Destiny 2 launched with a brand new Milestone system. From campaign to side quests to endgame, you used the milestones tab in your director to know what you needed to do next. This essentially defined your entire experience.

It felt like checking items off a grocery list, especially since your only real pursuit was that of power. Doing each of these activities would net you what the game refers to as “Powerful gear”. This is gear that is guaranteed to be an upgrade in power.

There were 5 world quests, and a raid which always gave you power, but it comes with a weekly lockout. This is a limitation that allows you to only receive rewards from the raid once a week with no incentive to play multiple times. The 5 world quests you could finish in a single evening, and that was about it.

The drive to complete our various collections finished up within a couple months, leaving nothing for players to really do in the game. We got to max power, but there was nothing more to accomplish with it. There was no destination at the end of the road.

The pursuit of power proved to be a dull, lifeless endeavor. For the first time playing Destiny, I felt like the game actually wanted me to stop playing it when my weekly milestones grocery list was finished. With every piece of gear in the game having fixed rolls, you also likely earned every weapon or armor in the game within the first few weeks.

This, combined with the insanely generous exotic gear drop rate, made Destiny feel boring. Each DLC and expansion raised the power cap, but it served little more purpose than to inject the game with artificial difficulty. If the previous power cap was 300, they would toss 330 power activities at you. However, once you inevitably reached the new maximum, those encounters normalized in difficulty. Creating artificial difficulty with power delta definitely has its downfalls, but we’ll save that topic for another day.

Summer Lovin’

Fast forward to last summer with the release of Warmind, where we finally had a sense of what pursuit of gear felt like. Bungie had begun their shift from focusing on the pursuit of power, to focusing on the pursuit of gear, mostly weapons. The Ikelos family of weapons were up for grabs in a surprisingly well-made endgame activity, called Escalation Protocol. Your purpose for playing wasn’t to gain power, but to gain the rewards.

Bungie had created 3 very compelling reasons to play the new activity, and for the first time in Destiny 2, I felt the joy of the grind again. Power was no longer hogging center stage. You would still go out and get more power, but it wasn’t just for the sake of having it. You got the power so that it would help you with your actual pursuit of attaining the weapons more easily.

With Forsaken leaning hard into the pursuit game, Destiny 2 finally started to feel like the hobby game I wanted all along. However, there was still one thing in the way. I couldn’t put my finger on it, but something was still nagging at me in the back of my head. Something that was still pressuring me to reach max power as fast as possible. Within one day of experiencing the updates in Season of the Drifter, I know what that thing is. Raids. Allow me to explain.

Rush to Raid

When a major piece of content is released, it usually features a new raid of some kind. With raids naturally being the ultimate pinnacle endgame activity, and considering the amount of design and development time that goes into them, they’re kind of a big deal. Don’t get me wrong, the pomp and circumstance that comes with Destiny’s raids is well deserved. Raids are some of the most intense, epic, well-designed, fun, challenging, and ultimately gratifying activities within the game. Needless to say, they’re what has kept people playing for years.

Season of the Drifter does not include a raid. We had a new one last season, and there will be another one next season with Season of Opulence. However, for the first time, I don’t feel a nagging need to power up. When booting up the game this week, I simply jumped into the new content, and played for hours without hitting any power roadblocks. It was exciting to play the new game modes, and I spent 95% of my time doing that. The encounters are challenging, and it’s easy to see how attaining more power would help, but it doesn’t feel like the requirement it was last season.

The issue with raids is that they tend to come out about a week after the power cap is raised for the new season. This usually results in a race to reach the highest power level possible, giving you an advantage in the raid itself. The race to reach max power as soon as possible has diminished the enjoyment of the chase for pursuits. Players forced to get through activities they may not be in the mood to play, just for the hopes of a power increase.

Time to Chill

Season of the Drifter is the first time where I don’t feel that pressure. It’s the game’s first release to not include a raid activity, and it’s kind of refreshing. You can just go play Gambit Prime & The Reckoning, and leave the power progression on the back burner.

Harder and harder versions of The Reckoning are releasing over the next couple weeks. Through this action, you can see the developers becoming more conscious of this concept. The game naturally increases your power as you play, and that’s what Bungie needs to work towards on a broader scale.

While the answer may not be clear, it could be something as simple as moving raids to the middle of the season, or at least a few weeks in. Give players a chance to enjoy the rest of the content on their terms. Don’t make them feel rushed to reach a number.

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