Bungie has disclosed the new Festival of the Lost activity for Destiny 2, and its reputation is not clear. The new event named Haunted Altars of Sorrow has been arranged with Halloween’s creepy side, and it borrows from the Onslaught and Altars of Sorrow activities. The free event to all gamers from October 21 to November 11 corresponds to Halloween and therefore it acts as an alluring gift. However, the community sees it as a curse, claiming that the technical issues that have plagued the event render it more of a pain than a treat.
Haunted Altars is thus an activity that combines both modes where Altars of Sorrow’s death and destruction would be transferred to the Onslaught side, except that it is all wrapped in the Halloween theme of the Festival of the Lost. It is unthinkable that there is a person who won’t enjoy shooting with their guns and at the same time picking up candies and wearing Halloween masks. However, the placing of the execution is where the confusion begins.
Broken game bug reports are flooding the Destiny 2 subreddit as well as Twitter feedback. In a way, it is really a disaster in that community. Users say that they sometimes experience soft locks at every point with the activity just turning on and off. One guardian, who went by the handle tsaintc, tried the event ten times and was able to finish it only twice, experiencing the whole range of experiences from first-person view glitches to falling through the world after dying. And what about the reviving system? Apparently, it is sometimes completely non-functional, thus players are left in limbo on the battlefield with no way to respawn.
The problem of lag is still persistent. User uldren, who is one of the lag sufferers, described it as “the laggiest event we’ve ever had”, which is a very strong statement given that Destiny has always had such a problem. BenR called `Nippalz` says it is “laggy and buggy even when no one is playing”, thus indirectly implying that it is even more miserable. If the server’s size cannot be the cause of the activity’s poor performance, what else could it be?
Community feedback has generally been very negative. Competitive Drama communicated a strong message to Bungie, saying “no one cares, you all will soon be unemployed”, which might be a bit extreme but gamers can get very attached. In the case of user zCaLLMeJacob99, he even uploaded a picture of what he thinks is an acceptable apology reward. On the other hand, JohnEasy thinks that Bungie should have waited until the problems were sorted out before advertising the event, which would have been a sound PR strategy.
Nevertheless, not everything is bad news! Some fortunate players have great fun as long as everything is on their side. Support Hunter Twist Ledgendz qualified it as “a decent mode that’s fun” while they did complain about “the mental autocannons those psions have”, which, to be honest, is the same feeling with me. Killerneto420 is having a fantastic time and calls the event “very profitable to play and decent loop” so maybe it is up to your luck whether the game will behave as it should during your playing time.
Matchmaking seems to be yet another common problem. Player WesKyt mourned over “red rumble”, whatever that is supposed to imply, and the issue of whether or not people are pairing up with their clans and fireteams to beat the competition. Meanwhile, elonisfagg0t appears to be making a strenuous effort to clarify why sometimes resurrection tokens are available and at others they are not, which indeed seems to be inconsistent and thus frustrating.
Even more surprising is the fact that there is a very split opinion among the community. Users like Lucifer Doggo on the one hand say it is “more bugs than anything you’ve ever released” but on the other hand, people like MONARCH6969 are tagging content creator Aztecross with seemingly positive feedback. It is a very strange divide where the activity might be fun in theory, but the poor technical execution is ruining the experience for many.
Bungie’s timing in this case is… curious. It would be a perfect chance for them to promote their seasonal content when the Renegades expansion is approaching. On the contrary, players like CDNandez are already giving up and saying “event is over for me…ill see you when renegades drop” which is probably not the response Bungie anticipated.
Another problem that has raised eyebrows is the balancing of weapons. User Vipereon27 claims that the psionic subjugators, equipped with their glitchy superweapons, are “mad dashing past everything straight to the altar like the flash”. The event is available on both PlayStation and Xbox platforms.
