The Biggest Problem With Destiny 2
Reviewing video games is a far trickier task than reviewing a film in many ways. When you go see a movie you form an opinion, sure that opinion may change in time and movies can both grow on you and also wane once the excitement has passed. Ultimately what doesn’t change is the movie itself, with video games its extremely hard to gauge an opinion within the timescales required to have your review out there for public consumption. Thus the game must appeal quickly to get good reviews and therefore increased sales.
Here at LRM we have barely scratched the surface of the video games industry, though it’s something we always planned to delve into more. However we tend to write about the entertainment we are passionate about, it is far more interesting for our readers and it’s more fun for us to write as well.
One such passion of mine has been Destiny by Bungie who made their name creating the Halo series for Xbox and I have been playing Destiny 2 when I can, which released on September 6.
Last month, I wrote a small piece on the launch of Destiny 2 and it’s live-action trailer , it was a big game launch and as I said in that article, I was a big fan, and put a ton of hours into the first Destiny game, counting it as perhaps the best co-op gaming experience I have had. So with Destiny 2 out now for around a month, I thought it might be worth really exploring this game…from a more critical standpoint.
Related Article: Watch Destiny 2 Live Action Trailer
You see, Destiny 2 is currently having a bit of an identity crisis. Even though a quick check for online reviews will have you finding many 9/10 and 5/5 reviews. Critics applauded the new cinematic and rich story for the campaign, which was admittedly lackluster in the original. It was easier to access, easier to find friends to play with and frankly easier to get through the content, but if you delve a little deeper into some of the communities like that on Reddit that championed the original game throughout its tenure, you will find a very different tale, and it’s a tale that I fully agree with.
We should start by explaining a few important details about Destiny, which are true of both games.
It’s is a mostly co-operative game against AI enemies (we call this PvE), and it also has a multiplayer component called Crucible, where players compete in standard game modes like Team Death Match and Control Zone/Other objective based games against real human opponents (we call this PvP).
The PvE content is broken down into 2 main categories, Campaign and End Game…or at least it was. The idea with Destiny has always been to balance these things out. Yet this balance is exactly what is causing this identity issue at the moment.
Campaign was supposed to be easily accessible pick up and play linear game play. End Game has so far — other than the Raid — been existing content at a far more challenging and rewarding level.
The balance in the original was ultimately a contrast between a fairly shallow and dull campaign, fantastically deep End Game content and a PvP that felt imbalanced due to Bungie’s desire to have the same abilities and weapons carry over seamlessly from PvE to PvP content. That balance has changed in Destiny 2, we have a very cinematic and story based campaign mode and they have worked to try and balance the PvP side out more. The result — and the major problem most fans are having — is that the End Game content for PvE has been stripped away dramatically.
To avoid overpowered abilities and an imbalance between the best and the rest on PvP, and to try and keep casual gamers engaged after the campaign has finished, Bungie have essentially thrown the hardcore Destiny player that kept the first game alive for 3 years under the proverbial bus. Within a few weeks it became apparent to gamers that the depth in the game just was not there, with criticisms centered on the following areas.
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What Went Wrong?
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So What’s The Problem?
Strikes — Only five on Xbox and six on Playstation — no longer with any Heroic versions with random modifiers for those that have powerful characters able to do them. Meaning they are not a particularly worthwhile pastime in the current game.
Nightfall — A weekly high level strike that rotates, with added modifiers and increased power enemies, supposedly the ultimate challenge for strikes, except there are 2 versions of it. Prestige is for players that have reached a power level of 300 only, but there is also a much lower version, which again seems designed for more casual players and gives out exactly the same rewards. Why would you run the hard version when you get the same rewards for running the easy one? There is very little incentive to run the prestige version at the moment.
Weapon and armor variation — one of the great things about Destiny was the random rolls on armor and weapons, which then enabled players to “grind” for god rolls on both, this alone probably kept the majority of hardcore gamers happy in the original. These have been removed to seemingly avoid locking casual gamers out of high level content and create a greater balance in the PvP arena. The issue is that without god tiered weapons and armor to strive for, there is little point in playing the game once you hit maximum level and already have a few things you like to use.
General nerf of powerful gear — There were combinations at certain times in Destiny that made you feel godly against the AI enemies, this was one of the most fun aspects of the game. This has been reduced dramatically in Destiny 2, therefore nullifying the chase to get these god tier pieces of gear. A good example of this was a sniper rifle in destiny called ‘Icebreaker’ the perks on the gun meant that it automatically regenerated its own ammo and enemies killed with it would explode into a fireball which could damage other enemies. The equivalents in Destiny 2 simply don’t cut the mustard in terms of fun overpowered weapons. In Destiny these items were so powerful you would play the game repeatedly for hours on end for a small chance at getting your hands on the prize. In Destiny 2 there don’t seem to be many items like this to strive for, meaning less reason to run content repeatedly to find them. A problem to be sure.
Raid — The ultimate test for six usually high-leveled guardians to work co0peratively to conquer a lengthy Raid, the hook, was that the gear available from this activity was normally the best gear you could get, and would make further Raid runs easier once acquired. Well, for a start it’s far too easy compared to the Raids of the original. It’s a steep learning curve, but once you learn the mechanics the skill level required to complete this Raid is negligible. Even worse, all previous Raids would provide those god tier pieces of gear — Gear that you would want to run Raids once per character per week for the chances of finally getting your hands on.
Apart from one or two guns that are desirable, there is really nothing here to excite players enough to run the Raid as often. Even perks which can only be utilised in the Raid itself (Which they had in Destiny) would make it worthwhile. Alas after running it one to two times, there is very little reason to do it again. The armor I can get from repeated Raid runs, is no better than the armor I can get from running very low end content. I assume they don’t want players to be excluded from the Raid who have not managed to get their hands on the higher gear. This is especially important with regards to the Prestige Raid, which after a delay is due to release on October 18.
Previous Raids would have a higher power level set for hard mode raid, and normally you’d have to get the gear from normal mode to have any chance of beating the ‘hard mode’ which would then offer even better gear for completion. In Destiny 2 the hard mode raid requires a higher power level to enter, but that is still no higher than activities which exists at the moment and the gear is basically the same as normal mode with some small cosmetic changes only, or so data mining tells us. Begging the question, why would people run the hard version when they can run the easy one for the same results?
Power Level — It has been very easy to get three characters to maximum power level. In fact, I have all three character classes at the maximum 305 level already. The problem is not really how easy it was to get there, it’s more that there is very little point in ever doing so.
The Raid doesn’t require a massively high level and neither does the Nightfall unless you run the pointless prestige mode. Not only that but the way your level matters to game content is far less dramatic than it was in Destiny. I could be a maximum level 305 character standing fighting with a 200 team mate and we will output exactly the same damage and take the same amount of damage as a result, so what’s the point? Where is the benefit in me spending my time getting to maximum level when there are only 2 things which require a power level of 300, neither of which are actually worth running as they don’t provide any better gear?
PvP — It seems like Bungie have real goals to turn their PvP game mode into an E-sport when it comes to PC finally this month. The game will run faster and use Blizzard’s (Makers of the insanely popular games Overwatch, World of Warcraft, and many more) servers for connections. But it’s never going to happen as the game has already developed into a fairly boring stand-off game played at distance with long range weapons. And if Bungie have sacrificed their PvE content to try and become an E-sport, then I think they have made a terrible mistake, sorry but the PvP was never that well designed in the first place and it’s a long way from the games that appear on the competitive E-sports scene and that’s not even in the technical stakes which again are lacking for E-sports.
Subclasses — less variation and choice in each subclass for each type of character, and a definite scaling back of abilities. Hunter Nighstalkers can no longer tether big bosses for the team to get increased damage. A Titan’s Defensive bubble now has no perks which make it a worthwhile choice for high end gaming. The Warlock solar ability, which admittedly needed to be changed as it was the way to solo many activities you were not supposed to in Destiny, has been traded in for a pointless and boring attacking subclass, that no one uses much, because the other subclasses are always a better option.
Gun Categories — In Destiny the PvE balance was great, you had Primary guns (Auto rifles, Scout rifles, Pulse Rifles, Hand Cannons), Secondary guns (Snipers, Pistols, Fusion rifles, Shotguns) and Heavy guns (Rockets, Special Fusions, Swords, Light Machine Guns). In Destiny 2 these have been changed to Primary (any gun not in Heavy slot with kinetic damage) Energy (any gun not in Heavy with elemental Damage) and Power Weapons, which now house Snipers, Fusions, Shotguns, Rockets, Grenade Launchers and Swords.
Now the issue here is best summarized with sniper rifles, they were gloriously good to use in Destiny and they have been marginalized to be of no use at all in Destiny 2 by placing them in the power slot. Snipers simply do not do enough damage to be useful as a power weapon. With fusion rifles and shotguns it’s easier to fix, fusions are fine as they have been changed and have increased damage, in fact they are far better in Destiny 2 so far. Shotguns are almost there, but they need a damage buff to make them considered above other options. Snipers can’t really have a damage buff without making them too powerful, the only solution is to place them back into special/energy slot.
However, this won’t be done because of the PvP balance, because snipers are indeed in the right place for PvP to stop people from using only snipers in every game. Again the PvE game suffers for PvP balance. The less said about grenade launchers the better, they are the most useless gun in the game and for some reason they have created a grenade launcher which goes into the secondary slot called The Fighting Lion, it’s an exotic gun and yet is probably the single most useless gun to have appeared in Destiny yet, was it a joke gun, because it cannot surely be serious? The chase for powerful weapons is simply non-existent and invariably people will be using the same two or three guns in each category, guns they managed to discover within the first week of playing the game.
It’s fair to say that the gamers that played Destiny more than any other game for the last three years are left a little bewildered at the approach Bungie have taken, which seems to direct everything towards the casual gamers who don’t play the game very often and E-sports on a platform they previously never supported.
Below is a video describing the issues as gamers see them from one of Destiny’s most popular You Tube streamers Datto, which echo many of my own thoughts.
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The Road Ahead
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The Road Ahead
It’s always worth reiterating what I said at the start though, that unlike film, after release, video games can be changed based on feedback. Destiny was improved immeasurably throughout its three-year lifecycle. So fans were willing to wait, thinking that maybe this is just the early game and Bungie will start adapting more to end game content soon, once they have the casual players hooked? We knew we were getting a prestige version of the Raid soon along with the likely return of Iron Banner which unlike other Crucible PvP modes factors in your power level and normally offers very unique gear.
Last week Bungie released their weekly feature called This Week at Bungie or TWAB for short, where they talk with the community playing their game. Click the link below if you want to see the full article
This week At Bungie
They announced prestige mode Raid arriving on Tuesday October 10th along with Iron Banner PvP arriving later in the Month. As it stands the prestige Raid has been delayed by a week to October 18, and Iron Banner has arrived as of Tuesday October 10. The problem for many fans now, is that they are not raising the power level cap it seems for the prestige Raid, and the rewards from the Prestige mode Raid seem as boring as those from the normal mode. It’s just harder it seems, to provide a small bit of challenge for gamers that are interested in doing all the content the game has to offer.
Not only that, but they announced that Iron Banner will no longer have anything to do with your power level. Again, this seems to be a move to try and not exclude the casual gamers that haven’t gotten to a very high level yet, and totally defeats the purpose for what Iron Banner was famous for. It’s basically now standard PvP content with some shiny looking new armor which doesn’t actually have any gameplay effect. I played a few games, cashed in a few tokens and got pretty much all the guns on offer, which are just re-skins of already existing guns and a couple armor pieces, which while looking pretty cool, have no perks which differentiate them from the gear I can get running low-level activities. After one evening I have no desire to run it again this week!
Finally, and seemingly in response to peoples criticisms of lack of End Game content, the Community Manager essentially told people that have run out of content that the important thing was to make new friends and have fun repeating old content to help them…or that’s the way people wrongly took it.
Someone posed this statement to Datto the same YouTube streamer in the video above and here was his response to Community Manager Deej.
Datto responds to Deej on friendship End Game
As said in that link by the pro gamer this may have not been the intention of the Community Manager to imply that the End Game of Destiny 2 was making friends, but a Community Manager should really be thinking about the responses they post and the current trends being discussed by the community they are supposed to represent. Bungie could do with talking more to their community and explaining their decisions for good or bad instead of hiding behind a wall of silence, and this really didn’t help.
The problem Bungie have I think in catering to the more casual gamer is a simple one, they are casual gamers, they will move away to play other games on release, especially at this time of year when many big franchises release their yearly instalments. When they are gone, it is only the hard-core player left, and those gamers are currently switching games in their droves. A few weeks ago I was seeing my online friend list almost entirely playing Destiny 2. Some of those are casuals and some of them are far more hardcore gamers than I am, but they are all playing far less and moving onto other games, casuals because they always would anyway and the hard-core because there is nothing left for them to do and they feel disappointed.
Destiny 2 is at a crossroads and I am not sure Bungie are properly equipped to deal with it, they seem to have set their stall on this casual gaming focus to the point that changes would be dramatic and lengthy in their implementation. Can Destiny 2 survive for three years like the first game did? Many of my friends and (almost) myself included have basically run out of things to play for. Sure those top reviews have helped Bungie generate great sales for the game, and that might be the most important thing for the company… right now! What happens however for the development of a Destiny 3 if the player base that made the game so great has all left to go elsewhere. Not to mention the planned “paid for” DLC content they have for release over the next two to three years. Most of my friends bought the season pass for the next two pieces of DLC and I think we may all be regretting buying it on the strength of the first game at this point.
Bungie needs to decide what kind of game they want to be. Bungie needs to seriously think about finally separating their PvE and PvP content to make the PvE content their main focus and allow you to be more powerful, whilst also maintaining a sort of balance in the PvP arena. Bungie really needs to provide gear that is overpowered in order to make the search for that gear part of the fun of the game. Bungie needs to create two mod slots for armour and weapons and introduce rarer and more powerful modifications to make there be a goal to aim for in becoming more powerful. Bungie needs to bring back the fun of the first game and if imbalance is the result of that, then so be it, we play games for fun, if they are not fun, people stop playing.
In closing, Bungie needs to completely rethink the way they are going with this game and fast, because if they make the changes too far on, the casuals will be playing something else and the hardcore will have found a new distraction to keep them entertained. The result could leave Destiny 2 as empty as my guns in the final Raid boss fight. So far the feeling is that Bungie is staying quiet because they feel the community is being unreasonable.
Certainly there is some of that self-entitlement creeping in where people want the game to be catered for them and them alone. This happens in every big game, we all play differently and have different opinions. The fact remains that out of all the friends I made playing Destiny, only a handful are still playing Destiny 2 one month into release and the majority that are still playing were late starting or simply further behind in progression to most of us. Ultimately, right now Destiny 2 is literally half the game Destiny was, despite having much larger worlds and more resources and story. It’s not as fun and it’s not as addictive. I am skipping a ton of detail here which probably wouldn’t help any readers who are new to the game, but for those Guardians in the know I leave all this with a simple request.
Bungie…Please? And don’t increase End Game content by 0.04%!
What do you think? Any fellow Guardians out there like me who have strong opinions on the new game, I’d love to hear from you in the comments down below as always, whether you agree or disagree with my views. And hopefully more press coverage of the issues facing Bungie may influence them to rethink their approach.
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The Road Ahead
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