Destiny 2’s Biggest Problems Don’t Include a Lack of Loot

The dreaded public events from Destiny have gone from being the most boring things to do in the original game, to bring some of the most exciting activities in Xur Location destiny 2 2. Easier to find and participate in, players can now locate and fast travel to them via the in-game map. There’s no more need to use a third-party website anymore.

Destiny 2 is headed in the right direction. Perhaps it's too little too late or maybe it could pull a healthy player base back in. For now, Destiny 2 is trying its best and is showing signs of quality of life for its future. Today it’s no surprise when buying a new game to be hit immediately by a patch, because what game makes it out of the door ever without having to go through a few updates and patches once it’s out the gate? Usually a major update will hit games freshly released within the first month followed by the steady stream of content and improvements. All of this is commonplace in the video game world and yet we as the audience still find time to get mad that games aren’t the perfect embodiment of what was envisioned. Developers do have a responsibility to be open with their audience and it does become a let down when certain things promised are nowhere to be seen or the game is more broken than let on. So let the saga of Destiny as it continues through the ages be a lesson, one that we are seeing more and more frequently – Anthem is on the horizon, after all. But it's our responsibility as players and developers to keep the dialogue going to get the best experience possible from all sides. Good luck out there, Guardian.

Much of the gameplay changes lie under the hood. Primary, Special and Heavy weapon classifications have been replaced with Kinetic, Energy and Power weapon classifications. While many may lament the fact that Sniper Rifles, Fusion Rifles and Shotguns have been moved to the Power Weapon slot, the changes made to the classifications are ultimately smart. Players now have more viable weapons to choose from, making it easier to melt enemy shields with Energy Weapons, pound unshielded enemies with Kinectic Weaponry and better control crowds with Power Weapons. New gun types like the submachine gun and grenade launcher are thrown in to add more variety and are quite fun to use.

You talk about the four-people having different and important roles in the Crucible. I’m curious as to why you didn’t add a fourth class. Every match will have at least one duplicate class. Doesn’t that defeat the idea that each player has an important role to play?
As for graphical fidelity, Destiny 2 offers more than enough to make PC users happy. Outside of being able to enable windowed fullscreen with upwards of 4K resolution, we are given a Field of View slider, Anti-Aliasing, SSAO, Texture Anisotropy, Texture & Shadow Quality, and Depth of Field selection. In addition, there’s environment, character, foliage and shadow detail distance, as well as Light Shaft, Motion Blur, Wind Impulse, Internal Render Resolution percentage, HDR for those with HDR screens, Chromatic Aberration and Film Grain. There’s even the option to display your FPS. Whew. As we mentioned, there’s a lot of options to go through, along with a VRAM Usage meter at the top to get a better grasp of your hardware capabilities. The ability to play Destiny 2 at 60 FPS is a game changer, especially if you can play it at a higher resolution such as 1440p or 4K. This feels like a game that’s made for it, and you won’t want to go back afterwards. Overall, the developers have done an amazing job bringing this to PC from a visual standpoint.

Placing all the powerful weapons in the same category has good potential for PvP, but it’s also a functional misstep in terms of PvE. Power weapon ammo drops more often in Destiny 2 than heavy weapon ammo in Destiny 1, but still not nearly as often as kinetic or energy weapon ammo. So right away there’s less incentive to use that ammo for any weapon other than a rocket or grenade launcher. Why waste that relatively rare and precious ammo on a sniper rifle when it could instead be spent on something much more powerful? It’s the same issue with abilities in that they’re all restricted by ridiculously-slow cooldowns. Instead of enjoying the ability to toss a grenade into a group of minor enemies, dodge around the battlefield at one’s leisure or even pop a super to take on a mid-boss, the game encourages players to bank them instead. To use one’s abilities in any situation other than the most desperate is to see them go to waste. Nobody wants to be caught staring at a cool-down meter when they’re stuck in a tight spot. These can at least be adjusted a bit with mods, but who wants to waste their mods on anything other than top-tier armor? The net result is gameplay that’s gone from fast-paced, fluid and fun, to something slow, limited and dull with no incentive whatsoever to make use of the game’s most enjoyable weapons and powers. If the developers truly felt that these changes were necessary to achieve a more fun and balanced Crucible, then perhaps it would have been better to just separate the Crucible from the rest of the game.