Destiny 1 remains one of my favorite games of all time. It came out in 2014, but the expansions improved the game so much that I was still hooked by the Rise of Iron/Age of Triumph expansion in 2016.

I am much colder on Destiny 2. While the core gameplay still makes every other first-person shooter feel obsolete, Destiny 2’s structure is still worse than the first game after months of updates. After seeing the teaser for the big fall expansion “Forsaken”, I’m ready to leave the game behind entirely.

Destiny 2 launched with less features than Destiny 1, and is still struggling to catch up. The satisfying Record Book from Destiny 1 gave constant incentive to complete challenges and get rewarded for them, but Destiny 2 launched with no record book.

Many Strikes and Nightfalls in Destiny 1 had specific, themed loot that looked really cool and encouraged you to grind for a powerful weapon or cool-looking armor. Destiny 2 got rid of strike-specific rewards and made the entire Strike system feel less important. I don’t know anyone who was purposefully grinding strikes for the first few months of the game: it was an irrelevant mode.

After hearing the community complain about Destiny 2 lacking quality of life changes and events that Destiny 1 had, Bungie started slowly rolling out a roadmap of changes. But this made me even more frustrated because they were just adding things back that were already in the first game, or making irrelevant changes.

Bounties should have launched with Destiny 2. Multi-emotes should have launched with Destiny 2. Heroic Strike Modifiers should have launched with Destiny 2.

The Eververse Store (microtransaction store) also hurt my enjoyment of the game by nerfing customization. I grinded for specific Shaders in Destiny 1 so I could have my characters in specific colours: Purple for Hunter, Red/White for Warlock, and whatever for Titan because Titan sucks and I don’t play them.

People frequently claim that “cosmetic only microtransactions are fine”, but this is an insult to the art teams that work hard to make video games look cool. “Things looking cool” is an important part of the gameplay experience: it’s why people spend so much time and money trying to get skins in Overwatch. And because I can’t make my characters and weapons look cool in Destiny 2, I care less about the game.

The Shader system in Destiny 2 changes them from unlimited-use items to consumables, so you are encouraged to spend money and buy more shaders from the microtransaction store. It is a bad change, and something that will likely not be reverted in the future. Skinning your guns was cool but I have never agreed with making shaders consumable.

Now that we’ve seen what Bungie plans for Destiny 2’s fall expansion, I have no interest in paying money to experience any of these changes. I don’t care about PvP changes or bringing back random rolls.

What I want from Destiny 2:

• Unlimited use shaders
• Modifiers for Weekly Heroic Strikes and Weekly Nightfall Strikes
• Don’t bring back random rolls. It’s a grind, but not an enjoyable one at all
• In-game Triumphs/return of the Record Book from Destiny 2
• Strike-specific loot

Some of these things are coming back, based on the roadmap Bungie has shown. But they’ve taken too long to bring Destiny 2 up to Destiny 1 standards. When I watch the Forsaken video, I am not excited. I feel no need to spend $40 to make Destiny 2 as good as the first. After being hooked and playing almost daily since 2015, I feel no need to boot up Destiny 1 or 2 anymore. I just want to play something else.

Destiny 2 did update to have specific unique rewards for Nightfalls in an update most people missed since it was during the time between expansions.

@perfidioussinn: I'm not going to say I disagree with your sentiments about Destiny 2, heck I had 2,336 hours into Destiny 1 over a 3 year period of time and after being pretty much done with Warmind I'm sitting at a far less 370 hours. I would consider myself a pretty hardcore Destiny player, and one of the most around here, and it just hasn't been as good of a game as Destiny 1. I do however want to talk about a few of the things you want from Destiny.

1. Shaders - I have actually grown quite fond of the piecemeal consumable aspect of Shaders in Destiny 2. They allow players to vary their look in unique and interesting ways. The idea surrounding it is solid, and it's function is good, but I agree it isn't without it's problems. My issues with it are the drastic lack of inventory space (there are only 50 slots, and 124 different Shaders), you cannot delete them in bulk if you don't want a specific shader, and no way to purchase shaders if you run out other than if they are Eververse and are the Weekly Items and you spend Bright Dust on them. They are fixing the bulk deletion issue in September, but I also hope they address the other two major problems with Shaders. I hope the new Vanity section under Collections will allow us to Purchase Shaders we own, just like it will Exotic's and possible Legendary Weapons/Armors. If that is the case, I see all of the Shader problems being resolved.
2. Modifiers for Heroic/Nightfall Strikes - These already exist in current Destiny 2. Specifically the Prestige Nighfall is a ton of fun in it's current iteration, and outside of adding new and more interesting Modifiers, I really hope they don't change it much (other than going from Singes to actual Burns, or 25% boosts to 200% like D1 for Elements). Heroic Strikes on the other hand often come with some pretty dickish modifiers that I'd like to see adjusted. There are currently whole days that aren't worth doing at all, but the structure itself is really good.
   1. Strike Specific Loot - In Destiny 2, this is actually Nightfall Specific Loot. While I'm not going to say it's great in any way, but it does exist, though I'd love to see some serious improvements in this department come September. The drop rates are way too low, there isn't enough of it, and what is there just really isn't worth grinding for. I think the DFA Hand Cannon is really the only worthwhile item.
3. Random Rolls - Personally I think the return of random rolls will be a good thing, if the advise of players at the Community Summit like Mercules904 is heeded. According to those that attended, long and thoughtful discussions were had at the Summit about the Pros/Cons of Random Rolls, and how an improved Mod system and Vendor Sales could mitigate the RNGness of Random Rolls. I would take a wait and see approach on Random Rolls before we jump to too many conclusions just yet.
4. Triumphs/Record Books/Collections - All of these are returning to Destiny 2. Year 1 of Destiny 2 Triumphs are returning this Summer, so that will be no different than any other year in Destiny's history. In September, we will be getting an entire Triumph's Tab on the main menu to track thing's we've accomplished. Having a Tab in this way kind of makes a Book irrelevant, but they may drop an end of the year Record Book with rewards for completing things both this Summer and beyond. It would fit rather nicely in our new Pursuits Tab that currently track's Quests. In addition to this, removing Collections from the Vault and adding more than just Exotic Weapons/Armors and Emblems is a pretty great change for September as well, especially the ability to pull any previously obtained items (not sure how this will work or if it even will, for Legendary Items and Random Rolls).

While I don't necessarily think some of these specific reason's are reason's to be skeptical, I do however think at this point, especially after what Destiny 2 has been, being hesitant to jump onboard is the logical move. I would write out my thoughts on the Forsaken Reveal, but I think Datto pretty much sums them up below in about 4 mins.

My biggest worries and points that I will need clarity from Bungie before September are as follows...

• Ammo Economy for new Weapon System.
• Current Kinetic/Energy TTK for PvP.
• Ability power tuning for Grenades/Melee, specifically in PvP.
• If the 9 new Supers are replacing or in addition to existing 9 Supers and Subclasses. I hope they are just new Perk Tree choices like how Sentinel's Ward of Dawn works (I assume this is the case since we saw a Ward of Dawn in the reveal).
• Will all items in the Collections tab be able to be reacquired (Legendaries or Shaders).
• Will we start seeing more frequent balance patches like they have been teasing, because even once per new season has proved to be far too infrequent. Destiny is better served by more frequent small changes, rather than drastic changes a couple times a year.
• Will we see changes to the bad implementation of Ranked Playlists for PvP?
• Will Trials finally get some much needed updates? It's dying, as it has gone from a once 400k players per weekend Activity to struggling to have 50k a weekend.
• Will we get changes to Patrol Activities to allow more than 3 players in an instance on purpose? That part of Escalation Protocol has been a Nightmare on Consoles.

These are the answers I want for September (and some more I can't think of currently). When they answer these questions, I will start to feel a lot more at ease about jumping back in come September.

Update: A few of these things have been addressed by Bungie and people who were at the Summit now that their NDA is mostly up for that.

1. The Ammo Economy has been addressed slightly, but it is ever changing. At E3, the current build has a set ammo for each Slot and Weapon Type. Snipers and Shotguns spawn with about 8-10 rounds, and can hold about as much as they do now, roughly 18-22 in reserve at max. Bows seem to spawn with about 30 and hold about 60 arrows. Current Kinetic/Energy Weapons (HC, Auto, Pulse, Scout, Sidearm, SMG) seem to hold their current amounts of ammo. Power Weapons seem to hold their current PvE varients of Power Ammo. Since E3 is only showing off the new Gambit mode, which is PvEvP, it should be assumed these values more closely associate with PvE rather than what PvP will be. Grenade Launchers, Rocket Launcher, and Swords seem to only exist in the Power Weapon slot currently, whereas Bows, Snipers, and Shotguns have been seen only in the Energy and Kinetic slots. It is assumed however that Fusion Rifles will also be relegated to the Kinetic/Energy slot and Linear Fusion Rifles to the Power slot, but neither of those have been seen to date. Bungie has however stated that certain high powered Exotics will remain in the Power slot like Legend of Acrius (which we have seen in promo's), D.A.R.C.I., and Merciless. This is all subject to change however, as some early reports from the Summit reported a slightly different Ammo Economy with Gambit that was seen there, but all of this information is what we know as of E3's demo.
2. Both Bungie and those coming from the Summit have stated that the 9 Supers are in addition to, rather than replacing, the existing 9 Subclasses. We do not know how that will work, but I highly suspect it involves adding new Skill Tree's we will have to unlock using the new Levels and Skill Points we will gain for Forsaken, just like Vanilla worked. We do know that they utilize the base Subclass abilities that they are already a part of, so strong neutral game Subclasses getting better Supers, will be very strong (looking at Nightstalker with it's new roaming Bladedancer ish Super).
3. According to Scott Taylor, the Collections tab will allow you to pull any Exotic you own, any Y1 Legendary you own, and any Shader you own, out. It's very likely this will have a cost associated with it, be it Glimmer or Legendary Shards, but this will provide a great way for players more easily get rid of both Legendaries, and Shaders they do not want to utilize, knowing they only need to keep the Shaders they utilize often on hard, and being able to create, say 10 New Monarchy Diamonds or Dawn and Dusk Shaders (two of my favorites) at any time. Combine this with the ability to mass delete Shaders, and the Shader System will be in a much better shape than it currently is. And if the Collections tab works similarly to how the Exotics Vault works now (it keeps you Masterwork and Catalyst progress), it may even remember what Legendaries you have Masterworked, which would be really nice.

@hestilllives19: I guess I've been pretty out of the loop considering I barely noticed Nightfall Specific Loot. The biggest problem for me is that the game has been so uninteresting for so long, even Forsaken wouldn't bring me back.

And apparently I'm in the minority but random rolls sound really really bad to me. I remember grinding for a good Imago Loop for way too long in D1. That's a grind for the sake of a grind, and is not satisfying for me.

Destiny 2 got boring for me the second I got through the single player. I only did the rest of the content to get through the platinum, which was way easier/faster than Destiny 1. Destiny 2 showed Bungie has been creatively tapped and that their management still has no interest in allowing for a cohesive, functioning dev team. I have a feeling Bungie is going to be spinning tires for a long time since everyone of note in that company, from a creative standpoint, has left; its really a shame to see bungie turn into this after how community driven they were even 8 years ago (basically anytime pre-Destiny 1).

I pretty much like everything Bungie saying about Forsaken, but tbh I think I'm done just making Destiny 2 good Destiny isn't enough for me. While playing Curse of Osiris it felt like I already played the campaign and run the strikes none of the new content feels new anymore I'm really tired of the formula and re-skinned enemies.

@hestilllives19: I've never seen an instance in free roam solo even half full its been flat out broken since day zero, as someone who works nights D2 feels like a ghost town.

The shader system is more poorly thought out than greedy, you can’t go into eververse and say i want this shader here is my real money. You can only purchase the 4 randomly selected shaders with the indirect silver dust you get from dismantling eververse items. It wouldn’t be that bad of a system if they implement the thing that basically everyone suggests and allow us to buy it with glimmer or something anytime assuming we have earned it once.

No need to go over modifiers again, but I do think some of the modifiers are fun and interesting. I also don’t think we need burns instead of singe, heroic strikes are already a joke to me again, and with an even remotely competent team you can kill most bosses instantly which is hilarious.

I think changing the strike loot to nightfall loot is totally fine, even a good idea....however you can’t have some of the loot be ghost shells and ships. Especially when some strikes get a great auto rifle that has zen moment or rampage, or a great hand cannon with rampage.

You can say it should have been there at launch until we are all blue in the face, but it wasn’t. The realities of their dev cycle being what they are I doubt we will see all the improvements in destiny 2 in their eventual destiny 3. Just seems to be too hard to change things on the fly for them.

@perfidioussinn: I think it depends on how it is implemented entirely. The current system is extremely boring, and only allows for Weapons to be what Bungie creates them to be. In the case of about 98% of all weapons, that has meant the Weapon's in Destiny 2 have been awful. How did we get to a place where Explosive Rounds had to be neutered because in PvE only the Weapons with it were worthwhile (Better Devil's, Purpose, Nameless Midnight, and Mannannan SR4). Explosive Rounds was barely a mediocre Destiny 1 perk, and nothing changed between the two games on it. The only gun in Destiny 1 that Explosive Rounds shined on was Burning Eye, and that is only because it allowed you to 1 shot Shanks during Aksis for Wrath of the Machine. The grind for Weapons in Destiny 2 will, by the Weapon's very nature, be less RNG based though, simply because D2 Weapons have 1 less primary Perk, so that alone increases the chance of "God Rolls". Many Weapon Tiers will still also come with their Tier Perk like Lightweight or Full-Auto, so you will really only be looking for a single main perk per weapon, and a middle column perk that doesn't ruin the weapon. If this new Random Roll system does deploy, like was hinted at by Bungie in the Vidoc, and we know was suggested to them at the Community Summit with Mods as an applicable 2nd main Perk, I really don't feel like there will be a terrible amount of more RNG to these Random Rolls, but it will allow for some significantly more powerful Weapons to start existing. If all of this also come in conjunction with the Rise of Iron Vendor Weapon Sales system, where each Vendor sells 4-5 Static Rolls and they rotate each week, I think we will be in a lot more friendly and powerful situation in terms of Weapons. That's why I say we need to give Random Rolls a chance come September. It's not as scary of a proposition as many are assuming it is.

Note: Keep in mind, throughout D1, Exotics, Raid, Trials, and special Activity Weapon Rewards were always Static Rolls. I don't see that changing in September, even with the return of Random Rolls for the general pool of Legendaries.

Edit: Keep in mind there have been a few powerful Legendary Weapons as of late that kind of break the crappy Legendary Fixed Roll mold, so I really hope Bungie takes note that players really enjoy this. Those weapons have just been extremely hard to obtain by following very specific routes and grinding. Those examples are Redrix Claymore and the Ikelos Shotgun. Both are flirt with the power level an Exotic should have as a Legendary, similar to some really epic and memorable D1 Legendaries like Fatebringer, Hung Jury (Dead Orbit Vendor), Black Hammer, Ex Machina, etc. The Ikelos Shotgun might be one of the most powerful weapons in Destiny's history in fact, as 2x damage from a melee hit is insane for a Full-Auto Shotgun. I'd love to see this continue going forward.

@thepanzini: Do you mean the matchmaking on Planets? They changed how it works for Destiny 2. In D1 it was 3 Fireteams of 3, but only 3 possible Fireteams. In D2, it should load up to 9 players total, but not cap however many Fireteams like D1. I've been in several Escalation Protocol instances where the group I was in owned 3 Fireteams, but we couldn't get 9 players because there were too many solo players around, so we only had groups of 2-3, and couldn't get all 9 of us in. The instancing is very weird though, if you requeue into a zone solo, you actually hit a new server entirely, so you will see a new instance of players. That's how many of us have been trying to find others for EP lately. I'm not sure what problem you are having though that you aren't finding very active servers, because on PS4, we are having the opposite problem, as there are too many active servers, you aren't able to reliably find players you know are from your own city (your own house in some cases). Servers are also often too full if you do end up finding another friend, which has led to some very unfriendly requests from random strangers to leave their Mars zones so their friends can join. It's a bad deal all around. PC on the other hand has a much smaller population, so you may not be seeing very crowded instances, but that is also allowing PC players to much more easily find each other on purpose. I hope all of that makes sense. This is why Public instance matchmaking is one of my biggest concerns going into September, it's something I really hope they fix, especially if they plan on doing more Escalation Protocol type content, which I hope they do. It's a very fun Activity when you can line up the Matchmaking properly with 8 other players. They could actually fix all of this is they just allowed players leaving a party to stay in an instance without going to Orbit, that way players could load into an empty instance, have the 2 other members drop, but stay in zone, then have others join in on them. It should be rather easy to fix (I say this as not a Game Dev, so what do I know) and I know it's both been suggested and seen by Bungie, so I'm hoping some kind of fix along these lines happens.

@hestilllives19:Totally agree, they need more interesting perks, the fact that faster movement while ADS`ing is even a main trait on some guns makes me sad. I hadnt considered that some cool perks could be tied to mods since i felt like they were going to have that be how you swapped a weapons slot. i.e. you apply an energy mod and it goes to the energy slot, you apply a kinetic mod it moves to primary.

@perfidioussinn: I also wanted to mention that you can get most everything in the eververse much easier now, they have this prismatic matrix, its just a punch out card every week. you get a free activation every week, and you can bank up to three. You will never get dupes and it makes getting the armor set even easier if thats what you want. It was always easy since they sell one part of the set for bright dust every week, but now you can do it faster i guess. Not a fan of any of the season 3 set, but i did like season 2s armor and thought it should have been the raid lair armor personally.

I got the game with the humble monthly and I enjoyed everything up until I got the aggressively hard 260 soft cap. Now I'm just grinding and using whatever guns have the higher numbers even if I prefer my old 240 grenade launcher. It feels shitty in a way that seems derived to drive me towards the $35 season pass which I understand will instantly make the grind vanish. It almost made me want to put it down and maybe buy Forsaken, which I understand will have another item that makes the grind instantly disappear.

@personandstuff: The reason that happened is because you dont have access to the content that drops higher power level stuff, from now on only raids and weekly milestones will ever increase your light. I would wait and see what these new packages for the expansions are going to be, but yes, the only way to increase your light outside of weekly milestones would be to buy the new packs.

@personandstuff: Hmmm, that's very interesting. I'm not going to say I'm entirely surprised that the OG 260 softcap is still a thing for Vanilla only owners, but that isn't how I was under the impression that it was working. I honestly thought the move to a 340 softcap happened for all players regardless of DLC ownership, so I had thougth for Vanilla players such as yourself it was extremely easy to hit the 300 Cap (305 with Mods). I assume you still have access to the Call to Arms, Clan XP, Leviathan, Trials of the Nine, and Flashpoint/Nightfall when they are Vanilla Destinations/Strikes. These are still going to be your go to Activities to get past 260, just like they were for all of us back in Vanilla. I'm legitimately curious about all of this though, as I haven't logged into my PC copy since Curse of Osiris, and I only own Vanilla D2 there.

Much more thoughtful than I care to be with Destiny 2. The asinine design flaws weren’t immediately apparent to me, though I found it odd that I never felt the need to change my gear for 40 or so hours.

Loot is a big problem, as is the lack of untimed nightfalls and other co-op activities left behind.

Better coop, loot stat rolls, and that cycle of hunt for better loot, then hunt for just-as-good cooler loot, then better loot, then just-as-good cooler loot would all help.

I gave up, though. Taken King and Rise of Iron were some good times. That may be my most played content this generation.

Bungie’s recovery with those D1 expansions and subsequent absolute implosion with Destiny 2 design choices have me out, over it, at peace, and happy to be gone.

Whenever I play it I'm just reminded how much it feels like halo, but without the tightness of design. There's no balance around the weapons, less variety of enemy types. In halo you know how many shots it takes to break an enemy's shields, how long the reload time is. Destiny its all dependant on the enemys hp scaling and your weapons random stats. Now they have to display hp bars above everyone's heads to make up for what was intuitive 15 years ago

I stupidly bought the annual pass last year and have just recently come back to the game, figuring I should at least see what those rip-offs "expansions" were.

More than anything, I can't believe how disjointed everything feels. It's like the entire game is the product of 2-3 different teams with vastly different ideas of what the game should be. They keep saying they want it to be casual, but design the best features to really only be usable by hard-core players with a regular group. They want loot to feel "epic" and have a "story" behind it, but Exotics drop like Pez and you can pretty much buy anything you want from Xur.

Even looking at their "Road Map" I get the same impression. For example, what's the purpose of having "In-game Lore" when you have also stated that future expansions will not be story focused? It's just bizarre. I think they need to have a sit down and decide what they actually want their game to be before they start putting together all these grand expansion plans.

I go back and forth with Destiny 2, but at the end of the day it's a great game to have installed on my ps4 for the times I have no other games to play or just want to jump in and play a strike for 20 minutes. Yes, it's insanely annoying that they had a near perfect product at the end of Destiny 1's life and threw it all away for part 2, but it still feels really good to play. The shooting, the movement, the different classes are second to none.

I hope at the end of the Bungie/Activision contract a big shake up happens...whether its that Activision buys the IP and I can be free, or Bungie keeps it and self publishes it going forward, in the hopes that their actual vision sees the light of day.

@chipwarrior: The AI is also light years behind Halo...which is a shame.

I think this is because you are level capped to vanilla D2, which is (maybe) 20

I'm a pretty hardcore Destiny player and my interest in the series was at its lowest point pre-Warmind (I personally think Osiris is the worst x-pac they've released and base D2 of course had serious issues of its own), but they've made some small steps in the right direction with Warmind and if they deliver on everything they showed in the Forsaken teaser I think it really will be another Taken King-like moment for the series.

It's still ridiculous they threw out so much that had made D1 great with D2 but I'm optimistic, even excited about the series again.

edit:

@breq I think the "in-game lore," if it's like D1's grimoire but in-game, is actually a smart move, even if the three Y2 add-ons after Forsaken are less story focused. Developing the x-pac campaigns and their associated cutscenes obviously takes a fair amount of resources and people burn through them in like 2 hours. I think a lot of the best parts of Destiny lore was buried in the grimoire cards that barely anyone saw, so if they create an in-game version of that where they can go to town with flavor text and developing the more interesting parts of Destiny lore through text while devoting development resources to new, repeatable content, like strikes/raids/the new PvEvP mode (without worrying much about cutscenes and campaign missions), that might be a smart move.

FYI, humble bundle put the Destiny 2 expansion on sale today. With then humble monthly discount, it's 49% off. I'm not sure how bad I feel about but I bought it. I know there are reasons to raise the level cap for expansion players but it's still a bad experience. And if feels very artificial.

I'm totally over this franchise and whatever Bungie is now. Fool me once, basically. I gave them a second chance with Destiny 2 and they blew it worse than they did in the first Destiny. The amount of underhanded garbage people let them get away with blows my mind. That's fine people like it but I'm not going to give them my money anymore. They make no meaningful changes to their games, they rehash content from years prior, they rehash the exact same enemies with new colors, they put less and less story content in their games, and people just eat it up. At least with something like The Division they actually made good on their game by actually making changes to their game post-launch even after all the (legitimate) complaints at launch and with the endgame. The worst part is knowing what this company was even at the end of their run with Halo...I have similar complaints with Bioware but I've never seen a game dev be handed such a great opportunity and screw it up all on their own.

the funniest thing is how 1UP/EGM era Luke Smith would have railroaded a company/game like this but now is part of that lunacy.

As a committed day 1 Destiny player who sank over 700 hours into Destiny, proudly unlocking my 'Age of Triumph" T-Shirt, I can't agree with you more about Destiny 2. Despite my efforts to really get into the game, I keep hitting a wall of frustration. Right at launch I was frustrated by the merging of special and heavy weapon slots, consumable shaders, and the elimination of collections kiosks. Beyond launch we've had two lackluster DLCs. r/DestinytheGame has turned into a toxic swamp of demands and I just get excited about a game that used to make me wake up early on Friday to see what Xur had to sell.

I have not made up my mind on whether or not I'll be pulling the trigger on Forsaken, but if this was a D1 expansion I would have ordered it and the expansion pack the moment it was announced.

Bungie are so close to making the game id LOVE but at the same time so fucking far away from it. So far infact that I didn't even bother to play Destiny 2. Yet, don't right, this type of game could be my absolute favorote.