If it counts I know how you feel.
Back in the day? I felt like a god at Unreal Tournament, I was so damn good that the LAN party I went too started doing things like slowing the game down in the host settings or doing big head mode all due to the fact that the guys at the LAN party would say, “Dude you are too damn good.”
Now? I can’t keep up with the kids playing Destiny 2 and god knows if I go to the Dark Zone in Division 2 I get mowed down in a heartbeat.
You and your friends are the only ones that can save the Kingdom, Country, World, Interstellar Government group.
Whomever sends you on this quest/mission/whatever? They give you about 200 gold/dollars/credits/whatever the money is and note the shopkeepers who also know you are your friends are the only ones that can do this, charge you an arm and a leg for everything. Thus that 200 will get you a T-Shirt along with a pointy stick and maybe a one healing item.
Granted a lot of games haven’t done this in some time. Last one I can remember was Fallout 2 where, “Good job getting past the Temple of Save Scumming and getting the Vault Dwellers underware. Here’s a Spear and $200 bucks. Now go get us that GECK!”
Being someone who plays Destiny 2 here’s my issue with it.
For one? The guns themselves are not really useless but they are not like some sorta pay to win thing. That said however? Bungie has been buffing/nerfing things so really all it takes is them to make a change to one of them and out of nowhere it’s part of the meta. On a side note it’s not like Bungie hasn’t done something like this before as well, they did give exotic guns away via Twitch/Prime Gaming. And one of the expansions you can buy gives you three or so exotics you can ‘pick’ from I believe Forsaken. But still $15 dollars for three exotics that really are not really all that hard to get in game is kind of stupid.
Now my big over all problem with it? The fact that it’s called a New Player Starter Pack when it’s really not the sorta starter pack they should be getting out there for a new player. And let me tell you right now being a new player in Destiny 2 sucks the big one. Normally when MMO’s offer a new player pack like that? It’s something along the lines of a few extra inventory/bank slots, maybe some kind of helpful buff to XP or something. Granted it’s Destiny 2 not ESO, FFXIV or WoW. But still that tends to be the norm.
This leads me to the whole being a new player in Destiny 2 sucks, as it’s not just the game it’s self. Lets go over how much money it costs just to start playing the damn thing.
First off? Where games like ESO, FFXIV, WoW have it where you get all of the older expansions when you buy the new one, or in FFXIV’s case you get Heavensward and Stormblood. Destiny 2 you still need to buy all of the older expanions. Thus you have… And note they are on sale right now on Steam but I’m going to list them for the normal price.
Shadowkeep - $24.95
Forsaken (and yeah you get 3 exotic guns that are not from Dungeons or raids) - $24.95
Beyond Light (has the Stasis subclass) - $24.95
Bungie 30th Anniversary Pack (A dungeon) - $24.95
Witch Queen - $29.95
Lightfall - $49.95 not unless you want to drop $100 for the season pass and a exotic Auto Rifle. And while Lightfall’s story sucks it has another subclass and at the moment it’s one of the better ones.
The Final Shape - Same as Lightfall
Now they do offer two packages for $60 bucks and $30 bucks that for the most part come with just about everything minus Witch Queen. And note they don’t list them as a new player pack or anything like that. It’s the Legacy Collection and Armory Pack. Still for a new player if you know to grab those? That’s still $90 dollars on top of having to drop $30 for Witch Queen and at least $50 for Lightfall. So we’re talking $170 dollars just to get yourself up to date with Destiny 2 as a new player. I’m not even going to get into how most new folks I’ve known who will start out in it will drop $15 to $20 bucks for an cosmetic armor set so they don’t look awful. But still, here’s what other MMO’s and I’ll even throw in a looter shooter or two as well.
FFXIV - Everything up to Stormblood is free, Endwalker is $40 bucks and I believe gives you Shadowbringers as well. Bit more if you want bonus stuff.
Elder Scrolls Online - Necrom is $40 there’s a deluxe collection for $80 that gives you everything along with all of the bonus stuff as well.
WoW - $50 for the base edition of the next expansion and you get everything along with Dragonflight. More if you want the bonus stuff.
Borderlands - The Borderlands Collection: Pandora’s Box that comes with everything and I do mean everything is $80 bucks.
Tom Clancy’s The Division - $30 for the first game $50 if you want the DLC packages with it. Division 2 is $30 if you want the basic game, $60 if you want the expansion, $80 if you want the base game and expansion with the extra’s I believe one extra is a character boost as well.
Now while that was a little long and I’m sorry about that? If someone is really wanting a MMO or looter shooter style game? And before someone gives me the line about Warframe, I never played it so I don’t know the full costs for the game. There are vastly cheaper games that give you a lot more bang for your buck and are also fairly new player friendly.
Really Destiny 2 even with that new player pack? It’s already costing an arm and a leg for someone new to get into it. I’ll add in that it’s not really all that new player friendly. Hell right now if you are a new player? You are going to make a new character and if at anytime you log out while doing the new player stuff on Earth? The minute you log back in it’s going to throw you into the new season.
Thus long story short? You are paying a crap ton just to get up to date with the game, and god knows if you are new they pretty much throw you to the sharks the minute you pop on the second time.
I think you need to look at what you play bro.
Starfield is one of the worst games to come out this year. At first I liked it too however after seeing what folks on Reddit are saying about it? Yeah it’s a pile of trash made by a company that shits the bed who are owned by the worst company in gaming history.
Really bro it’s the worst game of the year.
Ultima Online from it’s launch until the release of Trammel in 2000.
Alright for those of you who never played UO or are too young to remember or ya know not being born yet? UO was for the most part the granddaddy of MMO’s. Some of it’s systems and ideas have been taken into other games, things like player housing, crafting being a ‘big’ thing.
Anyhow Ultima Online ran with an free for all pvp ruleset. In the normal Towns and Cities you where under protection of the guards. Note you could have player thieves work in those areas and that was about it. Outside those areas? You could pretty much attack whomever you wanted.
So with how the game was set up? You had the following. Player thieves who would get into your pack and try and steal anything that was worth a crap ton. Player killers who would just run up and gank you, most of whom worked in packs. You’d see them coming if you saw a solid red name pop up on your screen. The “Notoriety Killer” namely someone who used the notoriety system to kill others, namely if they saw you use an AoE spell like firefield? They would run into it flagging you as a “criminal” and would kill you. Finally there was the Looter, namely someone who would lead monsters to other players with the idea of letting that person kill the things and they would grab the loot, or grab everything off the persons body when they died. And note you did have folks using exploits, hacks and the like.
And it did pay off big time. I did player thieving and believe me I could get more loot and then like from just stealing it off other players. PK’s made a crap ton, and the more clever ones when they put in a bounty system would once they got a bounty to some insane level? Have a friend kill the character, claim the bounty and would have a new PK already to go. Looters? Two of the most well known looters on UO the Galads of Sonoma became pretty well known. Galad the good did an interview where he even talked about how he got a crap ton of more of everything via playing ‘evil’ then he ever did being a nice helpful player.
Anyhow that’s how UO was until Trammel rolled around, Trammel being a mirror world of the main map and the Lost Lands. See Trammel’s rule set was that you couldn’t attack, steal, so on, from other players unless you where in a guild war or part of the order/chaos faction system. Looting still happened at first however the Dev’s changed some of the rules with that, monsters only being lootable by the players who kill them no real way for players to ‘block’ other players.
Anyhow needless to say Trammel pretty much became the main map everyone played on. Felucca the ‘old’ map pretty much started looking like a ghost town. To be fair for a moment, the Dev’s did try and bring life back to Felucca. They doubled the amount of resources and loot one could get there. Put in a Felucca only Dungeon that had some pretty nice ideas that went into it. Still needless to say there was a good chunk of the player base who hated this change and claimed it killed the game.