bungie's future for destiny 2 is tonedeaf and unsustainable
september 28th 2024
a couple of days ago, bungie release a developer insight article on the future of raids and dungeons in destiny 2. in this article, they detail their move away from two raids and two dungeons a year, to one brand new raid with the first expansion of each year, and then one new dungeon with the second expansion of this year. immediately, alarm bells are ringing, because what do you mean, the amount of endgame content the playerbase is going to receive is literally halving. the game already feels like it has a drought of new content with the current episodic model, with every single thing being drip fed over 12 weeks, and now they have the insane nerve to cut the content flow down even more. it gets even worse, as once a raid has released, in the next major update that follows it's release, the raid will be updated with 'new rewards, new mechanics, new Feats, and potentially even new encounters' (feats are optional selectable difficulty settings being added in the future). THE RAID WILL NOT EVEN BE FULLY COMPLETED UPON RELEASE. they are essentially following the early access model, for no real reason it would seem. there is no evidence that this makes bungie any more money, and it certainly doesn't suggest that player numbers are going to increase because of this.
it all leaves a poor taste in my mouth as it adds to the ever growing pile of evidence that bungie caters more heavily towards their casual players, rather than meeting the needs of every kind of player. it started with the removal of hard mode raids, as they didn't see enough player interest for them to be worth creating, which at the time was probably the right course of action, however the steps taken since have further alienated hardcore players. the strict health gating of playlist bosses, the lack of innovation in challenge, but the biggest offender of all is their claim that the problem in destiny is that replaying activities is a chore. somehow, even in their infinte wisdom, bungie lack the foresight to see that the reason that repeating activities is boring, is not a gameplay problem, it is instead a loot problem. there is no reason to run any activity as there is no loot worth grinding, because there are no activities where the loot that is worth grinding is required. this is the problem with destiny.