How do I have fun?

So I recently restarted playing Destiny because I got to the point where you get the item that automatically levels you to 25. I did this on accident because there was an objective icon that I instinctively ran to without actually reading what it was I was doing. After that I went to the map screen and there was so much Icon vomit that I wasn't sure where to even start. I have a sort of OCD where I want to see all the content, if there is an icon on my map I have a need to do it. And I also don't want to level out of anything.

So with my new game I am level 5 and I'm bored to tears. I like loot games a lot. I played a shitload of games like Borderlands and Diablo and I have a lot of fun with them. The problem I'm having with Destiny is I feel lost. There's so much I could be doing but it's hard to tell what benefit those things are giving me. Without the sensory feedback of consistently getting stronger or getting new stuff the loot system loses it's luster and Destiny Isn't doing that for me in a way that feels satisfying.

I feel like I'm missing something.

Besides random quests what should I be doing? Where do I find the fun but see everything at the same time?

@fatalbanana: Destiny's real loot doesn't start now until after you reach Level 40. It's not a loot pinata game like Diable or Borderlands where you will constantly be getting loot that makes you more powerful (it does happen, but all of that gear is trash that will inevitably be replace, and soon, because it's bad). The abilities you unlock do that to varying degree's, but not really the weapons. To even do the last DLC's content you are going to need to at least hit level 25, which is why the Spark of Light was put into Destiny. For the current Rise of Iron you need to be Level 40 and Light Level 300 roughly. So the question then becomes what are you looking to get out of Destiny. It's a mediocre to bad Single player loot game. Most critics of Destiny play it this way, and it's why they don't like it. Where Destiny really shines though is as a Coop game and doing Raids and high level PvP content. Destiny's Raids are some of the best content in gaming right now, and it isn't even close. So if that is the direction you plan to go you should take your time familiarizing yourself with the game through the Single Player and learn how all of the economies work. One great thing to do would be to check out Clans with Destiny. You can look at the GB Clans, post located here to help you find others to play with from right here at Giantbomb. You might get lucky and run into some players willing to help you get familiar with the game and how it works. Some of us, like myself have around 3,000 hours into Destiny at this point so to describe the details of what you should do in such broad strokes is pretty hard, but we can pretty easily answer any detailed questions you have. I hope this helps, but in essence you just need to push on to Level 40 and get your Light up to start seeing progress like you would in other RPG's or MMO's. I hope that makes sense. The early game is pretty meaningless at this point, as people have been at this endgame for about 15 months now after Level 40. Getting new loot at that level and grinding Light Level to 400 is what it's about right now. Then optimizing your loadouts, such as reload and ammo perks, Intellect, Discipline, and Strength splits, etc and knowing how to optimize Class perk tree's for certain engagement scenarios.

You don't. It took me two expansions to figure that out, but you really, really, don't. Destiny is one of those games that kept promising to be fun in a future patch, and then never managed it. Now they've moved from telling people to wait for the next expansion to just pushing people to wait for Destiny 2.

The problem, particularly if you want to "see everything" is that Bungie has designed the game in such a way that it's virtually impossible to do that without some level of not-fun bullshit. Wanna know the lore? Download a kludgy companion phone app. Wanna raid? Better like looking at third party websites for a group. Wanna get in that group? Hope you have a specific gear set. Wanna get that gear set? You gotta wait for a limited time mission to get part of it, and then hope you remember a set of weird steps you probably need YouTube to help you with. Oh, and that item only drops 20% of the time. Just for funsies.

Hell, you wanna just add a friend? All you need to do is go the home screen, click up to your social screen, click "add friend", remember the player's obscure GamerTag, type that in, click send, hope they get the message, then wait for them to go to their home screen, see your message, click "open message", read you friend request, and click "accept". It's so simple!

@lawgamer: Yep pretty much all this. As sarcastic as my first post here was, it was with good reason. I stayed on the Destiny train through Taken King, mostly due to friends wanting to play it. I can not honestly tell you that I had much fun during any of it. While Taken King was a significant improvement, I think myself and others were only into it due to it being better then the scam Destiny Year 1 was, and I only really enjoyed TTK for the first two weeks.

It's a bad, confusing game that should have been great. Bungie made a game that is stuck in the middle of two genres, without taking the benefit of either but keeping the negatives of both. They should have made it more narrative focused, ala Halo, or gone full MMO with better "dungeons" and factions and the likes. Instead it remains this game that is painful to look at, not only because it's just kinda boring, but because it should have been SO amazing.

I have zero expectations Destiny 2 will do anything better in the grand scale.

@hestilllives19: Thanks for the help that was really detailed and helped me realize that I don't want anything to do with what Destiny's design seems to be geared towards. I'm still enjoying the core game play so I'll continue playing until I'm either forced to do something I actively don't want to or fall off completely. Either way thanks for the help.

In much the same way as any MMO, each expansion made a lot of the content before it redundant. The truth of the matter is you don't get to the fun/relevant stuff until you're near the level cap and you can take part in the PVP events and start raiding, or doing daily heroic strikes or whatever. I'm not sure what level that is these days (I don't have the newest expansion) but it shouldn't take too long.

Basically grind until you can raid. Raiding is the best part of destiny. Also the strikes in the latest expansions are much more fun than the shitty ones you have to play through in the vanilla content.

Also, to all the people saying "stop playing destiny", don't be jerks. The dude just bought the game, your "advice" is neither funny or helpful.

@lawgamer@takayamasama Yeah that pretty much sums up my experience so far. I was hoping it was just me but Destiny seems actively against getting players like me on board. God bless the people that like it but everything I have seen so far makes me wish I would have saved my money. Like i said above I'm still getting some enjoyment from the core game play so I'll keep trucking along until I fall off completely.

Thanks for the replies.

@sweep: So I should probably let go of the need to see everything, use the leveling item and grind away?

I'll give it a shot and try to ignore all those icons that are useless to me on the map. I wish there was a way to say I'm not interested and have it not show those quests and icons at all.

The level 25 jump will save you a couple of hours yeah. The story is a garbled mess for the most part, and there's a shitload of repetition to the missions - you'll frequently be sent into the same dungeon or area to complete the same style of "Run here, press a button, fight a boss" style quest. So even though you might not be as familiar with some areas, or enemy types, you're still going to end up seeing most places. I wouldn't worry about it too much. If you're finding it difficult to stay motivated, definitely jump those levels.

And yes, there's literally a billion super-obvious changes that could be made to destiny to make it more streamlined and accessible for players. The list of complaints is so long at this point that it'd probably be easier for Bungie to just start from scratch. Which is most likely what they are actually doing.

Yeah, I agree in that I don't get how the loot and lore in Destiny could be fun. I just try to enjoy jumping around and shooting the bad aliens.

I enjoyed Destiny while I played it, and I did play it mostly single player.

That's not saying that I think people are crazy for not enjoying it or anything. I'm the crazy person here.

I really like Destiny's aesthetic. I think there's a lot of awesome art and a lot of incredible environments that I enjoy just looking at and being in.

The other thing that I really liked about Destiny was its gameplay. When boiled down to pure gameplay, I felt like very few console shooters matched up. Movement felt great, shooting enemies felt great, the guns were fun to use, and so on and so forth. I also really enjoyed fighting bosses. First person shooters rarely do boss fights well and I felt like Destiny did do them well.

It almost hurts to think about how far short of its potential Destiny falls. The stuff that is there, though, was just right for me.

I believe when you have to ask that, its probably time to start something else. If the sole reason to keep playing is to not waste money, you probably wasted money anyway.

@fatalbanana: If you are getting stuck on the grind to endgame content playing single player, you are going to have the kind of Destiny experience most of the downers here have had, which is not a particularly good one. Played in that fashion, similarly to what @justin258 said while it has top of the line movement and shooting mechanics, the story is at best passable with decently neat environments. The thing is, for the millions of people that still play Destiny, and on a regular basis, we know that is absolutely not what Destiny is about, at all. It's one of the most community driven, coop focused, and interpersonal games I've ever played. Without that aspect I would have, like many players, been gone after the first few weeks. I just jump on Destiny now to hang out with my Destiny friends. We've all learned every part of the newest Raid, hit 400 on all 3 characters in both PvE and PvP gear, and don't even need loot anymore outside of amazing Legendary drops that are incredibly rare. I mean I have every Exotic in the game right now. But we still hop on once or twice a week to hang out with each other, and Destiny becomes the backdrop. That's what Destiny is able to do, more than any other game I've ever played. I think a lot of that is the design of how content like Raids work in Destiny. You want to do this awesome new content, and the Raids are amazing, and the people you complete them are bonded through that joined experience. It's pretty great. I assume it works this way in most MMO's, but having not played any other games like this I wouldn't be able to say. But I can say the guys I met here at Giantbomb are some of the best dudes I've ever met gaming and it's been a fantastic experience. You may see me complain about Destiny on here from time to time, but it's always out of love for the game and a hope that it will improve and be that game that many of us think it could or should be.

I've put about 200-300 hours into Destiny and I will say...there's not much fun there. Once you realize you have a very small pool of content to grind over and over you get over it quick. If the competitive mp were balanced and more fun I could say you have at least that...but its not, so...yeah. Destiny is the world's most expensive chat overlay.

I think playing with others is the key to Destiny. I mean some of the raids take ages to get through so you need plenty of free time for a start. I enjoyed it for a while because the actual gameplay mechanics are great but I think you need a regular group to get the most out of it. That's why I prefer Diablo III because I can just plow through bits at a time at my own pace whenever I feel like it. Ironically it's the MMO aspect of Destiny that has put me off. It is still a great game for new players though in my opinion. Even if you solo you get a decent amount of gameplay out of it.

I only got like 15 hours into destiny before never touching it again. The loot wasn't good enough to keep me engaged and the mission design up to that point nullified the solid shooting. I had just come off Halo 5 and I think the movement/shooting in that were better, so that didn't help when trying to play Destiny either. If they got either loot or mission design right, I would have been on board though.

Give up your soul than you have fun. To have fun in Destiny you need to kill a part of yourself.

If you wanna have fun with Bungie combat while experiencing minimal story, just play Halo 5's Warzone Firefight.

The raid is where its at. Killing giant monsters with other people is always fun. The lore is dumb/fun, (why are there no Destiny novels???), the art direction is great. I bought the newest expansion but I have barely played it since WoW has been eating up a bunch of my time.

Again, the Raid (with people you know) is where Destiny really shines. I hope I can invest enough time into it to get to the raid and do it a few times with fellow duders.

You don't?

I'm joking. I had fun with Destiny but compared to the promise of this fps mmo type game I thought I was getting it was a huge let down. I'm still waiting for somebody to fully realise that idea. One where forming groups and working together using different classes and abilitys ala every mmo ever but in a fps.

You really gotta get into a nice group of people who are willing to help you through the grind. It's as simple as. If you play this solo, you're gonna get bored fast. Destiny is pretty great for getting you to socialize with other people, so I gotta give the game credit for that.

@lawgamer: "You don't."

WORD.

It's nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooot a loot game. It's not Borderlands, it's not Diablo. Your expectations were shot on the offset. It's a team based skill game with MMO trappings.

It currently has the most fun multiplayer out of any shooter I've ever played in Trials of Osiris and the Raids are also something you get nowhere else. You play it for that and consider everything else side activities. Nightfalls and Strikes become fun when grinding with friends to prepare for a Raid or search for a specific weapon. The core combat is excellent and makes all that stuff pretty fun on top of it being in service of becoming more proficient at the activities you're playing it for.

I'm not trying to dismiss people who say they had no fun with it, but you had no fun because you weren't looking for what Destiny offers you, not because the game is flawed in what it offers you. It's also apparent from the arguments brought like 'the loot in Borderlands was better' and 'the story isn't good'. That's like saying the stealth in Splinter Cell is better than in Doom.

You uninstall the game and play something else.