I've never been more confused at the point of a game than I am with Destiny. As one of the writers in GS wrote yesterday, the storyline makes no sense. You have story missions where you are fighting various enemies, who also fight each other. The traveler (if I understood correctly) is this big moon-like planetoid hanging out over the planet, dead due to some conflict centuries ago. Are you trying to resurrect it? At the end of the story, you ask the speaker what are you supposed to do to fight the impending doom. His response? Join other Guardians and "push back against the darkness". All I've been doing since I beat the story (an easy task) is grind against darkness. You get to level 20 by simply playing the story and doing a few side missions. Anything over 20 you have to increase using armor containing "light". This is the hard part. You get such armor from various vendors/faction leaders at the tower, the home base for guardians. You're trying to fight the darkness but they want to bust your chops and making you pay glimmer (the games currency) to get the weapons to do the job PLUS you have to be level 2 or 3 to get be eligible to buy these items. That's where the grinding comes into play. You can rank up in various areas as well. The Crucible, and 3 or 4 factions. You level up via "bounties" where various mundane tasks you take on (you can take on 5 at a time) give you 50 or 100pts towards leveling, XP and the ability to upgrade whatever active weapons you have.
Crucible: The games Pvp containing 4 or 5 different game types such their version of team death match, control which teams fight to control specific areas, etc. Bounties in the Crucible can be such things as obtain 50 head shots, 50 assist kills, 20 melee kills, etc. All the game modes have level balance turned on, so a level 1's weapons have the same strength as a level 20+. The lag is problematic as there are not local servers you can choose. You are simply placed where you are placed. So i've found myself firing into an enemy's head for 2 seconds only to be killed by their shotgun blast. Also the maps, while beautiful, are very limited. At the completion of each match, loot is randomly assigned to players on each time. Not to the top performing players either. It's just like playing a slot machine. Also you get 25 pts for a victory towards your crucible ranking and 10 (I think) for a loss. Finally it's tons of fun when you start games down a player because somebody got bounced or quit during the loading process. If you purchase a cape from one of the specific factions and wear it during these matches you also get points towards faction ranking as well.
Other Bounties: These bounties consist of playing PvE either via strikes (repeated strikes), doing even more mundane chores completing 6 missions on patrol. Each planet has patrols where you roam the land, find beacons which tell you to kill x amount of the enemy, sometimes getting various items from those you kill, going to a specific area and "scout", etc.
Raids: There are also raids which are special event type with their own story line. These are set up to be very hard, requiring 6 players to work in tandem to complete the task and earn legendary items. It's all well and good if you are a member of a clan or have friends online. I'm 42 years old. My clanning days are over and most of my friends find it amusing I still game (I know, I know..get new friends). Anyhow without 5 other like minded people to join you, these Raids are not possible (IMO).
Farming: Like any other MMO, you can also fight re spawning enemies which occasionaly drop engrams (spelling) of different colors. These are glowing orbs which you can convert into Armour, cloaks or weapons back at the tower. Depending on their value compared to what you already own, you can either keep them, store them, or dismantle them for parts used to upgrade your weapons and armor down the road.
Much of the above has already been stated, so I apologize for repeating, but this is more of a vent than anything else. To be balanced, this game does have positives. The graphics are stunning on the PS4. Definitely next generation console graphics for sure. The weapon variety is very good and all work very well. Currently I'm giving the game a 6, but I do hope that Bungie comes through with the big plans for the game I keep hearing about. I understand that if you want a game to last a decade, you can't show everything up front, but at least have an engaging, clear story line where the player can look forward to the next installment. I'm looking forward to it, so I can hopefully figure out what the hell is going on.