Destiny 2 is headed in the right direction. Perhaps it’s too little too late or maybe it could pull a healthy player base back in. For now, Destiny 2 is trying its best and is showing signs of quality of life for its future. Today it’s no surprise when buying a new game to be hit immediately by a patch, because what game makes it out of the door ever without having to go through a few updates and patches once it’s out the gate? Usually a major update will hit games freshly released within the first month followed by the steady stream of content and improvements. All of this is commonplace in the video game world and yet we as the audience still find time to get mad that games aren’t the perfect embodiment of what was envisioned. Developers do have a responsibility to be open with their audience and it does become a let down when certain things promised are nowhere to be seen or the game is more broken than let on. So let the saga of Destiny as it continues through the ages be a lesson, one that we are seeing more and more frequently – Anthem is on the horizon, after all. But it’s our responsibility as players and developers to keep the dialogue going to get the best experience possible from all sides. Good luck out there, Guardian.
The biggest improvement was the most recent update fixing a massive number of woes that have been plaguing Destiny 2 since day one and adding certain improvements where needed. Sniper rifles are useful now; it’s been six months and a weapon choice has been entirely useless up to this point. For anyone who played Destiny, jumping back in now will bring you right back to when Icebreaker was popping Vex heads off from a comfy distance. This isn’t just a rant about snipers being bad and boo-hoo, this is just one major example of one of the many pitfalls Destiny 2 has been filling in. The best part is all weapon choices seem to have gotten a nice healthy balance. Every gun feels good to use and is reminding me more of old play in Destiny with the improvement of Destiny 2. Classes have also seen dramatic improvements; not once did I find myself using the Sunbreaker until this most recent patch.
However, probably the most disgusting offense this expansion imposes on players is that vanilla players are now locked out of key content they had access to just weeks ago. The Prestige Leviathan raid now requires a Power Level that can only be attained by purchasing the DLC. This is especially terrible for PC owners who have only had six weeks to enjoy this content. Considering ‘Dark Below’ did not lock vanilla Destiny players out of the ‘Vault of Glass’ hard mode, there’s no excuse for what’s going on here.
Placing all the powerful weapons in the same category has good potential for PvP, but it’s also a functional misstep in terms of PvE. Power weapon ammo drops more often in Destiny 2 than heavy weapon ammo in Destiny 1, but still not nearly as often as kinetic or energy weapon ammo. So right away there’s less incentive to use that ammo for any weapon other than a rocket or grenade launcher. Why waste that relatively rare and precious ammo on a sniper rifle when it could instead be spent on something much more powerful? It’s the same issue with abilities in that they’re all restricted by ridiculously-slow cooldowns. Instead of enjoying the ability to toss a grenade into a group of minor enemies, dodge around the battlefield at one’s leisure or even pop a super to take on a mid-boss, the game encourages players to bank them instead. To use one’s abilities in any situation other than the most desperate is to see them go to waste. Nobody wants to be caught staring at a cool-down meter when they’re stuck in a tight spot. These can at least be adjusted a bit with mods, but who wants to waste their mods on anything other than top-tier Illegal Armor rolls? The net result is gameplay that’s gone from fast-paced, fluid and fun, to something slow, limited and dull with no incentive whatsoever to make use of the game’s most enjoyable weapons and powers. If the developers truly felt that these changes were necessary to achieve a more fun and balanced Crucible, then perhaps it would have been better to just separate the Crucible from the rest of the game.
One of the biggest questions around Destiny 2 is if Activision and Bungie are doing enough to fix what is an extremely wonky machine, and if so, can it be saved? Destiny 2 does have a dedicated fan base, but even that has hit a low point compared to when Destiny found itself going through these same woes, just with less grief, which makes sense. Destiny isn’t perfect and it came a long way from when it launched, but many of the problems in Destiny 2 didn’t exist for Destiny. In many ways Destiny 2 felt like it had taken about a thousand steps back. Now Destiny 2 finds itself not only on the same trajectory as the original, but also with more patches and leaks to fix. The boat was sinking as soon as it hit water, it just took a little time at sea to see just how bad things were.
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