Did none of you play the beta? I have no idea what people they were getting to be so disappointed with the game as it shipped. It was exactly what I expected, both the good and the bad. (OK, the loot system may have turned out to be far worse than I thought possible.)
I just don't get it.
The beta showed some portions of the game where we got a glimpse of what was to come. The gameplay and mechanics are there. No one denies that. It was a straight up shooter with decent control. What was not expected was the piss poor story line (Even though we all made fun of the horrible dinklage acting job) horrible RNG loot system, bosses where the difficulty ramping isn't new abilities for the boss but more hit points, a limited communication system, and what we now know as cut content to repackage as DLC and sell it, gutting the entire world that we could play in and actually understand from day 1.
Destiny has a story which has been cut to bits to repackage and it shows. It was a game sold on it's immersive world and it's a flat, boring, repetitive lazy designed mess with encounters that are stale after the 1st 3 times you do them, much less the same exact story mission types throughout the entire process. No one should defend this title one bit. No one. It has failed on just about everything aside from shit we already have had for the last 10 years in countless other games, which is a fluid gunplay mechanic and PvP. This is a shell of a game that was launched. Quite honestly it is sickening to think anyone would defend it. We had good gameplay mechanics in FPS games countless times. The world is stale, the maps all repeat, the story is completely gutted, the loot system is all kinds of horrible, the weapons themselves upon acquiring show no differentiation, the mission type is the same throughout, most of the class abilities and upgrades are just as stale without any graphical differentiation upon use, and the endless grind serves no purpose other than to beat your head against a wall.
Knowing what I know now, and seeing that "Wait until you play it. Don't trust the review" crap we saw from Bungie, and the aftermath with the reddit posts about the major changes all to cut content and sell it on DLC in the most fail of way via Activision, it's pretty apparent they were all in this scam. So I would say no. This isn't what we expected when we were playing a limited 8 level alpha/beta to test the servers and showcase the combat responsiveness and mechanics based on what we saw in 2013.
Can it be a good game in a year? Who knows. The game by itself, not a chance. A year from now I am sure their intention, if they don't have everyone trade it into Gamestop by the 8th, would be to continue to sell content that was already created to piece meal the story together so the game effectively costs about $120 by the time it is all said and done.
As far as I am concerned, this is an all new low in console gaming where at one point, I thought this shit only happened with very bad PC publishers. Something akin and even worse than Mafia 2 when they cut out the storyline when Tommy was in jail (Joe's adventures, originally was in the main game) and the entire open world portion sold as DLC as well.
Pretty damn ridiculous.
Then I buy Middle Earth, and my hope is renewed. Very happy to say we have games we can trade this in for.
Sorry Vorph just wanted to respond. I won't clutter it up anymore for people trying to plan raids and such. Carry on.