Destiny's Fall From Its Own Golden Age

A year and a half after launch, the MMO/FPS shooter Destiny is starting to feel barren.

I am a die hard fan of Bungie; I've conquered every single Halo game to date (except Halo 5...I only own a PS4 right now, sadly) and I was stoked when they announced Destiny years before it launched.  I was lucky enough to participate in both Betas, and, while some were a bit underwhelmed, I was enthusiastic; SPACE MAGIC!  SPEEDER BIKES!  GIANT TANKS!  What could possibly go wrong?!

And I've conquered nearly every challenge in game since then; I've done each raid except King's Fall on Hard, participated in a LOT of Iron Banner, and sometimes, when I feel like putting myself in my place, dare to fight in the Trials of Osiris.  My light level, at max, is 314, which isn't too shabby at all.  I'm one trophy away from 100% completing the base game (I just am too lazy to search for all of the Ghosts, honestly.)

Destiny's first year was pretty exciting; we had both DLC packs "The Dark Below" and "House of Wolves" as well as the introduction of the yearly events (something nearly every MMO does, but I appreciate it nonetheless.)  And when they announced The Taken King, I was jumping for joy in hopes that we were going to be treated to several more fantastic experiences!  A chance to take on the father of Crota, the biggest bad-ass of the game until then, was going to be awesome!   But now I'm at a point where I turn on the console, scroll past the looming Oryx icon on the dashboard, and let out a, "meh."

Six months since The Taken King dropped, I have found myself in a rut.  I almost never play unless it's to participate in Iron Banner (and that's because I know I can get a group of friends to jump in) or Xur has that one piece of gear I haven't got from a random drop.  There's literally nothing new or exciting going on, and that's frustrating given that I paid for the collector's editions for both Destiny and The Taken King (no regrets though, my Dinkle Bot is pretty freakin' cool, as well as the book with Cayde-6's notes.)

Bungie has made a few attempts to keep the community interest, adding speeder bike racing for a few weeks and a ho-hum Valentine's Day PVP event, but, beyond that, its been dismal.  Even right now, I'm looking at a text message from a friend wanting to know if I'd care to jump into a fire team and run the daily challenges, but those are, at this point, boring.  I have done nearly everything, and I'm only a few items away from having every exotic for my main (EXO TITAN FOR THE WIN!!!)

Honestly, the only thing that keeps me coming back is the fact that there are so few games I can play with 6 friends cooperatively on PS4.  Say what you will about the many flaws of the game (still waiting on a fix for the run button -_-) Bungie got co-op with friends right.  Yeah, there's a lack of match making to pick up a random person to help clear a raid after someone drops out...and that is very frustrating not to have when a person drops out an hour after starting, but I've learned to keep a big list of friends, just in case.  Which is another positive for me; I've met a lot of really good players and made some pretty cool friends as a result.

We keep in touch here and there, but it's not the same when you're coordinating a group to take down huge robots and platform jump across disappearing platforms (and we have some great one liners, like, "The F@$%ing walls are made of rubber!!!")  Some of our clan have been playing games from their back log (I've been trying to play catch up on Pokemon Omega Ruby,) some have been playing other FPS games, like Call of Duty or Battlefield, and a very select few are still holding out hope for Destiny on a regular basis.  They continue to fight for the Traveler and the Tower, and I commend them for their continued efforts; I was right beside them from day one.

So, since we're pretty positive that there's going to be a lack of content until Destiny 2 arrives, what does that mean for a Titan ready to smash the Hive back into their holes?  It probably means that I'm going to have to be OK with one of two outcomes; either continue to be OK with the grind and deal with the lack of content so I can spend time with friends, or hang up my Suros Regime & try and con my group into migrating over to other cooperative games.  The thing is, I don't want to be OK with that outcome, but, given the lack of exciting new content combined with dwindling support for issues from the initial launch of the game, I'll probably find myself migrating over to "The Division."

That is, until Destiny 2 arrives.