Destiny 2 is very unfriendly towards new players.

I just happened to have picked up Destiny after the big sale on the DLC's. I've played around 18 hours and there's a ton of things that are just simply never explained because they've obviously been added post-release and the tutorials never really updated. I'm just lucky I always dive really deep into every little menu and mechanic; Usually way before a tutorial would tell me how to and I'd be like "ugh yea I figured that out like 2 hours ago." Yet these tutorials never came in the case for Destiny 2. I had to find the following things out completely by myself:

**The Artifacts:** Never explained how to properly utilise *or even remotely mentioned* ***at any point***. With the sheer level of specificity that these perk sets come with it's basically impossible to use as a new player. *"Dealing sustained damage to severed targets unravels them. Defeating a severed target creates a hotspot of Strand energy, granting Woven Mail to nearby allies for a short duration"* This is complete utter gibberish to someone who's just opened the game, yet it's readily accessible to them right from the start and they're obviously at a disadvantage if they don't use it. Even now 18 hours in I still don't know what that perk actually does. I know of Strand weapons but no clue about the rest. This leads me to my following point:

**Completely unexplained terminology:** Many of the weapon mods and artifact perks use terminology that's just never explained nor is there any way in-game to find out. I didn't even know which element icon referred to which element in the text at first. There's nothing on a void weapon's information tab that says it's a void weapon or an arc weapon aside from the icon and colour. But you're expected to know the blue icon is a stasis weapon and the green thingy is a strand weapon when applying mods and perks. You figure out which icon refers to which element yourself rather quickly, but you still don't know what they do or what makes them different from eachother. Status effects are so much worse and genuinely impossible to decipher. *"Rapid final blows against weakened combatants grant you devour"* Okay cool, how do I weaken someone and what does devour do for me? *"Your ignitions do increased damage."* *"Stasis final blows against slowed or frozen targets release a burst that slows combatants and grants Frost Armor to allies caught in the blast."* What are my ignitions? What's Stasis, an ability or do they mean any weapon with the stasis element? There's frost damage? Huh, I guess Stasis freezes people judging from this one perk description. I still don't know what Strand weapons do or how you're supposed to properly utilize them.

**Chronologically intended questline:** Probably my most frustrating point is the sheer amount of quests you're bombarded with right at the start, making it extremely hard to figure out what to do or where to go. You do some introductory quests then followed by some aimless wandering around the european deadzone because the "Featured quests" tab told you to. Once I did one or two missions there talking to some dude with a spooky eye talking about how he missed the end of his world but gets to witness the end of this world which like okay obviously I missed some lore there, I have no clue who this dude is. After that's done the Featured Quest tab leads me to start the Renegade questline where they started talking about how 3 died and how things are so different now and I'm like "welp I'm obviously not supposed to be playing this right now either".

**Guardian Rank being locked behind arbitrary challenges rather than XP:** Queue my surprise like 15 hours into playing the game and wondering why I'm still level 2, I just so happen to find out the "2" next to my gear is a button that leads to a page that tells me I in fact need to do three solo ops, fireteam ops, Gambit ops, or Crucible ops. Of course it doesn't tell you where or how to do these, but I've come to get used to that by now and quickly found them scrolling around the menus for a bit.

**It's just bad game design.** I like to think I'm a pretty observant gamer and tend to be the type to whine about games that hold your hand too much, but the lack of information being communicated is crazy. Especially when it comes to things like explaining terminology. Being 20 hours in and still not knowing how to properly utilise the perk system because they built it for players who already know the game is just simply bad game design. ***The subclass menu has this system.*** Why isn't it anywhere else in the game? When hovering over a fragment or Aspect in the subclass menu it brings up an additional tab that explains one by one in detail what each blue highlighted term actually means. Why doesn't the perk or mod system have this? Why does the Queensfoil Censer have icons next to the elements in their perk description but none of the other artifacts do? It just all seems so clunky and inconsistent.

It's extremely difficult for someone who just got the game to actually get into it when so much seems arbitrary, complicated and confusing, and even nearly 20 hours in I feel like I'm barely playing optimally at all and basically just improvising as I go.

**Edit:** A lot of the responses suggest just googling things, but that often doesn't even work with basic questions. I shouldn't have to skim through a dozen 20-40 minute youtube video from PraxicChad44 or MrVoid1999 shouting in their cool ass Youtuber voice how to apply the thing I googled to the current meta or some new gamebreaking crazy ass loadout when I just want to know how to apply "slowed" to an enemy. Due to the game being so old there is basically no resources for new players, and every website or youtube video just discusses the meta to most efficiently min-max your stats, when I just want to know something like how to apply weaken to an enemy using the void class.