This much is obvious, but maybe it should still be said that is just my own opinion.
I should preface this with saying that I'm one of the few weirdos who actually really enjoyed vanilla Destiny 1's PvP even at it's most unbalanced and nutty (yeah, even when the Thorn and TLW reigned supreme).
I should also mention that I stopped playing regularly with the release of The Taken King (for reasons unrelated to the game).
I've been playing quite a bit of the Destiny 2 Beta lately and while the shooting itself still feels great, the matches themselves have lost some of the over the top hectic action I fell in love with in the original. I feel this is in large part thanks to both character abilities like grenades taking significantly longer to recharge and to the uniform 4v4 that will be standard for all crucible gametypes. I get that a lot of people didn't like the so-called "grenade spam" that'd happen, especially in the first fight of a game, but I feel like the new charge times are overkill. In my opinion, it really takes away a lot of the personality of the different classes leaving their double jumps as the biggest defining feature. Supers coming around on average only once per game in quickplay feels especially lame.
I for sure don't feel like a super powered undead Space Wizard fighting other weirdly murderous super heroes anymore.
While I think 4v4 is a really good idea for competitive, I think it truly sucks that there aren't any (last I checked) planned 6v6 or 3v3 modes. Variety is good! The spice of life even! 6v6 games with supers, grenades, and blinking everywhere were crazy and fun!
Another major bit contributing to the Less Fun is that characters and weapon/armor loadouts have also become simpler and consequently more boring. Really, the fact that all the cool secondary weapons from Destiny 1 (save for pistols) are now consolidated under the heavy category is the absolute lamest thing. I get that Bungie wants weapons like shotguns, fusion rifles, and sniper rifles to be game changers and part of the whole meta in controlling the heavy ammo spawns, but... as someone who really loved using all of those, being able to only briefly use them a few times per game sucks pretty hard. I do enjoy the fights over the heavy ammo spawns in competitive and appreciate the thinking behind it, but not enough to not be able to rock out with cool guns like the Lord of Wolves or the Pocket Infinity. Neither of which were the best guns, but were always fun to use.
I should also mention: I understand the logic for PvE where they wanted to address how people would often feel peer pressured into using primaries with elemental burns for everything since they were just... objectively the better choice. Especially the raid guns (RIP Fatebringer ;_;7 ).
I do recognize that there were always folks who hated how shotguns dominated things for a bit, how certain maps devolved into sniper alleys, disliked being one shot by a fusion rifle, and who really hated the blink + shotgun combo amongst other things. So perhaps I'm in the minority on all this and this is just the logical conclusion of what the majority of Destiny fans wanted.
Another thing I'm probably(definitely?) in the minority in is disliking how weapons and armor don't have randomized perks anymore. To me, it was always fun mixing and matching different perks on guns to see what fun combinations I could come up with that worked well with certain character abilities of special armor perks. It also feels like a mistake in a game as historically content starved as Destiny? At least it didn't used to feel like a waste when I'd get weapons with the same names. Now in the D2 beta, it's just like - so what? You're all the same anyways.
To me, coming up with interesting combinations of character abilities + weapon loadouts + armor loadouts + weapon/armor perks felt a lot like experimenting with different teams of characters and their assists in Marvel vs Capcom 2 and 3. Finding the synergy of which combinations worked well or were silly gimmicky fun. Actually, Destiny 1's PvP felt a lot like MvC 3 in that there were always clearly superior builds and combinations, but you could still be a threat with off-meta stuff. And that it was fun at least in part because of it's unbalanced nonsense.
Again variety = bueno, Life's favorite spice, etc.
All that said, I really enjoyed the PvE story bit in the beginning! Unfortunately I don't see me hopping back on the bandwagon anymore. At least not initially anyways.
My brother would also like me to mention he feels the sprinting is "clunky". " Like your guardian has taken one too many trips to IHOP." I didn't notice a difference.
Anyone else feel the same? Anyone think I'm blabbering and absolutely bonkers? I'd appreciate any takes on why I'm actually wrong and all this is all very bigly and Good.
I should preface this with saying that I'm one of the few weirdos who actually really enjoyed vanilla Destiny 1's PvP even at it's most unbalanced and nutty (yeah, even when the Thorn and TLW reigned supreme).
I should also mention that I stopped playing regularly with the release of The Taken King (for reasons unrelated to the game).
I've been playing quite a bit of the Destiny 2 Beta lately and while the shooting itself still feels great, the matches themselves have lost some of the over the top hectic action I fell in love with in the original. I feel this is in large part thanks to both character abilities like grenades taking significantly longer to recharge and to the uniform 4v4 that will be standard for all crucible gametypes. I get that a lot of people didn't like the so-called "grenade spam" that'd happen, especially in the first fight of a game, but I feel like the new charge times are overkill. In my opinion, it really takes away a lot of the personality of the different classes leaving their double jumps as the biggest defining feature. Supers coming around on average only once per game in quickplay feels especially lame.
I for sure don't feel like a super powered undead Space Wizard fighting other weirdly murderous super heroes anymore.
While I think 4v4 is a really good idea for competitive, I think it truly sucks that there aren't any (last I checked) planned 6v6 or 3v3 modes. Variety is good! The spice of life even! 6v6 games with supers, grenades, and blinking everywhere were crazy and fun!
Another major bit contributing to the Less Fun is that characters and weapon/armor loadouts have also become simpler and consequently more boring. Really, the fact that all the cool secondary weapons from Destiny 1 (save for pistols) are now consolidated under the heavy category is the absolute lamest thing. I get that Bungie wants weapons like shotguns, fusion rifles, and sniper rifles to be game changers and part of the whole meta in controlling the heavy ammo spawns, but... as someone who really loved using all of those, being able to only briefly use them a few times per game sucks pretty hard. I do enjoy the fights over the heavy ammo spawns in competitive and appreciate the thinking behind it, but not enough to not be able to rock out with cool guns like the Lord of Wolves or the Pocket Infinity. Neither of which were the best guns, but were always fun to use.
I should also mention: I understand the logic for PvE where they wanted to address how people would often feel peer pressured into using primaries with elemental burns for everything since they were just... objectively the better choice. Especially the raid guns (RIP Fatebringer ;_;7 ).
I do recognize that there were always folks who hated how shotguns dominated things for a bit, how certain maps devolved into sniper alleys, disliked being one shot by a fusion rifle, and who really hated the blink + shotgun combo amongst other things. So perhaps I'm in the minority on all this and this is just the logical conclusion of what the majority of Destiny fans wanted.
Another thing I'm probably(definitely?) in the minority in is disliking how weapons and armor don't have randomized perks anymore. To me, it was always fun mixing and matching different perks on guns to see what fun combinations I could come up with that worked well with certain character abilities of special armor perks. It also feels like a mistake in a game as historically content starved as Destiny? At least it didn't used to feel like a waste when I'd get weapons with the same names. Now in the D2 beta, it's just like - so what? You're all the same anyways.
To me, coming up with interesting combinations of character abilities + weapon loadouts + armor loadouts + weapon/armor perks felt a lot like experimenting with different teams of characters and their assists in Marvel vs Capcom 2 and 3. Finding the synergy of which combinations worked well or were silly gimmicky fun. Actually, Destiny 1's PvP felt a lot like MvC 3 in that there were always clearly superior builds and combinations, but you could still be a threat with off-meta stuff. And that it was fun at least in part because of it's unbalanced nonsense.
Again variety = bueno, Life's favorite spice, etc.
All that said, I really enjoyed the PvE story bit in the beginning! Unfortunately I don't see me hopping back on the bandwagon anymore. At least not initially anyways.
My brother would also like me to mention he feels the sprinting is "clunky". " Like your guardian has taken one too many trips to IHOP." I didn't notice a difference.
Anyone else feel the same? Anyone think I'm blabbering and absolutely bonkers? I'd appreciate any takes on why I'm actually wrong and all this is all very bigly and Good.
DDDDD
