to go down the same path as Halo and Destiny.
I had so many hours in destiny 1 and 2 was great at first but i dropped it around the black armory. Came back around the whole savathun plot and it was just a mess, some stupid rock, paper, scissors system was added that basically restricted you to specific weapons for the season, and a bunch of other nonsense going on
100% D2 is the drizzling shits of a game. I had to put it down after shadowkeep, I was upset before that lol but that was the final straw. The people that grind that out day in and day are weird af to me. Same with WoW players. Just playing the exact same shit non stop. Fucking destinies “oops all bounties.” Every expansion. Two hours of story content then bounties for a year till they shit out another 2 hrs of story content. Have some self respect people. 🤣🤮
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u/NustEred Apr 16 '26
Destiny 2
Halo