Destiny 2 players have been left confused about where things are going from here, as after the Renegades expansion this December, things seem nebulous. A roadmap of the path forward was promised by Bungie almost two months ago, and despite some updates about it still being worked on, it’s been a really long time and it’s nowhere to be found.
Bungie has indicated that the Destiny 2 plan for the foreseeable future is likely what we are currently doing in this first “Year of Prophecy.” That would mean two and expansions and the three-months-in “Major Update,” which would hopefully be more major than the disappointing Ash and Iron. This was already listed in a past roadmap covering the first year, and it’s called Shadow and Order. That’s all we know.
If the structure of the double smaller expansions and double mid-season updates remains in place, the main question I have is about the things in between. Namely, is Bungie going to keep going forward with The Portal as the main structure of 95% of Destiny 2 playtime, or are they going to sideline it/replace it with something else?
Feedback about The Portal has been mixed to quite negative since its debut almost six months ago. There is a consensus that sure, a central location to find Destiny activities is not a bad idea by itself, but the fact that it is the entire core of the game now and the entire pursuit is now a very long light level power climb, the exact kind of thing that players did not like toward the end of the Light and Darkness saga especially.
Bungie has dramatically overhauled parts of The Portal, namely how it doles out rewards. But accelerating power gains and giving out 3-4x loot, despite being something they absolutely should have done, does not solve the core issue. In fact, it’s sort of broken the entire system. Bungie has had to cave and not reset power for Renegades, meaning it should be easy to earn top rewards almost instantly when the expansion comes out, minus some sort of wrench thrown in the works. Tier 5 loot is extremely accessible now from the time you’re still 100 under the power cap. The system has gone sideways.
I do not think anything significant will change with the double expansion/major update structure, but I do think Bungie needs to figure out something different than The Portal for year two, and all the years it’s attempting to plan for the game going forward. I have previously suggested the Hail Mary idea of bringing back popular previous seasons and their loot, but who knows how plausible that is or if most of the playerbase would even like that. But most of them really do not like The Portal and the loot/power chase it forces everyone into.
Something has to be done. Destiny 2’s playercount has sunk well below Curse of Osiris, the “darkest time” for the game in its history. Ash and Iron was in some ways a net negative for the game, a revelation that these Major Updates are actually Medium to Minor, and not terribly compelling. The Portal itself, in addition to its core problems, is physically breaking much of the time now. Scores are not counting, encounters are softlocking. It feels like a third to half the time in certain playlists, you’re going to be screwed out of either good loot or even the ability to finish an entire run. So that has to be fixed too with Bungie’s hugely diminished QA team after rounds of layoffs.
Amidst all this is the invisible game director, Tyson Green, who after a brief introductory message, has been entirely absent, delegating game discussion to other team members. It’s a far cry from the previous game director, Joe Blackburn, and almost a metaphor for this new era of the game, with limited communication and missing roadmaps. Hopefully that changes soon.
Follow me on Twitter, YouTube, and Instagram.
Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy.
:max_bytes(150000):strip_icc()/Tcheky-Karyo-Cinema-film-music-festival-La-Baule-110125-940fb67e48ad4d3ca778e159a9067683.jpg "Tchéky Karyo, GoldenEye and The Missing star, dies at 72 – Entertainment Weekly")
