"It's the best co-op game we've played so far by a longshot."

Said by an acquaintance of mine who just picked up Destiny for the PS3 and is going through it with one of his cousins. They have only played campaign and strikes. No raids. No strike playlists. No PvP. No grinding.

I found this fascinating. He and his friend like to shoot things together. They don't have a lot of time, but they pick a game and go through it for fun. His experience of Destiny is that there is just a ton of content and it's really fun to get new gear. It seems that coming to it this late in the game really changes his perception of everything.

With all the burned-out folks in these parts, it made me think. Maybe Destiny isn't designed for the hard-core gamers and fans we are. Maybe it was made for casuals and the end-game is just poorly designed for those who are obsessive and want to go deep.

I don't really have a point with all this. I just thought it was interesting to hear such a different view of the game.

Some of my favorite times with Destiny have been when a new expansion comes out and I jump in with a couple DBOers and play through the new missions and strikes together. Even Patrol takes on a whole new appeal with friends. The problem I keep running into is that the closer you get to the end game, the more the quest lines spider-web outwards, the more difficult it gets for friends to all stay on the same page in terms of their progression. There's a lot of time spent going back and forth to the various social spaces, talking to vendors, managing gear... That can be a bit of a drag when 1 fireteam member needs to spend 15 minutes in the tower doing some housekeeping while the other 2 players are just waiting around.

Then, as you alluded to, there's the end game. At a certain point, if I want to seriously participate in Destiny's end game content, I need to dedicate a substantial amount of time to being "productive", and that doesn't always jive with just doing "whatever" with my friends. And that's a real shame to me, because those end game activities are SO GOOD. I have a few buddies who play Destiny "casually" (ie very much the way you described your acquaintance) and they have just resigned themselves to the fact that they'll never get to play the raids there's too much work involved. But the raid itself isn't the thing that turns them off or intimidates them; it's the grind.

I've finally hit that sweet spot with Rise of Iron where I can once again treat Destiny like a casual social experience. None of my characters are Max level, there's plenty of gear that I don't have, but I'm high enough level and have enough gear upgraded so that I can jump into any activity with any character at any time and have fun. And it feels great. I spent a couple hours doing WotM challenge mode on Sunday night and it was a blast. Chatting and laughing the whole way through. No worrying about light levels or having the right gear with the right perks or getting the right loot drops. I'm now passed all that stuff. When Destiny gets out of its own way, there's nothing that beats it.

TL;DR - I think the "casual" approach is by far the best way to have fun with Destiny, and I wish it was easier to extend that approach to the end-game activities as well.

Remember that he's getting the new, somewhat more coherent story, as well as the revamped missions as he plays through. There have been LOTS of changes.

As for the actual game of destiny, it has three basic stages. The first is where your friend is: Campaign and strikes as you level up. This stage is fun, you feel like you're progressing at a good clip. Little repetition because the pacing is such that there's really no need to go back and do anything over again. The mechanics aren't exactly deep, but the focus is on the things that Destiny does BEST which is shooting and getting new guns. What's more, as you reach the xpac missions, the game and story begin to get better and better and better, making you feel like the whole game improves as you go along.

The second stage is the early endgame. Nightfalls (WOW these are suddenly hard! SO COOL!!!) and raids (actually, legitimately awesome). You could say PvP is part of this, but it falls more into the next category, especially because noobs to pvp are very, very likely to just get smasht these days. More of a mechanics focus than before, and the weapon meta begins to show itself to the players. "Oh, man, I really need a high impact sniper for this. How do I farm one?" Hahahahaha. Seriously though, the game really starts to steer you towards specific weapons and perks on those weapons once you reach the early endgame. Something that didn't exist in the leveling up game.

The last stage is where most of us live. Late endgame. This stage is 100% repetition and grind. Weekly raids, weekly nightfalls, gotta do that weekly pvp bounty, now the weekly zavala bounties, trials for four straight days with no sleep trying to get a perfect card and go the lighthouse (damn it, DDOSed again). All to try and get a gun that is maybe one perk better than the one you're using. It's good, but it's not a "God" roll. Gotta keep grinding. Or man, you need that full set of heroic armor from the raid. NEED IT. But the dang helmet just won't drop. Let's make a same-class alt and run it again. Okay a third one. UGH THIS GAME IS SO UNFAIR!!! SCREW YOU RNGESUS!!!

Destiny doesn't handle the grind of the late endgame well. There's not enough variation in strikes run to run to make them fun. The game has a terrible habit of making you play the same strike several times in a row, or 3 out of 5 runs, despite the large number available to you. The loot drops are unpredictable and the rolls required for top tier play are so specific that even if you do get a drop you want it's probably not a roll worth using. The sense of progression goes to crap at the endgame and you don't ever get to feel like you finished developing your character (there's always one more thing to get) nor do you feel like you had any real impact on the game world (your actions are meaningless as far as the behavior of the game goes). Most gear progression is RNG based rather than investment based, which further cheapens the experience. Don't even get me started on pvp. The fidelity just isn't there. Bungie can claim a 30 tick all they want, the fact of the matter is that Destiny's pvp is a frustrating mess of laggy connections and trades which should clearly not have been. All made more frustrating by how fun the shooting is. It's awesome to shoot things in this game, but it sucks when you shoot a guy right in the back of the head and he still gets to turn around and shotgun you before he dies, taking you with him. No bueno.

So yeah, it's a pretty good game. I think all of the reviewers were spot on with their original assessments of 7/10. It's no halo, and to me it actually feels like the game a studio would make before making Halo, rather than one that would come, what, ten years down the line? All that being said, your friends got to miss all of the pre-launch hype and false advertising that really embittered me to the experience of this game. Coming in with no preconceptions and seeing the incredible artwork, as well as realizing that there's still a big community of players for a game this old, that's really got to be impressive for someone new.

Anyway, point your pals towards Borderlands 2.

It's my sentiment exactly, from 1.0 to now.

From my experience, Destiny is whatever you want it to be. At best, I play it casually. If I'm lucky, I can get an hour in 3-4 days each week. It seems my biggest windows are wee early in the morning on weekends before the wife and kid wake up, but even then, I'm flying solo. Playtime breaks down about like this.

Patrol: Probably my most played. Pick up some bounties and relax with muh game. It's not intensive and I can play at my leisure, alone or with friends.

Daily Story: Quick, yields decent loot, has a purpose.

Daily Crucible: Quick, yields decent loot, fun.

Strikes: If I know I have 30 minutes to play, I'll squeeze one in.

Co-op: My core fireteam members have less time than me to play, so I help them complete quests.

General Crucible: If there's time, I'll get a few good games in.

Then there's a bunch of random stuff mixed in, and waaaay down on the list...

Nightfall: I've only attempted (and completed) one nightfall. Mostly because I never have a party to play with.

Raids: I've completed VoG and Crota with the help of sherpas and experience players. I'm yet to complete Taken King. Even with the help of a sherpa, and two experienced DBOers, it took almost 7 hours to pull myself and rag tag fireteam to Oryx, at which time we were all too tired and logged off. I've not even started the machine. I love the raids, they are probably my favorite part of the game...but damn...they are a chore.

I love the introduction of the progress books. Even when I've completed "everything" there are still tasks that I can slowly chip away at and see progress.

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