Ladies and gentleman, Destiny 2 is upon us, and it is glorious! Millions of players are back on the grind and I got to tell y'all, personally it feels amazing. All the excitement from the first game suddenly feels so familiar again and I welcome this feeling 100%. But, as all you gamers know, every rose has its thorns. Though Destiny 2 is filled to the brim with new, fun and compelling gaming experiences, it is not a surprise that it falls a bit short to is predecessor in a few ways. Today, I will share with you my list of thorns. Sadly the gun Thorn is not in Destiny 2, which is something I WANTED to make one of the reasons in this list, but my love for Thorn would disturb younger audiences. Thus, I figured it best to table that for a later article. Keep an eye out for 25 Reasons Thorn is the Best Gun Ever, written by me.

What do you miss the most about Destiny? Is it the 6 v 6 set up of Crucible? Is it the old styles? Keep on reading and see if you're not alone!

15 Not Being Able To Buy What You Want (Relying on RNGesus)

One of the more satisfying things in life is saving up for a long time to buy that shiny new thingamajig you have had your eye on. This does not just happen in life, but it also happens in games, especially games that make you grind. Destiny and Destiny 2 both employ this grind system, but in Destiny 2, that shiny new thing you have been wanting is completely random. Of course with the engram system, there will always be some randomness to drops, but in Destiny 2, all of your rewards are engrams and all of your reputation is converted to engrams, which means almost all item acquisition is random. In Destiny, you were able to save up and buy what you had you eye on from the Lord Shaxx, the Vanguard, etc, but that is no longer the way of the Destiny franchise.

14 Perks Schmerks

The header says it all. These weapon and armor perks are so incredibly underwhelming that I have found myself rarely considering the item perk when determining which gun or armor piece I use. You want to give me extra movement speed when aiming? Increased accuracy and stability while crouching? Partially reload the magazine with a melee kill? No thanks. I understand that not every perk can be useful in every situation, but some of these perks are so niche that they border on uselessness. Some perks are so ridiculously specific, if I saw "Grants 2.4x damage when the 13th bullet in the magazine gets a killing blow", I wouldn't bat an eye. If perks could be relevant again, that would go far in allowing different play styles to emerge.

13  Destiny: Skill Tree, Destiny 2: Skill Twig

In Destiny, each subclass skill tree allowed for so much customization. They had around 8 columns for each subclass, and 3 to 4 skills to choose from in each column. This was nice because there were a lot of choices that made different ways of playing possible. The new, limited and restricted skill tree of Destiny 2 forces subclasses and character types into play styles. Are you playing as a Titan? No running and gunning for you! In addition to that, the new predetermined four-skill packages known as attunements restrict players even further, because if you like one of the skills in the attunement but the others do not serve your needs, you're out of luck and stuck with those three wasted skills. Being able to pick four of the eight skills between the two attunements would go a long way in fixing this.

12 Bad Reputation

I have a few issues with the reputation system of Destiny 2. Though the introduction of all of these new non-player characters have been great for developing the Destiny universe, the reputation systems for which they were created kind of fizzle out as you progress in the game. When you first start the story and begin to meet all of the vendors, it's actually very exciting and your armor will upgrade almost every time they have an engram for you. However, this system dries up quite rapidly. Once you hit 240-250 power, the armor you get from Devrim, Sloane, Failsafe and Asher are destined to be gunsmith materials seconds after decryption. When you're too strong, they can't help you get stronger. Which leads into the next point...

11 Being Resourceful

One of the best ways to farm reputation in Destiny 2 is to gather planet-specific resources and bring them to the planet's vendor for reputation, but as was discussed in the last point of the article, there is little point in acquiring reputation after a certain point. This means, that by extension, there is little point to collecting resources because they yield very little reward. In Destiny, resources were used to upgrade weapons and armor at the very least, so their use still persisted throughout the game, but that is not the case in the sequel. There is so much interconnection of different currency types, which on one hand allows you to flip glimmer into powerful items, but also, in this case, makes planet specific resources suboptimal.

10 Stylin', Wildin', Livin' it up in the Tower

Maybe this is just the ramblings and unreliable memory of an old man, but I remembered the armor being pretty dope in Destiny. I don't recall seeing many armor pieces and retreating in horror at its fugliness. Yet, in Destiny 2 it seems that goofy-ass armor runs rampant. I want my character to look like a warrior. A guardian should be a bad ass, not some dude with a spangly robe that's neon pink. Now you might be saying to just use a shader and know this... I have tried! Even with as many shaders as the game provides, there seems to be no way to make some of these armor pieces look good (I'm looking at you, exotics). Got me lookin' like I belong in Weenie Hut Jr.'s! Get your style up.

9 D2 Lacks Intelligence, Strength, And Discipline

Destiny 2 has done away with the system that allowed players to optimize their loadout around for their preference for melee ability, grenade and super ability. Destiny armor held values for discipline, strength and intelligence. Stacking intelligence reduced the cooldown for your ultimate ability, stacking strength reduced the cooldown of your melee special and stacking discipline reduced the cooldown for your grenade. This let you choose which of these you valued most and stack it to acquire massive cooldown reduction on your most deadly abilities. This is sorely missed in Destiny 2, where it takes a full minute for the melee (that does not even one shot in Crucible) to recharge. Sure, armor mods can charge it faster, but it's just not the same, man. :'(

8 The Heavy Burden

This may be an unpopular opinion, but I think the third weapon slot got a downgrade in both name and efficacy. What was once the heavy weapon is now the power weapon. I don't like change! It will forever be heavy weapon in our hearts. Now, the most controversial part of this is my new hatred for power weapons (especially in Crucible). I find myself not even going for the power ammo in Crucible. What am I going to do? If I use a sword I just get destroyed from range, if I get a rocket, I just get cut down before I can even fire it, if I use grenade launcher, it just ricochets past my target and I get wrecked, and poor poor shotguns are just not what they used to be.

R.I.P. Destiny shotguns 2014-2017.

7 "Exotic" Perks

Now I admit that this problem may have existed in Destiny, but boy did it hit me like a truck in Destiny 2. The exotic armor perks in this game are just so underwhelming. Now, if this is just #Warlockprobs then let me know, but every exotic armor piece I have seen has been unimpressive. I was optimizing my PvP loadout the other day and found that none of the exotic armors were worth it. The mod slot that a legendary armor piece affords me was far more useful then the pitiful recharge boost that Eye of Another World provides or the Nova Bomb resilience buff of the Skull of Dire Ahamkara. It truly seems that these items are exotic only in appearance and not in performance. Like, increased reload speed on firearms? Really? Nah, I'm good.

6 Pardon Me, Are You Agent Xur, Sir?

I will say that this did not end up being as big of a deal as I thought. When Bungie announced that Xur would be popping up at random places around the map, I was worried that I would have to spend hours looking for him and then he'd end up having Lucky Pants. As it turns out, Xur came for the first time this past weekend and he is a lot less of a Waldo than I thought. However, I still have beef with this change. Why did they do this? What is the point? It seemingly serves absolutely no purpose to have Xur on the move, it just inconveniences me because I can no longer access him on the tower. And why was this man in a tree this weekend? What's with the silly locations? My bet is next weekend he's bathing in a waterfall of vex milk.

5 Crucible Jr.

I find myself missing the Destiny Crucible layout of 6 v 6 more and more every day. There used to be such a variety of human shields to choose from on my team, but now that number has been almost halved! The new 4 v 4 matchmaking of Destiny 2 has allowed for the creation of smaller maps, which has led to tighter spawn points, WHICH HAS LEAD TO ME BEING 3v1'd LITERALLY A SECOND AFTER #$&@ING SPAWNING! This has made me quite disenchanted with Crucible in Destiny 2. In addition, there is also the fact that a full fireteam of 6 can no longer queue up together. This issue has caused a great rift within my clan. I fear we suffer the same fate as the Jonas Brothers.

4 "I Need Armor!"

I would first like to congratulate and send my condolences to all who read the heading and understood the painful reference of not having a healer on your team in Overwatch, but yet a simple Torbjörn who has been left to be the "healer", but on to my point. Let me know if I am alone in this, but it seems Destiny 2 has nowhere near the variety of armor pieces Destiny had. In Destiny I found that I would often get armor pieces I had never heard of before and that was a great experience! In Destiny 2 it's almost like I am getting the same sets. I get Tesseract Trace, Philomath, and Ankaa Seeker on repeat. Some more variety would definitely be nice, and players would feel less like every engram they get is immediately scrapped for inventory management purposes.

3 An Upgrade Downgrade

The new upgrade system, that now heavily involves modifications, is no doubt a great addition to Bungie's franchise. However, it is understandable to maybe think the opposite if you are one of the many who just cannot figure it out and consistently get value from it. What used to be the weapon upgrade system in Destiny was so straightforward: gain experience with the armor = unlock the perks. Now the modification system adds a new complexity to upgrading items. Legendary modifications especially are bringing confusion to the system by hiding base values so you can't be sure what will infuse into what and if you ever scrap the gun, you don't get the mod back. In theory, I give it a 10. In execution, I give it a 6.

2 The Gaming Experience

The gaming experience players get from Destiny 2 is certainly more story-driven than the first and has a good amount of content. However, I now find myself at 290 light thinking, what next? Sure, I will play every Tuesday to rake in those milestones, every Friday to see Xur and do Trials of the Nine, but ultimately I feel done with the game. I never had this feeling while playing Destiny and was able to maintain interest in the game through several months, but I fear Destiny 2 will be different. There just does not seem to be much incentive or desire to play this sequel once your light starts to cap off. Sure, this will be remedied by the expansion pass, but no one wants to wait that long and the player base may lose interest.

1 The Fall Of Nightfall

I love Destiny 2, but this is one of my main grievances against the game, and that is that the nightfall strike is essentially ruined. In Destiny, the nightfall strike's difficulty came from a 30 second revive timer and a total restart if the entire fireteam was dead simultaneously. Destiny 2 has revamped the nightfall set up and it is atrocious. Beating the nightfall now requires players to beat the clock. Some strike-specific obstacles can give you extra time, but the timer causes is a problem. This now means the nightfalls are designed to be skipped over, because if you don't skip over rooms of enemies, you will not finish in time. This compromises game integrity severely. Why make parts of the game spend all that time rendering the environment and coding the whole planet to have everyone just skip over it? I will never understand.