The 6,400 word 2023 Destiny 2 State of the Game post that was published by Game Director Joe Blackburn yesterday has seemingly united disparate fans and content creators all across the playerbase.
Kind of expected this response.
The 6,400 word 2023 Destiny 2 State of the Game post that was published by Game Director Joe Blackburn yesterday has seemingly united disparate fans and content creators all across the playerbase.
Kind of expected this response.
I didn’t find much issue with the post per se. Why is all that backlash only coming now when the game has been having major issues for the past year at least? Technical problems galore, lackluster seasons… In fact there’s a lot of good stuff in that post like the changes to ritual activities.
The backlash came to a head due to a combination of a few things.
All just my opinion/feelings on this shit.
The problems have been building since last year. Plunder and Seraph were less stable and more buggy. Plunder was kinda panned as a bad season by some, but between a Showcase promising us features we’d been wanting for years (in-game Loadouts, in-game LFG, a renewed focus on the ritual playlists, probably more I’m forgetting) and Seraph’s awesome story and (imo) fun missions, some hype came back for a lot of us.
Lightfall itself was a mixed bag, but they eventually made progress on the stability issues (credit where it’s due, shit is a lot more stable for me). It had story issues, but they weren’t WORSE than previous story issues imo, just a regression. It wasn’t a GREAT place, but if they fixed stability it would be ok.
Then the SotG comes out, which says (loosely translated) “Stop asking us to make more PVP/Gambit maps, we’re never gonna do it like you want because it wouldn’t make us enough money. Also no more free armor, because y’all didn’t appreciate our basic ass armor sets as much as the ones that make you into a fucking t-rex, just pay up piggies”
If they had not said anything, it would’ve been better than posting a “We, a company purchased for billions of dollars, can’t do the #1 thing our fanbase is asking for because it wouldn’t make us enough money”.
There is some good news in there, I guess. Favoriting shaders is the kinda basic QoL stuff we should’ve seen years ago when they redid shaders, but better late than never.
There was an undertone of blaming the community throughout the SotG. YOU aren’t wearing this ugly armor with low stats so we won’t make it anymore. YOU aren’t playing this neglected game mode so we’ll abandon it. It’s full of terrible excuses with backwards logic. If they made vanguard armor that looked half as good as anything in the eververse store we’d all be wearing it but they pour 95% of the effort into microtransactions.
Credit where credit is due, the last two dungeon armor sets have been amazing, but that’s also paid content (dungeon keys). It’s been made clear that we shouldn’t expect anything decent in free activities, even when those are considered CORE to the game experience…
Yeah the way cosmetics have been tied more and more to eververse is awful when they still charge like a full price game every year plus the other 50 avenues of monetization. But not having good sets tied only to gameplay has been a thing since at least shadowkeep honestly. Them coming out and saying we didn’t appreciate them was the worst part when they were so low effort compared to the EV ones.
But if I’m honest lower efforts for crucible and gambit is good in my book, if it were up to me PvP wouldn’t be in the game at all, it brings more downsides in terms of game and tech design (anti-cheat that limits what the game can be played on, rewards like the seasonal challenges forcing you to play it) than any value they have on their own, although they did get better at balancing power separately from the main game. But maybe that’s an unpopular opinion.
After playing casually since season of the arrivals, I quit the game in December after they rolled the game back during season of the seraph, never bought lightfall and have been feeling vindicated based on everything I’ve read ever since. The backlash has been happening, just coming to a tee now with no foreseeable hope in the future.