@imjimothy: I just ran Activity on Taswell Corps, there are now 25 open spots. Rorie already linked the Giant Bomb Destiny Discord.
As far as if this is the best time to jump back into Destiny, I personally think it is. But you might want to evaluate what you want from the game first. The Forsaken Campaign is really solid, but it does leave things a bit on the open book side. That is primarily due to a pretty expansive and honestly extremely well made Post Campaign arc. That arc takes you all the way up to Destiny 2's newest content that is only available every 3 weeks, this week in fact, of the Shattered Throne Dungeon at 590 Power Level. Here is where your level of commitment as a player comes into play. Forsaken has a softcap at PL 500 and Level 50. The vast majority of players touching it will pretty easily reach this due to any gear anywhere leveling you up to this point, but you are still looking at investing a decent amount of time to get here, depending on where you start from (0 or Level 30 having finished all other content). From Warmind's finish and around 385-400 PL, your probably still looking at 25 hours, maybe less, to finish the campaign and hit 500. Then you have to unlock The Dreaming City and all the post game content, probably another few hours. Once you've done that, the real grind begins. Forsaken easily has one of the harshest leveling systems in Destiny's history post 500, with multiple softcaps (look at this chart) and certain Activities with rewards that will actually allow you to make progress at certain levels, and others that will just pretty much even you out to your current power level. To be honest, this is not something I'm the biggest fan of. Mainly because for most people, not only takes it take longer than it should, but it's rather complicated, which is why I put up a Information and Leveling Guide to all things Forsaken (some of the stuff gets into really deep hidden Dreaming City Activities). But one of the great things about Forsaken, is in any given week, there are 20-30 possible things you could be doing, with and without groups. It is the biggest and most diverse the Destiny Franchise has ever been, but it can also make the game a bit overwhelming. In any given week, you can be being pulled between 3, 4, 5, or even 6 Activities that you feel compelled to get done because they won't exist next week. It's a whole lot to handle for Completionist type players. Very few people will even get half of what Forsaken has to offer done. But if that isn't something you care about, and you are ok with just jumping in and picking the few Activities that you like, it's a pretty amazing experience. If you get hooked, like many of us, on Forsaken, you can easily spend several hundred hours in this world, and feel like you are seeing new stuff very often. It's the best the Franchise has ever been in my eyes, but I do wish they would streamline the 500-600 Power Leveling process more. You are very likely to spend 3-4 weeks, at 20+ hours per week to start unlocking the End Game content like the Last Wish Raid and finally the Shattered Throne Dungeon. And keep in mind, a lot of these End Game Quest/Activities more or less require a group, so I highly recommend both finding a Clan and checking out the Discord. There are a ton of us hanging around there who have been there and done that with everything in this expansion, so we can walk you through any questions you might have.
And the whole monetization thing is being blown out of proportion lately. Activision promised investors in a call earlier this week that they wanted to bring players back because “Some of our other franchises like Destiny are not performing as well as we'd like. Forsaken is a high quality expansion of content into the universe, honestly some of the highest quality content we've seen in the franchise to date. We have not yet seen the full core re-engage in Destiny, which has led to the underperformance against expectations to date. Some players are in ‘wait and see’ mode. If you’re in, you’re deeply engaged. If not, we think now’s the time to bring players back.” I think Activision's biggest concern here is the "full core re-engage in Destiny". With 1.9m players logging into Destiny yesterday, a Sunday and 10 weeks into Forsaken, it's safe to say that the players who own Forsaken are playing, and frequently. But a low quality bar on Curse of Osiris, and general lack of depth to the End Game in vanilla Destiny 2 last year really turned a lot of the 10 million players who purchased it off. There are a couple things of note. Bungie recently released Destiny 2 base on PC for free until Nov. 18th. They also recently announced the end of Season 4 for November 27th, which very likely signals the launch of the Black Armory DLC, which is surprising in that most players assumed it would launch a week later on Dec. 4th. They also recently announced and put in game a new Silver purchasing option in the form of Temporal Surges. These are basically the ability to buy outright previous Season Emotes for an actual cash value. To be honest, while this sounds like the real money microtransaction scummery Jim Sterling loves to rage against, this is actually a very positive thing for the game, and something I've actually been a proponent of for a long time. Cosmetic items like Emotes, in my opinion, need to be given a value and sold for an actual amount, rather than RNG loot boxes. I love that Destiny 2 allows these items, in the current season, to both be obtained for free for playing, or purchased with an in game currency in Silver Dust if it's for sale that week. But you just might not obtain that item and really want it. For a game that some players put hundreds of hours into, not being able to obtain a silly dance move can be frustrating, so removing the RNG if you decide to buy it, is a very good thing.
TLDR: Destiny 2, after a lot of blood, sweat, and tears to get here, has one of the best microtransaction stores in video games IMO. I don't expect that to change, because to be honest, it doesn't need to. Bungie is making a lot of money off it, and it's a really good system. And I strongly think systems like Termporal Surges are what Activision was talking about to Investors, and that is nothing but a good thing for the game.
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