Back on the horse.
Marathon, Destiny 1 player and Day 1 Destiny 2 player here (currently 3,168 hrs in D2 on record).
I stopped playing Destiny 2 after The Witch Queen (which I absolutely loved and still think was Bungie’s best D2 DLC to date), mainly because I got sick of complaining about the state of the game so much. IE: I loved the game so much that I hated it.
For the past 2 years I’ve been playing Diablo Immortal, II, III and IV, Starfield, Fallout IV and Starfield. It’s been a good break (much more chill gaming experiences than Destiny grandmasters and raids that’s for sure!), but more recently I played through Remnant 2, and replayed through Remnant from the Ashes too which got me back in the mood for more pew pew pew action again.
A friend I was playing these games with wanted to give Destiny 2 a go (and a friend who never left D2 has been trying to get me to pick up the game again for years now). Initially I was dead set on never playing D2 again as I was certain that I was getting more enjoyment from regularly checking in to this reddit and YouTube for all the Destiny 2 drama, but a part of me wants to put the final nail in the coffin with The Final Shape, so I thought fuck it. I’ll re-install it.
The first few hours of returning to D2 was fucking savage. I was bombarded with pop-ups enticing me to spend money on this and that. I had forgotten just about everything; How the fuck do I bring up my sparrow again? Ohhhh, bring up the ghost first, then the sparrow… how do I do finishers again? How do I upgrade weapons and where do I turn in bounties? The UI is an absolute mess, not to mention my friend who was new to the game was even more lost than I was and my mate who never left was absolutely decimating everything on the screen in every activity we were doing.
I started doing what the seasonal quest tab was telling me to do, then the game was trying to get me to do an activity I didn’t have access to, so I bought the season pass, then the game tells me the activity is part of Season 22 and I can’t do it unless I buy the annual pass?! Fucking what?!
So fuck me dead. I pay for Lightfall + the annual pass (despite watching ALL the negative review videos on YouTube). I start out at 1600 light level and can’t grind for the Gyrfalcon’s Hauberk (Void Hunter for life!) as I’m WAY too low for legend lost sectors. OK I gotta level up. Then it hits me… I have to grind bounties (lots of them) and do the same old shit I’ve been doing for the past 10+ years. At this stage I was just about to rage quit again, but then it happened. I started grinding bounties, then strikes, then the crucible and even fucking gambit and dares of eternity, and just like smoking the first cigarette after quitting for months I was hooked once more.
Fuck this game!
Posted on reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/DestinyTheGame/comments/18qqc97/returning_player_just_like_that_im_hooked_again/