Challenge Destiny 2 Nixes Season 18 because it took too long

Destiny 2The season of plunder was a surprisingly enjoyable adventure through space pirate fantasy so far, but it hasn’t been without its problems. The biggest yet materialized this week when a new story quest required players to kill 50 champions before they could progress. Bungie decided to auto-complete the challenge for players a day later, but the situation ended up sparking a fierce new debate over fundamental issues with how the game is currently played.

Season 18 is all about attacking pirate hideouts and hunting buried loot, as such it revolves around a new activity called Ketchcrash. Each week, players attack a Fallen pirate ship in Ketchcrash, then complete an expedition to find treasure, and eventually face a new pirate boss to advance the story. It’s simple, repetitive, but also a good time.

This week, however, players had to kill 50 champions in addition to completing an expedition. These are tougher versions of regular enemies whose shields can only be brought down with particular weapon loadouts. They’re also rare in the game’s most common modes, making them a potentially big hurdle for many players to overcome. A series of weekly quests that would normally take an hour would now require a lot of tedious work. That is, unless players increase the difficulty of the game, and that’s where the controversy begins.

Bungie’s 50 Champion contract granted bonus progression for playing Ketchcrash on Master difficulty. How much more progress? Thirteen times more and efficiently enough to complete the requirement in a single mission. Master Ketchcrash is a 1600 power activity, however, and there is no matchmaking for it. This means that players who wish to participate must have a power level of around 1580. They also need real friends to play with or be prepared to use the LFG (group finder) tool in Bungie. Destiny 2 companion app.

Destiny 2 he himself won’t do in-game matchmaking for some of his best content, unlike other shooters. “I think matchmaking can make other players disposable for you,” then creative director Luke Smith said in 2015 when defending the practice. “The reason people give up on strikes is that there are no consequences for them leaving, just punishment for that disposable person on the other end of the line. It’s quite difficult for me, emotionally, to want to subject groups of players to that.

For understandable reasons, many players don’t meet the Master Ketchcrash requirements and don’t want to have to use a separate app to beg strangers to play with them. So Bungie decided to cancel everything. “Due to the completion requirement being too high for many players, we have automatically completed the Champions Defeated objective for this week’s Sails of the Shipstealer seasonal quest,” the studio said. announcement last night on Twitter.

The tweet has now garnered thousands of tweet replies and quotes as players wonder if it was the right thing to do. “Good,” one person wrote. Another wrote “babies”. Some of the answers were more substantive. “For people saying just master…not everyone can master loads of people don’t have free time please relax,” read one of the comments. “So don’t lol why do video games have to conform to your schedule?” replied another player. “In return this is what happens, they make the whole game free af…”

For me, the fact that the discussion has become so heated over something seemingly so small shows that there are deeper issues at play. The real problem, as far as I’m concerned, is that there are a whole version of Destiny 2 most players can never interact with it because it’s unnecessarily locked behind outdated progression mechanics and Bungie’s own weird apathy toward matchmaking. The problem isn’t that Bungie accidentally made a quest requirement that catered to end-game content, it’s that Bungie still seems committed to keeping end-game content out of reach for most players.

The truth is, Master Ketchcrash is a lot of fun, especially this week’s release. It’s hard, but not too hard. You don’t need a top build one Destiny 2 influencer to survive, but you need a thoughtful loadout with some synergies to not be completely useless. The initial phases of the mission where you can normally sleep or be fully AFK require minimal spatial awareness and a general focus on staying alive and reaching the objective.

A mission modifier means there’s no radar which really increases the tension and if the whole team doesn’t stay on their toes and get wiped out, everyone is sent back into space. The final boss fight, meanwhile, sees you trying to defend yourself against a small army of pirates on the deck of the ship as various types of enemies flood the screen from all directions. It’s the best time I’ve had in Destiny 2 been out of a raid for quite some time, and there’s absolutely no reason it shouldn’t be more readily available to anyone who plays the game.

Power level, which is Fate The jargon for an odd number that reflects how hard you play the game and how difficult various activities will be seems outdated for some time in the game’s current seasonal pattern. This became clear when The Witch Queen released with a Legendary setting for the campaign that made it the best in series history and basically completely ignored this mechanism. The mode is calibrated to a certain difficulty level and does not change no matter how hard you grind.

Raids, traditionally Destiny 2, are now in a similar boat as their recommended power level drops rapidly behind that of each new season. Raids are still challenging due to their arcane puzzles and unique boss encounters, but the one thing that’s stopping most new players from at least experiencing them is the fact that they still don’t support matchmaking. normal.

For a long time the idea behind not letting players team up for raids was that they required close communication and close coordination, and trying to do it with five other strangers who don’t have a mic would be zero. The not-so-secret truth, however, is that players do precisely that all the time using Bungie’s LFG app. At any time, you can find players at different stages of a raid asking people to join them and kwtd (know what to do). Sometimes they will have mics on. Sometimes they won’t. Some players, known as Sherpas, go out of their way to find raid newbies to teach. Oftentimes, just hop on board and let the veterans guide you. There are hundreds of written guides and YouTube videos out there that will show you what you’re supposed to do as quickly, if not faster, than five people joking around in team chat.

Bungie seems to understand that forcing players to do so many things outside of the game is exhausting. Last month, it announced a series of social feature enhancements that would include adding LFG tools directly into the game when the fall of light the expansion arrives next February. It’s unclear exactly how this will all work out, but hopefully we’re nearing a day when everyone can visit Destiny 2‘s, submit a request, then jump into the business of your choice with the team you need to make it happen.

Destiny 2 is a fantastic game. With a bit of luck, by the time he reaches his 10th birthday, every player will be able to enjoy the best they have to offer without first having to navigate a Byzantine maze. I’m sick of my friends rolling their eyes every times I try to explain to them what they need to do before I can start showing them the really cool stuff.