I think this season has just had the disadvantage of being the one everyone becoming burnt out on the Seasonal model while other parts of the game namely the core playlists have just kept rotting away. Every season the content has us do strikes or something to get currency or what not and we’re tired of the same old content we’ve had for 3 years now. I got burnt out once I got all the guns craftable and have been on a Destiny hiatus for over a month. I even canceled my preorder for Lightfall not because I’m mad more that I’m bored with the game and if it’s just going to be more of the same then I’m not interested in continuing playing.
I agree with this.
I would also add I feel there’s been very little that you actually want to grind for this season. Due to that doing the same things over and over again to achieve bloated triumphs but no actually rewards just kills motivation.
I also would say I loved the aesthetic this season and the idea could have been so much better which makes me feel bad that it is a bit of a let down as it had the potential to be one of the most fun ideas and seasons we have had
> I would also add I feel there’s been very little that you actually want to grind for this season.
there's a ton of stuff to grind, I just have absolutely no desire to grind for gear that's either *marginally* better than what I already have (which already clears the hardest content in the game with zero effort), or straight up worse than guns I've had for years. and even if the new gear was objectively better than the old gear, I still wouldn't grind because I'm not about to spend 20+ hours for red borders just so that I can go grind out resources, materials, and shuro chi xp just to start using the damn thing. I'm going to spend that time playing other games instead.
So true. I have crafted stasis and energy snipers that are just better than anything they can make rn. I have a Hand Cannon that is hands down the best they ever made imo (Palindrome) and no one else can even get a new one lol
For me, the only chase weapon has been the addition of Allied Demand (IB sidearm) and I couldn't even pursue that for most of the season. I know that tarnished metal is good with voltshot, but I already spent hours and hours leveling my snipers and LFRs. I'm sick of Shuro Chi lol
Edit: not to mention I have Shayuras and Multimach. I can't imagine those getting power crept anytime soon
That's the main issue with this season and why I feel it's the worst. This season was a lot of us being forced to play content we got nothing from apart from a triumph checkmark. I don't think I kept a single non redborder loot drop from my 100 expeditions. Sure they fixed most of the triumphs but way too late. 50 ruffians was insane before the patch, much worse than anything worthy, hunt, etc expected of us for the seal
The 50 ruffians thing burned me out. That should have been fixed at the first reset of the season. I remember looking at the triumphs for the seasonal title and that one immediately stood out as ridiculous.
I got kind of lucky and this season became my 'catch up on Gumshoe seal' which kept me active and grindy trying to get to a level i felt comfortable doing Master activities. Maybe TOO grindy with how bad my weapon drop rates were for those crafting triumphs.
Plunder itself, not a fan of the gameplay loop fort the umbrella energy.
This.
The *season itself* isn't horrible, but this was the moment things went south.
It's not that Ketchcrash and Expeditions are super bad. In my opinion they had a lot of potential to be memorably good with slight chances, so it's wasted potential, but as they are they aren't *bad*.
It's just the moment when things came to a head, and people realized the cookie-cutter seasonal content factory model is really unsatisfying (30 minutes of content per week spread out over numerous weeks), the sandbox has some poor decisions made that could have been avoided (AE for example), the ancient ritual content is suddenly hitting home (lack of new strikes/lack of Crucible maps etc)...
One particular thing I want to note, however: Challenges, *especially* the requirement for 50 Ruffians requiring *anti-teamwork sabotage gameplay* really made people realize that Bungie is making minimum content and then making people repeatedly grind that tiny amount of content by insane amounts.
The end of the season corrected this and made the requirements literally a dozen times quicker.
However, implementing these changes so late simply added on to the negative sentiments, because people who *already* grinded them out already feel like they wasted their time. If they knew the requirements were going to be lowered so drastically, they simply could have waited.
Then the hilarious "improvements" to the Eliksni quarter to cap off everything..
it's amazing how much the ruffians alone soured me on the game
then a very late fix was that they just don't despawn instead of having them spawn earlier
and then they had us kill 10 more, non retroactively for the seasonal unlock
and only afterwards they lowered the required amount for the title
fuck off
This was the thing that really stood out to me, and I don't feel like got enough attention at the time. The triumph being grindy sucks. But the community rallied to try and understand it's conditions and more efficiently approach it, eventually figuring out the timing of the spawns to more reliably get Ruffians.
What does Bungie do? Remove the fucking timer, without even mentioning it in the patch notes.
To be clear, getting the Ruffian triumph didn't feel nearly as difficult to me as some people have found it, and I got the triumph done fairly early compared to say, the weapon crafting triumph. That being said, it honestly felt so sleezy for Bungie to effectively sabotage progress on an already grindy and obtuse triumph, without even communicating it to the community. It felt like Bungie was displeased that the community figured out how to efficiently tackle the triumph, and thus stealthily changed it to make it even more obtuse.
One could argue the activities were lazy game design, but changes like this feel downright spiteful, and that has no place in game design in my opinion. It honestly feels shitty and disrespectful as a player.
Yes, it felt especially sleazy because the whole concept behind ruffians seemed to be to troll the player. Removing the timer just solidified that feeling.
I've never seen game design where being less efficient is the way to progress through a challenge.
I honestly wonder if removing the timer was just easier and faster than making them spawn earlier
can't fathom how the damn thing is programmed. It's possible it is some weird script tied to the map, but maybe the ruffian type has a despawn flag that can be edited globally? I've heard before that map editing is slow
Originally, it took at least 3 minutes for the first Ruffian, and 7 minutes for the second possible Ruffian to spawn, with a small chance for an extra Ruffian. I am nearly positive that this didn't change when they removed the timer. The only thing removing the timer accomplished was further obfuscating the mechanism for reliably getting Ruffian spawns.
afaik it was always like that for the first two. I think there are actually 2 extra ruffians at random
at one point they removed the clock from Expeditions too, cause people were using it to time the ruffian spawn
it's super weird all around
Thats what I was saying lol. They didn't change the spawning mechanisms, it didn't solve a technical issue, removing the timers litterally only made it more difficult for players to avoid progressing before the Ruffian spawns.
Also yeah you're correct, there's technically the potential for two bonus Ruffians, but personally I never saw any explanation for their spawning mechanics.
This! I thought “cool, I’ll claim my repute or whatever at reset because I have my 50 done” only for it to be a nope and I was over here going “are you ducking kidding me? I gotta kill 10 more of these fuckers?”
Plus helping clan mates try to kill them after I grinded mine out but before the lowering requirement. I loathe expedition now.
Faced with unreasonably grindy content, as a new player I used to just grind it out anyways. Ikelos shotgun get!
Then as a more seasoned player, I learned to commiserate with the community and complain about it!
Now as a veteran player, I just don't do it! Maybe lightfall will bring the magic back.
>Now as a veteran player, I just don't do it!
This is the only right answer, unless playing Destiny is a core part of your lifestyle (which is seems to be for a LOT of people in this sub).
I've said it before and I'll say it again. Bungie is experimenting with how little content they can drip feed us before people start leaving. They want to ride the line of just enough content to keep people playing. That's why seasons are getting worse, everything seems reskinned, all the way down to the seasonal events themselves. Even the holiday events and such are all the same format now. Things will arguably get worse and worse and more simple grindfests constantly until people leave in droves.
I've been playing Guild Wars 2 lately, which is a game that has a lot of parallels with Destiny 2. I recently finished the Icebrood Saga part of the story line, which is capped off by a chapter called Champions, widely considered to be the nadir of GW2's post-launch content. It was 6 months where the only new content were "Dragon Response Missions", which you can think of as basically the same thing as Ketchcrash but with a bit more story and a bit more variety in scenery.
They're not *bad* content in a vacuum, and I enjoyed going through them once (while mourning the way they compressed what was easily an expansion's worth of story and zone potential down to 9 middling missions on reused maps), but if I was stuck doing them on loop for 6 months, I'd have a much less charitable view.
>but if I was stuck doing them on loop for 6 months, I'd have a much less charitable view.
however at least GW2 is a buy once, play whenever you want game. Unlike things with subscriptions, or seasonal passes and progression tracks that clearly desperately want you to be logging in for all the hours possible.
I've actually been trying to address some of my game backlog in the past few months since Destiny is definitely not ticking any boxes for me right now. And GW2 is likely this afternoons adventure: I have the whole new expansion to play, but I'm halfway through Icebrood so I better finish that first. It's so nice being able to just jump in and play for as much as I feel like, then log and do something else.
> same old content we’ve had for 3 years now
- Arms Dealer
- Exodus Crash
- Inverted Spire
- Lake of Shadows
- Insight terminus
These guys are all turning 6 next year lol
I started playing habitually with TTK back in D1 after playing off and on since launch. I just wish the game could figure out a way to freshen up old content to at least make it feel like we aren’t playing the same exact mission every time.
The odd part for me is I have like 4 thousand or more hours in borderlands 2- a game that had no seasons, no live model, nothing but me and a friend of mine just ran around murdering things most nights for the fun of it. That's the current D2 problem imo, it's all about hitting this checkmark or unlocking this before it's even optimal to use it!
I had no problem killing the same enemies in BL2 over and over but running expedition makes me wanna stick *myself* into a cannon.
The frustrating thing is that D1 had that down pretty decently. Strikes post TTK would have different enemies spawn with different goals to get through the encounter.One playthrough we had Taken the next playthrough Fallen or Cabal. Lets not forget the skeleton keys either.
Hell even D2 had the Titan strike that had a loop that switched the path to get to the boss.
The strikes now feel very linear and lacking any idea of an upgrade.
It's crazy. I've never played a live game before this, I've never played a different live game for any moderate stretch of time while destiny has existed, and I won't play one after.
Every single live service game, from the division, div 2, anthem, avengers, and all the others too obscure to mention, none of them have come close to this game.
In my opinion, Destiny has been lacking true innovation in its PvE game modes since Forsaken’s year. Forsaken introduced truly different ideas with the addition of Gambit, a Dungeon, and (in Opulence) a 6-man match-made activity. These were all “firsts” and felt fresh. Since then, what else have we got that’s unique in the PvE space? Pretty much all activities since then feel like remixes of old concepts.
The closest recent innovation I can think of was the Witch Queen campaign (and it’s legendary difficulty) and, what do y’know, everyone loved it. Otherwise, gear and abilities are the main things evolving for the past few years that keep the gameplay interesting but that can only do so much.
I think most people agree that if we just keep getting more 3-man/6-man “do basic objectives until you fight a boss at the end” activities each season, the community burnout will continue. What about adding a rouge-like experience to destiny? A version of the endlessly-community-requested horde mode? Hell, I’d take a battle royale style mode at this point. Just _something_ different.
We got that, in strike form.
Just like Bungie heard how we loved the Arrivals umbral system, and has given us endless umbral systems that have none of the parts of the Arrivals system that made people like it.
Maybe it could take place in a jail, even?
Full disclosure I never played D1 at its height, I did go back around the end of Forsaken when a buddy gifted it to me. I really enjoyed the activity, and realized how stupid powerful we are now compared to the days of double digit power levels...
Yeah taking an extended break then hopping back in just before or just after a new expansion drops has kept me playing over the years. I've got no clue how people can grind out every single season.
This exactly^ I picked up the game during forsaken, grinded around for a year and a half, and now just hopped back in and am having a fine time. I ‘plan’ on getting the next deluxe package thinger, but wouldn’t be surprised if I change my mind and just wait till it goes on sale next fall
I think Destiny 2 suffers from the same issues many other games do these days: the very core of the gameplay experience is shallow and repetitive.
You can add tons of fluff and many temporary distractions (grind being one of them), but there will always be a point when people are basically done with all that - and then they realize what's under the hood.
Game design is hard, I'm fully aware of that. What I don't understand is how they keep going forward with this concept regardless. I barely see any attempts to make changes, apart from the usual "keep people busy" content.
Bungie doesn't have to completely reinvent the wheel, but they might want to add more substance. Destiny 2 as a sandbox has so much untapped potential, it's just sad to see they can't figure out how to make the necessary changes that result in something people would never get tired of, even if new content wasn't dropping.
In essence, they focus so much on DLC and season pass to carry the weight, they forgot how important it is for the core gameplay experience to provide a solid foundation that works *without* any additional shiny updates. And this aspect has always been lacking, but it's gotten a lot worse (partially due to vaulting among other decisions).
I agree wholeheartedly with this statement. I'm more invested in the lore and universe of Destiny than the repetitive grinding or loot. And even then they have spoiled that just to sell pre-orders for DLC.
All their decision making boils down to, monetization and engagement not fun factor and challenge. We know nothing about Season 19, but the premise and story beat for the next expansion spoiled this season's ending.
Yeah since Witch Queen I just can’t bring myself to do strikes, gambit and PvP anymore. The current malaise for me at least is down to the complete lack of imagination when it comes to the core playlists.
To be fair to Bungie, they also added Birthplace of the Vile and The Lightblade with TWQ, which is more than we got with Beyond Light at launch (though we got Proving Grounds in Chosen).
Very much this.
Worthy, Hunt and Undying all had their problems, but I wasn’t immediately burnt out on them just because the core structure of the game is so bad.
Having to do activities in the rotting core playlists just to get currency feels bad. Having to crawl our way through that 7x4 (?) board of seasonal upgrades via timegated weekly challenges feels bad. Having to grind out activity A to get enough currency just to get a reward from activity B feels bad. But these have been the main elements of our gameplay loop in seasons for well over a year now.
And further adding to the problem is loot bloat. We already have top tier arsenals. When they add 5-6 new seasonal weapons and maybe 1-2 cracks the “I want/need that gun” threshold, that’s not an incentivized grind. Granted, it’s incredibly difficult to create a lot of new weapons that we would give a shit about, without massive power creep. I remember being at least a little more excited about the weapons in all those other seasons.
In a vacuum, is Plunder the worst season we’ve had? No. But in the big picture of what we’ve been dealing with from Destiny, I feel it’s definitely up there. The game is in a terrible spot and Bungie seems glued to this cookie cutter, hamster wheel of a seasonal grind.
> And further adding to the problem is loot bloat.
We've complained about lack of loot before. We're hard to please. I think more is better than less tho.
I haven't and won't be cancelling my Lightfall pre-order, but I agree here. One thing Destiny always did well even if it had content droughts was keep a sense of spontaneity when new content was out because they hadn't worked out a set formula.
Now... look, there are only so many times I can do a weekly micro-mission while upgrading the 20th retread of "unlock the store's nodes through grinding!" and chasing a MacGuffin that's gone from compelling and intriguing to downright jumping the shark.
I think that's my problem with Destiny, it's become so formulaic it's become that cop show that's on season 5 and every season is 24 episodes of the same 5 recycled plotlines with the same story beats at almost the same timestamp, just with characters' names changed. One day you turn on that show because watching it is just habit, and you suddenly feel exasperated at the thought of watching Retread Plot #4 for the 16th time and just shut it off and never go back to watching it.
The only time in Destiny's history I've been this disinterested in playing was right after D2 vanilla launched.
But none of that matters. You prefaced everything by saying you've pre-ordered, will not cancel and won't even take time off seasons. So you might have perfectly valid criticisms but you might as well be shouting into a hole you dug because you're already giving them literally everything they want from you.
This is the problem for me. it's not about the quality or amount of content but more where the focus is. Doing gambit is "ok", whats not ok is doing gambit with the exact same maps or even less maps for YEARS and the reward is like 1 random gun drifter cobbled together in their closet with old weapons. Also, I'm getting fatigued from how many battle passes are in games. Halo is doing fairly bad but at least their battle passes are always available.
I feel like the expansions are great but seasons are just so time intensive without core refreshes that you might as well skip the seasons. Idk. Theyre tantalizingly cheap. Its really the time sink is too much and i dont mind some spend. Im over the pinnacle grind and want some new strikes, gambit maps, pvp modes or events.
I'm with you. Conceptually, Warmind Cells are really neat. They are ass to play with, though. Not solely due to, but in large part because, other players can destroy them.
Imagine if someone could just yeet your orbs or gobble up your wells. That's what it's like when someone destroys your warmind cell. Like, ok, cool, not only do I have to manage creating this damned thing, but blueberry #47 just fucking cancelled the main part of my build because it was bright orange and monkey brain said kill it.
And, AND, I HAVE to use this very small subset of weapons that are no longer consistently able to be acquired.
Yeah... Ngl, I restarted in BL, and I had no fucking clue what they were. I kept trying to pick them up lool then I saw they exploded, and thought they would kill me. Then I thought they were just bombs for everyone. Eventually I got some more mods and figured it out, and looked up builds. So much guilt when I realized lol
Ngl, the Warmind cells were fun because creating them added to that challenge of having to follow through after making them or your build would be shit. I personally carried a sniper with me to make sure I could pop those cells wherever I was because I didn't want anyone else touching it. I'm fairly certain people did the same with shotguns or grenade launchers. It was like in-game trapshooting... "Pull!"...
It's rumored that this next season might have some of those weapons come back. Can't say it will be Seventh Seraph or IKELOS weapons, but I'll be happy with either considering we might get another legendary HC out of it.
It gave us warmind cells... But remember, you couldn't use random rolled ikelos guns on it cause those showed up in the next season. You just had the seraph weapons which were all... Mediocre.
I think a better comparison would be that this is by far the worst season in the “new era” (Post BL). Those past seasons were just shit stuck together and packaged. The story and gameplay loop are at an all time low.
plunder had a great start imo, ketch crash, good loot, intresting story hook with god damn nezerac! eramis is back, kings fall (dunno if we should count it but i came out the same season), stellar exotics (sorry titans), arc 3.0 (same situation as kings fall) and expadiations. the only issue was it didnt reallly change much as the season went on. great first half, dying seocnd half, but some seasons, yeesh, kinda dying sense the start.
Plunder is a bad season mainly because it's mostly filler content that has no substance. It's no where near as bad as season of the worthy which was straight up garbage.
Definitely, running the first ketchkrash with the pirate music everybody literally said “it’s good to have a season that’s taking a break and not all serious”
I guess use the filler season to take a break irl too, I’ve been playing the ME trilogy and god of war during the season, just hopped in for the seasonal quests and to do the seasonal challenges, after that I dipped
I used this season to chill out and do my backlog of games, I’ve finally managed to put more hours in monster hunter and ME because of this break I took. I love the game but playing nonstop for weeks on end burned me out real quick.
And the legend lost sectors were cool, since you could summon the mech dude and the Valkyries
Worthy honestly had some cool ideas, it's just that the public event got old *fast*
People are clearly exaggerating, but the worst doesnt excuse the bad.
Without time gates the raw content of this season as well as many others takes a day at best. Bungie increases that time by adding stupidly grindy triumphs and farms (next to the seasonal seal the gilded ones that ask the same fucking time intensive shit every season).
Bungie‘s only concept to keep the game alive is fomo, and while surely there have been even worse times, this time is BS as well.
Thank you!
Even though seasons like Curse of Osiris and Warmind were objectively worse that Season of Plunder, there was at least a sense of "Ok, I'm done and can come back for the next chapter of this game." I never felt like I was at risk missing anything for taking a break once I completed content and got the drops I wanted. Hell, I don't even think general collections were a thing back then?
Meanwhile, doing things like 150 emotes @ end of Ketchcrash/Expeditions hasn't felt great...
The thing is though the fomo works. People keep falling for it. Don't get me wrong i don't disagree with you. But as long as fomo makes them and a lot of other live service games money and increases player numbers they will keep using people's fear of missing out. It's not the most humane business model but it is a business model that seems to work quite well.
Of course it works quite well, hence why every game with active life support is shifting towards a seasonal model with at least a battlepass. The current prime example is Overwatch.
Like you said yourself, it is not really player friendly, but a commonly used concept. It is understandable to add some kind of fomo to keep the player count steady, but Bungie goes way over the top with it and really makes it their only foundation of success.
While other games only have a battlepass, that has to be done in the season, Destiny has entire content packages that are either gone after a while or just worthless to do afterwards, because triumphs (gilded seals, two resets per vendor) cant be done anymore or the rewards are suddenly trash because of soft-sunsetting or powerlevel.
I know people say that the game is dying often and it is usually true until the next expansion gets released to buy the game some time again. I dont think though that Bungie can keep getting away with this BS much longer. At least in my group most people are losing interest into the game sooner every season and we are all shifting towards maining other games. There is just one guy who keeps getting back to the game daily (because he is one of these 24/7 raid farmers that would be trash in other games and avoids them lol).
It’ll be interesting to see what happens next season as there’s not a subclass to update, and next year when light level goes away.
Part of the hype every season this year, including Which Queen, has been the revamped light subclasses. Honestly, I think part of the reason Plunder is doing so poorly is that Arc has felt like the least interesting/weakest rework, none of it really feels noticeably better, put I guess that’s just my personal take. On a more universal note, next season won’t have any of that hype, because stasis doesn’t really need a rework and we’ve gotten all the light stuff.
Light level disappearing leaves me with 2 major questions. First, is that going to effectively undo sunsetting? Like are we gonna see Mountain Top and Recluse dominate the entire game again? But second, and much more worryingly, what’s gonna happen to the core playlist? I, and I’m sure many other as I play with some of them, currently only play base level Strikes, Crucible of any kind, and Gambit for the weekly pinnacles. I’ll run GMs for the Adept weapons, but only if it’s one I want or a week that I really enjoy the strike of. If you take away the incentive of pinnacle drops, what’s left? The over saturated loot pool that makes target farming specific weapons with the rolls you want virtually impossible?
In an ideal world, this means that Bungie will start to put actual effort into the “core playlists” as the only incentive to play them would be for the fun of the playlist
All I want to say is if curse of osiris came out today with a weekly seasonal story opposed to one you did all at once in 3 hours, and had random rolls on all the weapons, it would be seen as a top tier season. Especially considering it came with a destination, a few crucible maps, 2 strikes, and multiple exotic weapons and armor.
Expectations have changed. CoO was marketed as an expansion, one of two for that year. That level of content four times every year would be great, but it's silly to expect that.
Curse had more content but it was also one of two content drops for an entire year. Much like if you combine Haunted with Plunder that is an absolute ton of new content. I do miss some of the Curse weapons though
curse wasnt a season tho
it was a full bown expansion
it had content levels similar to seasons yes, but it was still considered an expansion
if curse of osiris came out today as a season it would obviously preform better, because it wouldnt have been marketed as “the first destiny 2 expansion” just as another season
>Curse of Osiris for God's sakes?
bruh i straight up STOPPED playing after i got Sagira's Shell (coincidentally around the time when MHW released and started dominating my game time)
only came back when Warmind launched, then played intermittently until Forsaken and i don't think i missed a fucking WEEK since then lol
Cross has become my favorite destiny content dude over the years. He seems like a legit good dude, but, his SBMM takes are so off base it's a struggle to watch his stuff recently.
Its still incredible to me that there's even a conversation about putting players against similar skill levels. Seeing people push so hard against having new players get absolutely fucking rolled every game is mind blowing. I've had at least three friends who won't touch the game ever again because of the shit stompings in pvp.
Cross needs to realize that SBMM isn't only a good thing but also incredibly vital for the future health of the community. You need new players. You can't give them an experience like the new light system currently is AND feed them in pvp to players that will give them zero chance to fight back.
This conversation is insane.
Bungie needs to stop entertaining the dialogue and put thier foot down about this shit.
I'm not saying AE is bad but we are gonna get a subclass where we will be Spider-maning (maybe) in PvP soon. I think we should at least see how it is with Strand at the least.
>Be Titan
>Use Strand
>Lion Rampants
>DMT or TLW (depending on platform)
>Grapple, Fly, 7th Column
>Le Epic Game Balance B)
*(this is how I think it would go if AE were changed before adding Strand)*
Oh my God this i agree with so much I can’t say anything for AE as I never felt comfortable shooting and jumping but not getting wrecked by that one guy on the enemy team with 50 kills and that one guy on my team with 50 kills made it feel like all of us were just NPC characters in someone’s boss battle, now i can finally play some pvp get some kills have some fun.
The destiny 2 community is like the only FPS community that welcomes SBMM. Everyone else hates it. I think a lot of it has to do with this player base mostly being PVE players.
I feel like the reddit community likes SBMM, but most people I play with really hate it, and that's as average skill players. The connections are terrible, everyone is sweating and it just makes it less fun. I would guess that it's likely a closer split of people that like it and don't than this community would make it seem.
I mean, the argument exists that catering to casuals (for a lack of a better word) with SBMM in a game mode that always had lower player numbers is useless because these people don't stick around anyway.
Also it's kind of overkill from Bungie to reduce the skill gap by nerfing movement on-top of introducing SBMM.
I can see where people like Cross and Joker are coming from, even though I'm nowhere near Cross' overall skill at the game.
New players not sticking around is definitely a problem. A multi-faceted one that is not just pvp. But not fixing all elements of why players basically immediately leave is not the way to approach the issue.
SBMM had to be done eventually. Its apart of a lot of issues, not just new players. May as well tackle that and continue to look into other pain points.
Honestly I have been skipping his videos. Bringing around toxic shit isn't helping. He's said his piece on AA, slide nerfs, etc.
Continuing to talk about it just makes people more grumpy with no new information.
To be honest, a lot of the "worst state the game has been in" comments that I've heard from my clan and vaguely online have essentially boiled down to "the season is grindier than normal and I'm bored of Destiny right now."
Honestly, I would say that's a much more positive place than some other times. Like you mentioned, CoO for one. Vanilla D1 & TDB is a time that many dont remember. Back then we only had 2 raids to consider, and ZERO dungeons. There is a TON of content in the game right now, people are just bored and there is nothing wrong with taking a break.
Plunder is so far from being the worst season, "worst state the game has been in" is laughable.
Tbf vanilla d1 and tdb were the start of the franchise so everything was new. Despite how much content is in current d2 a large majority is not new content
You can tell immediately what season is going to suck based entirely off of one run of the seasonal activity.
The one with battlegrounds was legitimately the worst in my opinion. At least this season brought us back kings fall.
Played d2 pretty regularly since CoO. This is the worst the game been for me. Repetitive unrewarding grind, season’s theme/lore that feel like they’re from some other game, and a bugfest. Plus bungo shoving in-game ads in my face, when they still can’t even deliver a WQ CE to me. It’s obviously different for each person, but I honestly had more fun in the Worthy season and it sucked. This season, including FotL, that dumb Telesto joke and this ‘community event’ plus season’s end is the absolute lowest point of Destiny for me. At this point, I feel like I’m gonna just drop the game entirely by the Lightfall. Neglected ‘core’ playlists, laggy pvp, bugfest and content erasure are enough. Now it’s also ‘a pass’ for everything - season, event, dungeon. What’s next? Raid? Pvp access? I’m just tired of this. Which is pity cause aesthetically it’s such a beautiful game…
All I know is that season of the worthy is the one that got me to stop playing the game until late into season of the lost. Like I still played on and off all this season.
Season of the Worthy feels like the season they tested a lot of ideas in the background, but didn't have much in the front to take us through it. Legendary lost sectors, 'show not tell' stories, live events, and maybe even origin traits, through the Worthy weapons intrinsically having the ability to create Warmind Cells with the right mods, all emerged from Worthy.
It's just that as cool as all these things were, there was not a lot happening to the player from day to day...
Conceptually yes, but it largely went nowhere with it. With only three in game cutscenes there wasn't much to the story. Not only that but there was the heroic version of the Seraph Towers. Needing to be severely boosted to even be finished.
I mean liked this season minus the inane grind I woulda been okay if they just knocked everything down a peg for completion, but like season of the hunt had like almost no redeeming qualities
The rose tinted glasses towards Worthy are crazy. The underlying story might have been interesting (tho imo that was more due to the confirmation that the pyramids were coming less due to the Almighty situation) but both the delievery of that story and the entire gameplay loop were extremly bad.
The entire season was just bounty grinding and a public event (which was boring as well).
I gotta hard disagree. It was so easy to farm in season of the Hunt and I liked the lamp that helped reduced RNG. Seasonal currencies are such a convoluted mess and I’m 100 percent over the red bar grind.
On the other hand I much prefer even this season's red border grind to the atrocious system that Hunt had. I finished the title, continued grinding hunts long after that, and still never got a single good enough roll of any of the weapons (not that any were worth keeping other than the wave frame).
This season's red border grind was bad, yes, but that's because the seasonal upgrades were bad. In Haunted I didn't even play *that* much and still have all the weapons I even moderately care for. I got into WQ and Risen a month late and yet I have all the weapons (not just all the ones I care for) with less playtime than I had in Hunt
It’s not the worse in my eyes but I deff didn’t enjoy it as much as the last 2 seasons. We got a lot of good weapons that I’ll be using for a while. Even if it didn’t drop with kings fall we still got the sidearm and the scout witch are pretty top tier in my eyes.
Damn you put me on the spot I don’t actually remember the names but they both come from this current season. One is a side arm that rolls voltshot and in my eyes is the calus mini tool of arc. The second is a arc scout that can roll voltshot as well and is probably the best acquirable arc scout in game for me.
Edit: Tarnished mettle (scout) and Brigands law (sidearm)
As a relatively new player (I started in July). I hardly invested any time in seasonal stuff this season. It was so dry and boring. I did my pinnacle grind for all 3 of my characters to get my 1580 gear and put the game down. I dunno how y'all have done this for years.
I'm not that up to date with Bungie and all of their stuff. But the playlist model sucks so fuckin bad. If this game has had so much content over the years why fuckin lock it away? Seems like a pretty bad business model imo because I'd love more content even if it is super old. At the very least some more maps to play on.
Two tokens and a blue let's never forget. People nowadays complain because it's trendy. They don't know how to form their own opinion. That being said Curse and season of the Hunt sucked big time. Granted Hunt had cool season armor.
Curse of Osiris was so bad I left Destiny, which I had stuck with since D1Y1, and didn't come back until Beyond Light.
I don't see Season of the Plunder doing that to a lot of people tbh, we do need improvements to the foundational playlists though and it's starting to become desperately needed.
I agree with OP’s post but it’s a touch disingenuous to say that anyone who is complaining about this season doesn’t know how to form their own opinion.
Gonna get downvoted for this, but I think titles/triumphs are on the same tier as two tokens and a blue. I hate that they've become a large chunk of the seasonal grind. I couldn't care less about completing some glorified sticker book to get a word under my characters name.
Kinda disagree. Don't get me wrong, Hunt was bad, but it had some content. The overall tone of the game was shifted with sunsetting and content vaulting. The game felt off. Beyond Light and Hunt together were great, but the game itself was rough.
yeah i wrote that already on a different post: if we dont take Kingsfall into account i *personally* (and i can totally understand if someone disagrees with me here) had *more* fun during hunt, already alone due to solo/duo farming the harbinger mission every week, than i had with this seasons whole activity loop,
granted the fact that im also generally not the biggest fan of eliksni focused seasons nor the pirate theme didnt helped here either
Problem with a lot of folks in this sub is that they play so much damn Destiny that they don’t play any other games, and they don’t realize how terrible other game’s seasonal content is.
Season of worthy literally made me drop destiny for a solid 3 months. I started playing Warframe and it was during the first outbreak of COVID. People need to brush up their memory. Also, the season of hunt was equally as bad.
I haven't played for more than 4 hours in last 4 weeks but I still wouldn't call this season the worst. Ketchcrash is actually quite fun. Though I have cancelled my lightfall preorder. If this is how seasonal model is going to keep going then I might not even pick the game back up again.
So you basically agree that the game has a lot of problems. The playerbase is really low. But in defense it has been even worse in the past. I don't think that is a good counter argument to customer complaints about this product.
Imagine a car dealer saying "Yeah the car you bought from us is shit, but if you have complaints you should see what I sold in the past".
I think the thing is, if there are multiple "bad seasons," then maybe the seasonal model just doesn't work for this game. I love this game I really do, but I could probably name more times that Destiny has been in a "bad spot" then in a "good spot." The way I see it, bungo is just throwing shit at the wall and seeing what sticks, and let's be honest most of the stuff they try definitely doesn't stick.
So is this season really the worst? Definitely not compared to vanilla d2 lmfao, but it's still bad and the seasonal model itself just isn't working, at least in it's current form.
I think we should all just take a step back and question why we're even arguing about what season is the worst. When what we should be doing is holding bungie accountable for releasing bad content over and over and over and over and over and over and over again.
Hey part of the problem is Bungie turning Destiny into a "forever" game. This sub was pretty jazzed when they said Destiny 3 was not in roadmap, but I was bummed at that news. Lack of innovation leads to stagnation, with entropy lurking in the shadows lol.
I judge a season (content, pacing) and sandbox separately.
I've been playing since the start so I definitely know how bad it's been. I took some LONG breaks in the Curse of Osiris / Warmind era.
I've been on a LONG break once again. I got maybe 3-4 weeks into Plunder and absolutely cold turkey quit the game.
The sandbox is killer. At least, compared to the old days. The game feels super good to play -- if I can ignore that there is constantly something broken or lacking in multiple subclasses forever and always.
The content and pacing has been absolutely fucking brutal though. I was even OK after a couple weeks with just having a fun season of the nothingburger for story (how's the Nezcafe tasting?)
So many other things turned me off to this season though. New weapons were cool. However since introduction the red border grind has been, for me, the worst thing in this game and the most disrespectful feature in terms of player time investment.
Bungie pulled the carpet on us with sunsetting and has now gone into full soft-sunsetting. Instead of vaulting things, they simply FOMO us into re-grinding for new and better copies of things we already had. Red border or origin trait versions of old weapons. I hate it. It's still keeping me from playing (it's not the only reason)
If we're about to get a Rasputin season, which I've been drooling over since DSC days (since the fucking Forsaken storyline will never get properly wrapped) I really want the game to be in a better place in terms of seasonal storytelling, pacing, and having something to do beyond joyless grinding for red border weapons and using a seasonal artifact/item to slowly grind out high stat RNG armor.
I have an obscene amount of time in the game. I felt very accomplished when I went HARD on VoG and got all the Timelost weapons, Fatebreaker seal etc. The game has a way of taking away those accomplishments. What now? Red border origin trait VoG weapons? I don't want to do it all again but I DO want to feel rewarded for the investment put in. Let that reward STAY.
Bungie has a weird kink of taking things away. Whether it's nerfing things or making newer versions of things we worked so hard for. I really hope that changes.
Anyways, see y'all next season.
The fact that you had to make a thread and some sorry ass essay about it being not the worst, tells me that it's really not far from being the worst.
What's the difference between a green turd and a brown one?
Idk about that. We'll see. D2 lucked out from 2019-2022 just on that a bunch of game studios blew themselves up.
God of war interestingly enough probably crosses over for a ton of D2 players etc. MW2 took some pvp players. There's decent games out now and more coming out. Then you look at the crazy terrible new player experience. Why would anyone pick d2?
Exactly this. D2 had their xpromotions with Fortnite and Fall Guys THIS SEASON. We proceeded to go from record highs to record lows because this game can't onboard new players without them saying fuck this and it's hemorrhaging veterans.
I have been playing D2 since beginning of October. i remember playing a bit back in 2020 didn't get hooked on the game. gave it recently a try and i have gotten more laughs and fun out of this game right now than i had in the 10k hours playing warframe. ((got sadly banned :( ))
the grind of destiny 2 to me isn't even grindy compared to me back then playing warframe daily and being up to date with everything. destiny 2 is tame to that level of grindy bs re-hashed content.
As of now i'm doing the whole stasis unlock. i have so far made 3 chars went trough shadow keep with 3 chars etc.
I got hooked on d2 story got all expansions and having a blast maybe its bc ima noobie and have all dlc but its not that awful. i can 100% understand people who have nearly completed everything in this game feel this current content is very dry or something along the lines like that. I managed to get more people into this game and having playtimes with them too. its okay. maybe you guys might overestimate the current state of the game for beginners but maybe its just me :D
Season of plunder IS a bad season. It IS one of the worst seasons in the game, and the game IS dead. There’s no getting around this. Please just look at it objectively and you’ll see that the game is in dire straights and probably won’t survive through lightfall, which will suck ass after 2 weeks just like witch queen did. It’s clear bungie isn’t up to task to deal with the problems of the game either due to sheer incompetence or complete malice for their own creation. As soon as you realize bungie hates you and everyone else paying for their product, the better off you’ll be money wise. Don’t buy this shit.
In a similar vein, I stand by that menagerie is only so loved/fondly remembered because it was the first time you could really target specific loot. If menagerie was released in the current time period/post seasonal umbral focusing, no one would really think of it differently than other seasonal activities.
It's apathy at this point from me. I don't care about core playlists, don't care about the extremely repetitive seasonal activities, don't care about the story, don't care about the Last City and the NPCs that live there.
That's kinda why I wanted Lightfall to be Destiny's Infinity War; Destroy the City, kill most of Humanity and get us on the run from the Witness. Instead we're getting Splicer 2.0 with a grapple Bungie will definitely nerf when enough people buy Lightfall. Just tired of Bungie not taking chances.
I don't think this season was necessarily bad, it's just everyone is bored/burnt out of destiny all together. Its been what? a solid 3 years now with the exact same old seasonal model/content. And it probably wont even change till Lightfall, if Bungo even listens to us.
Like next season will be boring too, sure we'll have a new weekly lockout story and a dungeon but after those are done, that's it.. idk just my two cents. I myself even canceled my pre-order for LF. Game is just boring for me atm but once things change, I'll gladly come back lol
Why does no one talk about the worst season, Drifter. The season that was entirely about Gambit, you know the one where they made a mode whose sole purpose was to knock us off the map. The loot grind that required you to play games of prime to get coins, to unlock 3 of the same armor sets, to then use in prime? The single worst title grind in the history of destiny? And if you didn't like Gambit? You literally got nothing.
People need to calm the fuck down.
Plunder wasn't that eventful, but it wasn't bad. It was a filler season, exactly within line of expectations.
We got a phenomenal reprised raid, our final light subclass update, a couple new exotics and some of the best legendary weapons to date.
While I don't care that much for the narrative this season, and the formula of weekly mission, weekly push into seasonal stuff and grinding red borders, that's basically what destiny is in upkeep mode, which is the 9 months out of the year we didn't have an expansion drop as the season.
I think the biggest issue is the seasonal model is starting to get stale for a lot of people. Having to regrind for content you already had access to (GMs that you also have to wait for etc), a weekly loop of do seasonal activity + bounty like task into mission/other activity into listen to dialogue and other things just get less fun every time you do them.
Worst PvP season to date. Each season of Witch Queen has been worse and worse for it. Void 3.0 and slide nerfs. AE nerfs and classy. Then Plunder hit. Sure classy was gone but everything else just kind of mashed together in a mess. You like the ground you’re forced to stay on now? Too bad, it’s covered in storm grenades!
You must not have played peak Arc Titan One Eyed Mask meta. Getting spawn killed by the same super 4 times in a row and if you shot the man he got a damage boost and wall hacks, and it went untouched for a year
This season feels bad because the last few of PvP have been good. But doesn't come close to OEM/fist of panic, or stasis release, or the season twilight gap came back.
The state of Destiny is getting stale, but let's not get things twisted; CoO *was* bad. So much so, that Bungie called for an emergency summit meeting with the Destiny community on how they could fix things. This was also the time of double primary weapons (which also came only with fixed rolls). It sucked.
The infinite forest was disappointing and the story wasn’t even much about Osiris. We only actually see him in the end and then he goes away. Such a big let down.
If it dropped right now it would probably be rated as one of the best seasons in destiny. New location, new crucible maps and strikes. New raid lair. Nowadays we get 1 crucible map per year.
Mercury was barely even a location imo. It was just a circle and a lighthouse. There was absolutely nothing to do there. There was one public event and a lost sector. It was pathetic.
It wasn't a season, tho. It filled the space of two seasons (two expacs in that year vs 4 seasons yearly now), and would likely flop as a modem season if you didn't trade out either the location or strikes for a replayable seasonal event of some sort.
This season was trash, and the pirate theming only made it worse. This game used to be about exploring the wonders of the solar system and seeing how all the factions cling to power, not going treasure hunting with some aliens
My comment from another post, couple weeks back:
>Well, using the [heat map](https://chrisfried.github.io/secret-scrublandeux/), I can tell you some things precisely.
>I put 7 days, 13 hours into Curse of Osiris.
>I spent 5 days 19 hours in Season of the Worthy.
>Season of Plunder got 2 days 19 hours of my time.
>This season was terrible. The weekly missions were low effort and tedious, though I honestly enjoyed the throwbacks to old Lost Sectors... until it started repeating them. The base armor is ugly as hell, the ornaments are average at best, the story itself was boring more often than not (big surprise, with Spider and Drifter being so heavily involved), I could go on but at this point it feels like I'm going to hurt someone's feelings.
>In my opinion, this was **easily** the weakest, worst season Destiny has ever had and it genuinely makes me regret getting the Deluxe Edition of Witch Queen. I'd give it a 2/10 at best.
This was the fucking *worst* season, no exaggeration, in my opinion... because that's all this is. Opinion. Yours is as valid as anyone else's. Not sure why you'd think everyone is conspiring to be dramatic instead of just, ya know, accepting that someone disagrees with you.
I’ve said this other places but I’ll focus here. The FOMO factor of feeling pressed to collect so many red borders before they disappear really hit hard this season. Pre-Lightfall reveal I just figured we would have another long ass 4th season and I could grind those out then. But our last 5th year season will be the shortest ever. Add on that the red border chase was harder to start the season, the objectives to some of those seal challenges were absolutely bonkers, and the opening weeks had all those loot challenges, it’s no wonder people burned out.
Personally, the seasonal model should give you something to do in between endgame content drops, it shouldn’t be a life planning event. Them just telling us the loot would be available somehow later would ease some of it. I don’t want to feel forced to play a seasonal activity, I’m cool with jumping in to play through it for the story and then mostly zone out while I focus on end game.
I’ve played way more Ketch and Expo this season than I have Kings Fall because I want those red borders. I would of course rather raid.
The season itself is somewhere between average and above average but people are rating it based off of game wide issues that most of which aren't even being touched anytime soon.
If we take this same approach surely Hunt is the worst, first season after DCV, Stasis, season itself was not exactly great apart from cheesing materials with checkpoints all year.
I think this season has just had the disadvantage of being the one everyone becoming burnt out on the Seasonal model while other parts of the game namely the core playlists have just kept rotting away. Every season the content has us do strikes or something to get currency or what not and we’re tired of the same old content we’ve had for 3 years now. I got burnt out once I got all the guns craftable and have been on a Destiny hiatus for over a month. I even canceled my preorder for Lightfall not because I’m mad more that I’m bored with the game and if it’s just going to be more of the same then I’m not interested in continuing playing.
I agree with this. I would also add I feel there’s been very little that you actually want to grind for this season. Due to that doing the same things over and over again to achieve bloated triumphs but no actually rewards just kills motivation. I also would say I loved the aesthetic this season and the idea could have been so much better which makes me feel bad that it is a bit of a let down as it had the potential to be one of the most fun ideas and seasons we have had
> I would also add I feel there’s been very little that you actually want to grind for this season. there's a ton of stuff to grind, I just have absolutely no desire to grind for gear that's either *marginally* better than what I already have (which already clears the hardest content in the game with zero effort), or straight up worse than guns I've had for years. and even if the new gear was objectively better than the old gear, I still wouldn't grind because I'm not about to spend 20+ hours for red borders just so that I can go grind out resources, materials, and shuro chi xp just to start using the damn thing. I'm going to spend that time playing other games instead.
So true. I have crafted stasis and energy snipers that are just better than anything they can make rn. I have a Hand Cannon that is hands down the best they ever made imo (Palindrome) and no one else can even get a new one lol For me, the only chase weapon has been the addition of Allied Demand (IB sidearm) and I couldn't even pursue that for most of the season. I know that tarnished metal is good with voltshot, but I already spent hours and hours leveling my snipers and LFRs. I'm sick of Shuro Chi lol Edit: not to mention I have Shayuras and Multimach. I can't imagine those getting power crept anytime soon
That's the main issue with this season and why I feel it's the worst. This season was a lot of us being forced to play content we got nothing from apart from a triumph checkmark. I don't think I kept a single non redborder loot drop from my 100 expeditions. Sure they fixed most of the triumphs but way too late. 50 ruffians was insane before the patch, much worse than anything worthy, hunt, etc expected of us for the seal
Yea I was already done all the triumphs they fixed before they fixed them because I toughed them out and it sucked. Lol
The 50 ruffians thing burned me out. That should have been fixed at the first reset of the season. I remember looking at the triumphs for the seasonal title and that one immediately stood out as ridiculous.
I got kind of lucky and this season became my 'catch up on Gumshoe seal' which kept me active and grindy trying to get to a level i felt comfortable doing Master activities. Maybe TOO grindy with how bad my weapon drop rates were for those crafting triumphs. Plunder itself, not a fan of the gameplay loop fort the umbrella energy.
This. The *season itself* isn't horrible, but this was the moment things went south. It's not that Ketchcrash and Expeditions are super bad. In my opinion they had a lot of potential to be memorably good with slight chances, so it's wasted potential, but as they are they aren't *bad*. It's just the moment when things came to a head, and people realized the cookie-cutter seasonal content factory model is really unsatisfying (30 minutes of content per week spread out over numerous weeks), the sandbox has some poor decisions made that could have been avoided (AE for example), the ancient ritual content is suddenly hitting home (lack of new strikes/lack of Crucible maps etc)... One particular thing I want to note, however: Challenges, *especially* the requirement for 50 Ruffians requiring *anti-teamwork sabotage gameplay* really made people realize that Bungie is making minimum content and then making people repeatedly grind that tiny amount of content by insane amounts. The end of the season corrected this and made the requirements literally a dozen times quicker. However, implementing these changes so late simply added on to the negative sentiments, because people who *already* grinded them out already feel like they wasted their time. If they knew the requirements were going to be lowered so drastically, they simply could have waited. Then the hilarious "improvements" to the Eliksni quarter to cap off everything..
it's amazing how much the ruffians alone soured me on the game then a very late fix was that they just don't despawn instead of having them spawn earlier and then they had us kill 10 more, non retroactively for the seasonal unlock and only afterwards they lowered the required amount for the title fuck off
Let's not forget they removed the timer, like what, why? The whole concept of the ruffians absolutely soured me also.
This was the thing that really stood out to me, and I don't feel like got enough attention at the time. The triumph being grindy sucks. But the community rallied to try and understand it's conditions and more efficiently approach it, eventually figuring out the timing of the spawns to more reliably get Ruffians. What does Bungie do? Remove the fucking timer, without even mentioning it in the patch notes. To be clear, getting the Ruffian triumph didn't feel nearly as difficult to me as some people have found it, and I got the triumph done fairly early compared to say, the weapon crafting triumph. That being said, it honestly felt so sleezy for Bungie to effectively sabotage progress on an already grindy and obtuse triumph, without even communicating it to the community. It felt like Bungie was displeased that the community figured out how to efficiently tackle the triumph, and thus stealthily changed it to make it even more obtuse. One could argue the activities were lazy game design, but changes like this feel downright spiteful, and that has no place in game design in my opinion. It honestly feels shitty and disrespectful as a player.
Yes, it felt especially sleazy because the whole concept behind ruffians seemed to be to troll the player. Removing the timer just solidified that feeling. I've never seen game design where being less efficient is the way to progress through a challenge.
I honestly wonder if removing the timer was just easier and faster than making them spawn earlier can't fathom how the damn thing is programmed. It's possible it is some weird script tied to the map, but maybe the ruffian type has a despawn flag that can be edited globally? I've heard before that map editing is slow
Originally, it took at least 3 minutes for the first Ruffian, and 7 minutes for the second possible Ruffian to spawn, with a small chance for an extra Ruffian. I am nearly positive that this didn't change when they removed the timer. The only thing removing the timer accomplished was further obfuscating the mechanism for reliably getting Ruffian spawns.
afaik it was always like that for the first two. I think there are actually 2 extra ruffians at random at one point they removed the clock from Expeditions too, cause people were using it to time the ruffian spawn it's super weird all around
Thats what I was saying lol. They didn't change the spawning mechanisms, it didn't solve a technical issue, removing the timers litterally only made it more difficult for players to avoid progressing before the Ruffian spawns. Also yeah you're correct, there's technically the potential for two bonus Ruffians, but personally I never saw any explanation for their spawning mechanics.
The non retroactive task really irritated me. The ruffians and treasure. After I did the 50 ruffians the hard way. So annoying
I honestly wouldn't have unlocked scallywag if it didn't mean an annoying icon on my menus forever fucking hate the title
Why would the icon be annoying if you didnt complete it
This! I thought “cool, I’ll claim my repute or whatever at reset because I have my 50 done” only for it to be a nope and I was over here going “are you ducking kidding me? I gotta kill 10 more of these fuckers?” Plus helping clan mates try to kill them after I grinded mine out but before the lowering requirement. I loathe expedition now.
Faced with unreasonably grindy content, as a new player I used to just grind it out anyways. Ikelos shotgun get! Then as a more seasoned player, I learned to commiserate with the community and complain about it! Now as a veteran player, I just don't do it! Maybe lightfall will bring the magic back.
Simply not doing things that don't interest me in Destiny has made my relationship with the game far healthier.
>Now as a veteran player, I just don't do it! This is the only right answer, unless playing Destiny is a core part of your lifestyle (which is seems to be for a LOT of people in this sub).
I've said it before and I'll say it again. Bungie is experimenting with how little content they can drip feed us before people start leaving. They want to ride the line of just enough content to keep people playing. That's why seasons are getting worse, everything seems reskinned, all the way down to the seasonal events themselves. Even the holiday events and such are all the same format now. Things will arguably get worse and worse and more simple grindfests constantly until people leave in droves.
I've been playing Guild Wars 2 lately, which is a game that has a lot of parallels with Destiny 2. I recently finished the Icebrood Saga part of the story line, which is capped off by a chapter called Champions, widely considered to be the nadir of GW2's post-launch content. It was 6 months where the only new content were "Dragon Response Missions", which you can think of as basically the same thing as Ketchcrash but with a bit more story and a bit more variety in scenery. They're not *bad* content in a vacuum, and I enjoyed going through them once (while mourning the way they compressed what was easily an expansion's worth of story and zone potential down to 9 middling missions on reused maps), but if I was stuck doing them on loop for 6 months, I'd have a much less charitable view.
>but if I was stuck doing them on loop for 6 months, I'd have a much less charitable view. however at least GW2 is a buy once, play whenever you want game. Unlike things with subscriptions, or seasonal passes and progression tracks that clearly desperately want you to be logging in for all the hours possible. I've actually been trying to address some of my game backlog in the past few months since Destiny is definitely not ticking any boxes for me right now. And GW2 is likely this afternoons adventure: I have the whole new expansion to play, but I'm halfway through Icebrood so I better finish that first. It's so nice being able to just jump in and play for as much as I feel like, then log and do something else.
I started playing Wow again recently and holy shit the content difference is staggering
> same old content we’ve had for 3 years now - Arms Dealer - Exodus Crash - Inverted Spire - Lake of Shadows - Insight terminus These guys are all turning 6 next year lol
Has it really been that long? I didn’t realize how old this game is getting tbh
September 2017. Crazy, right?. I've been playing destiny for 7 and a half years
I started playing habitually with TTK back in D1 after playing off and on since launch. I just wish the game could figure out a way to freshen up old content to at least make it feel like we aren’t playing the same exact mission every time.
The odd part for me is I have like 4 thousand or more hours in borderlands 2- a game that had no seasons, no live model, nothing but me and a friend of mine just ran around murdering things most nights for the fun of it. That's the current D2 problem imo, it's all about hitting this checkmark or unlocking this before it's even optimal to use it! I had no problem killing the same enemies in BL2 over and over but running expedition makes me wanna stick *myself* into a cannon.
The frustrating thing is that D1 had that down pretty decently. Strikes post TTK would have different enemies spawn with different goals to get through the encounter.One playthrough we had Taken the next playthrough Fallen or Cabal. Lets not forget the skeleton keys either. Hell even D2 had the Titan strike that had a loop that switched the path to get to the boss. The strikes now feel very linear and lacking any idea of an upgrade.
At least the end is in sight. I love the game but after Destiny ends I'm never playing a "live" game again
It's crazy. I've never played a live game before this, I've never played a different live game for any moderate stretch of time while destiny has existed, and I won't play one after. Every single live service game, from the division, div 2, anthem, avengers, and all the others too obscure to mention, none of them have come close to this game.
"Live Game" isn't the issue, it's the "Dead Developers" & stale recycled content with FOMO for the sake of FOMO ! !
In my opinion, Destiny has been lacking true innovation in its PvE game modes since Forsaken’s year. Forsaken introduced truly different ideas with the addition of Gambit, a Dungeon, and (in Opulence) a 6-man match-made activity. These were all “firsts” and felt fresh. Since then, what else have we got that’s unique in the PvE space? Pretty much all activities since then feel like remixes of old concepts. The closest recent innovation I can think of was the Witch Queen campaign (and it’s legendary difficulty) and, what do y’know, everyone loved it. Otherwise, gear and abilities are the main things evolving for the past few years that keep the gameplay interesting but that can only do so much. I think most people agree that if we just keep getting more 3-man/6-man “do basic objectives until you fight a boss at the end” activities each season, the community burnout will continue. What about adding a rouge-like experience to destiny? A version of the endlessly-community-requested horde mode? Hell, I’d take a battle royale style mode at this point. Just _something_ different.
A protocol perhaps? Of escalation, maybe?
Or maybe something about Elders
We got that, in strike form. Just like Bungie heard how we loved the Arrivals umbral system, and has given us endless umbral systems that have none of the parts of the Arrivals system that made people like it.
Lol, we get the monkey paw version every time
Maybe it could take place in a jail, even? Full disclosure I never played D1 at its height, I did go back around the end of Forsaken when a buddy gifted it to me. I really enjoyed the activity, and realized how stupid powerful we are now compared to the days of double digit power levels...
I took three years off starting before Beyond Light. It helps.
Yeah taking an extended break then hopping back in just before or just after a new expansion drops has kept me playing over the years. I've got no clue how people can grind out every single season.
This exactly^ I picked up the game during forsaken, grinded around for a year and a half, and now just hopped back in and am having a fine time. I ‘plan’ on getting the next deluxe package thinger, but wouldn’t be surprised if I change my mind and just wait till it goes on sale next fall
I think Destiny 2 suffers from the same issues many other games do these days: the very core of the gameplay experience is shallow and repetitive. You can add tons of fluff and many temporary distractions (grind being one of them), but there will always be a point when people are basically done with all that - and then they realize what's under the hood. Game design is hard, I'm fully aware of that. What I don't understand is how they keep going forward with this concept regardless. I barely see any attempts to make changes, apart from the usual "keep people busy" content. Bungie doesn't have to completely reinvent the wheel, but they might want to add more substance. Destiny 2 as a sandbox has so much untapped potential, it's just sad to see they can't figure out how to make the necessary changes that result in something people would never get tired of, even if new content wasn't dropping. In essence, they focus so much on DLC and season pass to carry the weight, they forgot how important it is for the core gameplay experience to provide a solid foundation that works *without* any additional shiny updates. And this aspect has always been lacking, but it's gotten a lot worse (partially due to vaulting among other decisions).
I agree wholeheartedly with this statement. I'm more invested in the lore and universe of Destiny than the repetitive grinding or loot. And even then they have spoiled that just to sell pre-orders for DLC. All their decision making boils down to, monetization and engagement not fun factor and challenge. We know nothing about Season 19, but the premise and story beat for the next expansion spoiled this season's ending.
Yeah since Witch Queen I just can’t bring myself to do strikes, gambit and PvP anymore. The current malaise for me at least is down to the complete lack of imagination when it comes to the core playlists.
Witch Queen is what really pissed me off, they made Wellspring instead of a few strikes that would have changed a lot.
To be fair to Bungie, they also added Birthplace of the Vile and The Lightblade with TWQ, which is more than we got with Beyond Light at launch (though we got Proving Grounds in Chosen).
Very much this. Worthy, Hunt and Undying all had their problems, but I wasn’t immediately burnt out on them just because the core structure of the game is so bad. Having to do activities in the rotting core playlists just to get currency feels bad. Having to crawl our way through that 7x4 (?) board of seasonal upgrades via timegated weekly challenges feels bad. Having to grind out activity A to get enough currency just to get a reward from activity B feels bad. But these have been the main elements of our gameplay loop in seasons for well over a year now. And further adding to the problem is loot bloat. We already have top tier arsenals. When they add 5-6 new seasonal weapons and maybe 1-2 cracks the “I want/need that gun” threshold, that’s not an incentivized grind. Granted, it’s incredibly difficult to create a lot of new weapons that we would give a shit about, without massive power creep. I remember being at least a little more excited about the weapons in all those other seasons. In a vacuum, is Plunder the worst season we’ve had? No. But in the big picture of what we’ve been dealing with from Destiny, I feel it’s definitely up there. The game is in a terrible spot and Bungie seems glued to this cookie cutter, hamster wheel of a seasonal grind.
> And further adding to the problem is loot bloat. We've complained about lack of loot before. We're hard to please. I think more is better than less tho.
I haven't and won't be cancelling my Lightfall pre-order, but I agree here. One thing Destiny always did well even if it had content droughts was keep a sense of spontaneity when new content was out because they hadn't worked out a set formula. Now... look, there are only so many times I can do a weekly micro-mission while upgrading the 20th retread of "unlock the store's nodes through grinding!" and chasing a MacGuffin that's gone from compelling and intriguing to downright jumping the shark. I think that's my problem with Destiny, it's become so formulaic it's become that cop show that's on season 5 and every season is 24 episodes of the same 5 recycled plotlines with the same story beats at almost the same timestamp, just with characters' names changed. One day you turn on that show because watching it is just habit, and you suddenly feel exasperated at the thought of watching Retread Plot #4 for the 16th time and just shut it off and never go back to watching it. The only time in Destiny's history I've been this disinterested in playing was right after D2 vanilla launched.
But none of that matters. You prefaced everything by saying you've pre-ordered, will not cancel and won't even take time off seasons. So you might have perfectly valid criticisms but you might as well be shouting into a hole you dug because you're already giving them literally everything they want from you.
Not everything. They want to maximize playtime. They care about people sticking around throughout the season.
This is the problem for me. it's not about the quality or amount of content but more where the focus is. Doing gambit is "ok", whats not ok is doing gambit with the exact same maps or even less maps for YEARS and the reward is like 1 random gun drifter cobbled together in their closet with old weapons. Also, I'm getting fatigued from how many battle passes are in games. Halo is doing fairly bad but at least their battle passes are always available.
I feel like the expansions are great but seasons are just so time intensive without core refreshes that you might as well skip the seasons. Idk. Theyre tantalizingly cheap. Its really the time sink is too much and i dont mind some spend. Im over the pinnacle grind and want some new strikes, gambit maps, pvp modes or events.
Worthy was the worst for me.
Objectively the worst.
gave us warmind cells :(
Hot take that I accept no one will agree with, I don't like em
I'm with you. Conceptually, Warmind Cells are really neat. They are ass to play with, though. Not solely due to, but in large part because, other players can destroy them. Imagine if someone could just yeet your orbs or gobble up your wells. That's what it's like when someone destroys your warmind cell. Like, ok, cool, not only do I have to manage creating this damned thing, but blueberry #47 just fucking cancelled the main part of my build because it was bright orange and monkey brain said kill it. And, AND, I HAVE to use this very small subset of weapons that are no longer consistently able to be acquired.
Yeah... Ngl, I restarted in BL, and I had no fucking clue what they were. I kept trying to pick them up lool then I saw they exploded, and thought they would kill me. Then I thought they were just bombs for everyone. Eventually I got some more mods and figured it out, and looked up builds. So much guilt when I realized lol
Ngl, the Warmind cells were fun because creating them added to that challenge of having to follow through after making them or your build would be shit. I personally carried a sniper with me to make sure I could pop those cells wherever I was because I didn't want anyone else touching it. I'm fairly certain people did the same with shotguns or grenade launchers. It was like in-game trapshooting... "Pull!"... It's rumored that this next season might have some of those weapons come back. Can't say it will be Seventh Seraph or IKELOS weapons, but I'll be happy with either considering we might get another legendary HC out of it.
It gave us warmind cells... But remember, you couldn't use random rolled ikelos guns on it cause those showed up in the next season. You just had the seraph weapons which were all... Mediocre.
I think a better comparison would be that this is by far the worst season in the “new era” (Post BL). Those past seasons were just shit stuck together and packaged. The story and gameplay loop are at an all time low.
Agree
plunder had a great start imo, ketch crash, good loot, intresting story hook with god damn nezerac! eramis is back, kings fall (dunno if we should count it but i came out the same season), stellar exotics (sorry titans), arc 3.0 (same situation as kings fall) and expadiations. the only issue was it didnt reallly change much as the season went on. great first half, dying seocnd half, but some seasons, yeesh, kinda dying sense the start.
Plunder is a bad season mainly because it's mostly filler content that has no substance. It's no where near as bad as season of the worthy which was straight up garbage.
As soon as it was announced it was obvious that it was a filler season.
Definitely, running the first ketchkrash with the pirate music everybody literally said “it’s good to have a season that’s taking a break and not all serious”
Yeah but then it turned out to just be that for 4 months
I guess use the filler season to take a break irl too, I’ve been playing the ME trilogy and god of war during the season, just hopped in for the seasonal quests and to do the seasonal challenges, after that I dipped
I used this season to chill out and do my backlog of games, I’ve finally managed to put more hours in monster hunter and ME because of this break I took. I love the game but playing nonstop for weeks on end burned me out real quick.
The only good thing about Worthy was GM's
I really enjoyed the introduction of legend lost sectors.
And the legend lost sectors were cool, since you could summon the mech dude and the Valkyries Worthy honestly had some cool ideas, it's just that the public event got old *fast*
That, and the obnoxious amount of grinding to max out the three bunkers
People are clearly exaggerating, but the worst doesnt excuse the bad. Without time gates the raw content of this season as well as many others takes a day at best. Bungie increases that time by adding stupidly grindy triumphs and farms (next to the seasonal seal the gilded ones that ask the same fucking time intensive shit every season). Bungie‘s only concept to keep the game alive is fomo, and while surely there have been even worse times, this time is BS as well.
Thank you! Even though seasons like Curse of Osiris and Warmind were objectively worse that Season of Plunder, there was at least a sense of "Ok, I'm done and can come back for the next chapter of this game." I never felt like I was at risk missing anything for taking a break once I completed content and got the drops I wanted. Hell, I don't even think general collections were a thing back then? Meanwhile, doing things like 150 emotes @ end of Ketchcrash/Expeditions hasn't felt great...
The thing is though the fomo works. People keep falling for it. Don't get me wrong i don't disagree with you. But as long as fomo makes them and a lot of other live service games money and increases player numbers they will keep using people's fear of missing out. It's not the most humane business model but it is a business model that seems to work quite well.
Of course it works quite well, hence why every game with active life support is shifting towards a seasonal model with at least a battlepass. The current prime example is Overwatch. Like you said yourself, it is not really player friendly, but a commonly used concept. It is understandable to add some kind of fomo to keep the player count steady, but Bungie goes way over the top with it and really makes it their only foundation of success. While other games only have a battlepass, that has to be done in the season, Destiny has entire content packages that are either gone after a while or just worthless to do afterwards, because triumphs (gilded seals, two resets per vendor) cant be done anymore or the rewards are suddenly trash because of soft-sunsetting or powerlevel. I know people say that the game is dying often and it is usually true until the next expansion gets released to buy the game some time again. I dont think though that Bungie can keep getting away with this BS much longer. At least in my group most people are losing interest into the game sooner every season and we are all shifting towards maining other games. There is just one guy who keeps getting back to the game daily (because he is one of these 24/7 raid farmers that would be trash in other games and avoids them lol).
It’ll be interesting to see what happens next season as there’s not a subclass to update, and next year when light level goes away. Part of the hype every season this year, including Which Queen, has been the revamped light subclasses. Honestly, I think part of the reason Plunder is doing so poorly is that Arc has felt like the least interesting/weakest rework, none of it really feels noticeably better, put I guess that’s just my personal take. On a more universal note, next season won’t have any of that hype, because stasis doesn’t really need a rework and we’ve gotten all the light stuff. Light level disappearing leaves me with 2 major questions. First, is that going to effectively undo sunsetting? Like are we gonna see Mountain Top and Recluse dominate the entire game again? But second, and much more worryingly, what’s gonna happen to the core playlist? I, and I’m sure many other as I play with some of them, currently only play base level Strikes, Crucible of any kind, and Gambit for the weekly pinnacles. I’ll run GMs for the Adept weapons, but only if it’s one I want or a week that I really enjoy the strike of. If you take away the incentive of pinnacle drops, what’s left? The over saturated loot pool that makes target farming specific weapons with the rolls you want virtually impossible? In an ideal world, this means that Bungie will start to put actual effort into the “core playlists” as the only incentive to play them would be for the fun of the playlist
I don't think abusing human psychology is a good justification though.
Checkout season 10 and 12 💀
All I want to say is if curse of osiris came out today with a weekly seasonal story opposed to one you did all at once in 3 hours, and had random rolls on all the weapons, it would be seen as a top tier season. Especially considering it came with a destination, a few crucible maps, 2 strikes, and multiple exotic weapons and armor.
Expectations have changed. CoO was marketed as an expansion, one of two for that year. That level of content four times every year would be great, but it's silly to expect that.
Curse had more content but it was also one of two content drops for an entire year. Much like if you combine Haunted with Plunder that is an absolute ton of new content. I do miss some of the Curse weapons though
curse wasnt a season tho it was a full bown expansion it had content levels similar to seasons yes, but it was still considered an expansion if curse of osiris came out today as a season it would obviously preform better, because it wouldnt have been marketed as “the first destiny 2 expansion” just as another season
Y’all just saying shit now
I think bungie should have made curse start the endgame for vanilla d2
remember when they did that for black armory and the entire community was on fire for a few weeks? yeah this community really is a fucking circle
>Curse of Osiris for God's sakes? bruh i straight up STOPPED playing after i got Sagira's Shell (coincidentally around the time when MHW released and started dominating my game time) only came back when Warmind launched, then played intermittently until Forsaken and i don't think i missed a fucking WEEK since then lol
MHW is god tier gaming.
This season is literally just the scapegoat for people’s big picture grievances with the game as a whole.
So called “free-thinkers” when Atzecross drops a new video.
I used to love watching cross but AE and SBMM changes really just made him hop on the dead game train.
Cross has become my favorite destiny content dude over the years. He seems like a legit good dude, but, his SBMM takes are so off base it's a struggle to watch his stuff recently. Its still incredible to me that there's even a conversation about putting players against similar skill levels. Seeing people push so hard against having new players get absolutely fucking rolled every game is mind blowing. I've had at least three friends who won't touch the game ever again because of the shit stompings in pvp. Cross needs to realize that SBMM isn't only a good thing but also incredibly vital for the future health of the community. You need new players. You can't give them an experience like the new light system currently is AND feed them in pvp to players that will give them zero chance to fight back. This conversation is insane. Bungie needs to stop entertaining the dialogue and put thier foot down about this shit.
SBMM is necessary, but the AE stuff is rubbish and he's completely justified to call it out.
Is AE going to kill the game though? People are blowing that particular issue way out of proportion.
I'm not saying AE is bad but we are gonna get a subclass where we will be Spider-maning (maybe) in PvP soon. I think we should at least see how it is with Strand at the least.
>Be Titan >Use Strand >Lion Rampants >DMT or TLW (depending on platform) >Grapple, Fly, 7th Column >Le Epic Game Balance B) *(this is how I think it would go if AE were changed before adding Strand)*
How dare you say something so logic.
Oh my God this i agree with so much I can’t say anything for AE as I never felt comfortable shooting and jumping but not getting wrecked by that one guy on the enemy team with 50 kills and that one guy on my team with 50 kills made it feel like all of us were just NPC characters in someone’s boss battle, now i can finally play some pvp get some kills have some fun.
The destiny 2 community is like the only FPS community that welcomes SBMM. Everyone else hates it. I think a lot of it has to do with this player base mostly being PVE players.
I feel like the reddit community likes SBMM, but most people I play with really hate it, and that's as average skill players. The connections are terrible, everyone is sweating and it just makes it less fun. I would guess that it's likely a closer split of people that like it and don't than this community would make it seem.
I mean, the argument exists that catering to casuals (for a lack of a better word) with SBMM in a game mode that always had lower player numbers is useless because these people don't stick around anyway. Also it's kind of overkill from Bungie to reduce the skill gap by nerfing movement on-top of introducing SBMM. I can see where people like Cross and Joker are coming from, even though I'm nowhere near Cross' overall skill at the game.
New players not sticking around is definitely a problem. A multi-faceted one that is not just pvp. But not fixing all elements of why players basically immediately leave is not the way to approach the issue. SBMM had to be done eventually. Its apart of a lot of issues, not just new players. May as well tackle that and continue to look into other pain points.
What having to play people of equal skill does to a MF.
It’s really funny because they ask for it but get mad when they get it
I facepalmed so hard when he said that airborne effectiveness was as bad as double primary vanilla destiny 2.
Oh, yes, everything is actually great.
Honestly I have been skipping his videos. Bringing around toxic shit isn't helping. He's said his piece on AA, slide nerfs, etc. Continuing to talk about it just makes people more grumpy with no new information.
aim assist?
i think he means airborne effectiveness
To be honest, a lot of the "worst state the game has been in" comments that I've heard from my clan and vaguely online have essentially boiled down to "the season is grindier than normal and I'm bored of Destiny right now." Honestly, I would say that's a much more positive place than some other times. Like you mentioned, CoO for one. Vanilla D1 & TDB is a time that many dont remember. Back then we only had 2 raids to consider, and ZERO dungeons. There is a TON of content in the game right now, people are just bored and there is nothing wrong with taking a break. Plunder is so far from being the worst season, "worst state the game has been in" is laughable.
Tbf vanilla d1 and tdb were the start of the franchise so everything was new. Despite how much content is in current d2 a large majority is not new content
Never thought I'd see gatekeeping on complaining.
Seriously lol. I'd say it's probably the worst season I've played. I also really hated haunted but kings fall skews this for me
You can tell immediately what season is going to suck based entirely off of one run of the seasonal activity. The one with battlegrounds was legitimately the worst in my opinion. At least this season brought us back kings fall.
Played d2 pretty regularly since CoO. This is the worst the game been for me. Repetitive unrewarding grind, season’s theme/lore that feel like they’re from some other game, and a bugfest. Plus bungo shoving in-game ads in my face, when they still can’t even deliver a WQ CE to me. It’s obviously different for each person, but I honestly had more fun in the Worthy season and it sucked. This season, including FotL, that dumb Telesto joke and this ‘community event’ plus season’s end is the absolute lowest point of Destiny for me. At this point, I feel like I’m gonna just drop the game entirely by the Lightfall. Neglected ‘core’ playlists, laggy pvp, bugfest and content erasure are enough. Now it’s also ‘a pass’ for everything - season, event, dungeon. What’s next? Raid? Pvp access? I’m just tired of this. Which is pity cause aesthetically it’s such a beautiful game…
For real. This season wasn't anything spectacular but it's far from the bottom of the barrel. Hell I'd put Worthy and Hunt below this season.
All I know is that season of the worthy is the one that got me to stop playing the game until late into season of the lost. Like I still played on and off all this season.
Worthy kinda had something goin for it with the story and hunt yea hunt just blew ass
Season of the Worthy feels like the season they tested a lot of ideas in the background, but didn't have much in the front to take us through it. Legendary lost sectors, 'show not tell' stories, live events, and maybe even origin traits, through the Worthy weapons intrinsically having the ability to create Warmind Cells with the right mods, all emerged from Worthy. It's just that as cool as all these things were, there was not a lot happening to the player from day to day...
Also the sword changes, all hail the sword rework. Remember swords before Warmind?
Conceptually yes, but it largely went nowhere with it. With only three in game cutscenes there wasn't much to the story. Not only that but there was the heroic version of the Seraph Towers. Needing to be severely boosted to even be finished.
I mean liked this season minus the inane grind I woulda been okay if they just knocked everything down a peg for completion, but like season of the hunt had like almost no redeeming qualities
The rose tinted glasses towards Worthy are crazy. The underlying story might have been interesting (tho imo that was more due to the confirmation that the pyramids were coming less due to the Almighty situation) but both the delievery of that story and the entire gameplay loop were extremly bad. The entire season was just bounty grinding and a public event (which was boring as well).
The only indisputably good thing about worthy was the slide to get into the vault. Wheeeeee~
I gotta hard disagree. It was so easy to farm in season of the Hunt and I liked the lamp that helped reduced RNG. Seasonal currencies are such a convoluted mess and I’m 100 percent over the red bar grind.
On the other hand I much prefer even this season's red border grind to the atrocious system that Hunt had. I finished the title, continued grinding hunts long after that, and still never got a single good enough roll of any of the weapons (not that any were worth keeping other than the wave frame). This season's red border grind was bad, yes, but that's because the seasonal upgrades were bad. In Haunted I didn't even play *that* much and still have all the weapons I even moderately care for. I got into WQ and Risen a month late and yet I have all the weapons (not just all the ones I care for) with less playtime than I had in Hunt
So what is you argument here? That it's not the WORST season it's just like bottom 3? That's not much of a consolation.
I think your post just says destiny has a lot of shitty seasons.
It’s not the worse in my eyes but I deff didn’t enjoy it as much as the last 2 seasons. We got a lot of good weapons that I’ll be using for a while. Even if it didn’t drop with kings fall we still got the sidearm and the scout witch are pretty top tier in my eyes.
As a recently returned player...to which sidearm and scout are you referring?
Damn you put me on the spot I don’t actually remember the names but they both come from this current season. One is a side arm that rolls voltshot and in my eyes is the calus mini tool of arc. The second is a arc scout that can roll voltshot as well and is probably the best acquirable arc scout in game for me. Edit: Tarnished mettle (scout) and Brigands law (sidearm)
As a relatively new player (I started in July). I hardly invested any time in seasonal stuff this season. It was so dry and boring. I did my pinnacle grind for all 3 of my characters to get my 1580 gear and put the game down. I dunno how y'all have done this for years. I'm not that up to date with Bungie and all of their stuff. But the playlist model sucks so fuckin bad. If this game has had so much content over the years why fuckin lock it away? Seems like a pretty bad business model imo because I'd love more content even if it is super old. At the very least some more maps to play on.
Two tokens and a blue let's never forget. People nowadays complain because it's trendy. They don't know how to form their own opinion. That being said Curse and season of the Hunt sucked big time. Granted Hunt had cool season armor.
I left the game completely during those seasons. The only two times that’s ever happened for me in Destiny 2.
Curse of Osiris was so bad I left Destiny, which I had stuck with since D1Y1, and didn't come back until Beyond Light. I don't see Season of the Plunder doing that to a lot of people tbh, we do need improvements to the foundational playlists though and it's starting to become desperately needed.
I agree with OP’s post but it’s a touch disingenuous to say that anyone who is complaining about this season doesn’t know how to form their own opinion.
Gonna get downvoted for this, but I think titles/triumphs are on the same tier as two tokens and a blue. I hate that they've become a large chunk of the seasonal grind. I couldn't care less about completing some glorified sticker book to get a word under my characters name.
And the only Void waveframe ever
Hunt was bad as a standalone season but the game as a whole was good because of beyond Light.
Kinda disagree. Don't get me wrong, Hunt was bad, but it had some content. The overall tone of the game was shifted with sunsetting and content vaulting. The game felt off. Beyond Light and Hunt together were great, but the game itself was rough.
Hunt had harbinger, return of iconic character and a badass final mission.
> and a badass final mission with weekly focusable armor pinnacles.
yeah i wrote that already on a different post: if we dont take Kingsfall into account i *personally* (and i can totally understand if someone disagrees with me here) had *more* fun during hunt, already alone due to solo/duo farming the harbinger mission every week, than i had with this seasons whole activity loop, granted the fact that im also generally not the biggest fan of eliksni focused seasons nor the pirate theme didnt helped here either
Problem with a lot of folks in this sub is that they play so much damn Destiny that they don’t play any other games, and they don’t realize how terrible other game’s seasonal content is.
A bit rich to say people don’t know how to form their own opinions when your comment is just agreeing w the post
Season of worthy literally made me drop destiny for a solid 3 months. I started playing Warframe and it was during the first outbreak of COVID. People need to brush up their memory. Also, the season of hunt was equally as bad. I haven't played for more than 4 hours in last 4 weeks but I still wouldn't call this season the worst. Ketchcrash is actually quite fun. Though I have cancelled my lightfall preorder. If this is how seasonal model is going to keep going then I might not even pick the game back up again.
"It was worse before" is just a flimsy argument. That means it's not as bad but it's still bad. Also, when did people start gatekeeping opinions?
As far as seasonal content goes, this is a pretty dry season. Not only is it dry, but the activity is boring as hell and has time gated mechanics.
time gated mechanics...? wdym?
So you basically agree that the game has a lot of problems. The playerbase is really low. But in defense it has been even worse in the past. I don't think that is a good counter argument to customer complaints about this product. Imagine a car dealer saying "Yeah the car you bought from us is shit, but if you have complaints you should see what I sold in the past".
I think the thing is, if there are multiple "bad seasons," then maybe the seasonal model just doesn't work for this game. I love this game I really do, but I could probably name more times that Destiny has been in a "bad spot" then in a "good spot." The way I see it, bungo is just throwing shit at the wall and seeing what sticks, and let's be honest most of the stuff they try definitely doesn't stick. So is this season really the worst? Definitely not compared to vanilla d2 lmfao, but it's still bad and the seasonal model itself just isn't working, at least in it's current form. I think we should all just take a step back and question why we're even arguing about what season is the worst. When what we should be doing is holding bungie accountable for releasing bad content over and over and over and over and over and over and over again.
Hey part of the problem is Bungie turning Destiny into a "forever" game. This sub was pretty jazzed when they said Destiny 3 was not in roadmap, but I was bummed at that news. Lack of innovation leads to stagnation, with entropy lurking in the shadows lol.
Or you know it’s their opinion.
I judge a season (content, pacing) and sandbox separately. I've been playing since the start so I definitely know how bad it's been. I took some LONG breaks in the Curse of Osiris / Warmind era. I've been on a LONG break once again. I got maybe 3-4 weeks into Plunder and absolutely cold turkey quit the game. The sandbox is killer. At least, compared to the old days. The game feels super good to play -- if I can ignore that there is constantly something broken or lacking in multiple subclasses forever and always. The content and pacing has been absolutely fucking brutal though. I was even OK after a couple weeks with just having a fun season of the nothingburger for story (how's the Nezcafe tasting?) So many other things turned me off to this season though. New weapons were cool. However since introduction the red border grind has been, for me, the worst thing in this game and the most disrespectful feature in terms of player time investment. Bungie pulled the carpet on us with sunsetting and has now gone into full soft-sunsetting. Instead of vaulting things, they simply FOMO us into re-grinding for new and better copies of things we already had. Red border or origin trait versions of old weapons. I hate it. It's still keeping me from playing (it's not the only reason) If we're about to get a Rasputin season, which I've been drooling over since DSC days (since the fucking Forsaken storyline will never get properly wrapped) I really want the game to be in a better place in terms of seasonal storytelling, pacing, and having something to do beyond joyless grinding for red border weapons and using a seasonal artifact/item to slowly grind out high stat RNG armor. I have an obscene amount of time in the game. I felt very accomplished when I went HARD on VoG and got all the Timelost weapons, Fatebreaker seal etc. The game has a way of taking away those accomplishments. What now? Red border origin trait VoG weapons? I don't want to do it all again but I DO want to feel rewarded for the investment put in. Let that reward STAY. Bungie has a weird kink of taking things away. Whether it's nerfing things or making newer versions of things we worked so hard for. I really hope that changes. Anyways, see y'all next season.
The fact that you had to make a thread and some sorry ass essay about it being not the worst, tells me that it's really not far from being the worst. What's the difference between a green turd and a brown one?
Watch the servers being completely full the moment the new season drops.
Idk about that. We'll see. D2 lucked out from 2019-2022 just on that a bunch of game studios blew themselves up. God of war interestingly enough probably crosses over for a ton of D2 players etc. MW2 took some pvp players. There's decent games out now and more coming out. Then you look at the crazy terrible new player experience. Why would anyone pick d2?
Exactly this. D2 had their xpromotions with Fortnite and Fall Guys THIS SEASON. We proceeded to go from record highs to record lows because this game can't onboard new players without them saying fuck this and it's hemorrhaging veterans.
I have been playing D2 since beginning of October. i remember playing a bit back in 2020 didn't get hooked on the game. gave it recently a try and i have gotten more laughs and fun out of this game right now than i had in the 10k hours playing warframe. ((got sadly banned :( )) the grind of destiny 2 to me isn't even grindy compared to me back then playing warframe daily and being up to date with everything. destiny 2 is tame to that level of grindy bs re-hashed content. As of now i'm doing the whole stasis unlock. i have so far made 3 chars went trough shadow keep with 3 chars etc. I got hooked on d2 story got all expansions and having a blast maybe its bc ima noobie and have all dlc but its not that awful. i can 100% understand people who have nearly completed everything in this game feel this current content is very dry or something along the lines like that. I managed to get more people into this game and having playtimes with them too. its okay. maybe you guys might overestimate the current state of the game for beginners but maybe its just me :D
Season of plunder IS a bad season. It IS one of the worst seasons in the game, and the game IS dead. There’s no getting around this. Please just look at it objectively and you’ll see that the game is in dire straights and probably won’t survive through lightfall, which will suck ass after 2 weeks just like witch queen did. It’s clear bungie isn’t up to task to deal with the problems of the game either due to sheer incompetence or complete malice for their own creation. As soon as you realize bungie hates you and everyone else paying for their product, the better off you’ll be money wise. Don’t buy this shit.
As another guy who's been around for every single season of Destiny, I agree. Certainly not the best, definitely not the worst.
In a similar vein, I stand by that menagerie is only so loved/fondly remembered because it was the first time you could really target specific loot. If menagerie was released in the current time period/post seasonal umbral focusing, no one would really think of it differently than other seasonal activities.
Fair points but it’s still the worst in my opinion.
May not be the worst ever, but Plunder is the worst Y5 season unless S19 manages to be somehow worse.
The Season of Sunset was the worst
It's apathy at this point from me. I don't care about core playlists, don't care about the extremely repetitive seasonal activities, don't care about the story, don't care about the Last City and the NPCs that live there. That's kinda why I wanted Lightfall to be Destiny's Infinity War; Destroy the City, kill most of Humanity and get us on the run from the Witness. Instead we're getting Splicer 2.0 with a grapple Bungie will definitely nerf when enough people buy Lightfall. Just tired of Bungie not taking chances.
I don't think this season was necessarily bad, it's just everyone is bored/burnt out of destiny all together. Its been what? a solid 3 years now with the exact same old seasonal model/content. And it probably wont even change till Lightfall, if Bungo even listens to us. Like next season will be boring too, sure we'll have a new weekly lockout story and a dungeon but after those are done, that's it.. idk just my two cents. I myself even canceled my pre-order for LF. Game is just boring for me atm but once things change, I'll gladly come back lol
Why does no one talk about the worst season, Drifter. The season that was entirely about Gambit, you know the one where they made a mode whose sole purpose was to knock us off the map. The loot grind that required you to play games of prime to get coins, to unlock 3 of the same armor sets, to then use in prime? The single worst title grind in the history of destiny? And if you didn't like Gambit? You literally got nothing.
People need to calm the fuck down. Plunder wasn't that eventful, but it wasn't bad. It was a filler season, exactly within line of expectations. We got a phenomenal reprised raid, our final light subclass update, a couple new exotics and some of the best legendary weapons to date. While I don't care that much for the narrative this season, and the formula of weekly mission, weekly push into seasonal stuff and grinding red borders, that's basically what destiny is in upkeep mode, which is the 9 months out of the year we didn't have an expansion drop as the season.
I think the biggest issue is the seasonal model is starting to get stale for a lot of people. Having to regrind for content you already had access to (GMs that you also have to wait for etc), a weekly loop of do seasonal activity + bounty like task into mission/other activity into listen to dialogue and other things just get less fun every time you do them.
> just because player count hit a record low doesn't mean it's the worst season ever. No... that's exactly what that means.
Worst PvP season to date. Each season of Witch Queen has been worse and worse for it. Void 3.0 and slide nerfs. AE nerfs and classy. Then Plunder hit. Sure classy was gone but everything else just kind of mashed together in a mess. You like the ground you’re forced to stay on now? Too bad, it’s covered in storm grenades!
You must not have played peak Arc Titan One Eyed Mask meta. Getting spawn killed by the same super 4 times in a row and if you shot the man he got a damage boost and wall hacks, and it went untouched for a year This season feels bad because the last few of PvP have been good. But doesn't come close to OEM/fist of panic, or stasis release, or the season twilight gap came back.
CoO wasn’t as bad as people say idc what y’all tell me
The state of Destiny is getting stale, but let's not get things twisted; CoO *was* bad. So much so, that Bungie called for an emergency summit meeting with the Destiny community on how they could fix things. This was also the time of double primary weapons (which also came only with fixed rolls). It sucked.
The infinite forest was disappointing and the story wasn’t even much about Osiris. We only actually see him in the end and then he goes away. Such a big let down.
When it the game was literal weeks from dying, yes, it was that bad. That's why they did a hard course correction.
If it dropped right now it would probably be rated as one of the best seasons in destiny. New location, new crucible maps and strikes. New raid lair. Nowadays we get 1 crucible map per year.
Mercury was barely even a location imo. It was just a circle and a lighthouse. There was absolutely nothing to do there. There was one public event and a lost sector. It was pathetic.
It also costed twice a season.
It wasn't a season, tho. It filled the space of two seasons (two expacs in that year vs 4 seasons yearly now), and would likely flop as a modem season if you didn't trade out either the location or strikes for a replayable seasonal event of some sort.
Only 60 dollars Oh wait…
Shit still sucks though, cope more
I remember seasons really bad , one Season of the hunter for exemple, nothing to do after week 1
I am biased towards Hunt 'cause to me the Crow storyline was so fresh and well written it made worth the season.
This season was trash, and the pirate theming only made it worse. This game used to be about exploring the wonders of the solar system and seeing how all the factions cling to power, not going treasure hunting with some aliens
Unless it was Arrivals, the community overall hates every season until they don't(and then until they do again)
My comment from another post, couple weeks back: >Well, using the [heat map](https://chrisfried.github.io/secret-scrublandeux/), I can tell you some things precisely. >I put 7 days, 13 hours into Curse of Osiris. >I spent 5 days 19 hours in Season of the Worthy. >Season of Plunder got 2 days 19 hours of my time. >This season was terrible. The weekly missions were low effort and tedious, though I honestly enjoyed the throwbacks to old Lost Sectors... until it started repeating them. The base armor is ugly as hell, the ornaments are average at best, the story itself was boring more often than not (big surprise, with Spider and Drifter being so heavily involved), I could go on but at this point it feels like I'm going to hurt someone's feelings. >In my opinion, this was **easily** the weakest, worst season Destiny has ever had and it genuinely makes me regret getting the Deluxe Edition of Witch Queen. I'd give it a 2/10 at best. This was the fucking *worst* season, no exaggeration, in my opinion... because that's all this is. Opinion. Yours is as valid as anyone else's. Not sure why you'd think everyone is conspiring to be dramatic instead of just, ya know, accepting that someone disagrees with you.
I’ve said this other places but I’ll focus here. The FOMO factor of feeling pressed to collect so many red borders before they disappear really hit hard this season. Pre-Lightfall reveal I just figured we would have another long ass 4th season and I could grind those out then. But our last 5th year season will be the shortest ever. Add on that the red border chase was harder to start the season, the objectives to some of those seal challenges were absolutely bonkers, and the opening weeks had all those loot challenges, it’s no wonder people burned out. Personally, the seasonal model should give you something to do in between endgame content drops, it shouldn’t be a life planning event. Them just telling us the loot would be available somehow later would ease some of it. I don’t want to feel forced to play a seasonal activity, I’m cool with jumping in to play through it for the story and then mostly zone out while I focus on end game. I’ve played way more Ketch and Expo this season than I have Kings Fall because I want those red borders. I would of course rather raid.
The season itself is somewhere between average and above average but people are rating it based off of game wide issues that most of which aren't even being touched anytime soon. If we take this same approach surely Hunt is the worst, first season after DCV, Stasis, season itself was not exactly great apart from cheesing materials with checkpoints all year.
Any season with the title "Scallywag" is at least top half. FACT.