Yea, I understand folks' frustrations, RNG has always been a hassle and the new mat complexities are confusing things in not-so-fun ways, but come on, guys. NEW STUFF! New things to work towards, new shaders to find, exotics to level, imbalances to exploit, and cheese to consume!
I feel like anyone who thought this $20 DLC would completely transform the game into what pre-launch hype made it out to be was just kidding themselves. It's more of the same and for those of us who have been enjoying the ride so far, there's plenty to be excited about here.
I'm with you. The current sting of the treadmill advancing and new currencies will fade away after a bit. Much to do with the raid will also change over time as the community masters it as well. So far, I've been enjoying the kickstart the DLC gave to my lowest-leveled character, the unavoidable challenge in content that hasn't been endlessly rerun and memorized, looking at the pallets of new gear for me to start pursuing (the dragon's breath and no land beyond are the only exotics I really know about, I tried to avoid reading about the others), 2 of the 3 pvp maps, and the extra XP afforded every day with Eris "me too!" bounties, and, honestly, playing around with all the unleveled exotics I have that can get a "bump" to the new base for 7 coins/7k glimmer rather than resetting the XP investment on one of my maxed ones. Ice Breaker's a given, but if the MIDA Multi-Tool or The Last Word gets offered on Friday I'm upgrading the shit out them. I'm looking forward to trying my old elemental arsenal in this Nightfall and especially to raiding with my crew tomorrow, wherein I fully expect us to get our asses handed solidly to us and masochistic glee to take hold (I live for getting a TINY BIT further than the previous wipe). Looks like Colonel will have to let us get beat before spilling the tips and tricks he picks up tonight XD
Longer term, the appeal of mastering and running newbies through a new raid is very exciting for me personally. It's been a blast in each one of those GAF runs and an unexpected opportunity for a personal challenge trying to see if I can beat "my" best complete time for the normal raid with a fresh group. I'm also looking forward to the Iron Banner next week- this time, not for the reward so much as just how much fun it was last time with all the really long-running, undefeated GAF groups or even better, intense competition and trading wins against a good team. I'll probably use IB gear to get my Warlock to ~31 and buy some upgraded Legendaries but the gear isn't the primary draw for me this time around.
Longest term, I think I will probably be getting my Hunter to 32 and that might be it... depends on how the Raid RNG gods go and what the fuck the Hard mode has in store for this thing.
I'm still excited. But I was happy with the game before and am perfectly content with just slumming it in the crucible all night every night if I don't have anything else to do.
There's also the question of "How much of your time do you WANT Destiny to take up?"
What do you mean exactly?
I get that there's a lot of bullshit. There's always going to be a lot of bullshit.
My thing is that you can kind of accept that there's always going to be a lot of bullshit, deal with it, and not really dwell on it for very long, instead focusing on the things that make the game good. While all games have some strong suits and some severe weaknesses (even games that are nearly perfect), in Destiny the
core moment-to-moment gameplay is incredibly tight, polished, and reliably fun. To me that's the ballgame. Sometimes, I honestly get the impression from a bunch of you that you would accept the other way around.
That is to say, all of the corollary systems and progression mechanics and reward gating and RNG and PvP weapon balance and map design and narrative and Dinklage performances were perfect, but the core gameplay was subpar. But I'd drop such a game rapidly. I don't care to choose "playing a videogame" as my entertainment activity of choice for the night and then play one that isn't
fun to play, and Destiny is really fucking fun to play.
It's not any more complicated than that to me, and it is to lots and lots of other people. that's completely valid. I can't convince anyone that the other stuff shouldn't matter to them just because it doesn't matter to me.
But I do see a lot of concentrated cognitive dissonance in posts that stipulate something like, "after this, i'm out"; "i'm going to do x, then I'm quitting"; "I don't see any reason to not just sit out until the next DLC if it resets everything"; "this is the last straw, I think I'm really done this time." Destiny isn't your boss.
Threatening to quit is meaningless. Play if it is
fun for you to play, quit if you don't. It's just I have to say that the track record would
appear to be that people will just keep playing, keep saying these kinds of things, keep playing, keep saying these kinds of things, and keep playing. playing lots. Playing all the time. But I mean I don't intend this analysis to be insulting, hell, it's incredibly addictive and I find myself wanting to play it all the time too. I just try not to look at it so antagonistically and it seems to do the same back
