We're now 6ish weeks into Destiny 2 and I feel like it's the perfect time to lay out the final verdict. We've seen a healthy sample of live events, the pace of patchs and all the content that was planned out for the launch window. We've also seen Bungie at twitchcon where they showcased their plans for season 2 of the live content as well as some improvements coming to the game in the next 2 months.

I'm not going to mince words here. I think Destiny 2 is a failure. It is a fine coop shooter with a competitive component but it doesn't even attempt to achieve the greatness promised since before the launch of Destiny 1. This is not the living, breathing gameplay experience you can always come back to. It's a refined version of Destiny 1 with more cutscenes.

All elements of the game gesturing at larger ambitions, like the faction rally, iron banner and the flashpoint weekly activity, are all incredibly half assed and disposable. The end game has lost all meaning since none of the rewards you can get out of it feel impactful or meaningful. In fact it seems like Bungie is doubling down on this idea. If you look at all the announced content in the video above it feels like they expect people to be interested in, and grind for, meaningless cosmetic bullshit and ONLY meaningless cosmetic bullshit. Over are the days where you could look forward to beating the hardest content in the game and be rewarded with a cool unique gun. Now you get an emblem and that's pretty much it.

We're 6 weeks in and our clan, one of the most active Destiny GB clans for the last 3 years, is done with the game. We jumped in the hard mode raid a few nights ago but our heart wasn't in it. This probably the first Destiny content we'll never complete and I don't see us logging back on in the next 2 months. I don't even know if I'll pick up the DLC. Bungie doesn't seem interested in making the game I fell in love with better. They're just making a coop shooter that will score well on metacritic and then they lie to people about this ''revolutionary live experience'' they're supposedly providing.

A few years ago Luke Smith gave an interview where he said that the Taken King Destiny 1 expansion is where they fixed the small problems with Destiny and Destiny 2 was going to be their shot at fixing the big problems. Well, they missed their shot and I don't know if they were even aiming in the right direction.

They over corrected from the criticism of the player base that stopped playing the game during vanilla destiny. To a point where they've ruined the game in contrast to what they had turned it into by the end of the first game. I can't bring myself to play it anymore. There is no point. I have nothing to play for or work towards. You can only run the same strike so many times. Or play so many PvP matches against people who all use the exact same load out so many times. Or do the stupid weekly checklists of the same exact crap you did last week for gear you already have.

It's better than D1, which wasn't even worth $60. I think the problem is the devs and hardcore fans act like it's some platform or an actual MMO that's fun for months when it's really a loot shooter that's fun for 2 or 3 weeks like Borderlands. Buying a shooter and expecting the PVE to entertain for months isn't realistic IMO. I've yet to see a shooter do that ever.

I'm very disappointed with D2 none of the problems I had with vanilla were fixed, playing the story and getting to level 20 was frustrating with the creep to 305 being a real pain. All the content available is very repetitive with little to no variation, the sandbox is very boring it feels like its running on a stop watch missing any sort of mystery and where is everyone? I've never seen more than half a dozen players in free roam. Its very irritating shooting samey bad dudes on samey locations in samey stirkes/missions chasing fewer less exciting guns, gear and shaders.

@assumedkilla: but it's the game they were selling and continue to sell with live events months after the initial release. I think it's very much realistic to expect a better continuous experience when they have F2P style microtransactions for cosmetic crap out the wazoo. In fact that was the exact pitch when they introduced that shit into the game. Hell, Destiny 1's expansions had fewer problems with player retention and engagement than Destiny 2. I still believe you can make a compelling replayable loot shooter experience. Maybe Anthem will be that game. Maybe at that point Bungie might feel the pressure and make Destiny better.

See, it's hot takes like this are what keep me on the fence about picking up the game when the PC version drops. I didn't play much Destiny 1 the things that everyone else railed against the game I also experienced and I wasn't into it. Everything I have seen of 2 has me optimistic that I will enjoy it. "This is not the living, breathing gameplay experience you can always come back to." This is a common complaint I see across the board and people more or less not recommending it because of this. Maybe I am in the minority but this is not what I expected from the game even before it came out and am perfectly fine with a 60 (or whatever) hour good time in lieu of a 300 potential hour good time grind extravaganza akin to a Diablo 3 or the like. If you ask me if what is here is good 60 bucks is well worth it even if the game doesn't live up to its full 300 hour potential. The thing is I haven't gotten a straight answer if this is actually the case or not so I'll try to just come out and ask.

Will I get a " regular games worth" (or more) of good content here or is that content not worth the 60 dollars excluding the endgame complaints?

I worded that poorly but I think you get the point.

@fatalbanana: Depends on if you have people to play with. I don't think the game comes together until you do the Nightfall and the raid and those require a group. I got my money's worth out of this game but that doesn't mean it's not a disappointment. That's my personal opinion though, I know people got their money's worth out of Destiny 1 just tooling around in strikes and public events listening to podcasts or something. You can do that in Destiny 2 and get like 90% of the loot so maybe you'd be into that? I don't know.

@fatalbanana: As someone that is also waiting for PC D2 to drop, I look at it like this: There's disappointment now from players who have finished the game, including the GB staff, but when they were playing through it, they were all saying how much they couldn't stop playing it. I would be totally okay having that experience for $37 (Best Buy GCU) and really, I'm not expecting anything more than that. They way everyone talked about it when it came out is all I need.

Strong words anonymous man.

@pyrodactyl: Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me. I bought D1 and quickly regretted it, since it was a small amount of content in a loop over and over, plus the loot system sucked until they patched it. I rented D2 for a few weeks and had a good time. I wasn't going to buy it due to my experience with the first one. D2 actually has a story, more content, and you have to replay content way less. In hindsight, I'd buy D2 over D1 in a heartbeat, but neither game is nothing special or fantastic.

Well the Precipitous drop in player count certainly suggests you might be right

http://destinytracker.com/destiny/reports/daily-population

I've been on the fence about picking up the PC version but this thread may have just convinced me not to bother with Destiny 2. I spent a lot of hours with the first game and was kind of hoping for a little more meaningful and persistent endgame this time around.

@slag: I'm really curious how that compares to Taken King numbers. That drop off looks abnormally sharp to me but maybe it's normal. Any way to get older stats?

Yet I still played through the game 3 times (with all the classes), got them to over 300 power and have ran the raid over a dozen times. Oh, and I'm going to do it again on Pc in a couple days.

I may have a problem...

I will say if nothing else it's fun, especially when playing with other people.

Sad to see the negativity, but I'm still pretty excited for the PC release. Same as with Destiny 1, provided I get a solid few weeks going through the campaign, seeing the sights, maybe leveling another class after I finish the campaign on one, I think I'll be pretty satisfied.

Very likely to shelve it after, until DLC hits, but judging from the pre-endgame/raid talk on the Bombcast and here in the community, seems like there's a good time to be had in there.

@pyrodactyl: don't know honestly to either

Although I can tell you that successful multiplayer games on Steam usually climb for months to years and then level off. So I'd be inclined to think a drop off of this size, this quick, is not a good sign. At least the basic numbers are high enough that I doubt active players are impacted. That's still a lot of players.

I personally went in looking for something to scratch that WoW/MMO itch. What I got was much closer to a Diablo than a WoW, that's not bad, but also not something I'm planning to invest any more time into.

It’s barely better than vanilla Destiny. I don’t understand what they’ve been doing for these years because it feels like an expansion. There’s just not enough content again. I’m mad at myself for buying the game.

I've enjoyed it as a podcast game, but it does feel like a bit of over-correction on Bungie's end. I know it's weird to complain that the grindy loot game is way less grindy and way more human-friendly, but I have to say that it's sorta insane that I'm already at a high enough power level for the raid after playing fairly casually over the past few weeks. I don't know what that says about human behavior, or skinner boxes, or how to properly balance drop tables, but there was something satisfying about getting my character to a high light level in Destiny (post-Taken King) because I had to "earn" it. Once I bother to group up with anonymous internet strangers to see Leviathan, I think I'm more or less done with the game until the next expansion.

The main problem with Destiny 2 is that by making the game "more rewarding," they have actually made it far less rewarding. It really seems like Bungie is terrified of of any players feeling left out or inferior to other players, so they completely removed the ability for anyone to stand out in any way. All the loot feels the same, nothing is special or unique, and everyone can obtain basically everything with minimal effort.

In Destiny 1 we had almost mythical raid weapons like Fatebringer, Vex Mythoclast, Black Hammer, Touch of Malice, and Outbreak Prime that were either a) very good, b) hard to obtain, or in most cases both. There was also raid armor that had unique benefits over regular armor. In Destiny 2, all the raid guns are no more special than any other guns and the raid armor is completely cosmetic. To top it all off, you don't even need to do the raid to get raid drops, you need only be in a clan where at least 1 group does the raid in a week and you get raid drops.

Outside of the raid, all the legendary gear is easily obtained and has only 1 possible roll, so everyone's stuff is the same as everyone else's. Exotics drop at a very high rate and Xur's prices are super cheap to the point where even the most casual player could buy all his wares every week.

One of the main selling points, or so I thought, of a multiplayer loot game is chasing that rare and powerful gear. Players want to stand out and feel like the time they invest in the game's hardest content will reward them with cool, unique, and powerful items. When everyone in the game has all the same things and the rewards from the hardest content are no better than anything else in the game and don't even require you actually participate to acquire them, there's very little incentive to do that content more than once.

Congrats to Bungie for improving the game in the areas that resulted in a better metacritic score and more positive reception from the people that only wanted to get a few dozen hours of fun from a loot shooter. It's just a shame they completely neglected the players that put hundreds or thousands of hours into Destiny 1 and were hoping for a game with similar hooks to keep them coming back for weekly activities in Destiny 2.

A game that is too rewarding isn't rewarding at all. For rewards to feel rewarding, they need to feel earned, unique, and worthwhile. Destiny 2's idea of rewarding players is to shower everyone with a mountain of the same mediocre gear.

So we're basically saying, this game needs more of a grind???

MAKE UP YOUR MIND PEOPLE/SHEEPLE!!!!

e: I do actually think I'd be happier with it if it were padded out more. That's the thing that I love about Diablo 3, mindless though it may be. There's always some sort of (very very tenuous) carrot on a stick dangling in front of me to make me keep wasting my time playing it.

@ripelivejam: Personally, I don't want more of a grind at all. I like the amount and frequency of loot drops. My biggest issue is that all of the gear is rather bland and underpowered right now. Same for the majority of the Subclasses. Because of some weird goal of PvE balance, and being absolutely terrified some players are very good at their game, Bungie neutered our abilities to be successful within the game. This has translated into rather bland and boring rewards from things like the Raid, Trials, Iron Banner, and Exotics, and Subclasses feeling out of whack and purposefully weakened by putting skills with synergy in oppossing Skill Tree's. Bungie needs to stop being terrified that players are good and can create good synergized builds if they let us, and make the most difficult activities in the game feel rewarding again. Destiny 1 did a very good job of that for all it's faults, and it's what many of us loved about it.

The following are examples, not specific truths:

The only game modes in the new COD are going to be hardcore modes, with no kill cams, no radar, and much lower health.

The new Titanfall is getting rid of titans, and larger maps, and everything will take place on smaller maps with no Titans.

The new battlefield is only going to be a five on five competitive mode, and large-scale battles are not found in the new game.

The new Destiny is going to be 4 vs 4, and will be entirely focused on team-shooting.

All of the above examples aside from Destiny are actually somewhat true, because all of these modes are included with newer games in each series, but they were either included or added to these games as OPTIONAL game modes. Take what everyone has learned to know and love, and give people an OPTION of playing the game differently.

Bungie is the only company I can think of stupid enough to screw with their basic gameplay formula to this degree, and then just expect everyone to be fine with that. It would be great as an option, and as an addition. Instead, it feels like I paid for new content, only to have something that I really enjoyed taken from me. And yeah, I understand that 6v6 with traditional Destiny PVP was never promised, and I even played the multiplayer in the beta, but that doesn't change the feeling that Destiny 2 offers less than Destiny 1 in this respect.

While I'd never say never before hearing more about the DLC plans, I don't see myself ever buying any DLC for Destiny 2 unless they bring back 6v6 multiplayer with traditional Destiny gameplay. Something that I enjoyed for years is missing from my Destiny experience, and I want it back.

I got a very good 50-60 hours out of Destiny (plus about 10 hours since that haven't been good). But now I am super done with it. I went from playing it obsessively to not touching it for an entire week pretty much instantly. There's nothing for me to do anymore and all the live event stuff (Iron Banner, Trials, Faction Rally, Prestige Raid) are completely pointless to me.

If all you want is that 50 hour experience then definitely get it. It's great while it lasts, but it fails in many of the same ways Destiny 1 did at launch. I have the expansion pass and right now I don't even feel like the December expansion will be able to pull me back.

@ll_exile_ll: All your points I agree with.

This is a similar thing to what happened with WoW. At some point they decided, right or wrong, that not enough players got to see all the content - ie, the raids. They introduce a mode that would allow you to see the content of those raids, earn gear from those raids and was so incredibly easy that you can literally ignore mechanics of the fight and afk your way through it.

What resulted was that people felt short changed. Why should I have to put in 8 hours a week raiding when John Smith can log into the LFR (looking for raid) and end up in a slightly worse, but almost identical set of gear to me? That was the attitude a lot of people had.

Blizzard have been trying to course correct since then, by introducing harder difficulties but overall the damage was done. Outside of some mounts - which get sold anyway due to how little gold actually means in game now, but that's it's own issue - there's not much reason beside a feeling of self satisfaction for doing the hardest mode. Unless you're in a guild aiming for world firsts, which basically these days means you're likely trying to make some money off playing WoW or are hardcore about it.

I'd like to see Destiny 2 and Bungie try and course correct, but as it stands now, the only goal is self satisfaction. And you can't show that off and it doesn't make the game player better - which is what people like. I was happy to have finished my raid armour set, earned from the raid and the tokens I got from it, but it didn't do anything for me, except probably give me way more mobility than I'll ever need.

@slag - That drop off isn't actually too dramatic. A peak of 3.5M down to about 2M. The game doesn't have a reason for you to log in every day. I get on about 2-3 times a week now. Once on reset day, once for a raid and then once or twice to hang out with some friends. Those friends all do the same and I'd imagine that a lot of people do that as well.

Destiny continues to sound like "Warframe, only without a majority of the features or smart replayability design".

I LOOOOOOVE Borderlands. My buddies and I crush every single one of those games the moment they're released. But I just don't get Destiny. No charm or unique style of Borderlands. Generic sci fi. I got all my buddies to play the PC beta, and despite me hard selling the game as best as I could it was just a collective shrug and then everyone went back to Warframe. It weirds me out that "the shooting is pretty fun and feels nice!" is enough to keep this thing lumbering along enormously popular.

I guess what really shocks me is that people buy anything Bungie says or treats their games as these incredible things. They haven't had a great story since they heavily leaned on other sci fi for Halo 1, and then went directly up their own ass for Halo 2 and on with VIDEO GAME LOOOOOOOOOOOORE in place of story and character.

Then the next step from Halo is this complete step down botch of a formula Borderlands already did so so so much better. No massive fun PvP with vehicles like Halo, strip that way down. Complaints from gamers about everything. It's just bizarre. They seem like a studio of amateurs who are always in the news because of scandal or an apology to the fans, or a post mortem on what happened to their game compared to what it was supposed to be....

While I agree with pretty much everything you said, I don't feel like Destiny 2 is a failure. I am having a lot of fun with the game regardless. I had a lot of fun with the game for the first three weeks and then I started to get a little disappointed with the lack of the endgame, which I see as the largest criticism here. I am the type of person that doesn't care as much as other people about being rewarded as a reason to play. The challenge of clearing the Prestige Raid is the reason for me to play it. Even multiple times, because I just like seeing myself go through it smoothly one day.

That also means that I still have stuff to grind for. I need those grenade cooldown mods for that Raid. I need that Recovery, I need to get certain things. Because the smallest differences matter a lot in there, which is something I really enjoy. That doesn't mean I don't care at all about rewards however, I don't see myself clearing this Prestige Raid 20 times without it, and that certainly isn't in place.

While I like playing the game more than most seem to, I can still say D2 needs work. But I'm not as down on it as others seem to be.

I don't think the problem is that is too rewarding, I think the problem is highlighted in your last sentence. Things like random rolls in D1 were so terrible because they excluded players of good gear they wanted to use. No matter the time you put in, you never got them if you were 'unlucky'. I was one of those people.

I don't think the problem is that 'everyone can obtain basically everything', I think the problem is they can do so 'with minimal effort'. If you get lucky and get Nameless Midnight from the first three Strikes you've run, that's super cool if that was really rare. Then someone like me would have to grind maybe 100 Strikes or whatever to get one, but eventually I should be able to obtain it too guaranteed. The problem now, is that the best weapons are just given to you more or less, in this example of Nameless Midnight it literally is. After two Strikes.

Just imagine if half of the community still didn't own Nameless Midnight, MIDA, Vigilance Wing, Better Devils, Wardcliff Coil etc. at this point. They would be furious if this was D1 and they had no idea if they were ever going to get it. But if they had a very clear endline where they knew that weapon would be waiting for them if they got there, people would love to still be playing, instead of grudgingly playing like they did in D1.

D2 will be my first Destiny game and reading this so close to the PC release I intend to experience it with is a bit disappointing. I'm hoping that experience will be decent for me given I'm not coming to this game with significant baggage (for lack of a better term, no disrespect intended) from the first.

@winterblink: It depends on what you are expecting. I run a clan for over three years now. I've seen people come and go and I can tell you that the most disappointed people just wanted something different from the game or expected something else.

If you're looking for Borderlands from Bungie, this isn't it. If you're looking for World of Warcraft: The Space Shooter, this isn't it.

Loot is a feature, but the amount of it is not comparable to something like Borderlands. Their original philosophy here was to reward people who kept playing their missions in Halo in a minor way with some loot. It's not a constant loot pinata, nor does it have crazy midget-shooting-guns. Everything is very minor in the grand scheme of things, but minor changes affect things a lot.

You're never overpowered. It's not an RPG. In its essence it is a challenging cooperative shooter. That's all it really is, except it peppers it with little cool things like loot.

If you're expecting an RPG, you won't like it. If you're expecting insane loot, you won't like it. If you're expecting endless grind you won't like it. If you're expecting to play it alone, you won't like it.

I love the game, though not unreservedly, but I also know what it is and like what it is trying to be.

THIS. Why on Earth is Destiny's PvP not the evolution of where Halo was?? You can't just say "oh PvP wasn't our focus so we put in this half assed arena thing." Like gamers will accept that.

@bollard: @flashflood_29: @pyrodactyl: Thanks for the responses I think I will be picking it up based on what I've seen. Even if I get a good 50-60 hours out of it that's more I get out of most games.

This is exactly what I'm hoping too. I guess we'll find out when it unlocks tomorrow.

There is such a dearth of good co-op out right now, Destiny is one of the few games I know my circle of friends will be playing. Its hard to wrangle everyone together, and as we get older none of us are really into competitive stuff anymore. Even if there is a lack of endgame, I know I'll get a good 30-40 hours with my friends. I hope Destiny does well enough that we continue to see more games take a swing at the format (come on, Anthem!).

@sarnecki: Destiny is not and never will be Borderlands. Going into it expecting it to be that will end up leaving you disappointed. It's not Warframe either. It is its own thing. People that like Destiny usually like it because it is that and it isn't Borderlands or Warframe.

I've played a pile of Warframe over the years to tide myself over on the sci-fi shooter genre while waiting for this, but I totally get that it's not going to be a 1:1 experience with Destiny. I don't mind a co-op loot grind, I'm going to give it a go solo for a while and hope that more friends of mine pick it up on the PC side (alternately will join an active clan).

I did try the PC open beta, and while I get that was a hair-thin vertical slice of what to expect it was intriguing enough for me to drop cash on a preorder. I do appreciate the insights.

That's my problem with it, it seemingly isn't anything. Less personality and style and LOOOOOT than Borderlands, less interesting sci fi future soldier fantasy and less interesting world and lore than Warframe. What does it do better than any game that makes it its own thing that people love so dearly? I don't think the shooting counts. Lots of first person shooters have amazing mechanics.

I really enjoyed my time with Destiny 2. I feel like it respected my time way more than Destiny 1 did. I'm the kind of person who likes finishing games and moving on to other things. I never imagined Destiny would be the be all end all of games. The game that I'd play forever. I put like 30+ hours into Destiny 2 and feel like I've gotten more than my monies worth. I'll return to it when they bring out meaningful content. It's alright to not play Destiny 2.

@sarnecki: If you are speaking of Destiny 2, I can probably understand where that sentiment is coming from. But as a console shooter, Destiny did have better shooting mechanics than literally any shooter I've ever player, and by a wide margin. The reason Destiny 2 doesn't, is they have drastically changed those shooting mechanics from Destiny, very likely in an adjustment to make the PC version feel very good. Base AA has fallen through the floor, and all guns have pretty terrible Bloom (how wide the accuracy cone moves out after a shot) and really bad Initial Shot Accuracy (bascially they just don't shoot exactly where you aim them, even on the first shot). I believe all of this was done so that a Mouse/Keyboard doesn't feel like instant Headshots (from the Beta it still does), but in all honesty it has kind of ruined that feel of the game on Consoles. And don't get me wrong, it still feels good if not well above average, but it's not that best feeling shooting in video games that Destiny was.

As far as the PvP, I don't think either I nor Space wanted Halo out of Destiny 2 PvP. I honestly think that's the biggest problem with Destiny 2's PvP is they tried way too hard to go back to their Halo roots. Destiny was it's own thing in PvP, and it ended up being something an awful lot of people really enjoyed and enjoyed watching. 10's of thousands of people tuned in to Twitch every weekend over the past 2.5 years to watch people play Trials every single weekend and between 400k-900k (numbers had dropped to around 200k but only for the last 2 months or so, after D2 was announced, everything had been obtained for literally 10 months, it was the worst meta that ever existed in Destiny 1, and it was only about the top 200k players left so it was sweaty as all the balls combined) players jumped onto Destiny every weekend to play. The complaints for Destiny 2 are that while the numbers seem to stay high (likely because it is the number 1 place for loot in Destiny 2 for the amount of time invested, 6 300 Items + up to 3 other Trials items + Trials Clan Engram at 300 for a Flawless run that can only take about 60-75 min), streamers have virtually dropped the game for Trials outside of Fridays (mainly because it's pretty boring to watch compared to D1) and most of the players I know don't run games past their 3 cards for the weekend (I went from 3-6 cards per weekend to maybe 1-2 if that), and these are guys who, like me had 150+ D1 Flawlesses and played Trials religiously. Destiny 2 PvP is boring. It's all about making good decisions and hoping your teammates do the same. If you and they do, you win, if you don't you lose. Gone are the days where you have plays where you just turn on a 3v1 and murder all of them, that doesn't exist. It's now a numbers game, and whoever has them wins, every single time. Which makes for extremely boring PvP. Say what you will about quick ability cooldowns, powerful grenades, and 1 hit specials, but those are what made Destiny interesting, and all of that is gone.

I find it a bit odd that gameplay doesn't count when discussing why a game is so appealing.

I feel like I don't need to choose or play favorites: I love Borderlands. I really do. I've played nearly a thousand hours of Borderlands 2. That said, I love that game for its loot and the crazy things you can do within it. If we're talking about how the actual game feels, it feels like trash compared to Destiny. This is what Destiny is better at than any other game. Borderlands doesn't come close, Warframe doesn't come close, nothing really does.

It's more than just the mechanics, it is the subtlety of everything within it. Where Borderlands has depth in the way you build your character and how your guns shoot, Destiny has depth in the way you can play it. If you were to give every player a specific loadout and let them complete the Raid, there would be players that would get wrecked and players that would make it look easy. It's not a numbers game, it's all around the mechanics and I really like that.

I also really like Borderlands, not saying one is better than the other. They just do different things. If I want to have a fun time with loot, it would be ill advised for me to boot up Destiny.

Weeeeell... Kinda too late to cancel my pre-order, sooooo... anyone wanna buy my Battle.net account for $50?

I think that I probably wasn't passionate enough about Destiny 1 to have this strong a negative reaction to Destiny 2, but from that perspective I feel like it is not significantly different from the first game and anyone who played that to exhaustion probably isn't getting much from it. They're a victim of how much people played the first game, I guess.

I'd probably agree with most of the points leveled here. My real big issue is that none of the gear feels worth chasing, really. Getting an Antiope was cool for PvP because it promoted gameplay different than a MIDA but that was about my biggest thing to chase. I feel like I don't have any incentive to run stuff in the normal game. I did an absoluteton of Iron Banner because those rewards were something new and the armor sets were cool looking. I did a fair amount of Faction Rally even, for the same reasons. If there were more gear in the game I bet I'd still be grinding out Faction Tokens and Planetary Tokens and all that. But as it stands, I have a nearly full vault and I'm missing all of 14 weapons in the game. So where is my incentive? If I'm looking at this like a loot game, I don't really have any. Or if I do, like wanting to get the weapons, I don't have (really) a structured, guaranteed progression to work towards achieving those goals. Want an Antiope? Pump all your resources into Gunsmith and hope you get lucky. I'd probably be more inclined to do that if I was missing more cool, interesting or otherwise worthwhile weapons but I don't think I am.

This also starts to highlight other problems like the issue of dupes: they serve no current purpose in the game outside of storing them on other characters so you're not forced to mess with an app or the in-game vault system when you want to grab a certain weapon. Its crazy to me that I've got close to 2,000 legendary shards (from sharding useless dupes/armor sets) and nothing to do with them except buy Exotics and turn them into gunsmith parts to level him up in the hopes of getting one of the guns I'm missing. I could buy a bunch of Ghosts, one for each planet/PvP, but why even do that? Its not hard to find chests and the extra tokens you get don't seem to ever proc. Got one that gives weapon telemetries? Have fun getting one telemetry every 10 hours that is worth less than a single gunsmith part. Which brings me to the issue of incentive for Clan rewards. After hitting max rank in Clans, you're "rewarded" with the ability to gain an extra faction token from doing a Nightfall, Trials or the Raid. Sounds somewhat useful until you realize its a single solitary token, and its random. Doing the Raid (even on Normal) and getting a single Dead Orbit token that I can't even use is the exact opposite of a reward. I couldn't even tell if you if the other rank rewards work because I'm not sure I ever noticed them.

There's a lot of stuff to do in Destiny 2 but the power cap is easily obtainable and there's no incentive to keep going once you're there outside of the basic fun of playing the game. Why are Strikes so unrewarding? Why do I only get a single Crucible token for a match, win or loss? Why aren't Adventures incentivized at all? Why should I ever step foot in a Lost Sector again after hitting the level cap? Heck, the reward for doing Prestige Raid is a shader, the chance at a set of armor that glows, a rare emblem and an ornament for an exotic. Where's the awesome guns? Where's the armor that makes me faster while holding a Psionic Charge for the Gauntlet? Where's any reason at all to replay the Prestige raid?

As I started typing this I got more and more upset about the game so apologies since I'm sure this comes off as ranty.

A lot of good commentary here about Destiny 2. All of my gripes have been described in this thread already, however I disagree that Destiny 2 is a failure. Personally, I've enjoyed the 100+ hours I've dunked into the game so far. The Discord GB LFG groups have introduced me to some awesome folks. I enjoy seeing familiar names pop up and signing up for random things. The folks I've met through the GB clan and Discord have made the co-op features that much more fun.

For the folks who are committed to PC preorders I wouldn't worry too much? There's a solid amount of content for your investment. The story is decent and coherent. The grind isn't too bad if you're simply trying to get to a point where you can complete the raid and the PVP is good enough.

Even if the grind is for cosmetic bullshit, who can hate on that Nebula Rose shader. That shit is money. Folks complained about D1's grind to the point where they dropped almost all of it. I spent weeks in D1 PVP for the Dead Orbit auto rifle. When the factions were brought back in D2 and I couldn't buy neat guns with grinded rep I was a bit sad.

The exotic weapon quests provide some fun additional content as well. I don't even desire to use weapons like Rat King, but getting to check the box felt nice. The post raid quest for the shotgun still remains...

I enjoyed the Prestige mode Nightfall and having finally cleared it, I'm feeling rather satisfied. A few weeks ago, the normal weekly Nightfall was serious business with multiple attempts required before our core group was able to clear successfully. It would be nice to have more of an incentive to clear the Prestige raid considering the level of difficulty. Either way, I'll look for fellow GB Guardians to clear the content with.

tl;dr I played a shit load of D2 and liked it a whole bunch & I don't think it's a failure.

@jesus_phish: A drop of ~40% in PvE and ~66% for a PvP game in only one month seems really huge to me. Especially for a game intended to be an evergreen "you only need to play one game for the whole year" type of thing.

I don't have a good source for other console game CCU counts, but that seems awful compared to what I'm used to seeing from popular Steam games (DOTA 2, PUBG, CS:GO, Rocket League etc).

I think we'll know a lot more in about a month. If the counts level off here that's certainly manageable.

I mean, just about all of the content can be seen in a month. It makes sense if you're not hunting trophies or looking to clear Prestige things.

If they don't roll out DC often, I don't see how this maintains an annual pace. I'd gladly pay for the content as I'm hungry for more.

I like Destiny 2 quite a bit. I barely have time to play it and I think that adds a lot to it's value. This is not a game that can be played consistently and without breaks.

Weirdly enough, Destiny is one of my least favorite games of all time. I am still unpacking how I could have such a drastically different reaction to such a similar game.

Destiny 2 has been a huge success for me. But I'm a very casual player. I will never see the Nightfall strikes or Raids and I'm fine with that. Destiny 2 has the best shooting going and is a significant (not huge) step up from vanilla Destiny.

If you read or listen to any of the guys from Bungie talking about the game, they're not selling that type of game. They want you to play the content, then you can hang around or go away and then come back at the start of the next season or the next DLC drop. And then repeat the cycle.

They didn't build this game to be played endlessly, for better or worse depending on your opinions of what Destiny should be.

Could be a timing thing? I know I can fall off games for a few months because I'm not up for the type of thing it is going for. For example, I am not always in the mood for a slow and plotting game, or one that has very elaborate character sheets and such. After I played Civilization IV for the first time, I could not care less for it. It was so slow and it literally had an encyclopedia in it you basically had to know to play well. But then a few months later I tried it again and I got hooked. Spent hundreds of hours in it.

Alternatively, D2 is a lot more streamlined in the sense that it is a lot clearer what you're supposed to be doing. Destiny was not like that at all. As an enthusiast I knew what was up, but when I tried to explain it to someone for the first time I basically failed to do so and realized how convoluted it was.

I think this is the real reason a lot of players who didn't find Destiny all that appealing are absolutely loving Destiny 2. It's just all around easier to comprehend for players. They are like 10-20% of the systems their were in Destiny, and honestly, everything else has been dumbed down to almost non-choices. I think it's also the exact reason a lot of the "enthusiast" players like us are railing against it right now. We likely cherry picking how our Subclasses worked, having thousands of perk combinations and knowing which ones were best, understanding the maxes for Int, Dis, Str on Armors to get the most out of them, etc. And there is literally none of that here. I get what they were going for but it's pretty obvious they took it way too far in the opposite direction. I really hope in the future we get an expanded Mod System and I know it probably won't happen now, but some sort of freedom with our Subclasses rather than set perksets. Do that, and start actually creating decent legendary guns (or allow Mod Perks to let us slightly customize these Rolls) and I think the more "enthusiast" players will be much happier.