A package full of Legendary armor fully leveled up waiting for me at special orders is all you can do right now Bungie to make me not hate this game.

Honestly, you know that is not going to happen. Yeah, you don't like the grind (nor will I), but that's kind of childish.

So leveling up your armor's defense also adds light. I need one more level of light to hit 26.

I'm looking at the materials required to level up some of my Leg / Exotic armor, and it's all rare shit.

God fucking dammit the grind just gets worse and worse. I literally did not even think it would be this bad, and I am seriously thinking about just giving up and saying fuck the raid.

A package full of Legendary armor fully leveled up waiting for me at special orders is all you can do right now Bungie to make me not hate this game.

Is there even the slightest possibility that you and Avateur are being incredibly impatient?

I mean that respectfully, you're both cool dudes.

I've committed to giving it at least a month before I give up, but I have to agree that there isn't much hope for the future. The grind is sooooooooo boring.

So leveling up your armor's defense also adds light. I need one more level of light to hit 26.

I'm looking at the materials required to level up some of my Leg / Exotic armor, and it's all rare shit.

God fucking dammit the grind just gets worse and worse. I literally did not even think it would be this bad, and I am seriously thinking about just giving up and saying fuck the raid.

A package full of Legendary armor fully leveled up waiting for me at special orders is all you can do right now Bungie to make me not hate this game.

Now I understand that on a fansite like this one, my current inability to play is an anomaly - I have literally not yet been able to put the disc into my console, so I have 0.0 hours played of the release game.

But it's pretty important to remember that the game was released 4 days ago - and to have you complaining that it's too much playtime to level up is pretty surreal. Maybe... I dunno... you're playing it too much?

Whatever. If you're not having fun, you should stop. It's really that simple.

I've read the whole thread up to this point and I think both the Cody camp and Pete camp have good points. It's a lot about the mindset you take when approaching this. Now, what I'm about to say might make people's heads explode, for a variety of reasons, and I apologize up-front if I'm out of my gourd here.

Cody, I understand what you're saying. The game should remain fun and interesting at any point in the progression. Should. But... think about this:

What is college? College is like Destiny pre-20. You're doing new classes each semester, working towards a goal, building accomplishments. Then, out of some sense of masochism, you pursue grad school. Then it's the same classes you took before, just more brutal. This is Destiny after level 20. But the enticement of further accomplishment (high level gear) spurs you to keep going, despite not wanting to--because the activity itself has lost its appeal, whether from difficulty or the sheer amount of time spent. So you go for the PhD. So you can, what, teach? You go through that to limit your prospects? But... but... it's the measure of success! Right? We all want that full set of Exotic armor. But what will that REALLY take?

We came here to Become Legend, no? To forge our stories in battle. Whether intentionally or not, maybe Bungie has made something deeper than just an FPS for us to dick around in. Stories, stories. Put your fan-fic hats on for a sec. You're a Guardian, reborn into an unfamiliar world. You meet other Guardians as you lash out at the forces of the Darkness. Is every day going to be epic? Is every encounter going to be like the battle below Halo 3's citadel? No, of course not. You go out in your jump ship, poke around the wastelands of our former empire, and return maybe that night, maybe days later, with whatever you've found and tales of those you drove back into the vacuum of space. Periodically, you rest and scratch your ass while watching vids off the net (like we all ought to do once in a while IRL; this game's been out 4 days only, people). You mingle in the Tower, enjoy nightlife in the City. You go beyond the Wall again. You come back. Rinse, wash, repeat.

See, this is an allegory for our real lives. It's not every day we feel like Legends. But when those times do come, it's awesome! The rest of the time, we should keep things in perspective. We do our Guardian jobs and it's not always fun. We live, we play, we laugh. We meet another Guardian, form a bond, fall in love. We have a family. You don't land that Exotic gear in a day. It might take years. You go too fast and all the you get is exhaustion, frustration--as is the case in anything! The point is, if you focus just on how annoying it is that a grind lies between you and Ultimate Victory, you're going to drive yourself insane. Just as the grind between burger flipper and CEO would drive us to drink/drugs/suicide if it was all we could think of. There's more out there and it can't be had instantly.

So maybe I'm crazy and you all want to rend me with shovels for this inane metaphor. But that's none of my business.

I did it and grinded it out. Level 26. Raid, here I come. If anybody here makes it to 26 before tuesday let me know so I can start putting together a raid crew.

PSN - D_P_Roberts

contact @ codymiller dot org

If they aimed for an MMO-style game this sounds about right. Back in the days with WoW the game's pace slowed down incredibly when you got to late game content. I read an article defining this as the content wall, something that should take ages to get past, because after that there is nothing more, this will (hopefully) keep active players playing until the next content update.

In WoW previous content was made easier to access and/or play so anyone, not only hardcore raiders, would get to actually experience it. Meanwhile a new content wall was put up at the end of the new content, naturally. If Bungie plans to deliver content in the same way, and you're not into seemingly endless grinding, it might be sensible to just not play the last content until the next game expansion :)

That said, I have not played the actual game yet... guess I'll wait for a PC version.

The game has been out for five days. Here's where I stand.

Crucible is this game's saving grace. It's far from perfect, but it's the one mode in this entire game that actually WORKS on a fundamental level. I enjoy PvP enough that I'll probably keep playing it for the foreseeable future, but the rest of the game severely lacks replayability. The loot grind is super boring. Patrol mode, which was initially my favorite mode, feels very repetitive now. I only play it when I'm in the mood for some free-roam shootin', which isn't very often, and never for very long. I don't use it for its intended purpose (grinding). The story missions are extremely repetitive, and since the story itself is so unremarkable, I have no incentive to trudge through any of them again, except for the sword one because it actually offers something unique for me to do. The strikes are also repetitive and every boss battle is tedious, but I am partial to one or two of them despite myself. I'll probably replay those occasionally. (But I'm never touching the Moon strike again. FUCK PHOGOTH.)

I'm nowhere near where I need to be for the raid - it will probably take me weeks to grind to level 26. Why should I have to slog through weeks of boredom just to play something I want to play? At least it's not going anywhere... unless Bungie decides to lock it again, which is entirely within their capability. I don't see why they would, but just knowing that they COULD if they wanted to is unsettling to me.

I can see myself playing this six months from now, but only when I'm in the mood for it. This will never be a seven-nights-a-week game like Halo was.