It’s insane how little effort seems to be put into the new player experience. I’m constantly telling my friends that destiny is my favorite game but no they shouldn’t try it because there isn’t a good entry point anymore and I don’t want to spend weeks guiding them.

I took a 2 year break after forsaken and when I came back pretty much everything I had played years ago was wiped from the game. I understand it’s hard to keep people happy but it’s kinda nuts that they removed so much from the game and still haven’t replaced large portions of what they took away (eg gambit and pvp maps). It feels weird knowing I paid for that content (red war and forsaken campaigns) but can’t access them anymore.

I played destiny religiously, did all my weekly stuff, told my wife we couldn’t do anything that evening, since I needed to do something before the reset, things like this. During Witch Queen I fell behind my buddies since I wanted to play the campaign on legendary as we had done during each Halo release, but they didn’t want to, since it wasn’t „economical“ to play it Legendary the first time. This was my wake up call, that something was seriously wrong.

Since I wasn’t Raid ready in time, I fell off hard as soon as VotD released and didn’t really come back. Paradoxically: Playing Witch Queen‘s campaign on legendary alone or with Randos was the most fun I had with Destiny in ages.

Yup.

The backlash came to a head due to a combination of a few things.

1. Lightfall release was a mess, and not well-received. Primarily walling off lore in the paid-for seasonal content did NOT go over well at all.
2. Consistent server problems (much worse since Lightfall dropped)
3. Cheating in PvP (which there has been a decent crackdown by Bungie recently)
4. The announcement of Marathon (where all their primary PvP devs went)
5. The video by streamer Aztecross on monetization creep in the game, and subsequent responses by other streamers.
6. Silence from Bungie, or updates such as this one that don't really adequately address the message players are trying to send.

All just my opinion/feelings on this shit.

The problems have been building since last year. Plunder and Seraph were less stable and more buggy. Plunder was kinda panned as a bad season by some, but between a Showcase promising us features we'd been wanting for years (in-game Loadouts, in-game LFG, a renewed focus on the ritual playlists, probably more I'm forgetting) and Seraph's awesome story and (imo) fun missions, some hype came back for a lot of us.

Lightfall itself was a mixed bag, but they eventually made progress on the stability issues (credit where it's due, shit is a lot more stable for me). It had story issues, but they weren't WORSE than previous story issues imo, just a regression. It wasn't a GREAT place, but if they fixed stability it would be ok.

Then the SotG comes out, which says (loosely translated) "Stop asking us to make more PVP/Gambit maps, we're never gonna do it like you want because it wouldn't make us enough money. Also no more free armor, because y'all didn't appreciate our basic ass armor sets as much as the ones that make you into a fucking t-rex, just pay up piggies"

If they had not said anything, it would've been better than posting a "We, a company purchased for billions of dollars, can't do the #1 thing our fanbase is asking for because it wouldn't make us enough money".

There is some good news in there, I guess. Favoriting shaders is the kinda basic QoL stuff we should've seen years ago when they redid shaders, but better late than never.

After playing casually since season of the arrivals, I quit the game in December after they rolled the game back during season of the seraph, never bought lightfall and have been feeling vindicated based on everything I've read ever since. The backlash has been happening, just coming to a tee now with no foreseeable hope in the future.

I stepped away before The Witch Queen, however I did play the last season of the expansion. Essentially I stepped back about 10-12 months to get some space away from the game. Lightfall has been disappointing, and even though I'm not a consistent PvP player (I'll periodically play IB), I have to say that the gripes from that community are legitimate.

Maps, Gambit, the ritual armor, all explanations revolve around the fact that they're not paid for content. It's frustrating, really. It's frustrating that the main PvP devs from Destiny are working on Marathon instead. I stated in the other thread that it's difficult being tossed onto Titan via RNG for three to four Gambit matches in a row (yes that's really happened)...even before Titan came back. If Titan and Mars were canonically gone, why did we keep them as a maps instead of The Dreaming City? Why Mercury, Mars, and Titan for Crucible? I digress because it's frustrating AF sometimes.

Overall I've gravitated away from the game more recently. Another Season of the Cost, where more content is locked behind another slab of silver. Granted it's optional, but this is the state of the game now. You want something nice you have to pay for it, or wait for the chance it MIGHT show up for bright dust randomly.

But you know...I hate Destiny; I play every day.

(really I play maybe twice a week now...and that's becoming a chore)