Here's What Destiny 2 Didn't Mention During Its Livestream
In a recent livestream, Bungie showed off a plethora of new content coming to Destiny 2. It was a pretty exciting display, showing off some of the new story missions that players can expect in the coming months.
Players got to see their first wider look at Bungie's plans for Season of Arrivals, the latest public event for the game. It will apparently involve the entire player community joining forces to finally face off against the mysterious black pyramids that have been looming over Destiny 2 for quite some time.
Also of interest was the official trailer of the game's next major expansion, Beyond Light. That expansion will take players to the ice planet of Europa for new raids and story missions.
However, the livestream's biggest one-two punch in terms of reveals was a trailer teasing Destiny 2's future, which appears to be more long term than we could have expected. Beyond Light won't be the end, as we will be seeing two new expansion in the coming years: one called The Witch Queen in 2021, and one called Lightfall in 2022. Not only that, but the next few expansions of the game will bring with them a new system called the Destiny Content Vault. This vault system has been developed specifically to cycle old and new material in and out to keep the game fresh and interesting. While Bungie didn't go into a ton of detail during the livestream, the company posted a blog that detailed their plans in more depth.
The post explained, "Destiny 2 is too large to efficiently update and maintain. The size and complexity of the game are also contributing to more bugs and less innovation. Instead of building a Destiny 3 and leaving D2 behind, each year, we are going to cycle older, less actively played content out of the live game and into what we're calling the Destiny Content Vault (DCV)."
In the blog post, Bungie also flat out acknowledges the massive failure of Destiny 2's most recent event. The quest to gain the legendary Felwinter's Lie shotgun was met with a nearly complete lack of player engagement. The absurd amount of grinding needed from every single player in the community essentially led to even the most diehard fans putting their foot down and refusing to engage. In return, the developers had to figure out a way to exponentially increase the progression of the quest, just to get people to the next part of the event. This event meanwhile still suffered from catastrophic bugs in its later stages, eventually forcing many a player to throw in the towel.
By narrowing Bungie's focus with this new vault system, there is a very real hope that Destiny 2 fans won't have to deal with issue's like these in the future.
Bungie's blog expressed a worry that the company had shortchanged players by ending support for the first game in the series and releasing Destiny 2. There's a hope expressed here that Destiny 2 will fulfill the promises of the first game as well. Bungie is committing to Destiny 2 for the long haul with The Witch Queen and Lightfall. By cycling out older content and bringing out newer content at the same time, Bungie is looking to keep Destiny 2 thriving well into the next console generation, which should be an exciting prospect for fans.
This absurd file size is actually very similar to an issue that people are having with Call of Duty: Modern Warfare. Between all of the new maps, weapons, and updates, the game has continued to "balloon" much in the same way as Destiny 2. When you add in huge additions of of side content, like Modern Warfare 2 Campaign Remastered and Call of Duty: Warzone, you have a massive file size that is almost untenable. Much like Destiny 2, this size has seemingly led to the game being much harder to properly maintain, leading to multiple bugs and openings for cheaters to exploit.
In other words, Bungie may truly be onto something here. While players will likely be bummed to see some of their favorite maps taking a holiday, it could benefit the game in the long run. Also, with the new Content Vault system, it's likely that they wouldn't have to wait too long to revisit those areas.
If nothing else, there is a very real possibility that Destiny 2 could be setting a positive precedent for games of this type. In theory, this sounds like it could be the ideal way to maintain interest and quality control. If all goes well, maybe we will see other games adopt a similar model.
As Bungie said in its blog, the company's focus is on maintaining a strong future relationship with the player. "We want our quality of service to grow ... to be able to react to community feedback quicker, to innovate more often, and to continue to tell new stories with your characters. We're excited to continue that journey with you."