The guy I bumped into last week who plays Destiny a lot with his kids told me he loves Dreadnaught and how it was so different to the other areas in the game. I suspect a lot of other people feel the same way and tbh, I can see why. The Dreadnaught actually has stuff to do in it. Earth? Moon? Not so much.
Yeah, I like the activities. The mini-secrets were a lot of fun and will hopefully become standard in future patrol spaces. Court of Oryx was an absolute success imo. Sure, it's a ghost town now but that's to be expected for a "mid-game progression" activity. Some of my best TTK memories were getting big Gaf groups together to tear through tons of runes. It gave a smooth leveling progression and exemplified Destiny's strength as a social game.
The ride-along was more focused on level design and aesthetics which aren't very strong. It's cramped yet still too large without sparrows. The drab Hive barnacle shit is beyond played-out. Hull Breach is neat but otherwise the entire space feels extremely samey. Compare that to Venus which has more personality and color in the Endless Steps than the entire Dreadnaught. Terminus floating up in the skybox, which you can visit via an elevator that's powered by the blue lava flowing from the volcano. You can actually see the lava flowing from the mountain to the elevator if you glitch out of bounds nearby.
The Dreadnaught personifies a huge problem with TTK's artistic direction: besides the enemy designs, nothing feels "Taken." It's all the same Hive garbage that was worn thin a year ago. The Taken are bizarro black&white sci-fi ghouls but their activities (patrol, strikes, raid) sport the green/brown Hive parasite design. Only the first story mission, with Cabal being sucked into starry b&w vortexes, captures the right feeling. The Moon already nailed Hive-as-parasites, with winding underground tunnels rotting it from the inside. I'd be fine with the Taken as palette/ability swaps of existing enemies if they had distinguished themselves as a unique 5th entity.
I figured out my fragment problem the tracker website I was using had the wrong video linked for fragment XVIII
Nice! Glad you figured out what the issue was. I was worried there was some weird glitching going on.