Prepare, Cody.

Prepare.

I agree with much of this - I would love to know the reasoning for some of their decisions.

In particular in regards to the Raid structure being so different to the rest of the game's mission structure. It's like a separate game!

I also agree that the Queen's Emissary "Event" is a total let-down. It's not an event; its just the same content in a different wrapper.

You play a shitload of this game for someone who consistently finds themselves losing interest in it.

... and at the time I just thought you were just way over-stepping your dislike of Reach's fairly limited investment system and making wild assessments.

But I was wrong. You absolutely nailed it. Destiny isn't a game about the player going out and having fun with friends (with the exception of the raid.) Destiny's sole purpose seems to be to get you and a group of friends hooked and competing, then rewarding you with just enough meaningless loot to keep you coming back. At level 26, I really want to finish off the raid, but it take so, so much repeating of old content to get there. After going to farm spirit blooms for a few times already, and completing a few bounties to up my vanguard rep I'm just not so sure I want to keep going. I certainly have no interest in starting a new character. I'm not having the fun I was having with literally no reward like in Halo 2 and 3.

Then there's the ever looming hope that Bungie will add "new content." With the Queen's wrath event, I've lost hope that we'll be getting anything "new" in the next few months. I was excited prior to the event with all of the hype about a new story and missions, etc. What did we get? Some bounties that are the same as the ones that we were already doing and some missions we've already done. No new cutscenes, no new landscapes, not even new enemies to fight. If this is what the "constantly updated" world of Destiny is going to be it simply isn't good enough. My only hope is that the DLC's bring something huge to this game.

The more I think about it, the more I realize that this is the reason Halo 2 and 3 are looked back on so fondly. The game wasn't engineered to keep you hooked and playing. It was engineered for stupid fun that didn't get old. It's hard to believe that the grueling unfun grind of Destiny and the nonsense 10 minutes of fun that you never wanted to quit of Halo 2-3 came from the same developer.

Looking around the internet at various other communities such as reddit Destiny, and here, I see the same thing arising:

People are losing interest in the game.

All of them are saying the same types of things I said day 1. There is nothing to do, and replaying stuff over and over is not content. The grind is no fun.

I'm not sure if this is an "I told you so" or not. With how you keep posting "#codywasright", I'm thinking it is. Recent issues with some people that agree with you and think similarly to you have reminded me how far you've come but I still think everyone that said you were rushing to judgment on release day and the day after were right, and "I told you so" rarely helps your case.

Most of the folks who disagreed are starting to come around now that they have reached the end game.

You know, I have some serious problems with Destiny, but they seem to almost all be different from your problems with it. This part, about the endgame, is the only thing that gives me pause. Well, that and the story; I have yet to see anyone say they love or it even really like it, but I haven't heard anything about it being badly written per se or uninteresting, and the Grimoire seems related to that issue, and to at least be of high quality overall.
I guess I'll see if you were right about most of this in a few days, or a few weeks. I don't see myself getting bored of the combat any time soon, though, and that's what will keep me coming back, more than numbers and stats. In fact, it'll probably pull me in in that way less than Reach, even. Something about commendations made them really get their hooks into me, and thus far nothing in Destiny does the same thing, which is good, because Destiny won't do those things for me you were right about investment systems doing that are less than desirable.

...they get me in a great state of mind to play a mean Crucible match. Kinda like when I play a few bad games then get in the zone. I was pulling off moves I didn't think were possible!

Looking around the internet at various other communities such as reddit Destiny, and here, I see the same thing arising:

People are losing interest in the game.

All of them are saying the same types of things I said day 1. There is nothing to do, and replaying stuff over and over is not content. The grind is no fun.

I honestly want to know what Bungie was thinking with this system. How did not one of the 400 people working on this game say to themselves while playing it, "You know, this is kind of lame…".

I want to know how Tyson could design the investment system he did without knowing it would lead to this. If that's the best you could come up with you need to find another man for the job, or better yet find a way to scrap the system completely.

I want to know how they could hype the Queen's event, which was literally just "play these same missions over again". I want to know why Bungie just removed the only incentive to play these missions.

I want to know why the raid was so cool, but the story missions were not.

I want to know why the story was a complete mess, and 100x more deserving of an .isnotcanon site than Reach.

It just utterly baffles me that this could happen in a studio that has nailed the fun factor up to this point, and without regards to the investment system in Destiny, mostly nailed it there.

Most of the folks who disagreed are starting to come around now that they have reached the end game.

None of the events except the Vault of Glass are any good. Combined arms and Salvage are playlists that should have just been active 24/7 from day 1. Queen's bounties are just recycled story missions. Iron Banner is just crucible with better rewards.

Why does Bungie think that people were mindlessly shooting in the loot cave not wanting to play the game? Because playing the game when you are 22+ kind of sucks. The fact that folks would rather spend their time at the loot cave than playing the game should be deeply embarrassing.

Keep in mind I predicted this FOUR YEARS AGO, even before the game was announced. Either I am a goddamn psychic, or I know something that Bungie apparently doesn't.

Destiny went out with a whimper. Contrast that with The Last of Us, which upon finishing, my first thought was "Holy shit, what an awesome game, I can't wait to try on Survivor!".

I'm not sure the comparison to The Last of Us is relevant, as the games are not really in a similar genre at all. But I do agree on a lot of points. One problem is that most MMOs or other similar titles either have a lot more content, or they have more randomized content of some kind to keep things fresh. I'm starting to wish that they had put more resources into making a dynamic single player/coop campaign, with maybe some public battles thrown in, as that's what they've been good at in the past, and then separated out things like patrols and strikes. Or, alternatively, they need to devise a system that is fundamentally more dynamic that people can keep playing, like an expanded Firefight mode. If they expanded patrols to keep things changing, instead of just respawning the same groups of enemies over and over, that would be a vast improvement.

After some thought, here's how I would want them to do things in the next title, keeping in mind limited time for development: A short, but tightly designed story mode for single and coop play that is completely separate from the public spaces, so it isn't held back by their requirements. After that, a number of sandbox maps similar to what we have now, that would be like Patrol crossed with Halo's Firefight, but with many more random events and missions, and much more dynamic monster spawns and movements. In other words, something that feels more like an actual battlefield, instead of a whack-a-mole machine. They could work strikes and raids into this system, but randomize bosses and locations more so it doesn't feel so repetitive (this would also mean less voice acting needed). The competitive multiplayer side of things seems fine, except that they should not be withholding certain modes from players. That just seems ridiculous.

Personally, I liked Reach, btw. The progression system didn't bother me because it was completely cosmetic.

Why does Bungie think that people were mindlessly shooting in the loot cave not wanting to play the game? Because playing the game when you are 22+ kind of sucks. The fact that folks would rather spend their time at the loot cave than playing the game should be deeply embarrassing.

Every game with the potential for grinding gets this. Usually the people who do it quit playing before too long, unless there is a ton of end game content and they're just trying to get to it fast. Closest example off the top of my head that's been like Destiny was Borderlands 2. A lot of people were farming bosses endlessly to get skins and perfect stats on rare weapons that all had ridiculously low drop rates. And I'd say it had less overall end game content until it's DLC with Raid bosses came out, and the level cap was raised along with harder game modes. But that took months and months. Gearbox also nerfed the gear that made farming fast-ish pretty quick too.

Really, I just don't understand why people are doing it in Destiny. It's one thing to grind chests for components here and there, but from what I've seen most cave farmers were doing it to grind EXP and really shit engram drops. I'm 28 and the only grinding I've done so far is chest runs for Spinmetal and the like, and a bit of grinding for this Queen event, like farming the stupid Walkers.

And I hated the investment system in H4.

I think it can be boiled down to two core ideas:

Replayability =/= New Content

Replayability and new content are two separate ideas that seem to be getting confused in this title. It appears that Bungie had an idea with Halo that we played it over and over again because the skulls, commendations, and armor pieces are what hooked us (after Halo 2). They took that model and designed an entire game around it. The loot was never supposed to be a reward you got for being proficient in the game, it is supposed to be a reward you earn for replaying your favorite aspects of the game. You get marks and rep by playing Destiny how you want to play (PvE or PvP, strikes, missions, patrols) and you buy the reward you want. However, replayability does not equal new content, and running the same strikes and missions ad nausea does not a great game make. A fun game, certainly. The RNG loot was supposed to be a way for you to keep getting (not earning) gear for playing what you want. Instead of modifying existing missions, I think they should have new missions, strikes, patrols, Raids, etc., with those modifiers as the core experience. Scrap the level of the content all together. Add new content that is more difficult. Change the boss mechanics of the new content. I thought this is what the Queen's Wrath event would be. Instead, we got more modified existing missions.

Destiny is not an MMO

A problem was born the first time someone referred to Destiny as an MMO. I can clearly see why we never heard Bungie say "Destiny is an MMO." Shared World Shooter is exactly what it is. When reviewed in the context of a shooter, it is truly magnificent. When reviewed in the context of an MMO, it is terrible. When reviewed in the context of an MMOFPS, it's just okay.

I have a picture in my head of the development team sitting in a conference room after the "Destiny is an MMOFPS" isea took off. The entire team is groaning, and screaming "It's not an MMO! We've never said it's an MMO!" The MMO moniker creates entirely new expectations that are outside the scope of the vision of Destiny.

Put plainly, and perhaps in an unsatisfying manner, the expecations a lot of people had about Destiny were not realized. It's not MMO enough, or it's too MMO for a FPS. I don't know what the middle ground is, or if there is one.

I don't know how you reconcile these two items. I don't know how you make Destiny better, without changing the vision for the game. Is it possible that Bungie's ideas on what brought us back to H3, Reach, and ODST were wrong?

I'm having fun with this game, despite these two things. I have noticed; however, it has been easier for me to not play in the last few days. Perhaps I played too much, too fast in the hope that I was "missing something" regarding content. I think I'm starting to see that I was not.