So once I realized that the armor had mods, I jacked up my resilience and I stopped losing fights to coin toss Pulse Rifle recoil. So I was able to play at least 40 games of Control yesterday
Played a Dawnblade with Nightshade primary and Minuet secondary - the meta weapons right now as far as I'm concerned.
It's very clear that Bungie wants the Crucible to be slower and more methodical. Those moments where you run around slaying people and chaining supers are a thing of the past and only happen once towards the end of the match. For the majority of the game, you are hugging corners, aiming down lanes with your Pulse Rifle and running away from fights to assist your teammates somewhere else. I found myself staying alive for a minute or more throwing down healing pools and hunkering down behind barriers to inch my way towards a control point. And if a teammate died, I'd evade out of there to regroup with them.
Pushing without your team was a death sentence 99% of the time - even when you were in your super. You can't play as a lone wolf in Destiny 2 at all. 1v1s don't exist. Destiny 2 is about staying alive first and getting kills second.
Expect the level design in this game to be very flat and very simple - a far cry from Destiny 1 maps which were vertical like Blind Watch, cluttered like Twilight Gap, or maze like akin to Sector 618. Bungie is very clearly looking at competitive shooters like Counter Strike and Overwatch for inspiration, perhaps in an attempt to win over some of those players.
As a former Halo player, the game reminds me of high level Halo Reach, from the emphasis on abilities and teamshooting to the reticle bloom. Power Ammo is effectively a power weapon spawn and it lets everyone in the game know that only two people will have it up at any given point. This means the rest of the game, you know you're going to be fighting primaries and are able to move around and position yourself without getting Blink Shotgunned from the whole team (it still happens though). I can't wait to see all the bad kids who ran Bladedancer meta from the first game losing sweats.
The spawns system in Control as far as I know is still tied to the capture zone. But on Endless Vale, all 3 zones seem to have spawns tied to them, unlike Destiny 1 where B didn't have its own spawns. This is a good change that makes B more important.
I don't agree that Control is worse. It's smarter and more strategic, and 4v4 is a way better player count to keep track of.
So far, the things I dislike the most about the game are the pointless cooldowns, the design of the Supers and the balance of the weapons. There's really no reason to use a Hand Cannon or Scout Rifle over a Pulse Rifle. I don't like that everything has basically the same kill time and only changes efficiency based on your range. HCs are way harder to use than everything else, and the RoF is too slow to contest with the other 3 primaries. Couple that with the fact that auto aim drop off is way more pronounced in this game, and it's just a rock-paper-scissors during every right. The dual primary system works well in PvP, but it's extremely repetitive. I don't think there is enough depth in the gunplay to justify firing Pulse Rifles all day. As for the cooldowns, things like waiting a second after clambering or unscoping and waiting for your radar to come back are just annoying delays that slow down your ability to react. That shit needs to go.
Also, the Daybreak Super is incredibly underwhelming. So many times I've popped it and watched people just sidestep the slash. Or you're right next to somebody expecting to hit them like you do with a Sword, but you just do a really lame swing and it completely misses them. And by the time you get to people, it's already run out. Meanwhile, the Strikter Smash and Arcstrider Staff last much longer and don't consume energy to move around as far as I know. I've always thought it was stupid that a Warlock needs to use a flaming sword anyway, so I wish they would scrap it and design something cooler. It's the only super in the game right now that feels like it doesn't belong.
And it goes without saying that beyond their supers, the Hunters have terrible neutral game right now compared to the Titans and Warlocks. Dodging is an incredibly useful asset in the PvP this time around, but Warlocks can do it way more than a Hunter and Titans still have faster lateral movement. The Hunter's only asset right now is that they can strafe faster, whereas the Titan just tanks bullets.
I don't think this game is going to take off in the competitive scene because it lacks dedicated servers and 60 FPS. But if Bungie set out to make a game that wasn't a mindless cluster fuck like the first, well they succeeded. Whether you like it or not depends on what you liked the first game for.