The recent reveal of Destiny 2 have caused a certain amount of unrest in our Destiny community. Some of these were addressed by Bungie at their latest blog post after the reveal while the rest escalated further when the guys at Digital Foundry raised more concerning issues. To be fair, it has only been a week past the reveal and some concerns mentioned are still premature as one can always expect these issues to be rectified before launch. Then again, it’s Bungie we’re talking about here. *Shrugs*
Here’s a break down on the concerns regarding PVE (Player versus Environment) and PVP (Player versus Player):
PVE:
The previewed game-play provides limited information on the depth of PVE content and it makes one question replay value and the quality of it’s end game content. In regard to this matter, a few members of our community mentioned that Bungie should emulate Destiny 2’s content to be as good as The Taken King and not prior to that “Destiny Year 1’s vanilla experience”.
With the “Inverted Spire” strike as the only strike that was showcased during the event, and with a confirmation of 1 raid at launch; one can hopefully wish that Bungie may reveal more contents in E3. As for now, we can agree that there’s a severe lack of content at launch.
Will weapon balancing affect PVP and PVE or it to be left untouched? Or will it be a blanket nerf like what happened to it’s predecessor? These questions were brought up by our community.
“I can assure that most players will want to have awesome guns and crushing arsenals to be unleashed to the AI. But from the past decision which the Crucible Live Team made which was meant to nerf weapons for PVP content affected not only PVE, but there were game breaking bugs cause by the blanket nerf.”
As Bungie mentioned, they will be revamping how patrol mission works by incorporating “exploration” with things like Lost Sectors, Dungeons and Treasure Hunts. Let’s hope they’re new and refeshing. We can all recall how empty, boring and pointless the patrol mission were and “sparrowing” a world map for occasional random public events didn’t make it any better. It was a relieve when The Taken King and Rise of the Iron expansions introduced the Court of Oryx and also Archon’s Keep which made patrol a little bit “not boring”.
End game rewards such as armors, gears and weapons will also be a huge part on making this sequel a success. Concerns about how easy or how difficult it is to obtain such said items will also play an important role in prolonging the replay value of Destiny 2. Will Bungie continue the winning formula of “The Taken King” expansion by giving us time-based quest such as what we saw for “Sleeper Stimulant”, “Black Spindle” and “No Time to Explain” exotic weapon quest? Only time will tell (no pun intended).
PVP:
No dedicated servers on all platform as pointed out by Matt Segur, Engineering Lead on Destiny 2 but instead uses a hybrid of client-server and peer-to-peer technology, just like Destiny 1. We all know how bad the matchmaking system was on Destiny 1, with all the controversies surrounding Skill Based Matchmaking and Connection Based Matchmaking through and through. It is rather obvious that Bungie’s “new” and “hybrid” system is just a re-branding of the predecessor.
The news of changing the PVP team to a 4v4 instead of 6v6 came to us as a huge slap to our sanity, in a positive way of course. The concept of a smaller team will generally lead to a more sweaty lobby as 4v4 PVP format is used for the current Destiny PVP Legends tournament format. This decision will help to promote the game for tournaments but on the other side it will leave casuals to be overwhelmed when they are matched against a full fire-team of 4 hardcore Destiny PVP players. This will also accommodate a clan to have more teams play a game of PVP.
There weren’t any mention on having Ranked Matches; which could further throw casuals out of interest as a huge number of casual players would definitely not be having a jolly old good time in PVP.
As far as my Destiny 1 experience goes, never have I seen a game that went through countless number of nerfs throughout a lifespan of a game. Remember the infamous nerf to the water volume on the first patch/update on Blind Watch? This experience raised more concerns, such as how will the manage the weapon tuning, weapon balancing and who will be in charge of managing the PVP sandbox team.
The “Guided Games” feature is a good step in introducing an in-game LFG system but we all know that the system can be abused by trollers and generally evil a**holes who just want to see the world burn. So, how will the so called improved matchmaking will work? Will solo players be paired with other solo players or will there be a system where a full fire-team will only be matched with another full fire-team in PVP?
The community is also looking forward to an implementation of an in game reporting system to punish players with unsporting behaviors. We all know the reporting tool in Destiny 1 is for aesthetic purposes. It will be great if Bungie makes use of the reporting tool and implement bans or low-priority matchmaking.
Only time will tell and we all hope that more information will be released during E3 2017 conference. For now, I will remain skeptical that Activision and Bungie will impress me with a “Wow! I’m gonna pre-order the game right now”. So, clench your teeth and mark your dates for Monday, June 12 at 6 PM PT and tune in here for more exciting news on Destiny 2.
