To say that Destiny proved divisive upon its release is like saying Jack the Ripper was an avid anatomy enthusiast. Accurate, but not really the whole story.
We’re three months into the release of Destiny and Bungie has been rolling out updates pretty consistently. The Destiny community has seen many changes, large and small. So the question we now have to ask is, after a quarter of a year of Destiny, has the game improved? Or is it just worse?
Well, looking at it, it seems pretty easy to say, “Keith, have you been huffing paint again? Of course it’s better. Look at everything they’ve improved!” It’s true that Bungie has certainly been busy. They made the loot system less absolute garbage. They’ve nerfed overpowered weapons and buffed the underpowered ones. They’ve taken a balanced, fair event and broken it because it was supposed to be unbalanced and unfair. They’ve even gotten around to making Exotic weapons feel powerful, or at least feel better than your garden-variety Darkness-slayer. Heck, just last week, they overhauled the very way you upgrade Exotic weapons and collect upgrade materials.
All in all, I think it’s safe to say that all of these changes have improved Destiny. But have they really made it better? Or just made it less bad?
Disclaimer: I love Destiny. When I’m not playing a brand new game, it’s what I play on just about a daily basis. It’s my go-to game, but only the truly ignorant and the truly annoying can just blatantly ignore and/or deny the obvious flaws in a game. Just because you like something, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be critical towards it. So everything I’m saying after this point I say as a fan.
Let’s start with the looting. How incredibly annoying was it that you would spend hours grinding until the point where Legendary Engrams would start dropping, finally acquire one of the elusive purple jerks, and then bring it to the Cryptarch, only to find that– surprise!— it was Rare gear, not Legendary? Answer: VERY. VERY INCREDIBLY ANNOYING.
To Bungie’s credit, they fixed that. Engrams now only drop items of their own rarity or higher (consequentially making Legendary Engrams harder to find, in the spirit of keeping the game balanced), and Engrams in general are now easier to acquire. Spend an hour in the Vanguard Strike Playlists and you’ll walk away with more Engrams than Master Rahool can swallow.
So hopefully he chokes.
But why was that even a thing to begin with? Bungie’s been around for quite a while. They’ve created one of the most lucrative franchises in gaming history, which also happened to heavily influence online multiplayer and first-person-shooters in general. How did they not think to themselves, “Gosh, this sure is annoying. Aneurysm-inducing, even. Maybe we shouldn’t do this?”
Or what about Exotic weapons? In some cases you have to practically run and gun your way through Hell just to acquire one, and when you finally get one? There’s a pretty good chance it’s not that great. Thorn, for example, is a pretty decent PvP weapon, what with its Mark of the Devourer upgrade, which is essentially a ‘poison’ effect. But between its abysmal reload time, small clip size and ammo capacity, and Mark of the Devourer perk doing almost nothing to higher-level enemies, it’s junk. Very cool-looking junk, but junk nonetheless. Why pursue a weapon which requires you to jump through flaming hoops (and the occasional pool filled with sharks), when you can just save up some Vanguard Marks (again via the Strike Playlists), and just buy a good Legendary weapon? Especially when there are no restrictions on how many Legendaries you can have equipped at any one time?
There’s more, too; Why was the Vex Mythoclast even a thing in its original state? Why use anything other than an auto rifle in Crucible, when it was originally the best weapon by far? Why, for the love of that great big bloated god they call ‘the Traveler,’ was the Iron Banner anything other than exactly what it was advertised to be?
At the end of the day, you could look at the lists of updates that Bungie has applied to Destiny, and you can say “Yeah, the game’s better.” Technically yes, it is a better game compared to when it first launched, but a very large amount of the things they’ve improved shouldn’t have needed improving in the first place. Between Bungie’s experience and the ludicrous amounts of money Activision threw at them to replicate Halo‘s success, I am absolutely dumbfounded by their inability to foresee the amount of issues Destiny had upon launch. While a technically-sound game, it had major design flaws which are still being fixed to this day, three months later.
I’d say the best update is definitely that event where you can play with the Sword of Crota, though. Hands down.
