Destiny 2
Bungie
It is incredibly hard and annoying to get friends into Destiny 2, a place where you really have no idea where to tell them where to start, given that the first two years of the game has been deleted, the first expansion is not great (Shadowkeep) and the latest one (Lightfall) won’t make much sense unless you’ve played the others (and it still doesn’t make a ton of sense).
These days I’m not going all the way down the “every expansion should be free but the last one” train, but I do think they need to do some consolidation, and loosen up some chains on free-to-play players.
Probably the most egregious example of Bungie trying to milk past content is the $20 “Forsaken Pack.” Originally, I thought we were logically heading toward a place where years later, Forsaken would be made free for players, as it was a good campaign and would be a solid point for new, free-to-play players with the Red War campaign gone.
Instead Bungie chopped it into pieces. They deleted the entire campaign, but they kept the Dreaming City zone and two of the strikes. And the final pieces they scooped up with a dustpan and created the “Forsaken Pack.” What exactly is in that thing?
It includes the Last Wish raid and the Shattered Throne dungeon, which was good content and is about to get more relevant with updated weapons and perks and such.
Destiny 2
Bungie
It also includes over twenty Forsaken era exotic weapons and 15 armor pieces, where no, you don’t get them instantly, you either have to spend ciphers or do Lost Sectors for all the armor.
Just…no. No.
It is already confusing enough to try to get into Destiny without some extra content pack that’s the zombified remains of a dead expansion which is made up of high level content and a bunch of random, often massively powerful weapons and armor pieces.
If you want to keep the old expansions for sale, intact, fine, but this thing? Just loosen your grip a little bit. Free-to-play players already barely have any content to do with how much the first two years of the game were gutted. Now you’re going to keep 35+ exotics away from them, including heavy-hitters like Trinity Ghoul, Wish-Ender, Izanagis, Le Monarque Ace of Spades, Heart of Inmost Light, Ursa Furiosa, Contraverse Hold, etc, etc, etc?
Let it go. It’s time. It was time before this, and I think Bungie realized that, which is why they tried to salvage as much of Forsaken as they could without deleting everything, but this idea that the giant pile of loot from the most loot-heavy expansion (and previous seasonal exotics as well) needs to be sold in its own bundle is just not cool at this point. It’s confusing for new players, puts them at a unnecessary disadvantage. These exotics should just be unleashed into the wild.
I understand the eternal “but Destiny needs to make money” refrain. But a game that sells a year of content for $100 plus an eternally stocked microtransaction store does not need to be nickel and diming players for five year old loot from an expansion they decided to erase.
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