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Destiny

I’ve said before about how much I enjoy playing the game Destiny, and, to a much smaller extent, its successor Destiny 2. I used to be an avid player — jumping on for a few hours a night, playing with a clan, running strikes, missions and raids.

I was a late start into Destiny. I remember buying the base game just before House of Wolves launched. That meant I missed out on the real experience of running Vault of Glass first.

I was never a PvP person. I enjoyed the stories, the character building, the worlds, the music and the exploitability the PvE experience had to offer. After playing by myself a bit I got into a clan – Legion of Morn (Which sadly is no more) after watching Brendan on Twitch. LoM were great with a few really active players and I was always able to jump on and have a run at some PvE activity. The whole community surround Destiny at the time was phenomenal. Bungie had a pretty open API that allowed people to build incredible applications. Ones that transferred gear to your characters or gave you insights into how you or other people played, and even how much time you spent on Destiny in various activities.

I ran my first raid, Vault of Glass, away back 03/03/2016, and then various raids since then. My favourite of all was Kings Fall. A proper, behemoth of an activity that replied on multiple people doing multiple things, with everyone having to take their turn – so you could always be the one who did certain things thanks to the mechanics. I only ever completed Kings Fall 4 times but man, I still reminisce on it fondly.

Destiny 2 then came out and despite being better looking, with better playability, something just didn’t strike the same feelings as Destiny 1 did. I went with my clan into Destiny 2 full of wonder, but very quickly it was apparent that some decisions had been made by Bungie that put the whole game in jeopardy — not from a “this game is going to crash” type thing, more of a “this game is about to lose all its player base”.

Destiny 2 has always had 2 sides. PvE (Player vs Everything – where you normally fight or battle computer based opponents) and PvP (Player vs Player, where you would fight against other Destiny players from around the world), and for a while, it seemed as though PvP wash the driving force behind the decisions Bungie was making, and it affected a large portion of the player base — me included.

Destiny 2 was the start of me realising that it’s not the game I started playing. It’s not the game I enjoyed playing. I’ve forced myself time and time again to play Destiny 2, having now clocked more hours in it vs Destiny, and I still just don’t feel the same about it. Some missions are brilliant. The opening story and subsequent story missions have been phenomenal, but more recently the stories just don’t feel like they have the same depth or planning as they used to.

Its a shame. I still love the stories. I still love the lore. I love the background, almost everything about it apart from playing the game. I’ll happily read the lore entries, and watch other people play – anything to do with Destiny. Apart from play it.

That saddens me.