It’s a sure thing: Bungie’s barefoot mobile title, Destiny 2: Rising, is yet to be unleashed upon the world, and its community has already entered into altercations. The only instance of player housing in Destiny 2 was to be realised for the first time on his mobile offshoot, much to the indignant reaction of the gamers.
The shitstorm began after the D2 news account, @destinytrack, had declared it their “villain origin story.” And honestly? Same. The comments exploded into hundreds of frustrated Destiny players who seriously could not fathom why Bungie would do this for their mobile game and implement in said mobile game one of the deepest, most granular player-requested features from their flagship title.
“Just by these comments you can tell people have absolutely no clue about developing a game or managing anything,” mused @Kronaxx, probably the only voice of reason in a sea of salt. But, truth be told, when has logic ever stopped gamers from expressing their anger online?
Given the bifurcation of opinion, in one direction were players such as @FarisWeelll arguing that “bungie devs wanted to add player housing. Management gave em the old middle finger and said no.” The implication here is that it is management’s choice, not a technical limitation. In contrast were the other voices suggesting technical difficulties: @shomachina: “Because Tiger Engine is a bloated, slow, difficult to use piece of sh-t. And Bungie doesn’t have the dev overhead to do anything like this in Destiny 2 on that engine.”
Some hot takes were laid down by @pastaloni, taking a snipe at Bungie’s monetisation: “Say what you want about how greedy mobile games are… Bungie is that same level of greedy except they don’t give players what they want.” Ouch; that probably stung a bit at the HQ.
Adding to the comedy, Destiny actually had some variant of player housing a long time ago. @Drjusmar reminded: “We had player housing 6 years ago and they deleted it. You can’t claim ‘its not that type of game’ when it literally was that type of game.” They even linked to an old article regarding the removed feature, firing it up even more.
The mobile vs. main game insult wars kept raging as @MiskatonicMedic noted, “The mobile game has more content in it than the standard game, which somehow doesn’t surprise me.” Double ouch. At this point, Bungie’s PR team is probably hiding under their desks.
Some players offered up their imaginative middle grounds, like @RigoPintoJr with, “I always felt that our ship should of been our HQ where you could do this.” Meanwhile, others such as @TheCyberFLASH took a bolder stand, which while acknowledging the difficulties, felt that it could lead to disappointment.
The real kicker? This ain’t even the first time Bungie has had a fanbase licking its wounds for putting features the players want into spin-offs before considering the main game for implementation. You know, like when the companion app for Destiny got features the actual game didn’t have? Yeah, this is giving major deja vu.
As the reply feed kept growing longer, it became increasingly evident how deep this terror reaches into the realm of actual frustrations building over Destiny 2’s development priorities. It was summed up by @crossbihh: “All we get is constant recycling of past content. The area of destiny that gets the most love is eververse.” Oof. Straight into the microtransactions.
While some of the defenders argue that mobile development is fundamentally different (and easier) than working on Destiny 2’s aging engine, that logic isn’t comforting players who’ve been asking for housing for years. Especially when they’re already paying premium prices for expansions and seasons.
