Bungie did an unexpected thing and increased the power for Destiny 2 players, and the reaction was… strange. The official Destiny 2 Twitter account told that the Vanguard has made a very powerful set of gears which can be obtained in the Tower through a Techsec Supply Drop and will automatically upgrade the player’s account power to more than 300 instantly. The fact that the power increase is free, comes along with Devrim Kay’s Call to Arms Event, the player’s excitement of getting power ups received a rude interruption as if a loud speaker was placed on the issue of the game state.
To clarify, Bungie is indeed trying to make all players fast runners in the game, but the old players are not very happy about it. The almost instantaneous player reactions were a mixture of seeing the bright side of the coin along with complete annoyance, with some even calling it a temporary solution of deep-rooted problems in the game.
For instance, there is one player whose username is ben and who made the statement “yeah i am not interested in 300 after you took 2k power from me” which oof, this is really some serious salt right there. He is alluding to the power level changes that Bungie enforced very recently, which almost scraped a lot of players’ progress. It is like in several months spending enormous amount of time grinding your character so that you can finally get the developers telling you “hey, we are giving you this free stuff to compensate for taking your other stuff”. The experience is really not good.
And DJ Frankys is one of the players who said, “Make it 500. Can’t handle the whole grind anymore.” The same feeling is shared by many in their comments – they are simply tired of the endless power grind loop. It has become a very dull treadmill where one keeps chasing numbers rather than getting the actual game fun. Like how many times can you do the same strikes before they start feeling like a work?
The discussion gets even hotter if the reply chains are analyzed. Paladin Gaming and Lucifer Doggo argued for a long time regarding PlayStation‘s delivery issues, Paladin saying “Time gating is the bane of D2 and should be abolished,” and honestly? He is absolutely right. The Destiny community has been complaining about the practice of time gating, ie allowing players to wait for an unreasonably long time for new content, for years.
Honestly, what is very interesting is that this free power boost has become the center of major frustrations. Players are discussing matters as wide-ranging as the new player experience, content delivery, the upcoming Marathon game, and even the recent power fixes. For instance, Yama’s response is a good example of the general feeling: “BUNGIE: Play our game! Me: No, BUNGIE. BUNGIE: Free armor for account power 300+ Me: No, BUNGIE… go work on Marathon.”
There is this constant anxiety underlining the concern that Destiny 2 is being neglected while Bungie is concentrating all their efforts on the development of the new shooter. It is especially easy to believe so when you overhear the dissatisfied players grumbling about missing content and the improper delivery of features that have not yet arrived.
The revive economy was another aspect that came up several times during the discussions – swannyken31 ranted on how “our characters’ whole stick is that they can be brought back to life by the ghost and you only give us three revives” which like, he is right? The resurrection system has been especially a problem for casual players who just want to take their time going through the game without being stuck all the time.
The changes have not encountered total negative feedback; the positive side is that quite the opposite. Notorious players like Bryan are thankful and say “the grind is no longer super tedious” and power-up will help a lot in making friends play together. Thus, the apps are there, though overshadowed a bit by the greater problems.
The overall debate is pretty much that of love and care from the players’ side. They are not so active in letting their dissatisfaction out if they think the game should get better along with them. The power-up seems good, but it is like a fancy coat of paint on a car with a still-existing engine problem. Users demand new content, better systems and less frustrating mechanics, not just temporary number increases.
The whole situation has once again reminded us of the incident when all our gear was sun-setting and people went nuts. Bungie is again riding the hobby horse between making the game easy for new players and attractive for veterans but it is like walking a tightrope in the middle of a hurricane. Every single change made makes some people happy while it also makes very others upset.
