I’ve been revisiting anno 2205, infamously the ugly duckling of the Anno series of RTS games. I don’t mind so much the fact that it’s different, lacks customisation and random map generation - I’m bothered because the game is so slow to progress through on challenge settings, and it feels like a game designed just to artificially waste your time; in other anno games, you can always pull tricks to dig yourself out of economic crisis - selling off assets and surplus goods, completing quests for other parties, or taking loans. 2205 is very very confined in terms of what you can do to financially recover in the early game and forces you into a lot of military events.
Yeah, Destiny 2 pretty much lived in the core gameplay loop. To this day I don’t think there’s another game that felt as good to play as Destiny. But without refreshing the core gameplay or giving some actually meaningful progression. I remember at one point I was doing a strike and those who have played the game will know what I’m about to talk about. After clearing the second wave of enemies and waiting for the third I realized that I was just going through the motion of threes. I was going to fight the third wave of the encounter so I could get to the second stage of the three stage strike and those strikes I have to do 3 times because that’s the weekly goal and that’s the entire 3 months of the season. It just started feeling like a treadmill where I’m running just for the sake of running. Just a carrot in front of the treadmill and if you get it then the next season the treadmill resets and the and carrot is put in front.
Once I saw that I could no longer get into Destiny. It just feel like I was there only to go through the motions. No emotion, no engagement, just doing the same thing over and over.