To say that Destiny 2 had a rough first year would put it lightly. The game was remade in a bubble. Many aspects of Destiny 2 appeared to be the product of designers observing the evolution of Destiny 1, and creating a “definitive” version of the game.
Unfortunately this new “reboot” of Destiny was only skin deep, and the player-base felt the hollowness within a couple months. Destiny 2 did not launch with the Destiny hobby in mind. Decisions were made without having time to consider the long-term affects.
Ammo Economy
For instance, the fixed roll system. While it was a good attempt to provide a greater identity to each weapon, it couldn’t replace random rolls because there weren’t enough weapons to make up for it. Another issue was with the ammo economy. Power weapons were much more important in year 1 because they included all weapons that would do significant damage.
After almost 2 months with the new weapon system, it’s hard to imagine that shotguns were ever trapped in the power slot. The developers knew ammo was going to be an issue.
One of the biggest criticisms surrounding the first console Destiny 2 beta was the lack of power ammo drops. It had a similar drop rate to Destiny 2, but the added dependency on that slot created by the inclusion of shotguns and sniper rifles meant that we needed more power ammo than ever. Between the console and later PC beta, the developers fixed the issue by guaranteeing power ammo drops from all orange and yellow bar (“Powerful”) enemies.
The ammo economy was changed again for update 2.0 with the new weapon slots. With green ammo bricks once again being defined as special ammo, the drop rate had to be slightly reduced. On top of that, since power weapons now only included heavy weapons, the guaranteed dropping of heavy ammo from powerful enemies was completely removed.
This was done to restore heavy weapons back to being that weapon you pull out every so often to deal major hurt very quickly. This is ok by me, but there’s one problem. It completely ruins major year 1 content that relied on the way ammo dropped; namely the Leviathan Raid.
A Shattered Throne
Leaving previous year content behind is nothing new to Destiny. With the release of The Taken King in Destiny 1’s second year, all of the year 1 weapons and armor got left behind, as did the old raids. Meaning that you couldn’t infuse them up to year 2 levels. There was no incentive to play year 1 raids, since they featured the same gear locked behind year 1 levels and don’t contribute to year 2 progression. The same is true with Destiny 2’s second year, and that’s ok too. The issue is with going back to Leviathan.
There are 2 encounters where power weapons are crucial to your success, with the most impacted being the Pleasure Gardens encounter. With the limited time during damage phase, you need shotguns, rocket launchers, and fusion rifles to finish the job efficiently. The developers, knowing this, designed the encounter to being with your group needing to ram the map, killing about a dozen “powerful” enemies with the sole purpose of stocking up on ammo. Since they guaranteed the dropping of power ammo, you had what you needed to get the encounter completely without any frustration. It allowed the game to get out of your way, and for you to display combat effectiveness properly.
In year 2, we have the new raid Last Wish. To combat this issue and address community feedback for the the nature of team wipes, they implemented “Rad banners”. A teammate could deploy one of these consumables to grant you and your team instant full ammo and super. This allows players to negate the limitations of the ammo economy and play the encounter without frustration. This is a fantastic solution, however it does not apply to Leviathan. Players are unable to deploy raid banners during that raid, and so now Leviathan is artificially more difficult, due to players not being able to attain more ammo.
Picking Up The Pieces
Is year 1 content unplayable? Of course not. If anything it has become more fun overall thanks to the new weapon slots and supers. The point is that the evidence of year 1 past is still very apparent in most of the content.
The raid ammo is only one example of precision content becoming irrelevant and sometimes counter-intuitive to the game design. It only shows the design flaws of year 1 even more clearly now. Other areas include year 1 weapons that can’t be modded, destination vendor’s lack of purpose, and the removal of the prestige difficulty.
It might not be feasible, but a major pass is needed on year 1 content. We still don’t know Bungie’s plans for the fall 2018 release, but there’s a good chance that we will get another major expansion to Destiny 2. At least, that’s the hope for Destiny 3’s sake. For year 3 of Destiny 2, we need to see all of these issues addressed. Even if they don’t want to bring Leviathan forward to current power levels, they still need to achieve a consistency of design to allow Destiny 2 feel intuitive and cohesive.
The Next Step
As the current Festival of the Lost event shows us, you don’t have to bring forward items in power for them to stay relevant. Give us Leviathan raid banners and a couple weekly bounties that go towards the acquisition of masterwork cores or a random piece of powerful gear.
The content from year 1 isn’t garbage. With a little love and attention, Bungie can redeem much of that content, and provide even more avenues of progression. Let’s hope they take the opportunity to do so.
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