Paying to Fix your Mistakes: Destiny 2

Much hubaloo was made yesterday when the Destiny 2 Year 2 Roadmap was revealed. They are finally addressing some of the long standing issues and bad design decisions they made in the sequel, and it is release on September 8th, 2018.

In a paid expansion, with annual pass option.

Oh, hello greed! Nice to see you again!

It is no surprise that Destiny 2 was a pretty big step backwards in terms of expectations, reception, and engaging their player base long term. Heck, D2 fansites stopped reporting concurrent players because it showed how steep of a cliff the population was jumping off of and didn’t want to “present a false narrative” to the wider customer base. With all the disappointed customers, and people who paid for expansion packs but didn’t bother playing because the game was so bad (hi, that’s me!), you would think the answer to winning back their customer base would be to fix the issues and invite the community back before charging them.

Well, not this guy. Destiny 2 remains dead to me and I hope other players are smart enough not to buy into this scam as well. I know it will bring some hopefuls back. I don’t remember, in my almost 10 years blogging, being so disappointing in a company or title.  So much so, in fact, that I am worried I am misplacing it a bit. Still, this is my rant-how-I-feel-off-the-cuff post after watching the live stream yesterday and absorbing the news. Of course, my disappointment is only equal to the high expectations I held for it, so that is probably also their fault. Right? =)

Information about the changes can be read here (or anywhere, if you google it). I am not convinced this solves all the problems either, but there is some intriguing decisions made (randomisation of rewards is the biggest one I am shocked they stepped back from)  To be fair – I would 100% try it again if this was a free launch of system fixes and a mea culpa “hey, we heard you – sorry!”. The timing of the expansion, pass fee and changes is what frustrates me – although you will still get the QoL changes without the expansion it just reeks of cash grab. I think they would have won me back if they launched the QoL fixes first, then the expansion 90 days later.

I’ll stop now. I don’t think anyone here cares about Destiny 2 anyway.

7 comments / Add your comment below

  1. I am assuming (perhaps wrongly) that they’d have to ret-con a lot of these changes into the existing game, no? If so I will try it, since I already own it. If I have to buy the expansion in order to get random loot and stuff… nope nope nope, no way. Maybe when a Game of the Year Edition is on sale for $10

    Happily I didn’t spring for the season pass or anything, just the base game and I played it for probably 30 hours or so, which felt OK to me. But I really have zero faith in the company. If there’s a Destiny 3, I’ll wait until well after launch before even thinking about buying it, and then only if the community has convinced me that they’ve finally learned a lesson.

    I took some comfort in the fact that Luke Smith never appeared in that video. Getting him away from the design process feels like a solid first step.

    1. I am with you. My disappointment stems from the unrealized potential, but I already have a dozen or so posts here outlining that. Lining up the improvements with a paid expansion reeks of not being accountable. In my opinion.

  2. Being able to wield any weapon in any slot is a big one. Weapon Stat randomization- something like every player enjoyed and actually extended the fun of the grind in a destiny 1 – another big one. Will these be behind the expac paywall? That would be pure evil. I know that this past year’s season pass was a complete waste of money. Neither release that was covered by the annual pass should be called an expansion – this September release should be covered by the current annual pass. Let the next 3 anaemic content drops like we got recently be part of the next annual pass package. Sadly – there just isn’t another shooter that has the feel/fun of Destiny. And they know this!! I also have a great regular group that pushes each other and that raid together regularly so that helps keep one playing. So we will see when hopefully Bungie feels the pressure and gives way more then they are currently hinting at for a $90 package (expac+season pass) because next year brings Anthem and I don’t see a bunch of people gambling on season passes again with D2 given decent competition coming up.

    1. I agree with you with the lack of competitors in this space. Warframe is WAY better in many regards, but it’s third person. The genre really needs a Destiny killer. Anthem won’t be that either (another 3rd person shooter..)

  3. Maybe D2 just realized how niche the market actually is for a loot based fps. There are better loot games. There are better fps games. There are better squad games. Wasn’t so much the case when D1 came out.

    And parallel a bit since diablo3 did the same kitchen sink overhaul with RoS. It worked. Course word of mouth was hyper positive maybe d2 can do the same…

      1. Borderlands is much better.

        I think what you mean is “group-based COOP FPS game with loot mechanics”. The statement further validates the niche aspect of that game. If you remove some of those variables, there are much better alternatives out there. How many people are looking for EXACTLY that?

        MH:W hits all of those except the FPS part (including horrible group mechanics).

Leave a Reply to IseyCancel reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

%d bloggers like this: