It feels to me likeDestiny 2(andDestinyat large) is inoculated against repeated success. With Bungie reducing the importance of weapon crafting and doubling down on the Power grind, the community is slowly growing more and more tired of how the studio is handling the game.
Specifically, we’ve now had not one buttwohuge Reddit threads where aDestiny 2player going under the name of Techman- wentdeepinto discussing what’s going on with Bungie’s flagship project. Their assessment? That Bungie is slowly but steadily dismantling the legacy ofDestiny 2‘s former Game Director, Joe Blackburn. I wasn’t too worried when Blackburn, who was beloved by the community, announced his departure. His replacement was a different Bungie veteran, Tyson Green, andthe future seemed reasonably bright at the time.
That assessment of mine can now safely be revised, as it hasn’t aged all that well. On top of releasingone buggy disaster after another, the delightful heights thatDestiny 2reached upon the release ofThe Final Shapehave now been replaced by a series of confusing lows. Techman- has got an idea of why that is the case.
Bungie is messing up the legacy of Joe Blackburn, and that’s not a good sign for Destiny at large
Techman-‘s posts, which are massively upvoted and popular on the DestinyTheGame subreddit, have helped me contextualize what’s gone wrong withDestiny 2over the past months. These assessments are exceedingly well-sourced and hugely supported by other members of the community, and they posit a few simple claims:
This is seemingly being accomplished mainly through a renewed focus on Power grinding and by deliberately not making cutting-edge top-of-the-line weapons craftable, which they were under Blackburn. Weapon crafting is a particularly notable issue here because it offered players a relatively straightforward and (more importantly) RNG-free way of earning endgame-ready gear.
Techman-‘s original post garnered lots of support when it was first posted, butBungie’s recent developer updatespurred them into action once again with anewassessment of the matter:
The author of these posts now feels that Bungie is working with “ego-based decision-making”, withDestiny 2slowly peeling back all the many different quality-of-life improvements it received under Blackburn’s umbrella. The community now feels that Bungie doesn’t understand what the community wants and that the recent Episode Revenant’s Tonic-based RNG optimizing system is a straight downgrade compared to the established weapon crafting systems.
From my point of view, it seems entirely obvious that Bungie is floundering withDestiny 2. Earlier this year, I finally managed to put my feelings about the game into words with a simple argument: thatthis franchise’s biggest problem by far has always been uncertainty. This wasn’t quite as pronounced in the years past when we knew quite clearly what Bungie’s next step might be. Now, though, with Episodes falling flat on their faces time and again, and withDestiny 2: Frontiersbeing a huge unknown, the community is absolutely beset by uncertainty.
Players just don’t know what to make of Bungie’s current plans for the game, and given the studio’s latest developer update, there now seems to be a severe disconnect between the team and the community. That’s a huge issue for a live-service game that lives and dies by how much its players care about the presentandthe future.
Compared to what we had on the cusp ofThe Final Shape,Destiny 2is now grindier and less approachable. These issues are compounded further still by the fact thatFrontiersis supposed to be a huge revamp of the core progression loop with sandbox campaigns, Metroidvania elements, and more. Techman-‘s posts are a solid mirror of the current state ofDestiny 2‘s community, and I highly recommend reading up on them if you haven’t kept up with things. On the flip side, it seems likeDestiny: Risingis better than anyone expected it to be, so hey.
