Okay, I LOVE Destiny.
It's attention to detail, lore and worldbuilding AND it's gameplay loop and mechanics are some of the best fun of it's genre. One thing I loved MORE than that was it's cinematic storytelling, that has always, ALWAYS put Bungie in the limelight - It's the reason we loved Halo, and it's the reason we continue to love Destiny.
So why in Light's name did we leave the original campaign behind?!
I get wanting The Tower at the forefront, I get wanting a new year and new content (Being awoken D1-style was amazing) yet all of my friends that have been skeptical of D2 get to The Tower Post-Shadowkeep and the first thing I hear is 'I'm lost' or 'There's way too much' or 'Where am I supposed to be going?'.
All of the New Light quests being thrown on you at once, all the activities open to new players without any sense of noticeable guidance, The old story being thrown into the trash as Legacy Content in the Hanger where people can forget it exists, it all reeks of a real lack of narrative direction - The kind that makes Destiny such an enjoyable game to begin with. It's just bad design.
When you want players to stay engrossed into a game, you typically give them a narrative sense of direction to pursue that inspires or invokes them to keep playing and exploring. The original story was on-rails until you beat The Red War and never had this issue - Which is why taking it out completely threw the narrative direction off the rails, and the incentive for new players to continue playing with it. It makes D2 feel hollow. Long-term fans know that's not the case.
The most crucial thing to nail when you want people to stay and play the game is ensuring new players can figure out how to play the game on their own. They could play with friends, but not everyone has that luxury (and some choose not to, for that matter). Others may not always be around to play with their friends (or have friends that play Destiny 2 yet).
If new players can't get find an incentive to play the game and keep going, then they just won't play. The lack of solid and meaningful narrative direction is the main cause of this, but even all the markers in The Tower at the moment are overwhelming to look at.
I made this post because when I've tried to introduce D2 to my friends - players from other looter-shooters that I had convinced into Destiny 2 - They had been skeptical of the game before being convinced into trying it (especially now it's free). And now that they've gotten into these issues, they cannot find the reason that I and many others like myself kept playing the game. They've been unable to play since.
One of them was kind enough to address issues after a few hours of play, and while they definitely pointed out the great things about D2 they also said this: 'Destiny 2 is a bit like contemporary art - it's creative, it's rich, but you have no idea what on earth is going on.'
So, some solutions:
1: Offer players who wish to get straight into the story if they wish to jump straight into The Red War, or return to The Tower (Those that don't could find the story in The Courtyard, moving the Legacy Content from Amanda to Banshee-44). This is a perfect way to introduce the campaign as you're leading your new guardian to The Last City when the Red Legion attacks. At most, this method would involve tinkering with a cutscene or two, implementation of choice Post-Awakening and giving Banshee-44 the quests.
2: Fill in the story for New Light players, so that they're aware of what they missed - A single cutscene detailing the events of The Red War would be more than enough to set narrative direction. I would still recommend moving all 'on-rails' Story Content to Banshee-44 and remove the Legacy tag from Y1 Expansions - This way, the New Light guardians are canonically placed shortly after The Red War as intended, and can enter Curse of Osiris and Warmind as new guardians if they wish.
If anyone else has any opinions or ideas to suggest, I am open to comments below :)
Submitted December 01, 2019 at 05:18PM by Miphaling https://ift.tt/35LpKGC
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