I tried getting into Destiny a couple months ago. There is no hook for new players. It's like watching a later season of some over the top, corny, convoluted show without ever getting to watch the previous episodes. The level design is just silly. Towns aren't towns, they are mazes with a bunch static, talking props haphazardly sprinkled about. Every time I came back to the game it'd play some cinematic I don't understand and throw me into some place I have never been with no instruction on how to get back. I did not play for long and won't play again.
It's not just maps that have dumpster fire design.
The original 4 enemy races were all incredibly well designed. They all worked really well solo to provide interesting encounters, and were decent in pairs of races, too. Everything after has been downhill. There have been a few that were "fine", but nothing remotely comparable to the initial design. They just want shit to look cool, not provide cohesive gameplay.
And seasonal shit with different kinds of enemies that only take damage from specific gun types with the specific season perk? Absolute fucking horseshit. The beauty of original Destiny was that I could play something with my Hunter and high impact scout rifle from start to finish and barely touch my skills and be golden, and the guy next to me could be a Titan with an autorifle diving into anything that moved and constantly using his super and have the same quality experience.
Destiny, and I say this as someone who loved D1 and tried very hard to love D2, suffers from a mix of the worst of art-by-committee and the worst of art-by-auteur.
Every game director has managed to come across both a simpering sycophant and clueless tyrant, trying to cater to both the vicitudes of MTX optimization and the whims of their 50-hour-a-week players, both of which command Bungie's ear to try to make the most addictive game on the least content.
As a result they are stuck to committing to a constant release schedule where they have barely enough time to create basic terrain and voice overs, throw in their usual stock of enemies and press-button-while-holding-a-shape game play. And they are damned if they do and damned if they don't touch the PvP mode, where half the players are mad if they lose a single engagement in a single match in a single game while playing with the most optimized loadout, and the other half are the same but playing with random trash they found on the floor.
The gun play is great, but it's clear they can't think of anything exciting to do with it any more. All sense of mystery has gone from the old story, and the new story doesn't have time to explain why they don't have time to explain.
Their most recent season was focused loosely around pagan witchcraft, I'm a amateur (secular) Tarot reader, my wife and I are loosely (atheist) pagan celebrants, and they even had a custom tarot deck as merch - couldn't hold my attention because it was still an easier Court of Oryx from Destiny 1, and the main game play is "shoot monster, go to the HAM radio which for some reason is the size of a fridge to listen to an alien with a Brooklyn accent chat shit about something that happened 2 years ago"
The disjointed random video dumping you to a new mission every time you log in as a new player is super weird. Really makes it hard to figure out what you were doing.
I think the worst part about this starter pack is that, not only is it mostly useless garbage, new players (who this targets) have no idea this is mostly useless garbage. They surely don't even know you can only equip one of these weapons at a time, let alone that they are far from meta.
D2 is just the absolute most miserable experience for new players and Bungie consistently makes it worse. It's baffling. Meanwhile, they try to milk their veteran players more and more every season by offering more for money, less for free, and making the game more of a grind.
The best part about Destiny 2 is it has personally put me on a hard line against any kind of live service game for the foreseeable future.
Wow, there's a lot of hate for D2... I played Destiny 1 almost daily, and enjoyed Destiny 2's launch. I fell off for a while, played a little Beyond Light, but didn't get any of the other expansions. I got back into the game during Season 21, Season of the Deep, and thoroughly enjoyed the content. I played the old campaigns (got them on sale for 75% off), then enjoyed Season of the Witch. Now, Season of the Wish just came out yesterday and I enjoyed the 30 minutes I had to play the game (busy day). Yeah, I pay for some things, story content mostly. The game play is really good, the story is fine, and we're coming up to the end of this huge 10-year saga between the light and darkness, the Traveler and the Witness. The Final Shape (next campaign) has been delayed, but Bungie is putting extra content into this season to make up for the extra long season we'll have, and it'll be free for everyone, not just people who bought the season. Everything has been building up to this point, and I'm so excited to see where it goes from here.
Sure, other games do a seasonal model better, other games have better writing or mechanics or less monetization. But I'm still having fun. Not everyone hates Destiny, even if Bungie has made some bad decisions in the past and lately.
I got back into the game in Season 21 and played all the campaigns then. I enjoyed all of them. Shadowkeep was very cool, I felt bad for Eris. Witch Queen was fun, I found the story gripping. Lightfall was kinda meh, but Strand is so powerful. Every campaign doesn't need to be amazing much like every season of a TV show need to be amazing, but I'll still watch Futurama and Bones and The Office over and over.
The only campaign I haven't played again is Beyond Light, which I mostly finished back when it came out.
I think the part I disliked the most of all the campaigns was getting Strand meditations for my Banner of War Titan. But the levels were fun to play even if the story wasn't great.
We're spending $15 every few months. That costs way less than a full season of a TV show or even a single movie, especially in the theater, and we play Destiny for many more hours than watch a TV season or movie.
Destiny 2 has been one of the biggest wastes of my money ever. Every time I put money into it they drop a DLC shortly after, so I just gave up. I liked it at first, but man it just didn't hold up at all. Warframe on the other hand has dope ass exciting things to do every time I log on and I have a ton of fun and have never had to spend any real money because the platinum trading system is solid and you can earn a good amount just playing the game.
Not sure when you last played it, but they've revamped the new player stuff a lot to make the transition much better. I never had a big issue with how it was personally but I think it's gotten way better about introducing new players to how the game works. Definitely not at all the case that you need a hundred hours to get into it, that's just ridiculous hyperbole in my opinion. I think it may take a few hours of play to start getting into the habits and finding cool mods and stuff to experiment with, but definitely not a hundred hours of grinding. If you haven't in a long time, try it out, it's really great.