I’ve been creeping the forum for a while jumping from thread to thread and thinking about Destiny, Halo, Fortnite, Call of Duty and how the landscape of shooter games have changed over the past 20 years. It seems like they aren’t as fun as they used to be. Why is that?

The biggest universal change I could think of was the introduction of custom loadouts.

Halo, Halo 2, Halo 3. During the campaign missions, you were given weapons. You started each mission with a different weapon loadout. If you ran out of ammo, you had to scavenge for weapons from fallen enemies or strategically placed drops. When it came to multi-player, everyone started the game with the same weapons and scramble to find power weapons and other options on the map. Everyone started on an equal level and fought for the best stuff.

Then Call of Duty really started to gather steam and they introduced custom loadouts. At that time it was pretty basic, you could choose from a few options of weapons, but whatever you chose, that was the weapon you got.

Halo Reach did something similar. You could choose a few basic weapons to start with but there was still the mad dash to weapons on the map that kept things constantly fresh.

At the root of these games, the objective was to….wait for it….play the game.

After Halo Reach, the Halo games and CoD games started to gradually expand their loadout options.

Enter Destiny.

We are given so much customization. We can build our own armor sets. Build our own weapon sets. Everyone is unique. Everyone has their own custom loadout. You play the game to unlock more stuff. When you play campaign missions, you can build your character to suit the specific task. When you play multiplayer, you can build your character to highlight your play style and strengths. It’s amazing! Right? Welllll….I dunno.

Destiny 2 comes out and they ramp up the customization. After 2 months, people are burnt out and D2 is nosediving. Over time they make patches, add weapons, add events, add armor. Basically the game becomes a rotating lineup of experiences we’ve already done, just so we can continually improve our loadout. It then gets to a point where even doing this is a pain in the butt because of enhancement cores, light level barriers and other frustrations where I have to sit back and ask myself “what am I playing this for?”

Enter Fortnite.

Fortnite releases and blows up. I jumped in at the end of season 1 and it was a blast. It became my go-to time for next 6 or so months. When I think about what made it so fun, it was that the objective was to….wait for it…play the game. I didn’t have to worry about getting the best weapon, or building and armor set. They literally just drop you in and say “GO”. All of the weapons are on the board and you fought for the best ones. When the game ended, that was it…so let’s do it again!

I actually really liked the reward/progression system in Fortnite. 100 levels of cosmetics that you could unlock as you play. Weekly and daily challenges that were fun and required you to play in a way you wouldn’t normally play. Completing them would help you unlock the 100 levels.

I’ve not played Fortnite in a long time because it’s gotten really silly and stupid speed builders ruin any type of ambush/firefight interaction. But I missed playing a game for the sake of playing the game!

When I look at my tasks in D2, I cringe. Exotic quests that require beating raids. The Thorn quest that requires beating a ridiculously hard strike. Because of the timing, I’ll probably never beat it. At this point everyone who wants it has it, and those who don’t probably aren’t even interested. But even if I try to complete the quest, I would only be doing it to complete the quest. It’s for a hand cannon. I hate hand cannons and would never use it.

Now that Destiny has become the standard that everyone strives for (since every game that comes out is theorized to be a “Destiny Killer”) I shake my head at this trend. It’s almost like video games have become social media. “We’ve got to keep the gamers engaged at all times or else they’ll go somewhere else.” So developers are constantly releasing more “stuff” for us to add to our loadout to keep us playing…instead of making a game where the objective was to…wait for it…play the game.