Via Polygon
The article outlines a number of reasons for the diminishing traction to Destiny 2
The article outlines a number of reasons for the diminishing traction to Destiny 2
Destiny 2 seems to have fallen off the map, after launching to considerable sales and excitement just six months ago. It promised a bigger world to explore and more stuff to do than its predecessor did. The game launched to rapturous acclaim, from this outlet and from pretty much all the others.
So why does it seem like no one is playing anymore?
2017 was the year game publishers tried to push microtransactions to the next level, and the audience pushed back. Destiny 2 and Star Wars Battlefront 2 were the worst offenders, and both games have become cautionary tales. Bungie built the sequel around the Eververse real-money economy, and this adjustment poisoned many of the features that should have been clear improvements over the original game.
Continuity encourages commitment. Players feel invested in their collections, in their characters and in the community, and that keeps them playing. When Destiny became Destiny 2, it severed that link. Bungie blew up everything the community had built, and took away everything players had earned and purchased. They came into Destiny 2without the stuff that had tied them to Destiny, and that made it easier for a lot of players who had previously been heavily committed to the game to leave.
Destiny 2 lets everyone reach the power cap by doing weekly milestones, most of which are pretty easy. Higher gear levels are no longer limited to high-end players. And the Trials of the Nine and Iron Banner PvP modes no longer give advantages to players with higher-level gear. Everyone who has kept up with most of their milestones over the course of a couple of months has the same maxed-out power level.
That may have been a big win for accessibility, but it was kind of a disaster for a game where the motivation to keep playing is a quest for more and better gear. In the original Destiny, raiders came back every week to keep inching their power level higher. For more casual players or nonraiders, events like Iron Banner or Sparrow Racing League, which offered raid-quality gear, were a big incentive to log back in.
This was a response to some problems with Destiny's PvP metagame, but the changes weren't well-received. Getting kills tended to require coordinated fire, which was hard to achieve in solo-queue modes. Super moves took longer to charge than they had in the old game, and with fewer people in matches, there were far fewer opportunities to pull off spectacular multikills. PvP felt slower and less exciting.
December's Curse of Osiris expansion felt light on content. The missions were short, the new patrol area was tiny and the Infinite Forest, which had been teased as akin to a procedurally generated environment, was underwhelming. It was just a bunch of hallways randomly stitched together that you run through on the way to some mission objectives.
The expansion did come with a new activity called a "raid lair." Raid content is always the best Destiny content, but Leviathan, Eater of Worlds wasn't really a complete raid, and didn't reinvigorate the community. Expansions should get players excited about coming back if they've left the game, but Curse of Osiris was easy to skip.
However, while Bungie is finally correcting course, the Destiny franchise is at a low point, largely because of the misguided focus on Eververse in the early months of the game. Bungie is in a hole it dug for itself, at a time when it faces unprecedented competition from other shooters. Winning back lapsed players often means pulling them away from Fortniteand Overwatch. And the sentiment among the community seems to be different than it has been at previous low points for the franchise: People may have hit their breaking point.
