Destiny 2 is in Trouble....Again

 The game many gamers love to hate but secretly love and the game that probably set off the live service craze, Destiny 2, is in trouble....again

From a technical standpoint Destiny 2 is doing pretty well I would say. Servers are running well, not too many game breaking bugs or glitches going on. Telesto works and is still available in the game to be used in PVE and PVP. When you get hit by a melee attack you don't go flying through the world like a brick nor do you fall through the game world just because you jump in a weird way and gear is not randomly disappearing from people's vaults.

The problem Destiny 2 is facing is not technical but instead is enthusiasm and trust. The player count in Destiny 2 is dropping and as of now it is at the lowest point it has ever been and the trust from the community is also very low. Enthusiasm is low because as of right now there is not a lot to do within Destiny 2. If you finished the Final Shape expansion and you are caught up with the current Season of the Revenant, completed the raid and the dungeon then there is nothing new for you to do. 

For people who have already played enough Trials to get all the armor and guns, there's nothing else to do. For people who do not play Trials or PVP in general, there's nothing else to earn. 

For free to play players, such as myself, there's no quests to complete, no story lines to go through, no seasons to participate in and hardly any exotics to earn because they're locked behind buying the legacy packs, dungeons and recent expansion. 

The free gear to unlock is very limited and at some point after you play enough times you will most likely find ALL the weapons and free PVE world gear to drop and you'll get to a point there's nothing new for you to unlock. 

The Dawning event that just ended was exactly the same event it was last year just with slightly different gear perks and an armor set that is ONLY available if you purchase them with Bright Dust or Silver and not something you earn by completing event based quests or general activities.

The point I am making is that the enthusiasm for Destiny 2 is fading because in almost every direction you turn in almost every road you take to experiencing Destiny 2 there is a wall of some kind. A content wall, a gear wall and a pay wall. You can only do so much in Destiny 2 before you run out of things to do in Destiny 2. 

Now the most important thing that is happening right now with the community and Destiny 2 is the trust from the community. At this point, Bungie has lost all the trust with the majority of it's player base. Players lost a lot of trust when then game director Luke Smith introduced "Sun-Setting" content and gear in Destiny 2. It was content that players paid for but they were taken out of the game as to make way for future content. There was no refund of any kind and players did not get the money they spent back with silver or a free expansion for that year, it was business as usual. Today, players still fear content to be sunset or locked away so there can be more content updates. To add to the mistrust, when the Dawning Event of 2024 launched two weeks ago, for one hour the Event Card to the Dawning which is a little bonus card for small cosmetic things like Ghost Shells, emotes and shaders was free for one hour. Normally, players can buy the event card for 1000 silver ( or ten dollars ) and have access to these small bonus cosmetic items.  

Bungie could have just let it slide being the Holidays and all to let players enjoy the spoils of the event card but instead Bungie took down the card, took down the Dawning event for a brief moment and instead worked it to where players had to buy the silver and in turn buy the Event Card. 

It was a moment that Bungie could have earned some good will with their player base but instead they showed their true colors by charging players for a simple event card that does not give you any real advantage over anyone and instead was a moment to squeeze more money from players.

Look I understand that Bungie needs to have money coming in to keep the lights on and pay their devs but this is ridiculous. Truly at this point I feel there might not be a Destiny 2 in the coming year or so. Players are leaving in droves and given the other live service offerings or gaming offerings in general, Bungie needs to give players a reason to keep coming to Destiny and at this point there really isn't that much to bring players back to the game. 

If you ask me Bungie has two things to do which I think might help them get some good will back from the community, plus get some new players in and potentially more people to buy their in game cosmetics.

One: Make the game a true Free-To-Play. As it stands right now, Bungie is trying to have it both ways with Destiny 2. First they are trying to sell Destiny 2 as a free-to-play title while monetizing Destiny 2 as a mobile game. Sure you can download the game and play for a couple of hours BUT whenever you want to get more out of Destiny 2 you have to buy all sorts of content packs and expansions in order to get the most out of your Destiny 2 experience. Want more quests and loot? 20 bucks (outside of a sale) for each content pack, 30 for the previous expansion and fifty dollars for the latest one. Want to also get hard to earn loot through the Dungeons and even some raids? Another 20 dollars for the Dungeon Pass.

Yes, 20 dollars to play an endgame style PVE experience which you need to find 5 other players who also spent 20 dollars to have access to the content. 

There is probably way too many players that Bungie would like to admit turned away from the game after learning that one.

So if they want to really bring players back, stop charging people for this content. From here on out. When a new season drops, just drop the whole damn thing and let people play and grind to their hearts content without having to drop 15 bucks or more for this stuff. 

Second: Bring back EVERYTHING!!!! Bring back past seasons, let players experience every story from Red War and onwards so that way Destiny 2 can feel like a complete experience. 

I know there are technical limitations to it but I really think Bungie needs to do this so that way new players have a starting point and can feel more connected to what is going on in the world of Destiny right now. Plus, that GREATLY expands the loot pool from past weapons to future ones. Sometimes people don't use guns just because of perks but also because how the weapon feels when playing the content and of course there are players who acquire guns just because of how they look. 

There is no reason why at this point in Destiny 2's lifespan that this content should be time-locked and lost forever where other games like Halo Infinite and Helldivers 2 allows you to acquire season pass style content or challenges well past their initial release. The fact that Destiny 2 does not do this is a big part of why many players will choose to leave the game collecting digital dust, actual dust or uninstalled.