Why Players Can't Stop Playing Destiny

Destiny is a game that a lot of players have a love-hate relationship with. While the game is definitely fun, progressing through the game can at times feel mind-numbingly tedious. You repeatedly play through the same content, you are not always guaranteed rewards for your efforts, and the already slow leveling process is made slower by capped rewards each week. Still, with all of these reasons to want to stop playing, many players are having trouble putting the game down. Let's look at these reasons for quitting and see why they still haven't driven many players away.

Reason to Quit: Repetitive Content

There are not a lot of missions in Destiny. The game is fairly short and has very little variety in the mission structures. Do you recall the mission where you fought hordes of enemies, progressed a little further to a checkpoint, and then fought more hordes of enemies? You should, because that's every mission in Destiny. Players find themselves running the same missions over and over for loot, to the point where it stops being fun and starts feeling tedious.

Why They Haven't Quit:

 If players were just doing the same things repeatedly they would probably get burned out a lot quicker, but Destiny includes a variety of modifiers to make the experience feel different when players go through it. Bounties task players with different challenges, difficulty settings and modifiers alter the ways enemies will engage you, and random drops ensure that players always have the chance of being surprised with new gear. There are also limited events like The Queen's Wrath and The Iron Banner which further add a small amount of variety to the content. These changes are not significant, but they work in giving a small amount of content a lot of replay value.

Reason to Quit: Not guaranteed rewards 

One of the furiating parts of grinding in Destiny is when you're not guaranteed a reward for your efforts. You're given a few methods of getting guaranteed rewards with daily missions, weekly strikes, and your first public event for the day. After you've exhausted those options however, you're off praying to R.N. Jesus for another good drop. Getting a gold tier rating in a public event won't guarantee you an ascendant shard, and being the top player in a crucible match won't guarantee an engram. When you're putting forth a lot of effort and not being rewarded for it, especially when you know there are players who aren't putting in the same effort that are getting exotic drops, it can lead to an infuriating experience.

Why They Haven't Quit: 

Gaining random loot in Destiny, like other loot-driven games, gives players a satisfying dopamine rush to the brain's pleasure center whenever their reward drops. One of the reasons people feel a large amount of satisfaction isn't just because they received a reward, but because it was unexpected. People receive more satisfaction from a positive event if it is unexpected, as this results in a larger hit of dopamine. Rewards are unexpected in Destiny as you can get almost any random item from defeating all types of enemies in almost every game mode. Working hard and not getting a good item is very infuriating, however it causes the player to feel incredibly satisfied when they do get one. This wouldn't be the case if players always had a guaranteed method for getting the rewards they desire.

Reason to Quit: Reward Caps

For those willing to put in the effort in getting their guaranteed rewards from daily/weekly missions and strike/crucible playlists, they may get upset that they cannot repeat those playlists indefinitely each week for the same rewards. They can only get a specified amount of strange coins from weekly strikes and marks from playlists, making an already frustrating leveling process even more so when players feel that they've hit a temporary dead end. It is easy to see why this could make some players upset when players can constantly feel like they are out of resources for leveling and can no longer play the game at the pace that they want.

Why They Haven't Quit: 

If there were no limit on the rewards you could get, players would indeed run the same missions indefinitely until they got all the rewards they wanted. However, players who play a game so obsessively that they feel burned out often report that they are less happy when playing a game than more casual players. In addition to limiting your time, the caps provide an incentive to keep coming back to play. Whether the daily/weekly mission has reset, or you're ready to talk to Xur on the weekend, Destiny's reward caps keep players coming back to an experience that they would likely otherwise feel miserable doing if they were allowed to burn themselves out on grinding.

Destiny is one of the biggest anomalies in gaming that many players have experienced. Even though the combat is finely tuned and a lot of fun, the lack of content and grind-heavy endgame is surely an experience that a lot of players want to quit. The game however has managed sink its hooks into players despite its shortcomings, and it's left players with a less than ideal experience that many cannot seem to stop coming back to. The game has changed since the era of loot caves when it initially launched, and now many players feel less inclined to seek out those areas since rewards are distributed more generously. The game will certainly change more in the future as more content comes out, and it will be interesting to see if the current grind-heavy state of the game is affected when that does happen. Either way, players will likely still keep coming back, whether they enjoy it or not.