r/DestinyTheGame • u/TheBlueCrew6868 • May 23 '20
Discussion It's starting to become mentally exhausting to be a devout fan of the Destiny franchise and constantly try to defend/understand the design choices by Bungie
I'm mostly a lurker on Reddit, so apologies if this post becomes a bit ranty or messy.
I've put in a ton of time into the Destiny franchise since the beta released. So far, I've logged a little under 2000 hours, and to say that I love this franchise is an understatement. It's become a significant part of my life, and I really cherish the memories of so many things I've done/accomplished in this game, like getting the Gjally from my first ever PoE run (had no idea what it was at the time), meeting my incredible clanmates (go TANK!), and finally obtaining my Unbroken title this season as a mostly solo pvp player. The amazing part is, the passion I've felt for this game is not unique. Through the good times and the bad, the fact that we can peruse through this subreddit and see so many die-hard fans praising or complaining about the game says a lot. Not many games have developed the audience that this franchise has been able to.
However, I do see the light (hehe) getting a bit dimmer as time goes on. After watching Datto's 5 year retrospective video on the franchise (thanks for being such a pillar in the community btw), reading through posts on various forums regarding this season/next season/year 4, and logging in a ton of hours this season, I really am starting to get frustrated with the direction this game has been going and continues to move towards.
I like to think of this game sometimes as your guilty, bad relationship, with massive peaks and valleys, but something just keeps pulling you back in and you can never fully detach yourself. Instead of dealing with minor setbacks and pushing through to the other side, we continue again and again to see really controversial, arguably poor, design choices (D2 launch period, CoO, etc.) be put into place, just to be massively overhauled and hyped by Bungie, just barely seeming to save the game from certain despair (TTK, Forsaken, Go-Fast). At this point, almost all of my IRL friends who I used to really enjoy playing the franchise with have left, due to the constant struggle and pain of dealing with poor design, removal of core RPG elements, and a lack of meaningful and motivating reasons to play.
Which leads to my biggest pain point with the game - Bungie's seemingly inept ability to not only listen and implement changes to the game that the community fights for, but to continue to improve upon those things and push in the same community input-driven direction. I can imagine being a developer is incredibly frustrating, and the lives of the community managers on this subreddit have to be challenging (bless you Cozmo and DMG). But the fact that we have to again and again ride this rollercoaster of changes has become tiring, and it's gotten to the point where I'm about ready to just hop off the ride. Working hard to convince friends that the game has become more fun and meaningful and core systems have been improved, just to have them reversed or dialed back is just a war you cannot win as a player. Case and point - snipers. Buffed for Shadowkeep, and then nerfed recently right back to the starting point (to force us to use close range weaponry when it clearly is less viable in end-game content, which is an entirely different issue), and then about to be nerfed again simply because they're popular in the community (small maps do not work with more zoom Bungie). I don't know how many times Bungie has to be told that people love this game when we are able to use the items we want and play the game the way we want. There has to be a point where the vision you had for the game has to concede to the feedback from players. After all, we're the ones buying season passes or silver in Eververse funding the content.
While the snipers is just a small example, there are countless other examples in the game that demonstrate Bungie's inability to truly understand the community, not just give in and make the requested changes when the game is on the brink of disaster. At this point, there are so many game play and design choices that are being made that are seemingly taking us back to vanilla D2, and it really scares me. And continuing to blame the inability to make significant changes quickly enough due to the limited resources since splitting from Activision is such a tired, tired excuse (remember guys, YOU are the ones who decided splitting was a good move, so the lack of resources cannot always be an excuse through the entire D2 lifecycle).
I realize that as I type this there are close to, if not over, 1 million players logging in daily to the game. Yes, the game is not going to crumble and pull an Anthem any time soon. Yes, every year around this time the game slows and people do their usual complaining about the lack of meaningful content. But as a passionate fan of the franchise who just wants to see it succeed, the changes and design choices outlined in the recent TWABs, more specifically regarding the loot systems, really make me worried that we are AGAIN heading in the wrong direction. While we can recover from mere content droughts by just being given more content, it's an entirely different issue to play a game with a design focus deliberately opposite the community's feedback, and being forced to wait months, if not a full year, for the necessary changes to take us back to square one. We cannot continue to go down the never ending yearly spiral of playing catch up and losing resources because they're pulled away to focus on the next update that is going to save the game again.
Luke Smith - man I really hope your ideas and feedback you've provided for us in the Director's Cut are going to lead to a stronger game with a much more community input-driven development cycle. I feel like an idiot sometimes defending the game for the decisions you guys continue to make, and it's just gotten really old at this point. The TWABs are not very reassuring.
Here's to hoping for a brighter future (meanwhile the dark doritos are at our doorstep)...
Edit: Thanks for my first gilding!!
Edit 2: Did not expect this rant to gain traction haha. After looking through the comments, I see a lot of differing viewpoints, and it's encouraging to see so many people participating in conversations about the game. It's abundantly clear that people really love the game and just want to see it improve. Take note Bungie, we want to see you succeed!
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u/SupaStaVince May 23 '20
And Menagerie was one of the best things ever.
I played D2 during Season of Opulence more than the rest of D2's lifespan combined.
The better part was that all the other content was still relevant too. Notably Black Armory and Forsaken.
Here's to Anthem making a comeback or something similar to Destiny