After Bungie unleashed a new exotic mission on Pinnacle Ops, named Heliostat, for Destiny 2, all hell broke loose in reactions. The mission sees these brave Guardians breach into a long-forgotten old Golden Age facility and stop a man, known as the Conductor, from activating a badly tweaked Warsat. Exciting, isn’t it? Well, the community reaction has been all over the place from pure exhilaration, utter confusion to downright anger.
So the thing is: Heliostat is good to go for all players, which is fantastic! But… within moments, reports of problems started to appear. Too many people reported that they could not put items into the vault?! That is like an elementary function! One particularly enraged Florida Gerican player literally asked DestinyTheGame, “Anyone else having issues can’t put items into the vault.” And they were not alone. Another Guardian, G0D0FW4RT0RTL3, reacted to the problem with, “Plan on fixing the vault?” So yeah, technical problems straight from the get-go.
Then there is the mission. A number of players love this! Zooksiee said, “It’s pretty fun, excited to see how the catalysts play out.” Another player called theJthatmatters said that they liked it, especially the jump puzzles. And TommyFoolery631 said, argh!, “Half the mission was the spire of the watcher jump puzzle” – that’s one pretty specific complaint.
Mission length was another big complaint. MoonsMalloy asked Bungie, “Can I ask why was it delayed? Just felt really short for it to be delayed that long.” Which then ignited an entire debate in the replies as to how long the development has taken and whether Bungie needed more time, with FarisWeelll jumping in several times in defense of the studio, even telling one critic, “They are not a large company. They have about 800 to 1000 people working there with it split between destiny and marathon.”
Second films arise upon the mission mechanics. Nethan10Troi moaned about the “useless timers, causing many to rush through the mission as opposed to enjoying the environments” and called them “troll mechanics.” And KRONK47614613 just directly asked, “Is this a scrapped strike or something?” which really is a fairly reasonable question considering how some exotic missions have felt in the past.
Discussions on the exotic weapon – this axe thing – have also become divided. Yoohoo230 asked, “Can we get all the upgrades for the axe day one or will it be week by week?” while MoonsMalloy was much more straightforward, saying, “buff the axe cause it’s awful.” And then Optimus13499 reports what may be a bug: “Maybe I missed something, but is it a Bug that I can’t trigger Forgemaster (or loose the Buff), when using the new Exotic?”
The true dividing factor in the discussion is a matter to die for; we got allegedly “Huge W for @Destiny2Team” from SirCosta11 meanwhile, on the other hand, Sinistar2077 considered it was “mid and that’s being nice.” Some threads got somewhat nasty, with 1234 telling another player that they were “defending a multi-billion dollar company that doesn’t give a fuck about you or your time.”
The announcement had set off some interesting reactions directed against the corporate lingo as well. TheBiasedVol07 posted, “Oh boy I can’t wait to clock in today!” accompanied by a gif of a guy looking miserable at work; and fflitzer chimed, “when do i get my paycheck??” in similar spirits. It seems some players are beginning to feel the game is becoming more of a job than fun.
Sigismund707 came grumbling about the navigation, “Why the hell isnt there a quest in my quest tab. That was confusing af,” which implies the mission might not be as clearly signposted as it should be. Regional availability was panned, too, from ygavrenkov, who commented, “Available to all players within certain regions,” with a winky face, probably alluding to the ongoing geo-restriction debates.
Despite all the critiques, there came some positive reviews. Developers, it seems, fixed some display issues rather quickly, with Lucifer_Doggo thanking for “the rapid fix and the quick response to my ticket.” And genuinely, a few players seemed excited about the new catalysts.
So, where is that going to leave us? Heliostat encapsulates everything that strikes a chord with the Destiny 2 community – instant engagement with the new content channeling technical issues that need to be ironed out, polarized opinions on the quality, and the eternal friction between player expectations and developer deliveries. The mission appeared to provide some pretty cool ideas with the Golden Age facility and Warsat premise but seems to have stumbled in execution.
So, whether or not the exotic mission will remain one of Destiny’s storied exotic missions or get completely lost in the abyss will hugely depend on how Bungie quell all of the complaints and whether or not the exotic weapon really is worth all the hype. Until then, Guardians are out there diving in, vault-related issues and all, to see just what this new activity offers on PlayStation and Xbox.
