The weekly Destiny 2 update has been released, and wow, there’s a lot to unpack. So much stuff really. Big stuff: The Ash & Iron launch is on Tuesday and introducing a new term called Dungeon Lairs (which honestly almost no one does seem to understand), shifting portal rewards a bit, and for the upcoming raid, major changes in the World First Race rules are going into effect. Oh, and next comes the patch notes previews. So much has been revealed by Bungie, yet the real story lies in how the community is responding to it at large.
Let’s all start with Dungeon Lairs, which is both “veteran” and extremely confusing for many players. One user @SpareRations wrote: “I’m out the loop what the fuck is a dungeon lair, we getting another spire of stairs or something?” And honestly, I feel for them—awareness is truly sinking in. The problem here, though, is that the dungeon lairs have really been criticized by the community because they don’t drop updated tiered loot, which just sapped smugness and left many in the community wondering why they would even run them. @FireCloud42 was perfectly blunt: “The fact that the ‘new’ Dungeon Lairs don’t drop ANY of their loot as updated versions drastically kills a reason to run them.”
Then comes the World First Race controversy. New rules state that teams cannot blackout screens during a race anymore, and some consider that to be a huge W. @reedwhaley shouted: “Just gonna shout out the massive win that is not being able to black out the screen while running world first anymore. Fantastic change.” Unfortunately, not all parties are grinning; @B_RantGaming complains “You shouldn’t have to stream to go for worlds first,” positing that forcing people to stream for world first converts it into an event for “streamers,” and not for the community. It’s raising a whole discussion in the community about what is more important—accessibility versus legitimacy.
The portal rewards have mixed reactions. For some players, the whole grind feels repetitive and unrewarding. “What brain trust thought this season’s game model was a good idea?? Let’s not only drip feed rewards, make em run the same 6-8 activities on Master & Grandmaster. Make dungeons and raids worthless,” @InverseTwit617 raged. Others simply appreciate the fact that at least something is free – @XFAngel98 pointed out: “The holy grail that everyone has lost track of….THIS IS FREE NO PAYWALL WOOOOOOT” so there’s that?
While there’s a bit of complaining about some cases, @Chimeran_Hybrid have reported a bug in the Harpy boss in Spire of the Watcher not retreating correctly during DPS phases. @FinnesseeTitans, meanwhile, still has not been rewarded for barrow dyad, for some reason. The harsh roasting of the seasonal model is continuing, with its player base crashing to the lowest and Bungie facing a plethora of questionable decisions.
Of course all is not bad. The change in raid date actually proved to be helpful: “@GSXRCLYDE is grateful to Bungie because they get to attend their friend’s wedding instead of grinding for world first.” So that’s nice, I guess. Those are the small wins.
Beyond that, it becomes quite interesting to observe how divided the community is on all of these changes. Some refer to it as Destiny’s death, while others are just happy to have anything new to grind for. Another hot button issue is the pricing of dungeon keys. @Fujyno asks, “Why are dungeon keys still 2k silver then if you need to get 2 of them to play one from each?????? What is this decision making genuinely,” and I guess that’s a fair point.
In the end, Bungie wants to innovate and reinvent the Destiny formula at every turn, whilst the player base remains bitterly divided. Few issues get praised, others are dragged through the mud. So many players are feeling that this new dungeon lairs concept is half-baked, world first rule changes are contentious, and that seasonal model dictates the time of exit for what feels like the majority of players doing some variation of the same activities over and over again with mediocre rewards.
Always classic Destiny community stuff—equal parts excitement and frustration, hope and disappointment—even before release. The game was just so long that the players have concrete expectations laid out for the game, and when Bungie fails to meet those expectations, players speak out loud about their views. Whether or not these changes propel the game forward or generate loads more issues is yet to be counted, but one thing for sure – destiny could be a hot topic for the community.
