From Festival of the Lost, to SRL, and now Crimson Days, Bungie has been upbeat about their new sustainable live-events, but these limited events lack substance.
Iron Banner returns this week and on February 9th we’ll see a brand new 2v2 Crucible mode, featuring “a special twist, born of new gameplay and mechanics that only battle-tested star-crossed lovers will appreciate.”
Bungie has almost put focus on nickel and dime tactics, pushing for limited time events. SRL only lasted a few weeks and there was a ton of community feedback. It seems like we could be beta testing some of the stuff that will be overhauled and improved in ‘Destiny 2’ – which we only have rumors about at this point. Will it come out this year? Who knows.
Year One expansions seemed more sufficient because they added something permanent to Destiny, and this is why so many people are willing to pay for them. It’s likely Bungie will continue with the current strategy: free events until the big release. But Destiny has changed before and it will change again, optimizing and learning, like the Vex.
Hopefully there is a whole team of people working on sweet new activities for Destiny 2 and beyond, but right now, there’s a lot of half-baked content that propagates micro-transactions, such as the Mask packages in Festival of the Lost or Record (stat) Book in SRL.
Knowing that something is out of reach unless you pull out your wallet is frustrating, and very few people want to pay for items when they’re getting seemingly little in return. If they can bring something substantial in the next few months, the “free events” may just pay off.
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Year One…
Vault of Glass, Crota’s End, Prison of Elders, or any activity which isn’t the “now” is almost obsolete; not only for long-time veterans, but for new players as well. The latter is a much more depressing concept. Bungie has made attempts to integrate old content into Year 2, such as No Time To Explain, but it’s not consistent.
Many players only find solace in dominating the King’s Fall raid on hard, while others savor going flawless in Trials of Osiris. These two consistent events are the only reason most Guardians stay hooked on Destiny, as SRL and Iron Banner have longer hiatuses between their appearances. Being more than 315 Light serves no real purpose and there’s nothing cool for reaching the current 320 max.
Destiny is a game focused on building characters to a player’s own liking, featuring a variety of weapons, armor, and abilities. And in turn, making Y1 gear somewhat irrelevant seems like a slap in the face. But it’s understandable: Gear is meant to be enjoyed and powerful during a time, and then new gear takes its place. But how about new cosmetic gear to take its place from the old raids in which it originally came from?
This idea is to help bring Y1 raids into relevancy. It doesn’t necessarily need to be done with any new mechanics, but cool unique gear that can drop for you if you’ve completed the raid before. Perhaps these items could be cosmetic and/or Legendary Armor/Exotic Weapons, and would only open up once you’ve completed the that raid before. It would just be an incentive to keep “old” content alive, which is still brand new for anyone’s who’s picked up the game recently.
Trey-fantastico said it best: “Lets say this trend continues. Bungie changes the leveling system every time new DLC drops and increases the level cap by requiring a new set of gear each time. At the end of 10 years we will have just as much relevant content as we do now.”
We can safely assume Bungie wants new players via Refer A Friend, yet they don’t promote the content that new players will undoubtedly want to play; epic stories of VoG could be their reason for buying the game in the first place.
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Authors
- Tubraize K
- Jim Wallace (Year One…)