I just cant do it anymore. I got into one activity today and couldn't even finish it, I got halfway through the weekly mission opened a chest and got some random useless materials immediately returned to orbit and closed the game. At this point in time there's nothing enjoyable to do in the game. Two weeks ago grinding felt great because weapons and light had a meaning now I can get to 450 just for the game to say "nah youre capped at 200 for this activity" like actually what's the point of power if youre just gonna have me at -20 anyway. Also it wont matter next season when they drop me right back to 200 and I have to start all over again. Don't get me started about how most of the actual fun activities are useless right now including dungeons and raids. Portal is absolute dogshit. Fuck matterspark. Fuck sieve being on a timer. Fuck weapon tiers being locked behind the pointless power grind. Fuck all the old armor being practically useless now aside from the juicer 200 weapon and super rolls. Its genuinely sad to see one of my favorite game series of all time go to shit like this. Warframe is looking real nice right now.

Not sure about you guys, but I have zero appetite to grinding the portal for T1 to T5 gear again if my current gear is (soft) sunset.

This gear should last at LEAST a year. The thought of doing 2month no-life grind for it only to be useful for 4months makes me feel sick.

I can put up with a lot of shit, but don’t mess with my loot.

- I can't farm the weekly GM Nightfall for adept weapons (or anything else)

- I can't do 3 matches of comp crucible for a guaranteed roll of the new comp weapon

- I can't level up whatever tower vendor gets bonus rep this week, in order to reset ranks and unlock multiple perks from that vendor for the rest of the season

- I can't complete Vanguard operations for guaranteed exotic engrams (every 3 operations, get an engram, up to 3 total)

- I can't farm the seasonal activity to get red border weapons for crafting, and complete patterns

- I can't do the raid for a guaranteed red border

----

I guess I can do the most efficient Solo Op, over and over and over and over again to level up my power number to the next difficulty breakpoint, and then do it again. I could even group with people and do the same thing in Kell's Fall.

Destiny has amazing shooting, but man, it sure feels crappy to play right now.

I played for about 2 weeks into EOF trying to grind via the portal system and I just couldn't do it. I no longer felt like I was playing the Destiny 2 I know and love. I'm not against change as the Destiny 2 I have nearly 4000 hours in has changed a lot over the years but the portal feels like the Destiny 2 I put all those hours into, was taken out back to be put down in favor of a terribly unfinished, underbaked, frankensteined version of a "new" update. I've been playing since Destiny 1 on the Xbox 360 through all the ups and downs but this was the first time I felt bungie genuinely didn't care about my time one bit. Swapping out the weekly pinnacle missions, raids rotators, dungeons rotators, GMs, vender reward tracks, and the pathfinder that allowed me to play either Strikes, Crucible, or even Gambit and still get some rewards, for the portal genuinely makes my head hurt to think about. I feel they had this amazing game with an alive world that always kept me coming back for more to keep building onto, but instead they literally buried the game I've been playing these last 8 years, in favor of a game that will drip feed us content through a vastly inferior system. To be clear its not the modifiers I have a problem with or even the idea of a portal in general but way they rolled this out. We went from the systems previously mentioned to running what is essentially a lost sector and Star crossed for 2 months.

I was looking at ash and Iron as a potential jumping back in point but no SIVA, no Splicers, and we get Cabal and Vex instead? What are we doing here? Like Genuinely? This is not acceptable. Imagine they remastered the moon for Shadow Keep but there was no Hellmouth or Hive temples. What would be the point and what is the point of the Plague Lands coming back if you're going to do it this dirty? It feels like a cheap way to manipulate people into hopping on the game in an attempt to get them to buy skins in what will inevitably be a fully SIVAd out Eververse store after you throw 5 pop ups on login advertising all the cool new Eververse gear that will be available to buy while not putting any of the SIVA flair into the actual fan favorite destination. We know they can make old destinations feel new while still feeing faithful to the original because the just did it to the Dreadnaught last Episode. Too bad they deleted that I guess. The other thing I'm supposed to be excited about is **checks notes** Dungeon encounters? We cant even have FULL dungeons that have been out for years in this new system? What is the point of the system if it cant feature the best content Destiny has to offer In FULL? Make it make sense.

I am 100% sincere when I say I want the game to succeed but I genuinely do not know if they have the man power to fix Destiny 2 at this moment in time due to the layoffs, being spread thin from working on other projects, and all the dev time that's most likely going into finishing/Polishing Renegades. They have a seemingly impossible task Infront of them. I know Bungie always manages to find their way out of the messes they make but dang, they sure have to show the world they still have that magic in them to not only make something special but also repair the damage that has already been done.

EDIT: To anyone in a similar position as I am, I definitely recommend checking out Destiny 1 if you have a console that can play it. Super fun if you can get over the 30fps and no fov slider and still has a healthy population on Xbox one. Also most importantly the progression is fun :)

You managed to kill the interest in this game for my entire clan.
   

We’re a 95-member clan with a core group of 6 to 10 highly active players. We focus mainly on high-level content, and we love it. We’ve earned almost every raid title, completed all Salvation’s Edge Master challenges, and collected all raid exotics and catalysts.
   

We prepared for the Contest Raid Race like our lives depended on it. We pushed our light levels as high as possible. But when we actually entered the contest raid, it wasn’t a lack of skill that held us back. The DPS checks weren’t tight; it was unbearable. Some of us refused to chase broken builds just to pass arbitrary DPS thresholds. We wanted to clear it with our own skills, using builds we crafted ourselves. And even at our absolute best execution, the most we could do to Agraios in a full damage phase was around 25%.
   

We refused to be disrespected by a system that demanded such extreme workarounds, so we abandoned the contest raid and switched to normal mode. After a few attempts, we cleared every encounter once we learned the mechanics. But when we finished the raid, the feeling wasn’t excitement or satisfaction. It was relief. That was a first. I was over 2055 light level before the Edge of Fate. I used to play daily, almost religiously. But this was the first time I felt relief instead of fulfillment after completing a raid.
   

Now, none of us feels motivated to keep playing. Here’s why:

• None of us wants to farm light level anymore. It’s just a key to enter harder content. Whether you're 100 or 450 levels above the soft cap, you're still stuck at a fixed power delta. It doesn’t matter anymore.

• None of us wants to run the raid 5 or more times just to get low-quality loot and maybe, eventually, a good roll.

• None of us wants to teach the raid to others in the clan. Salvation’s Edge was already difficult to explain, and this new raid is even worse. Nearly every encounter is a mechanics-heavy slog that demands equal effort from all players. Desert Perpetual is possibly the most anti-LFG raid you've ever made.

• None of us wants to rebuild our loadouts after so many of our builds were broken. The new stat system ruined a lot of setups. Even with full preparation for Edge of Fate, many players still struggle to hit desired stat tiers because the new archetypes bottleneck almost every build.

• None of us wants to grind side missions or high-difficulty campaigns for two tokens and a blue™. Even if they occasionally drop Tier 3 or Tier 4 loot with good perks, it’s not worth spending 20 to 30 minutes for one roll from a slot machine.

• None of us wants to engage with Vanguard, Crucible, or Gambit anymore since Pathfinders were removed. That was the only consistent way to earn Bright Dust. Sure, something might eventually replace it. But Pathfinder also gave XP, which meant Bright Engrams and light levels. Now we’re stuck with only three daily objectives and nothing else once the weeklies are done.

• None of us wants to farm ritual vendors since Vanguard, Crucible, and Gambit weapons no longer drop with multiple perks. The reset feature is gone, and it is also old loot now.

• None of us knows where to get Ascendant Shards or Alloys consistently. Expert Nightfalls might drop shards, but without seasonal activity, there’s no reliable way to get Ascendant Alloys. I’m not even sure if Sieve drops them, and it’s timegated with its own system.

• None of us wants to raid or solo dungeons anymore. The power delta and negative penalties completely broke the balance. We barely defeated The Witness in normal mode, not because of the mechanics but because our damage output was terrible. We constantly ran out of heavy ammo, even with 150+ in Weapon stats. I’ve solo flawless’d every dungeon except Vesper’s Host, but I don’t plan to try another unless something major changes.

• None of us wants to run Fireteam Ops together either, since rewards and bonus drops are different for each player. It feels like we need to draw a complex Venn diagram just to find a single activity that benefits everyone equally.
     

And to be clear, this isn’t Reddit echo-chamber talk. I’m the only one in the clan who even reads Reddit. These are our real, shared experiences.
   

With a single patch, I went from having many reasons to play Destiny 2 to having none. Even if I wanted to stick around, the only thing left to do would be grind light levels and chase a few Tier 5 weapons or armor pieces. Anything short of Tier 5 feels like a waste of time. I’m not going to grind up to 450 light just to maybe get a shot at something good.
   

This seriously feels like the first time I'm done with this game after 4,000 hours of gameplay.
 
 
^{edit: I really did not want to edit my post again, but stop trying to flame me. This isn’t just my personal experience, it’s a summary of everything our group went through with EoF as a whole. Yeah, I know, "skill issue". Funny enough, that phrase also happens to be my signature move in raids, so I’m not exactly getting butthurt by it, lol.}

Xur sells legacy weapons only, and can still give out upgrade modules, of all things.

Pathfinder was removed before it's replacement was added.

The Portal doesn't rotate available strikes.

Raid and Dungeon content has been entirely left out of the new system. Salvation's Edge, which released a scant 1 year ago, is now outdated. Sundered doctrine, which basically released 5 months ago, is now outdated even more, since it is effectively hard capped at tier 2 weapons.

The real problem, is that we've seen this before, so we know what's coming: old content is going to be sold back to us as 'new content' that has had its loot updated and raid/dungeon feats slapped on, which they are absolutely going to do one at a time, and present it as new and shiny.

Stop it. Stop. If you revamp a game system, that's not content. These old systems need to be updated fast, and not one at a time.

Most of the conversation surrounding the dlc on this subreddit leading up to release has been that it’s clearly “minimal effort”. Bungie didn’t advertise this release as well as they could’ve so I could definitely understand people underestimating the amount of content in this dlc.

Now the dlc is actually out. It has 14 campaign missions as opposed to the original 7-8 seen in Witch Queen, Lightfall, and TFS with 13 optional quests scattered around Kepler. This is to say nothing of the other changes in the release, some of which have been pitched by the community for years now (I.e. alternate forms of narrative delivery and firing range).

And yet, and I can scarcely find a single positive thing about this dlc today. Nobody seems to care that there’s more story content, or less chatting with npcs, or that there’s very little downtime between missions. We’ve come from fucking Shadowkeep to this.

For anyone who doesn’t know what I’m talking about, here’s what I mean:

• Shadowkeep had no new enemy units. At all. This time around, we have 2 new units and reworked foot-soldiers.
• Brought minimal changes outside of armor 2.0 and Nightfalls
• the story was plagued with useless downtime steps like (“gET 400 kIllS iN SOrrOwS HaRBoR”)
• there were like, 4 original story missions? The rest of the missions included reused bosses.
• oh yeah it took place on a destination from a previous game. And they marketed it to you for substantially more than the base price of EoF.

Why this comparison? I saw somebody say this (EoF) is the worst Destiny dlc and it actually broke me. There’s no way people are thinking like this — there’s just no fucking way.

And then there’s the smaller things about Kepler itself. One HUGE piece of criticism I saw about Neomuna is that it didn’t feel lived in (I totally agreed with this). This time around, that’s been addressed. There’s a visible civilian presence with their own language, lore, and characters (in addition to a new way of interacting with them via the dialogue screens).

I know how people are on this subreddit so let me just summarize: I’m not saying EoF is flawless, but a lot of the discourse around here is super disingenuous if not straight up bullshit. If you’re going to criticize, fine (great, even). But give credit where it’s due and try not to be a dick about it.

Watching Datto’s team swap their loadouts 4 times in one DPS phase and not even do a third of the boss’s health made my team quit the race right then and there. Loadout swapping has set the bar too high; this Raid wouldn’t have been possible without it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D7wZ2tpjrmE

Apparently, leadership was also worried that attractive Trials of Osiris cosmetics would cut into Eververse sales. This all shows the true face of Bungie leadership.

-No one is running legacy raids or dungeons because the loot is mostly seen as worthless.

-No one is running nightfalls because they were removed from the game.

-No one is running campaign missions because they're either too hard/time-consuming/unrewarding and/or because matterspark is annoying.

-No one is running seasonal content because we don't have any.

-No one is running pvp because it's broken.

-No one is running legend lost sectors because there's no reason to.

-Very few people are running the new raid because the weapons aren't craftable, the drops don't increase your light level, and you can't get tier 5s.

I have officially arrived at the point where I log in, say "fuck the portal," and then just stare at my ship floating in orbit until I realize that there is so little to do that I don't even know what I'm doing here. As someone who I honestly thought would always be a die-hard fan of the game...............this feels crazy. It feels like there's nothing to do unless you're trying to play by yourself. If the experience during renegades is ANYTHING like this, I honestly don't think this game survives, which is a massive shame.

I know that Bungie never takes it seriously when hardcore players say they're gonna leave, and I haven't quit playing it yet. But Black Ops 7 comes out later this year and as someone who LOVED BO3, I will honestly just move on to that, at least for a while, if this situation doesn't MASSIVELY improve.

It's so telling that even though I MIGHT be content to just go run solo dungeons and fuck around with new builds in meaningless activities like old campaigns, the number one reason I'm not doing that is because I have a very large motivation to NOT play the game for the sole reason of driving their numbers down. Not wanting to play a game primarily for the purpose of punishing the developers is actually insane. How did we get to this absurd level of bad-will?

I know that post got memed on like crazy, but comparing how content structure (not quantity) was like back then, it felt far more rewarding of casual play and sustained longterm investment into destiny. Crafting, the gradual eradication of Power as a core mechanic, and the movement away from Destiny as a “main game” to more like a weekly TV show was much more fun.

EoF feels like Bungie corporate got unmitigated control of the game and just started throwing anything at the wall to drive engagement, never has destiny felt so anti-social and anti-consumer bar sunsetting and that time they did XP throttling during year 2.

I don’t want diablo resets in Destiny, I don’t want to have to grind through three tiers worth of poop guns just to get weapons on the level of my current loadout, isn’t that why blue & green engrams got retired in the fist place. Same with armour.

And god don’t get me started on this mobile-game ass portal, if I wanted to play a mobile-game destiny, I’m already looking at Rising

Thank goodness for the narrative and weapons teams they’re hard carrying this expansion.

I'm still genuinely having fun. I play with a small friend group and we do raids and dungeons and GMs and just mess around and it's so much fun. It's our main co op game. But it's no secret that the game is in the worst spot it's ever been.

I know people have been parroting the "destiny is dying" thing for years now but unless Ash and Iron turns out to be a home run (and it's looking like it will flop right out of the gate) then this game might genuinely be just a few weeks from closing its doors. Bungie is going to keep under delivering and nerfing everything into the ground until even me and my friend group are the only players left and we quit too.

The game can be saved, but it needs swift, decisive action NOW. I don't think Bungie has time to collect data and "see how things play out." They don't have time left to "wait until renegades". The ship is sinking and the crew is asleep.

edit: why tf are people downvoting this?

"Hey guy go grind those cool shiny weapons and enjoy them... till next week cause then we don't want you to use them anymore"

what on good heaven has this game turn into mate, lm sick of using the same handful of guns when my vault is full of cool shit l've collected for years, and if l DARE use some of them, l sacrifice not leveling up efficiently,

remember vanilla year 1? no random rolls, every gun is the same, tedious public event grind, no reason to level up etc. the game feels EXACTLY like that again and worse, devoid of the life it had merely 2 weeks ago, oh and they charged 40 racks for it

In the past, prior to large DLC launches, large state of the game articles were written by Joe Blackburn and Luke smith (the two game directors prior to Tyson Green). It is clear that Tyson wants to take the game in a different direction to Joe, but when systems that work well are ripped out of the game in favor of replacements that were clearly not ready for launch you cannot stay silent while the community suffers.

The silence from Tyson is deafening, discussing his vision for the game going forward as the prior two game directors have done especially in the games current state is not something to avoid. Even when Lightfall was not well received, Joe made an effort to communicate consistently and keep us informed on the path forward, leading the game into a far better position post TFS launch. Those of us that love the game and are still playing are holding out for some sort of acknowledgement from Tyson, as acknowledging the flaws of new systems, rewards and disincentivized group play would help immensely knowing we will get changes. I miss playing raids and dungeons for pinnacles, and playing a game where activities with friends were encouraged and rewarded.

Having a different vision for destiny is fine, but as player sentiment rapidly declines, radio silence and not discussing a path forward as prior game directors have, is not.

This is dangerously low number for a game that use to be around 80k constantly. This will drop below 10k before next release, there are like no people to LFG anymore for some activities making you screwed.

This is the driest it has been for the past 10 years it has never been like this. It actually feels like the game is dying and still Bungie is doing so many changes for the next expansion, but the interest is just not there anymore for system changes, this game needs its next Taken King or Sony will pull the plug, but i don't think this will be possible with half the man power. Bungie are in a pickle situation.

https://i.imgur.com/7po7T9T.png

Since people want more stats apparently STEAM charts are the devil, they can check them themselves just google them here are some charts from activeplayer io, the game is in decline no matter the platform.

50% down compared to last year.

https://i.imgur.com/GQti1nA.png

https://i.imgur.com/2cvinho.png

Every. Single. Area. Every. Single. Boss. Fight. Every. Single. Puzzle.

First it was getting around as a ball to find conveniently exposed areas constantly.
Then i'm being forced to use it to progress boss fights by finding areas protecting their shields.
Now I'm being forced to use it to kill enemies to drop crap for the boss fight to progress, or I'm being forced to use it mid boss fight to charge up some stupid pylons.

I honestly really hate it. It's literally a clicky ball that zaps. Wheres the gameplay?
I'm playing this game to get cool guns, yet I'm being forced to run around as a weak crappy ball which does crap damage to enemies and makes you a sitting duck during boss fights while you're doing the annoying mechanics.

Did someone who actually played destiny** really play this and think, wow this is so good, players will love this absense of being able to use their guns or abilities in favor of a weak ball that rolls around and just zaps things!!!

The rest has been okay but the longer I play through the campaign the more I groan everytime I have to use the damn ball every single time.

**(did raids with friends, did dungeons, grandmasters, pvp, wasn't being paid as a game tester or worked in the bungie office/kindergarten)

I can understand them wanting to iterate and evolve the game with time, but the director screen is such an iconic part of destiny’s identity and this treatment of it is so fucking dumb imo

Bring it back? Please?

It was a nice slice of long term progression that just seemed to… disappear overnight.

I’ve completely ignored every single legendary weapon drop that I’ve gotten in the campaign so far and have zero incentive to try and use / collect the new things until a higher difficulty. That doesn’t feel good at all.

Now the new portal system & power level progression is settling in, I can't help but feel like Bungie has walked headfirst into a design trap that Blizzard already stumbled into, and learned from, years ago with World of Warcraft.

Here’s the core issue: players will always optimize the fun out of a game if the system encourages it.

With the introduction of the Dungeon Finder (late 2009), WoW players began chain-running the same 1–2 fastest dungeons for daily rewards, ignoring others entirely. Blizzard noticed that:

"Players aren’t playing the dungeons because they’re fun — they’re playing them because they’re efficient."
Ghostcrawler (Greg Street), former WoW lead systems designer

This isn't a player problem; it’s a game design problem. If there’s a path that gets you loot/power faster, players will take it, even if it turns the game into a chore. That’s human nature in a loot driven game.

World of Warcraft ran into this with things like daily quests &dungeon runs. Eventually, the devs acknowledged that systems designed to "give players choice" were actually just offering the illusion of choice because one option was clearly optimal.

Sound familiar?

The portal system could have been an exciting mechanic encouraging exploration or replayability. Instead, it’s quickly devolved into a funnel for people to rush to the highest tier rewards. Power level bumps have been reduced to a formula. Want efficiency? Here’s the mission to run over and over. Everything else? Doesn’t matter.

What gets lost is the fun. The wonder. The experimentation. Bungie’s best systems.

Do the whole campaign, no other players. Go into the portal as recommended, most of it has no matchmaking, is solo, or at best you run a strike with 2 people with no way to interact or stay as a team or need to work together.

The best way to farm now is solo ops just doing lost sectors but at least lost sectors you saw a pile up of sparrows of a player going in and out with you. Now everything just feels dead it's just you just that instance.

Title. Edge of Fate released on July 15th, exactly 6 weeks ago today. Also today, we got another Eververse set added to the store, bringing the total up to 3 new Eververse sets this season. That's a new set of paid Eververse armor every 2 weeks.

I had a whole mini-rant ready to go, but what would even be the point? We're at an all-time low in the game's lifespan and Bungie is churning out more microtransaction content than ever. Without a Bright Dust purchase option either, to at least throw a bone to the few of us still here.

I have a hefty amount of hours into Destiny, about 1400. Which is a LOT for me. And I do like playing the game and especially love the dungeons. But I still consider myself a pretty casual player, don’t really do raids unless I’m feeling spontaneous and look for a LFG group.

Anyways, I’m a little over half way through the campaign and I can’t help but feel like I’m not having fun anymore. I really don’t like Matterspark because the only thing it makes me think of is how I would just prefer it wasn’t there. I’m sure that’s a bad opinion but it makes me feel frustrated that these random things clearly took so much focus and time just for me to not enjoy at all. And the grind this time around for someone like me feels so much worse than it usually does. I don’t want to be negative, but I really just can’t seem to draw any enjoyment from the game currently and that really sucks. The portal also feels like it’s sucked some life from the game to me. Idk, I just wanted to rant I guess and see what other casuals like me are thinking about the DLC so far. Hopefully I’m in the minority here.

I mean this as respectfully as possible, but seriously what is going on? I feel like half of the changes are so far from what the community wants and everything coming out way seems beyond half baked. For example dungeon lairs seem cool but why at the very least aren’t the dungeon weapons updated for the new gear tiers? Watching destiny rising get everything we’ve been BEGGING FOR and more, patches next day, etc, is just a huge slap in the face man. Come on Bungie it is way too late in the game to be making the same mistakes, over, and over, and over again.

They spent weeks hyping up detailed tuning changes and publishing extensive patch notes. That gave me the impression that systems are deeply tested. It’s clearly not. I know they laid off their QA team but damn, you’d think that something like the audio bug or damage numbers not displaying correctly would be caught in some type of test.

Don’t give me the “oh but live game environment is different from development ”. Stop… damage numbers not matching with the actual damage? Dude, come on. Yes I know it’s hard, I don’t work in game development but like… you don’t test basic front facing aspects to make sure they work? The audio bug…maybe slipped through cause I’m assuming they test on PC but even then, I experienced it within maybe the first minute of playing on console. NOBODY caught that?

Look, no disrespect to the people who are working their ass off over there at bungie but I’m really starting to think that bungie cares less and less about good quality.

My point is, the community shouldn’t be finding these bugs, we should find things like that weird crack in the map we used to get into Last Wish back in the day. Idk I’m just disappointed because I took a break from Destiny and returned to this. Feels shitty bungie.

Edit: let me give some context - I stopped lurking this sub way before a lot of the drama. I’ve always given bungie the benefit of the doubt, even in the darkest times. I realized that I enjoy the game more when I ignore the online chatter. But this time I feel like I can speak for a lot of people, I’m starting not to care about the game.

Edit again: for everyone commenting “FiRst TiMe?” Or “starting!?” Thank you so much for your constructive input in this conversation. It’s much appreciated.

Tuesday resets used to be amazing and exciting. We could runs raids and find a group in minutes (or seconds) in LFG servers.

Now it's much more difficult to find a group that will actually stick together and complete the raid. It's just too much for many players and the desire to "complete red borders" or just get the best loot in the game is not as compelling.

Even though some raids were "easier", they at least attracted average-level players, which is needed for a game like this to achieve a critical mass of players.