Destiny 2 has been out on consoles for a good while now, and many of us have been spending long hours enjoying the game. Despite the fun we have had with the game, there are some significant issues that you will face, specially if you decide to stick with a lot longer than I did, and really delve deep into the end-game. Here’s what one of the top Destiny 2 players has to say after spending countless hours playing the game.
On Power Level
Power level is not a good thing at all. Light level was sloppy in Destiny 1, and they preserved problems from Destiny 1 while introducing new ones.
Destiny 1 light levels made it possible to under-level but not to over-level, which makes it feel like your character never gets more powerful. You get “less weak,” but never “stronger.” This is also true in Destiny 2. Power level isn’t used as a requirement for equipping new weaponry, so gear strength and power level also aren’t related. You also don’t gain more health or deal more damage. Power level does nothing.
And on top of this, you now can level to 305 through patrolling and just doing public events. Being max level in Destiny 1 during most of its expansions meant you had completed a good amount of the endgame content – but now, “endgame” content is trivialized by design – it’s not an important part of the road to the strongest character. High level content is far less “worthwhile” as a result.
On top of that issue, you don’t need 305 for anything. As of next Tuesday, level 300 will be useful for the prestige raid and the prestige nightfall. We already know that the Prestigious Nightfall does not give you unique loot (the aura does not count, sorry), and the prestigious raid is looking to follow a relatively similar suit.
So to summarize, you can get 305 from anything, you don’t need it for anything, and it doesn’t do anything. It’s too easy to level, yet simultaneously not worth it to even try anyway. It’s clumsily tacked on to the game.
And that is a problem.
The one thing that power level manages to do is spin a narrative that there’s more to do after level 20. The mere existence of power level suggests that an endgame exists in which getting your power to the maximum level is valuable. Why would power level exist if you didn’t need it for something? Why is it the most prominently displayed number on your emblem?
On Loot
Good god, I want to cry for the loot. The loot pool was made shallow to the extent of maybe 100 legendary guns when Destiny 1 could have literally 182,000 variants of the same gun. This would probably be excusable if it felt like each gun was a work of art, but it feels like a handful of drops from Destiny 1 were taken at random and chosen to be the “fixed” Destiny 2 roll.
Why is Nameless Midnight seen as top tier by sole virtue of having explosive rounds, and more importantly, why is loot so wimpy that seeing Nameless Midnight that way isn’t wrong??
Basically, we got a lot of mediocre rolls as our fixed versions of guns with no chance at anything better. The loot in Destiny 2 feels watered down so much that I’m starting to think it might just be water.
This is also a massive hit to replay value – yesterday I did my milestones for the week, dismantled the repeat gear I got from that, turned in the tokens I got from doing them, dismantled the repeat gear I got from that, then turned in the gunsmith parts I got from all that and dismantled the repeats I got from that. At the end of the day, I had managed to start back at square 1 – my factions didn’t rank up (since that’s not a thing anymore), and my gear wasn’t better (since after about 200 hours I’ve gotten everything at least once).
Amassing loot and dismantling it felt like I was just making a mess in my inventory for the satisfaction of cleaning it up. I have not once in my years of experience with Destiny had such a strong feeling that I had wasted my time.
The worst part of it though is that there is absolutely 0 hope for better gear. There’s no reason to check your second Nameless Midnight for outlaw, no chance of your Blue Shift having cluster bombs, not the remotest possibility that your Dire Promise will get the range perk it so desperately needs. Hope is gone from the loot-earning process, and when hope walks out the door, excitement follows out right behind it.
On End-Game
Destiny 2 seems to have a horrible identity crisis that has tarnished the RPG/MMOlike elements and, honestly, ruined them. I like the game and I’m glad I played it, but those aspects of my enjoyment in Destiny 1 were not once reignited during Destiny 2. Power level was a huge tease that set expectations in a place to deliver disappointment.
Replayability being crippled into nothingness has utterly destroyed the social aspect of the game for me. My friends do not play and do not want to play anymore. It is very sad to see.
There is no doubt that the game has plenty of playability, and it’s fun to play, but it cannot be treated as a hobby in its current state. I can’t blame my friends for not playing, because the game feels intended to be beaten and moved on from. Bear in mind, I am one of those guys that play too much and so are my friends. This game does not work for that attitude at all, unfortunately for us.
Balance has taken a lot of the fun out of loot and the crucible without adding anything meaningful. Those who like it more this way are almost certainly rivaled by numbers who don’t, because there’s no question that the change is a matter of taste purely – but having less cool pve weapons is doubtlessly less fun. Therefore, balance has hurt the game more than it helps in my opinion.
I wish they’d make a titan skating exotic.
People in a similar position to mine – on any level, and I am not the only person who has gotten more than 100 hours in these 5 weeks – want reason to keep playing the game, but will find none.
It leaves a lot to be desired.
On Random Rolls & Reforging (rerolling)
Stop making balance the central focus of the game. Nobody is going to look back in 8 years and say “Destiny 2 was so balanced, it was amazing,” but people very well might think back on the rocket launcher that exploded into a wolf-pack of tiny homing rockets and obliterated nearly everything in the game.
Reintroduce randomized rolls but control for it better. Create a list of perks and their values from weak, ok, strong, and incredible. Give them appropriate rarities (25%,50%,20%,5% as an example) and then find an appropriate pace to reduce luck levels as playtime increases so you have some level of diminishing returns. Reward players in a way that respects their dedication, but doesn’t put them on a totally different level.
Reintroduce reforging alongside random perks such that you combine two weapons into one, choosing which perks from both you want and scrapping the rest, so god rolls are possible to work towards. Critically here, godrolls would become unique to the individual and feel like a progressive endeavor rather than a slot machine. Someone could log on and work on making their perfect Mannanan SR4. This system would make repeat drops of many kinds valuable, and players would finally have some customization that isn’t purely cosmetic.
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