I never understood why this game required an online connection.  Its not an mmo, hell you can't even trade items or communicate with other players.

Over promising isn't game design. It's marketing. And it doesn't run smoothly. It runs at 30fps.

THIS!!!!!!!

I haven't played it yet, but if you lose your connection does the game kick you out or something? I hope going into the future this doesn't become a trend. 

Its funny, the same people that were against Microsoft's always online feature are the same people that support this game requiring an internet connection for no reason.  I guess when Microsoft tries to do it its wrong, when Bungie/Activision try people eat it up. 

I don't quite understand what you're saying.  That's what a drop rate means.  Any game like Destiny or WoW has to have a loot table with drop rates or it would never drop at all.  It has to be the same mechanism.  A loot table is the only way "luck" can work in programming.  Back when I first started raiding in WoW, I badly needed a dagger from Ragnaros that had like a 5% drop rate at the time.  I finally saw a Perdition's Blade drop but, since I was bidding for it with like 5 other Rogues, my real drop rate was more like 1%.  I never did get the blade and we eventually loved on to tougher content when it was released.

This is a mechanism MMO gamers are well versed in.  Destiny tried to bring this to console FPS gamers but I think that's a much more "I want this right now" crowd.  However, saying it's bad game design when it's the system of choice for tens of millions of people is kind of silly.

People's complain with Destiny was that even though you preformed wayyyy better than your teammates, they could get wayyyy better loot than you. Say you got 20 kills and the other guy only 2, yet the latter got a legendary weapon and you got nothing. 

I never played Wow for more than an hour, but from what I understand when raiding, people have to work together and 1 person's mistake can cost everyone the battle (that might be an exaggeration, but correct be if I'm wrong on this). That is not really the case on Destiny because of the FPS nature. In Wow every player focuses on a single enemy, in Destiny there are hordes of enemies (as well as a boss) and in the end, the game gives you a score, when you see that your score is higher than the other players and yet you didn't get anything, is natural to get pissed off. This doesn't mean that Destiny doesn't have teamwork like Wow does, but actually knowing by numbers that you did better than the other players and got nothing, imo, is a flawed game design. People probably wouldn't have complain if the score tab was removed altogether.

As far as I know, your score means absolutely nothing on Destiny's loot system.

The raids in Destiny are the exact same thing. They require absolute cooperation amongst 6 people to complete, bar none. Heck you can't even open up the door to the raid area without 6 people co-operating and standing on different plates, let alone fighting bosses or figuring out the puzzles inside. In fact, Destiny's best gear, which are raid gear and exotics come from completing various parts of the raid. Since everyone is contributing significantly to complete the raid (or else you couldn't even progress within it), loot drops are well earned overall. Plus the drops are more generous there, especially with the new raid. I have not seen anyone really complain about the raids. They are mad fun. It's just the boring SP missions that suck.

Also Destiny does have a surefire way of getting the best gear, i.e. exotics. It is through the vendor Xur who comes every weekend. Sure what he sells is random and you may not get exactly what you want every week, but he will sell guaranteed exotic gear and guns every week. He has sold almost every exotic gun in the game in the past three months of visits, so if you visited him every Friday you would have almost every exotic gun in the game apart from the PS exclusives, which aren't sold by him for some reason.

Fridays and Saturdays, which are days he is available have famously become known as Xursdays amongst Destiny fans. These days are filled with nothing but anticipation and fun.

If Destiny is what failure looks like, I can't imagine how rich a successful game dev would be.

They've persuaded millions of people to pay for a game and its season pass, and play that game for hundreds of hours. Meanwhile, games that look like Destiny plus this article's proposed fixes are doing much worse.

funny thing about this game is that destiny 2 will be far better than 1. at its core and in the areas that are hardest destiny is a great game. its in the little things in relation to the game design and structure that they dropped the ball. I doubt they would be making that kinda mistake again in the sequel