Is Destiny like an abusive relationship? I ask myself, nearly every day, why I keep coming back to Destiny. I have lots of great games and are more meaningful than Destiny or look like lots of fun (GTA V, Infamous Second Son and First Light), yet I keep coming back for more Destiny. I suppose it is because Destiny is very comfortable and predictable, plus the game mechanics feel about as perfect as I can imagine.
But yesterday, Destiny pissed me off several times. The first and most upsetting was when I jumped to the Tower to turn in a bounty, then promised to rejoin a friend on the Moon Patrol (she needed to kill Hive and I needed to get public events for another bounty). From the Tower, I joined her fireteam and started flying to the Moon. My friend told me that a “Defend the Warsat” public event was starting. I was still loading (covered up by the flying animation). After a minute or so, she said that the Warsat was about halfway done, but I was still loading. After another seeming interminable time nothing changed and my anxiety to get there turned to FURY. I was so mad at the fucking load screens that take forever on modern gaming systems with the game loaded on the hard drive. At that point, I just turned off my PS4 and played LOTRO for the first time in 2 weeks. LOTRO was very relaxing and non-rage inducing.
But LOTRO got boring after I did a bunch of quests in Western Gondor, so I needed my FPS action fix, so I jumped back into Destiny. Then a couple of other annoying things happened, both involving “Kill Target” public events. I didn’t bother rejoining my friend’s fireteam, because I was embarrassed that I rage quit because of the stupid load time. Instead, I found a Kill Target event on Earth. I wasn’t able to kill the target alone, because I couldn’t keep his shields down long enough. In fact, the only Kill Target that I can do by myself is a Servitor on the Moon that doesn’t have shields – it’s an easy one. So I failed and got a “participation notice.” Thanks, Destiny.
Then I went to Mars to kill Cabal elites. There is a circuit there where we can kill between 1 and 4 elites every few minutes (depending on who spawns). I had 3 other people doing the circuit with me, which led to timing issues of someone killing an elite before I could get there, but it worked out. Then another Kill Target event started, while the other 3 were still around, but as soon as I jumped down to engage the target, they all disappeared. Once again, I could hurt the target, but not kill him, because I couldn’t keep his shields down long enough. What the hell happened to all the people competing with me for elite kills? I have no idea, but I was completely puzzled by it.
So the two Kill Target event-related annoyances are no big deal and part of the game, but that damn forever load screen was just too long and too infuriating. I need to find a way to cut my addiction to Destiny and stop the abuse it does to me. Time to go beat up hookers in GTA V (or whatever the bad behavior is in that game).
On a side note, I got an Xbox One that was on sale at Costco, so I may have to shut down the PS4 for a while and try XBone games, including AssCreed Unity that came with it!