I’ve been using Destiny to torture myself about how I hate the way my desires for playing games has evolved.
Halo was a fun game. Certainly for it’s time, even if it hasn’t aged well. I spent countless hours playing that game. I played Assault on the Control room hundreds and hundreds of times. Every difficulty, different strategies. There was nothing “in it” for me except having fun.
Destiny 2 is a better game. I’m playing on PC, my preferred platform. It looks better. It runs better. There is more variation in playstyles, builds, strategies. Heroic strikes have changing modifiers which reward and challenge in different wys, and swap each day. There are more missions. I can customize and decorate my character. I can play online and show off my skills to other players. I get gear and, while not great, have something to work towards.
But I don’t like it.
I never walked away from Halo thinking, “that was bullshit, what a waste of time.”
Destiny though?
I hate when 3 of my 4 powerful armor rewards are boots, already my highest slot. I hate when 4 of my 4 powerful weapon rewards are power slot, already my highest level weapon.
It gets me frustrated that I have no control over how I progress. I just spend time to roll the dice.
It gets me frustrated that my progress is just a number slowly going up, with almost no change in how the game plays.
I hate when the heroic modifier is grounded, punishing players for jumping, a major part of what makes combat cool, and tied to a number of builds and strategies.
I hate when it’s Flashpoint Mercury, with one event I need to wait to do two or three times, depending on how many side events I’m running around trying to participate in.
I hate that as a solo player there are about two hours a week per character during which I can progress. A game that claims it wants to be my hobby locks me out of making my meaningless number go up in about a day each week depending on my play schedule. If I had a raid group, or Nightfall team, this would go up at the start of each expansion as we learn the raid. Then it would settle back down to three or four hours a week. It blows my mind that this is the case.
But I played Assault on the Control Room hundreds of times. The Cartographer hundreds of times. The Pillar of Autumn hundreds of times.
I couldn’t customize or see my character. My number didn’t go up. I didn’t have abilities or jetpacks/triple jumps/momentum magic. No ults. No abilities. Fewer weapons. Fewer missions, with less variation. Worse controls. Worse graphics. Worse shooting.
I hate that change in my motivation.
I really hope Anthem gets that right.
If you offer progression, customization, expression, variable playstyles, you have to nail a lot of it. If you don’t, I won’t complain that I’m a solo player, who used to have a large group that raided. They we’re right to quit. I feel wrong for staying.
