Recent reviews by Rays

As a player who's sunk a lot of time into Destiny 1, I must say that initially i was disappointed with Destiny 2's Year 1 Release with Activision/Blizzard. I must add that I've also pre-ordered the game along with the season pass about 2-3 months ahead; however, right as I got into the game, I felt that something was off. Destiny 2 did not felt like it lived up to the legacy that Destiny 1 left. I played about 4-5 hours worth of game time and immediately put it down and never to pick up back up again...

UNTIL...

The release of Shadowkeep. To be honest, I've never even considered picking back up the game again nor have I even heard about the release of Shadowkeep, but as fate has it; my friends who are more in tune with gaming community heard about Destiny 2 going free-to-play. This ultimately garnered their attention towards the game as people were getting $60 (and more if counting all the previous DLCs) worth of free quality content. At the time, everyone was looking for something new to play together anyway so Destiny 2 happened to be the obvious choice. So naturally, we all gravitated towards it, starting a fresh game as a New Light Player.

As of writing this review (as I rarely do because I've never played enough of a game to feel obligated to share my opinion as I have with Destiny 2), I'm currently 359 hours deep into the game and would like to list out some of my opinions on the game through my experiences.

Pros (in no specific order):
1. High potential for quality cooperation play (either with friends or even strangers you meet through LFG discords)

2. Progression feels rewarding in many different ways which encourages a player to continue chasing the grind (also a con that I'll further elaborate).

3. Fairly easy for anyone to pick up, and although it is an FPS game, good tracking isn't necessarily required for enjoying gameplay so if this was one of your concerns; fear not.

4. Yes, some content is repetitive, but however, in MY PERSONAL OPINION, it is the good kind of repetitive (this will vary from person to person).

5. Skill-ceilings are high and rewarding for those who choose to play the game in a meticulous way that could be equivalent to an art form (players who always make the right decisions for the right situations for every encounter; I'm looking at you). This is ultimately what separates a good player from a bad one and often times, you couldn't even tell if someone's hard carrying you because of how smooth the runs of whatever you're doing would feel until they leave.

6. NOT PAY TO WIN!!!!! As someone who used to play MMORPGs like Black Desert Online, this is one of the BIGGEST incentive that's starting to disappear from modern MMORPGs as developers are constantly milking the players for their addictions. I shouldn't even have to explain this. Time spent = progression. Nothing more, nothing less.

7. A play-style for everyone; whether you like to grind for gear and get the best in slots for every weapon/armor, discover the vast Destiny world and its' never-ending lore, or simply collecting all of the trophies/triumphs/achievements. There's something for everyone to do.

8. There's definitely a lot more to say about the game and how it's doing good by it, but I'm going to let you explore that yourself as I move on into the cons section.

Now to be fair, as a newer player, you won't exactly encounter some of the issues that the veteran players complain about as developers do tend to fix their mistakes. Now, with that being said, I haven't used the word "always" and here, I'm going to list some of my concerns (cons) about the game.

Cons:
1. This is going to be on the top of the list and I wish EVERYONE to see this and I'm also going to use full capital letters to visualize my frustration: IZANAGI'S BURDEN QUEST STILL ISN'T FIXED AFTER WAITING SINCE THE RELEASE OF SHADOWKEEP. THE FIX THAT WAS INTRODUCED RECENTLY ONLY MADE THE SITUATION WORSE. KNOWING THAT THIS SNIPER IS A META WEAPON THAT EVERYONE'S LOOKING FOR IN ANY ENCOUNTER. Thinking back to all my years of playing a variety of games, I cannot think of another instance where someone has dropped the ball to this degree. I can only hope that one of Bungie's major shareholder's children is playing this game and also stuck in the same boat because only then I can see a real QUICK HOTFIX TO A MAJOR ISSUE being put into the game rather than being implemented in the "next weekly reset". It's not that hard to take servers down for about 15-30 minutes to input changes that could save players DAYS of waiting for progression.

2. Although I did state that the game is NOT PAY TO WIN, I need to clarify and also say that a lot of the newer/relevant content is gated behind the DLC. Now, I don't exactly mind this because I know exactly what I'm paying for, but however, for the newer players who are coming into Destiny 2: if you're planning on playing an MMORPG and you expect to sink a lot of time into progression and such, you'll be somewhat forced to buy the DLCs otherwise you won't be able to enjoy the full experience (hence why its called a DLC). So unfortunately, if you're playing Destiny 2 and expecting it to be fully free; you'll be right and wrong at the same time. Although there's PLENTY of free content, a lot of it is irrelevant and there's little to no incentives of playing the old content as the gears/rewards are outdated if any still exist. The friends that I've played Destiny 2 with are beginning to hit this stonewall and are quickly losing interest due to it because they had no intentions of buying any DLCs from the beginning and are true to their words; so if you are one of those kinds of players who's trying out Destiny 2, I've foretold your future.

3. The power curve between a strong meta setup between a random weak one put together by throwing in whatever you had at the time. Now, I understand that every modern game that involves multiplayer has a meta and a specific way to play it to maximize efficiency etc etc. The difference in between those games is the amount of variance that it has for different aspects of game-play. So how exactly does that relate to Destiny 2? Well, let me give you an example: everyone whos doing end game PvE content would have a loadout that looks something like this (Izanagi's Burden, The Recluse/Divinity, Wendigo's GL3/21% Delirium). In my perspective, there's 2 problems about this and I'm going to explain why:
First and foremost, Izanagi's Burden can only be obtainable through a quest-line that's gated behind the Forsaken DLC (which is pretty much irrelevant now except for getting Izanagi's). As I mentioned above, the questline for Izanagi's is BUGGED since the release of Shadowkeep, so all the newer players (and older returning ones) who are looking to get the best in slot for their gear is facing 2 problems: either 1, having to buy ANOTHER DLC (Forsaken for $25) after buying Shadowkeep and 2, finding out that the quest is BUGGED FOR 3-4 WEEKS after spending that money just for the weapon.
This becomes a morality issue of supporting a company that seemingly has their priorities backwards but that's an entirely different issue that I won't expand on. So, going back on the loadout issue, if you do a bit of research on how to obtain those weapons/loadout that I just mentioned, you would find it to be QUITE A GRIND that would put off most players before they would even begin. Having worked hard for strong gear is a natural thing and should be rewarded as such, but when the community demands everyone to have those kinds of loadouts before being willing to engage in activities is where the problem sinks in. See, nobody is going to want some noob on their team with some random purple weapons with some unrelated mods slapped together with whatever they had at the time. The issue here is that there's little variance in PvE game-play at the higher end as content becomes more difficult and the common denominator will be time.