Now if the reward for this turns out to be a new dungeon/exotic mission, then I'll eat a Funkmon sock (and I'll be your official Carry person for it forever)...

But this ain't Whisper/Zero Hour Bungie anymore.

I mean, fair enough, but why does it have to be something gawdang amazing? Can something no longer just be "eh, pretty neat!"?

I don’t wanna come off as entitled as the above post makes it seem. Rather, my issue is with how lackluster everything has been the entire season (which may not be entirely on Bungie, as I’ve noticed an odd trend in the live-service space in general these past couple of months), and how low the community sentiment is with Bungie in general right now from a PvP perspective (personally, I’ve no issue with the state of PvP, but it’s the hot topic at the moment).

Apparently some folks were being hyped about some so-called “community event”, too, though I don’t know what all that’s about, and this is no Sundial event.

I think it’s just a goodwill issue and poor timing all things considered. But if you think it’s neat, more power to ya!

Oh, I’m not here to defend the quality of most Destiny content. Most seasons have been straight up bad and unfun with a few exceptions. There has never been an actually fun six person matchmade activity. They’re decent time-wasters at absolute best.

I just also happen to think people expect far too much from live game developers. Fortnite kinda set the bar, and they’re infamously worked into the ground for it. Bungie says they don’t do that. For whatever reason, I actually believe them. The Destiny we have now is partly the price of that. I just don’t think it’s currently possible to produce the quality and quantity of content people want and not run your team into the ground while doing it. I’d still give up the seasonal bullshit for a Taken King or Forsaken every fall. It’d be a far better value proposition.

But, at the end of the day, I still feel like I’m getting my money’s worth from my annual $100 deluxe edition purchase, but I’ll admit they’re getting close to the line there.

I just don’t think secret missions or puzzles are the thing that’s missing, although I can see why so many people think so. Destiny has been pretty rote for years now. The seasonal model seems to working for them, and there are things to like about it, but it seems like it has them stuck in a rut a little bit. There aren’t surprises any more. We now thoroughly understand the cadence of Destiny, and people missing secret stuff is a desire to see that routine change in some way. I agree with that desire, I just don’t think it has to be a secret thing. A season not built around grinding the main playlists so I can in turn grind the season playlist to then unlock the weekly mission would be enough.

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I'm not sure that single 'secret' missions really accomplish what secrets are intended to do: Make the game feel bigger and more expansive by letting you know there's more to it than meets the eye.

Traditionally you'd have tiers of secrets. Some are easy to find, others tougher, and several very hard. Critically, the easy ones lead you to realize that there's more to the game than it seems. And there are many. The game is full of them. They can range from neat little bonuses, to more substantial things.

The entire game is built around discovery and seeing the puzzles all around you. Some are simple combat encounters (often at the mercy of the narrators), some involve physics, and others use the environment to set up a sequence that builds off of another area. But the game very rarely tells you what the puzzle even is. You have to use the power of common sense to find the starting steps and solution all on your own.

The whole thing feels like it was built of the question “what if Breath of the Wild had fun puzzles?”.

I highly recommend it, and I think it’s on Gamepass.

Also critical is that they not be tracked or labeled. There must be no expectation that the player will find any of them. Doing so immediately turns them into a checklist, explicitly letting players know everything there is to find, which is the opposite of what is described above. It'll be perfunctory, with players just following guides to get the achievement. No sense of mystery or wonder.

Where would a secret mission with a gun as reward fall here? Closer to the latter scenario I think. Everyone will simply look it up on /r/DestinyTheGame. It might as well just be a regular mission.

The game also does a fun balance of rewarding you for doing the puzzles with seemingly random rewards, usually cosmetic, occasionally with unique gear that’s part of a set. There’s nothing explicitly telling you that any puzzle will give a certain reward, so it just comes down to you going out there and solving things because you want to.

Only a few can have the awesome moment of discovery before the secret is simply known to all. Information travels too quickly these days.

These free content releases and events simply aren't in the cards anymore.

Zero Hour and Whisper were the only free things in that list. Everything else was contingent on a DLC or season, I’m pretty sure.

Also, we’re still getting lots of that style of content. Whisper and Zero Hour have just become the exotic missions like Presage and whatever the Hawkmoon quest was called. Vox Obscura was a disappointing follow up to those, admittedly, and it’s a bummer we haven’t seen another one since then. Dungeons are also expanded versions of that style of content.

Corridors of Time was neat in principle, but it’s not exactly riveting content, and I’m not super torn up about obscure puzzles not being a thing. At least Niobe Labs was ostensibly solvable without internet crowd sourcing.

All scrapped in favor of two Dungeons a year that you pay $20 for.

I genuinely do not feel like we’re getting less worthwhile content than we used to. We got Presage and Hawkmoon. Vox Obscura, I guess. Seasonal content is hit or miss, but the story missions for last season were great, in my opinion, and far better than the Corridors of Time puzzle, if I had to choose. The Xenophage Quest. The exotic quests from Beyond Light were both fun. All the Dungeons. The reprised raids are arguably more substantial free content than we ever got before.

I would say it’s a bummer to know we can’t really look forward to any surprises, but that’s more because the pattern of Destiny releases is so well established. It needs a structural shake-up of some sort, I think.

Destiny youtube is going crazy trying to stir up drama about dropping player numbers like we aren’t at the end of the most boring season in recent memory, in a long line of very samey seasonal content. I don’t think a new Corridors of Time is the fix.

Because they can not keep the content secret, they are straight up not making this type of content. You like Whisper? Zero Hour? Black Spindle? Corridors of Time? Niobe Labs?

Where do Bungie say this? The only thing you quoted says nothing of the sort. Especially if we consider dungeons or exotic quests an extension of those sorts of things, which I do.