Major Problem #2: Not Enough Grind/Reward
3 Major Destiny 2 Problems and How Bungie Can Fix Them in 2018
As weird as it sounds to casual or non-fans of the genre, there just isn’t enough grind in Destiny 2. Whereas Destiny 1 was too reliant on luck, Bungie swung the pendulum way too far in the other direction where now I have a pile of stuff that I don’t care about because I already have the gear that I really want. Legendary and exotic engrams just aren’t that exciting anymore because of this. There’s just not enough big carrots on the stick to motivate players to stick around. Yes, yes, you can play for fun of course, Destiny 2 is plenty fun. But there are lots of other fun games out there to play this time of year. What kept me, and probably other MMO or grind-loving players to stick around throughout the entire life of Destiny 1 was that there was always something worth working towards. While Destiny 2 was incredibly exciting at first with how generously it showers you with loot, now (and it’s weird to say I’ll admit) I actually long for the crappy drop rates and the crossing of fingers on a Vex Mythoclast drop at least in comparison to the system now.
To their credit, Bungie took a step in the right direction with Lost Prophecies in Curse of Osiris. Something that takes effort, revitalizes older content, and doles out a guaranteed reward. However, while the structure is sound, the rewards are kind of meh. A lot of the weapons aren’t that great and even the ones that are, are just legendary weapons at the end of the day. Players have literally tens and hundreds of them.
Instead Destiny 2 could desperately use a 1-2 punch of rare exciting drops, plus powerful weapons that players can work toward. The two raid content events, Eater of Worlds and Leviathan, are tired at this point. The Raid Lair didn’t really add much in terms of rewards that didn’t exist already. Throw both of them a bone, (or at least the Raid Lair), and give players something super rare, exciting, powerful, and totally random to pull for via a raid boss drop. Sure it’s frustrating when it doesn’t drop, but it gives replaying the raid a bazillion times an added edge of excitement.
However, that should be coupled with something that can be controlled by players. I come from a Final Fantasy MMO background so an equivalent for those familiar could be that of relic equipment: a weapon or armor piece that is a serious time sink in terms of grinding, but is worth the effort, adding game changing benefits for the player that put the work into it.
Of course, the major roadblock for all of this is that Bungie remains adamant that weapons be the same across PvP and PvE. So adding something awesome and fun to use in PvE threatens to break the already very tenuous balance in the Crucible. That is a problem worthy of its own article, and we’ll get into that another day…
