Just some thoughts, good and bad, about current Destiny. (Destiny)

by cheapLEY , Thursday, March 14, 2019, 22:02 (2098 days ago)

Destiny has me hooked again, so here's a random collection of thoughts after playing since Season of the Drifter started. Let's get the bad out of they way first, so that I can focus on the good.

-The power grind feels completely broken, now more than ever. There's two new things to do, Gambit Prime and The Reckoning. You cannot reasonably play them without leveling up by playing a bunch of old stuff we've been playing for months now. What is there to gain by increasing the level cap every season? It adds nothing to the game, as far as I'm concerned. The only single time I can think of in the entirety of Destiny where increasing in Power was a compelling experience was during Forsaken, when we first got to the Dreaming City. Every step felt dangerous, like we weren't really supposed to be there, and we gradually powered up and could go farther and farther and more confidently. Nothing else in Destiny has ever made watching arbitrary numbers go up a good experience. I got an invite last night to do The Reckoning Tier II with Malagate and few others. I wanted to do it, but I was still in the 650s at the time, so I couldn't do it. It's really frustrating being locked out of playing activities with friends because Bungie doens't think I played the right shit.

-I'm still bummed at the lack of armor. What happened to vendor refreshes?

That's really it for negatives. Now the good!

-Gambit Prime is really fun. I really prefer it to normal Gambit (which is also much better now). I haven't played the new map yet, but I'm excited to tomorrow!

-The Reckoning seems like it has potential to be cool. I'm eager to power up and actually jump into the higher tiers.

-The new lore stuff is incredible. The combination of extensive lore books and reworked missions with new, unique dialogue is a really smart way to handle this sort of stuff, I think. It's short and simple, but I think the Allegiance quest was absolutely fantastic. It really exceeded my expectations. I hope we see more stuff like this going forward. The Aunor pages are great, and the Drifter tapes were really cool. The implications of what's going on are really interesting. I love getting into the more political side of the Destiny universe. I do hope there is a real consequence to that choice, at some point. The only real bummer is that neither Zavala nor Ikora acknowledge the quest at all. As much as I love their voice actors, I really wish they would do the Cayde thing and recast them with people that have more availability and can come in more often to make them more active characters. As as side note, if you haven't, turn in Vanguard tokens for new lore stuff from Zavala, too. I've only got a couple so far, but they're neat little situation reports about different things from around the system. Really great stuff.

-It just genuinely feels good to be back into Destiny. I've missed enough over the last few seasons that I've still got entirely too much to do. I'm doing the Malfeasance quest finally (and Breakneck!), still doing the Forges to try and get Jotunn and Le Monarque to drop, finally making an effort to hit Fabled in Comp (which has been amazingly fun the last few nights!), I want to have a go at soloing the Shattered Throne this weekend. So much to do!