DLC n expansion or whatever are the wrong words I guess, because I'm not against a samey sequel if it can pull off something excellent: Mario Galaxy 2 (which has enough inside baseball changes to make it a better game, in a significant way) for instance fits that bill.
And I didn't exactly stop playing Dark Souls 3 because I felt it was creatively boring, but sure I, and many others naturally respond better to sequels that make significant changes/upgrades. Either add mechanics the first game didn't have, or far more shallow reasons "Holy shit look how much prettier it looks". Only for you know, the game to play the fucking same.
My beef with the footage is that they've done very little to convince me Destiny isn't boring as sin. I thought Destiny 1.0 was a double stuffed shit barrel that didn't respect the players time nor rewarded the player for being skillful or offering any depth to its gameplay. Like the whole "the gunplay is amazing meme" sort of never translated into the actual combat being all that engaging. The shooting feels nice, but the enemies even with their elite styled bob n weaves, don't make the combat nearly as dynamic, fucking Halo 1.
It felt like a lot of bog standard shooting. I appreciate that more of the enemies use projectiles, I appreciate the enemies n gameplay is a bit more than a standard shoot out in something like CoD, but I still find the overall loop to stop, center screen, death, push forward. And it doesn't help that anything meant to present a challenge to the player is either
A: A glorified horde sequence. Your typical hold this spot, fight off waves of enemies (and every fucking mission did this by the way)
or
B: One giant ass bullet sponge, that has maybe 1 interesting attack, but who cares the fight goes on way long to ever stay engaging once you're in rhythm. Especially the strikes.
Dropped that game, didn't bother getting the dlc because that shit was a scam. And then as a christmas gift got The Taken King from the GF's brother because he knew I liked games (ugh), and played through that content with a buddy. None of the dlc fixed my complaints, but okay, yeah some QOL changes with Taken King.
The Cartographer guy wasn't, the fucking worse. Taken King actually sets up a story, and some genuine motivation. I still think the mission designs are fucking dull most of the time, but every now and then it mixes it up better, even the spongy ass bosses have their own sort of unique set up. One of them you fight in this dark ass area where you can barely see shit, another 2 are brothers where one has a bubble shield and launcher attack and the other is a dick. It's inherently more interesting than some of the stuff in Destiny 1.0
I actually got to try the raids, yeah the first raid I was over leveled for, but look at that a mix up of mechanics and set ups that require coordinated play for coop. Something the strikes don't fucking do, because they play more or less like a regular Destiny mission, but scaled to be spongier for broop. Anyway the Raids are actually fucking good, I didn't try the Crota raid, and my crew only tried the King's Fall raid just to see it out, and there was relay race sequence that was super fucking good.
Where we have to move this thing back n forth, in a timely manner, while the other 2 stay in this circle fighting off waves, then the other guy comes back, and we can run back with whatever stored up energy bullshit, and now you gotta fight more dudes while releasing said energy, and your friends are back at that other circle needing you to speed it the fuck up. It's exciting, it's tense, it requires a lot of communication between your party members.
Where is that shit in the strikes (never got to the level cap necessary for nightfall strikes, if nightfall strikes fixes that). I wasn't completely sold on Destiny with Taken King, but it went from a bad game, to at least an average/okay one that I think is on the upswing. And Rise of Iron was back to the same ol shit, a lot of it felt like a downgrade from Taken King.
So I wanted to see a mission n gameplay sequence that felt diverse from the usual round of shooting up some dudes, hell I want to see new enemies that would have mechanics and attacks the other factions do not already have, I want to know what these lost sector dungeons looks like, I want to see boss fights, good, well designed boss fights where the boss is able to keep the player honest through interesting mechanics, and not because 'oh he takes awhile to take down".
The loot stuff, whatever that I'm inherently not a fan of. It's not as shamelessly shitty as 1.0, but in Rise of Iron, as I began my "gear up for the raid" route, I don't fucking like that I'm replaying content I already did, over n over again just to gear up for the next interesting mission. It has nothing to do with my skill, it has more to do with RNJesus throwing me the keys I need, to have fun.
More to it, I also don't like how I can be decked out in all this legendary shit, and what I'm now getting is more or less the same item/piece of gear, but it's 2 points stronger. Which seems dumb, why not just make different, stronger gear? Kind of devaues the legendary item to me, if I get a 250 one, and then get the same legendary item, but now it's 252 (I'm guessing the numbers off my head, sue me). That takes the surprise factor out of it, it also makes the loot itself less special in comparison to its number.
Like I don't think Diablo, in any form, is a deep game. It's actually fundamentally shallow as fuck. But at least it makes more of an effort to gas up its loot, even if it suffers the same trap, and I'm going to assume World of Warcraft (all I've ever done is play the tutorial) is the same shit, where the Raids are this interesting form of gameplay, but the moment to moment shit is hot garbage. So yeah part of it is just that I hate loot games, so consider this my rant against loot games while we're at it.
Too long; didn't read - So at the end of the day Destiny's uphill battle for me, is probably that I dislike the core of it so much. If you find it fun, whatevs, more power to you, but I find it lousy as I find the game mechanically shallow, and the whole looting stuff to be stuff that takes advantage of the player being compulsive, and not necessarily rewarding them for mastery or skillful play. And as someone who has enjoyed parts of the game in bursts, I wish it was showing me something that I would find enjoyable, not more of the same, because I was never of the opinion that Destiny's issues were a lack of content. My issues were that the content that was there, was fucking lame.