Seasonal events have been a long-time staple for our favorite live-service looter shooter. Year after year, the seasonally themed tower redesigns make themselves visually known alongside a new matchmade PvE mode or two. Of course, the new modes accompanying such events come with their own themed weapons and armor. Then, finally, there are the expected themed cosmetics that are sometimes free but are mostly there as an excuse to interact with Destiny 2’s cash shop. Meanwhile, I’m here thinking Bungie can do better without breaking their budget. Let’s explore why Destiny 2’s Festival of the Lost needs a change.
Introduce a New Spooky Invader into Core PvE Modes
Being that Festival of the Lost operates around the spookiest of holidays, it makes sense for Bungie to use their enemy reskinning tech to their advantage. A powerful, invisible miniboss that randomly spawns during strikes, nightfall strikes, and dungeons could be a fun way to introduce a bit of the Halloween spirit in Destiny 2. I imagine this invading miniboss would be either a Hive creature or a Taken with an extra creepy reskin. Once defeated, it would be clever for the miniboss to drop a good amount of candy, too, which would incentivize players trying to hunt him down in core PvE modes.
Make Crucible Maps Dark and Creepy
In every season, there are a certain number of Crucible maps that are the most likely to appear in any given PvP Playlist. Bungie could take that handful of maps and subtly tweak them visually with lit candles, graves, spider webs, or even the corpses of the Hive or Taken. Additionally, that would be a fantastic time to slightly shift the time of day of these maps to be darker and a bit more tense.
I, for one, miss the Crucible maps of Destiny 1, where it felt like each map had its own day and night version. Bungie making tweaked seasonal maps for Destiny 2 could be a smart move in that regard since the added variety could help stave off repetition.
Nobody Would Turn Down New Thematic Exotics Mid-Season
Simply put, one new exotic armor per class every three months doesn’t feel like enough. So why not create a new exotic per class during these festive times and make them thematic and spooky while they’re at it? Doubling the exotics players get throughout each season would go a long way to expanding build diversity and gameplay within each class and keep players engaged.
Besides, some extra love toward Stasis given the current sandbox would also be appreciated. Additionally, I refuse to believe that Bungie doesn’t have enough of a budget for each season to accomplish something like this.
Nothing Says Fashion in Destiny 2 Like New Armor Ornaments
I think it may be time for Destiny 2 to introduce new sets of ornaments that players can earn without needing bright dust. These ornaments should be earnable via gameplay within the new modes introduced because that’s one of the best ways to earn the community’s good graces. Even better would be ornaments that are not only appropriately themed but have special effects.
I imagine these special visual effects could have a more gameplay-centric spin, like a visual explosion of bones on a precision headshot kill or eerie red stasis crystals. I think these kinds of ornaments applying a new look to some skills in every subclass would be a great evolution of ornaments as a whole, too. Especially if said ornaments are special and tied to seasonal events like Festival of the Lost, thus potentially increasing the number of players that would participate.
Festival of the Lost Shouldn’t Be a Direct Tie to Real-Life Halloween
One thing that has always struck me as odd is the seasonal events in live service games like Destiny 2 and how they reflect real-world holidays. Even if the game world and lore are pretty far removed from the reasons why we have the holidays we do in real life. A reasonable fix for this narrative dissonance would be to alter minor aspects of how these seasonal events are presented in Destiny 2. I still love the idea of themed decorations everywhere; they should just be altered to better suit the world they exist in.
For example, the tower in Destiny 2 could still look spooky, but instead of decorations that reflect real-world Halloween, like pumpkins and bats, Bungie could use unique examples born from Destiny lore. Instead of pumpkins, why not the skulls of defeated Hive thralls? Zavala knows we’ve collectively killed millions of them anyway.
Instead of skeletons, why not have a few unruly fallen shackled around the tower? A few throw-away voice lines from a nearby NPC could explain that said fallen tried to steal or was getting into fights, and because it’s a holiday, they get chained up and gawked at instead of punished. It makes more sense for the decorations to mean in the context of the world of Destiny instead of Bungie cashing in on another holiday.
