I would suggest you level to 20 or w.e. max level is with the current offering you get through Crucible/Strikes, then do the storyline/quests to get highest light level possible. Course, if you just have the base game you’ll be missing out on a lot of extra stuff and if you want to just ‘causally’ play it, you should just do the storyline without bothering of attaining “Max!”…
The game is solo friendly for the first part of the game, but for all endgame stuff you’ll need to use 3rd party sites to get a fireteam (group) going to complete objectives that give better/unique rewards, such as Nightfall, Raid, The Well (Or you can load in and out and in and out and in and out until you find an instance with other players, usually possible at the start of the week after reset…), Competitive mode (Which is just fucking with you unless you have a team you’ve played with for a long time…-especially on PC with abysmal population).
Basically, if you just play it a bit and quit after 40-something hours, you’ll enjoy it a lot more than 1000+ hours of you hating yourself every time you join a competitive match where half the time you’re fighting your own team due to how fucking stupid bungie has designed the mechanics, the quests (bounties) and triumphs (achievements).
(Add 20+ hours if you’re on a console due to the shitty loading…)
Year 2 of Destiny 2 - with Forsaken expansion made it a lot better game, but they still have ways to go before being as good as Taken King and Rise of Iron for Destiny 1.
At launch it surely did suck. After Year 3 QOL improvements it was pretty good, and a whole lot better than what D2 launched as, D2Y2 is getting closer though.
I don’t know if I’m simply getting old and cranky but the writing in this game is so juvenile that my face is now permanently disfigured from cringing so hard every time NPCs open their mouths. And what’s with the huge levels in every mission, where 95% is spent just walking around? Quest design is extremely simplistic too. And whoever forced so many goddamn platforming into this game deserves to have two ghosts strapped to his head and listen to their inane lines for all eternity.
It really feels like a design by committee mmo. The one thing that I really like are how the game handles - shooting and general movement are quite smooth and the guns sound pretty nice. Ability effects/animations also look great.
But overall, if I had to pay for this game I’d try really hard to get a refund.
Since it’s free and my daughter and I both have accounts we’re going to try it on Thursday since schools are closed. Can’t say I’ve ever payed much attention to this series, but if it’s fun co-op I’ll be happy.
I enjoyed the beta for a few hours well enough but not enough to pay for the game when it came out. But I spent most free time this weekend playing and enjoying this (once I got it downloaded). But if I was in it for the story I wouldn’t have it later more than a half hour at most. The story just gets in the way of shooting and item progression. I can’t imagine trying to make sense of whatever story is trying to be told.
I wouldn’t say it is like Diablo3 - at least in Diablo 3 you could quickly teleport back to town and delete all the ‘crap’ before going back into action… in Destiny 2 that is a lot more time consuming process.
Also re:loot, now (after forsaken released) weapons can drop with a few more randomly selected modifiers, but most of them aren’t very good. That said, the guns can still be fun to use/sound/feel – just not the best choice. I sometimes use guns that are more “fun” (and handicapping myself) to use, even if they means everything will be much harder…
In terms of “drops” from kills, you’ll hardly ever (after forsaken) get exotics, but at least you can quest for a few of them and some of them are decent.
You’ll get a lot of “duplicate” weapons, most of which will have bad rolls (stat combinations), but that means you’ll have more materials to spend.
The good news is that it doesn’t matter much until you’re max level/light, so just have fun with guns, the quests and shooting until then, then delete all but just a few of the weapons that you plan to “Infuse”(level up) to higher light to keep using… And you dont really need to do that either, unless you’re into min/maxing and
optimizing.
One tips: do not spend materials to level up your guns until you’re max level and above 560 light level, the cost to upgrade weapons is way too high for ‘experimenting’.
tl;dr: play it casual and have fun or go hardcore and hate a lot of the game :P
(use Destiny Item Manager to manage your items somewhat easier, as the ingame user interface is horrendeous - https://app.destinyitemmanager.com/ - but you still need to go ingame to delete all the useless junk).
So I played a few hours yesterday. The core gameplay is good but everything surrounding it seems disjointed and janky. I’m not sure there is enough connective tissue to keep me invested but it is worth what I paid for it. If anything it’s a good proof of concept for that game type. Makes me excited for anthem. Hopefully BioWare doesn’t fuck that one up.
Oh snap! Activision CEO just said Destiny 2 Forsaken did not hit internal sales goals during their earnings call. They are evaluating courses of action to improve player engagement and revenue.
