@sweetz: I always try to keep my mouth shut when these posts come up because as the top poster on the Destiny forums, I think my opinion comes off a bit biased, because I honestly love Destiny and it's why I put over 3,000 hours into it over the past 28 months. But I think a question about whether to buy or not buy Destiny at this point comes down to this... What do you want to get out of Destiny?
Many players have come into, during many points over the past 28 months and either loved or hated it, and it all comes down to that one question. If you come into Destiny looking for a great story, a Mass Effect space Odyssey in FPS RPG form, I hate to tell you, at it's best Destiny is not that game. It's story has always been, even at it's best passable, and at it's worst just downright bad. It's best lore, and there are some good things there, are locked behind Grimoir card only accessible via Bungie's website, or hinted at through gamemodes and ongoing side stories like Iron Banner, Raids, Hidden Story missions, etc. It is not a very single player friendly game, and was never designed to be. It's also not Diablo, or Borderlands. So your loot driven heart will go cold looking to slowly upgrade your character via loot. It's not that type of game. All loot before Legendaries and Exotics are garbage, and will never be used by you outside of getting you to the point of being able to obtain that sacred Exotic/Legendary gear. Your abilities in Destiny come in the form of your 3 Subclasses, one of which you are going to have to wade through now old content to locate. Speaking of old content, the UI is going to be a massive overload at first. Destiny's item system is incredibly convoluted and complicated. Mostly due to the fact that they have had to restructure it because it was broken at nearly every launch of DLC, or about 5 times now. Many launch players will hardly recognize the game as it is now. Now as far as content there is a massive amount of content, but it's going to be a bit of sensory overload if you will. The game is going to throw Quests from Destiny, The Dark Below, House of Wolves, The Taken King, The Y2 April Update, Rise of Iron, and as of Tuesday The Dawning at you right as you boot up. It's going to be hard to tell what to do, where to go, and you will be easily overwhelmed. Lack of Content is far from Destiny's problem at this point. Now if this is the type of game you were looking for and these things turn you off, do not get Destiny right now. Wait until Destiny 2 and try to jump in then.
Now that I've probably scared you off will all of the bad parts, here is what Destiny really is, what you should do if you plan on getting Destiny, and why it's actually a pretty fantastic time to jump in on the franchise before Destiny 2 comes along. Destiny is a Coop game, and one of the best Coop games ever designed. It is built to be played with other people. From a PvE standpoint, connecting with others is fantastic. All PvE content is designed around a 3 player fireteam (outside of Raids which I will touch on it a bit). The game plays and feels best within a Fireteam that can Super, create orbs, which allows Super Chaining, and watch each others back, and Res each other if they die. That shooting and ability use feels fantastic, and is universally agreed as the best part of Destiny, that minute to minute gunplay. No FPS on the market does it better. To be honest, after putting so many hours into Destiny, it's really hard to even touch games like Call of Duty or Battlefield, as Destiny just feels far superior to them in that regard. And while many of us are tired of fighting Fallen, Vex, Hive, Cabal, and Taken, there really are a massive amount of enemies in Destiny to learn how they work and how to counter each and every one of them. There are 43 base enemies in Destiny according to the IGN wiki, many of those have Boss variations and several of the Raid specific enemies such a Gorgons weren't listed there either. There are 6 explorable open world areas, 16 Strikes (17 on PS4, 3 of which are being remade on Tuesday with variations and another 3 from Rise of Iron that had variations as well), and 4 Raids. The current leveling system past your actual level (1-40) is called Light Level and goes up to 400. The current content, Rise of Iron starts at level 40 and 290 LL. But upon purchase you are given what is called a Spark of Light. It is an item that can be used to Level you instantly to 40 and give you 280 LL gear. I would highly recommend using this to jump the hurdle many of us had to go through in getting a character to that point (likely save you 20-30 hours of mindless grinding for no reason and not gaining any progress towards end game). Now as far as Light Leveling goes, they have made major changes since Rise of Iron dropped, and now just playing the Siva Strike Playlist will get you up to 365 LL gear. Playing the Heroic Strike Playlist will get you to 385 LL. After that Exotic Engrams, Skeleton Key Treasures, Iron Banner, Trials of Osiris, and Heroic Wrath of the Machine are the ways in which to get all the way up to 400 LL. If you do not plan on playing the Heroic WOTM Raid or Trials of Osiris, hitting 400 LL is completely unnecessary, as you can easily do anything else in Destiny at 375-380 LL (complete leveling guide here). Most of your time in Destiny will be spent doing similar activities on repeat trying to obtain Exotic Weapons/Armor and Legendary Weapons/Armor with specific rolls of Intellect/Dicipline/Strength (effects how quickly your abilities: Super, Grenade, and Melee recharge) and perks such as Hand Cannon or Scout Rifle Reloader and extra Sniper or Shotgun Ammo and Extra Rocket or Machine Gun Ammo, etc. A lot of my time has been spent looking for Artifacts and gear with specific perks and those RNG stat rolls so that I can have special abilities like my Artifacts that either Generate Super 50% quicker for Teammates once my Super is up (4 minutes down to 2 minutes) or always on Radar with a Primary equipped. That and having perfect 5-5-1 splits on Super recharge, Grenade recharge, and Melee recharge. But if you don't care about min/maxing yourself, you won't be spending as much time doing that stuff, or collecting all of the Exotics in the game.
The biggest draw to Destiny are the 4 Raids. Wrath of the Machine, Kings Fall, Crota's End, and Vault of Glass from newest to oldest. Wrath of the Machine is the only Raid that will drop current Light Level gear, so in essence it's the only viable Raid right now. Which is ok, because it is easily the best Raid to date in Destiny (in my opinion) second to the original Raid Vault of Glass. These are 6 player mission that take between 30 minutes and an hour to complete when the group already knows how they work, but going in blind can take many hours to figure out the mechanics to, as they are pretty complicated scenarios most of the time. They are easily, at least in my opinion, the best content in all of gaming on your first playthrough, and still pretty satisfying in the runs through them thereafter. Those runs being to perfect how to do the Raid and get loot. The biggest drawback to Raids is the fact that you have to have a premade fireteam of 6 Guardians. Which for many people is either hard or impossible. That is why, if you search this forum you will find a lot of Clans (link is to our Giantbomb Destiny Clans) and Raid searching feature like 100.io (our 100.io page to find Raid Groups). You can also use sites like DestinyLFG.com or DestinyLFG.net, but those tend to be a mixed bag, as I've had better luck with other GBers from here. My biggest suggestion would be if you get Destiny, join one of our clans, work on getting leveled up, and try to get into groups with clanmates and have them help you along to understand parts of Destiny that may confuse you. Likely most of the time those guys will help you out, and Raid with you, as most Destiny players, like me have friends lists of over 50 other Destiny players to do activities with. Mine is closer to 90 Clanmates on PS4 and 120 PSN friends, but that's mostly because I play a lot and am a Clan leader of those 90 or so Guardians.
As it doesn't sound like you are much interested in PvP, all I will say is this. While is has huge problems, as I stated in another post above, its something I hated at first but grew to absolutely love once I understood it. In and of itself it's pretty fantastic, though I wish it's Matchmaking architecture wasn't as awful as it is, which causes bad lag issues. And Bungie has a bad habit of letting the PvP get stale by not changing things often enough, but those are nitpicks of someone who has put thousands of hours into it.
Here is why it's a great time to jump in right now. The Dawning, their Christmas event, kicks off tomorrow. So there should be a slight uptick in active players. Even without that Destiny is consistently a top 10 Twitch game, 28 months later, and PS4/Xbox One have well over 1 million active players each week, even in downtime. Plus it is highly likely (this is far from a guarantee, but is highly speculated) that Bungie is going to relaunch Vault of Glass, and Crota's End at current Light Level (or whatever the LL changes to) with the April Update early next year. So it is likely those activities will again become relevant and people will be running through them before Destiny 2. Buying Destiny now gives you plenty of time to get oriented with Destiny and level up before that launches in April, and then you can go back through the old Raids with fresh eyes so to speak.
If you can find Destiny The Collection on sale, it's a great value for your money. I've put several hundred hours into Rise of Iron alone. It's a game you can pretty much play endlessly. But it isn't a very good solo player experience and if that is what you are looking for, you may want to look somewhere else, because Destiny is at it's best when played with other people. Good luck with your PS4 Pro.
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