I had a similar arc with D2. I was on it straight from work for hours for a few years, was a bit too much to be honest.

Then it became even more cyclical and the grind felt like I was Sisyphus, constantly working towards the next thing.

Haven't turned it on in years now and happy that way!

Oh man, I used to love this game. I adored the lore and gameplay, but fell off at Season of the Splicer, which is a damn shame because I LOVE the eliksini!! It was like that season was made for me. But I just got tired of the weekly chore list, and the need to "get my money's worth" for whatever season I bought. Story was locked behind these chores too. Just.. damn shame.

Yeah +1 on Destiny. My most played game after ARMA2 and I'd not recommend it. It doesn't respect your time and you're expected to just grind the same 3 or 4 events constantly and those don't have any variation to them. Each season roles around with the same event to do each week for the next 12 weeks to get a slight recoloured gun.

I know it's common among MMOs to hyper focus in a small subset but at least alts exist and there's a world to explore. There's virtually no reason to go back to the main world in D2 outside of seasonal events and every area has the same feeling to it. Alts don't really matter either, there's 3 classes that all play almost the same way with slight variation. If I start a Mage or a Warrior in an MMO I'm going to have a different experience and challenge, In D2 the biggest challenge between a Hunter and Warlock is learning how double jumping works. I'm still going to be using the same gun to kill 99.9% of enemies.

The devs also don't care that much about their game. That much is self evident if you followed the recent major DLC release where at the end of the story even the communities own lore experts were scratching their head about what exactly the MacGuffin in the story was. At no point did the writers decide they should tell the players what it is/does even though all of the NPCs talk to you as if you already know.

Same. I think I have roughly 2k hours over the years, but I've reduced my own playtime (and also the amount of money I give them, I don't buy it unless it's more than 50% off) over the years and ever since Forsaken I've had less and less reason to recommend it to anyone else. The big reason is pretty simple. Bungie just keep giving it less and less focus while monetizing the game as much as possible. Without writing an essay on everything wrong with Destiny I think the best summary is that the game has lost it's vision and turned into a content treadmill. The themes of the original story have been largely thrown out the window. There's no longer a clear artistic style of Destiny but rather whatever seems "fun", like having 80s themed sci-fi setting with a "surfs up bro" type of character for an expansion. That expansion in the context of the wider story was supposed to be the dreadful defeat and uncertainty about the future, but we've thrown the story out anyway so who cares? Content is largely the same thing we've been doing since Forsaken with the biggest difference being the setting. All the while price of the game is increased and content gets spread out between expansions, seasons, dungeons and in game store, so that Bungie could get all the money they want.

And that's just for the seasoned players. New players have it even worse. The new player experience is a lazily put together nonsensical mess. One of the worst I've seen. New players would have to put in a lot of effort to "get" Destiny and for that commitment they get "buy now" thrown in their face on every possible chance like some shitty F2P mobile game.

Kept scrolling till I found this comment.

I absolutely loved Destiny 2 but good god is it terrible in a lot of ways. Couldn't keep up with the time investment required and the game really likes using FOMO to keep players hooked.

It's less of a game and more of a second job. At least, that's how it started feeling towards the end for me.

I haven't played since they removed a bunch of content that I paid for. I played the hell out of Destiny and pre ordered Destiny 2 but Bungie is dead to me now.