While many things in the game are just straight-up broken, or seemingly the product of no effort from developers, a lot of things in the game that make it such a letdown are due to misleading advertising.
For example, many complain about the lack of story in this game. The only reason this is an issue is because Bungie advertised their questline that they call "Story Mode" as a traditional story mode. Think about it. All the story mode is about is destroying the Black Heart in the Black Garden. Is it any more important than killing Crota in the Dark Below or imprisoning Skolas in House of Wolves? No. If Bungie advertised the vanilla game as introducing the first questline, releasing more questlines later, the game would be more forgivable for its lack of story, as the story would have never been expected in the first place. Additionally, many would probably receive the DLC with a better heart, as the vanilla game was more of what they expected, and because they were not let down as much, they would be happier to receive the DLC.
Another example is how Bungie refuses to relate this game to a MMO (probably to appeal to the younger, FPS-only audience). If Bungie told everyone that the universe was supposed to be somewhat generic, because the game is more about options to make your character extremely powerful through completing quests and other events, then many would receive the game in a better light because they were not mislead. The idea of lore being something the players explore if they want to, and the game being anything but linear is what Destiny is [and what many MMO-style games are], but Bungie still refuses to call it what it is, which misleads buyers and makes them less likely to enjoy the game because they have been tricked. The main, and one of the only things big enough to keep Destiny from being called a MMO, is that the game does not hold as large of an amount of players in servers, and the idea of lobbies restricts all players from interacting simultaneously.
In conclusion, many things are still wrong with Destiny that is not the fault of advertising. But, much of the complaining on the forums is due to these players being unaware of what the game would really be like at launch, in my opinion. I think the game deserves better than a 76 on Metacritic (some Viva Pinata game is higher than that), but this low rating is probably the product of the anger and disappointment from mislead buyers.
No matter how much worse it sounds, Bungie, tell people exactly what they are buying, and if that thought frightens you, then your content isn't worth buying anyways.
-
I just constantly keep remembering this quote from the 2013 E3 conference before release: "If you can see it, you can go there." My God were we lied to...