The two sides of Destiny 2 are eating each other

Since the launch of Destiny 2, Bungie has struggled to maintain the balance between its PvE and PvP communities. The two sides have argued for years over whether Destiny should be just a PvE game or whether it really has room for competitive offerings. In the process, all the players have lost. Every time Bungie tries to make a new addition to co-op play, it is hampered by multiplayer balance, and vice versa.

Bungie’s devotion to both sides of the Destiny coin, while admirable, has sparked an identity crisis. The studio will likely never separate their PvP Crucible from their cooperative PvE activities. But if one thing is clear, it is that current attempts at harmony are not working.

The history of the crash

The original DestinyPvP was a bit tricky, with players mostly abusing a stable of single-shot weapons, like shotguns, rather than primary weapons like auto rifles or hand cannons. But he was loved by a certain group of players. Many that all ended DestinyPvE content saw the Crucible as a way to extend their playtime. Some of Destiny 2The most prolific content creators trained in the multiplayer mode of the original game, and they have brought that knowledge and experience to the sequel.

The transition from the original Destiny for Destiny 2 It did not come without its changes. For Destiny 2With the launch, Bungie made a major change to help curb the frustration in PvP. Rather than carry forward the series’ traditional weapon slots of a primary weapon with nearly unlimited ammo, a secondary weapon with limited ammunition, and a heavy weapon with rare ammunition, the study eliminated the secondary weapon entirely.

Players can now equip two primary weapons, one of which dealt elemental damage, and a heavy weapon. Previous special weapons such as shotguns and the series’ unique fusion rifle were now in the limited ammo heavy weapons group, as were rocket launchers and swords. This “dual primary” time period of Destiny 2 it made for really nice PvP. Opponents were able to develop a more cat and mouse like game as they couldn’t kill each other as fast as before as shotgun and sniper rifle ammo was rare. Yet despite all the newfound joy in PvP, Destiny’s PvE game underwent the change. Those one-shot weapons that Bungie made less accessible to upgrade the Crucible were the same weapons that were essential for taking down high-level PvE enemies.

Then came the Abandoned expansion, which brought its own changes to Destiny 2charging system. As was the case in Destiny 2During launch, players could still use dual primaries. But they could also customize their equipment with two special weapons, a shotgun paired with a sniper, for example, or a combination of special and primary weapons, to the original. Destiny. This freedom gave PvE players more room to experiment with unique equipment. But the change also returned PvP to the one-time hell it had been in the original.

Now, with those frustrations back in place, Bungie is once again ping ponging in his balancing efforts. in a recent interview on the Firing Range podcastLed by some of Destiny’s leading PvP enthusiasts, the developers at Bungie duplicated Destiny’s philosophy of a shared “sandbox” (a term used to describe the game’s current balancing environment). For Bungie, key to the Destiny experience is that players can pick up a new weapon from a raid, bring it to the crucible for a spinand have a similar experience with the weapon in both modes. The studio doesn’t want players to practice using a skill against a fallen scum in the Cosmodrome just for that skill to behave differently against real enemy players.

This attempt at symbiosis has more recently affected Destiny 2 with the new Stasis subclasses added in the Beyond the light expansion. These classes started out strong in PvE content, where freezing enemies with ice powers proved to be a satisfying mechanic.

But Stasis classes were so powerful in PvP that Bungie quickly nerfed them. While this nerf began to soften PvP, even if Stasis remained dominated for months, it was a huge blow to subclass viability against AI enemies. Bungie recently announced plans to reverse some of the nerfs to help Stasis return to viability in PvE.

Perhaps you are beginning to recognize a pattern? These same changes that will improve Stasis’ viability for PvE players could have a ripple effect on the PvP community. The pendulum keeps swinging. The inconsistency is not in how skills and weapons behave from one mode to another, but from season to season throughout the game.

So is Destiny a PvP or PvE game?

Based solely on where Bungie spends its time and resources, it’s hard to argue that Destiny 2 It is not a PvE centric game. PvP players, despite their devotion to the shooter, have hardly seen new content. TO Reddit post earlier this year noted that more than 600 days had passed since Destiny 2 received a completely unique PvP map, rather than something ported from the original game. Meanwhile, Bungie updates the game with new PvE content every three months and then drip-feeds it for the following season. While Assistant Game Director Joe Blackburn has recently revealed plans to add more maps and modes to the Crucible in 2022, many players feel it’s too little too late.

Bungie’s biggest dilemma is that despite a history of primarily focusing on PvE content on Destiny 2, the studio has cultivated a dedicated PvP community for nearly seven years, more when you consider the goodwill it garnered from Halo’s touchstone multiplayer offerings. You can’t just rule out players who have become so attached to your competitive field. But all things considered, it is undeniable that Bungie’s attempts to balance the Crucible are causing disharmony in its broader PvE landscape.

Some players have floated PvP in their own game. Others have simply asked Bungie to balance the two game modes separately. One of those solutions involves developing another title entirely, with more standardized weapons like Halo, since players would not bring tools from other activities. And the other is something the studio is not expressly interested in, as noted during the balancing conversation on the Firing Range podcast.

So what’s up? Bungie has placed itself in an impossible position. Destiny has always thrived on repeatable raids, dungeons, and cooperative activities. It’s what I came to the game for and where I made amazing friends. But others have the exact same experience from a PvP point of view. Is my experience more valid than theirs? I do not believe it.

But as both sides of Destiny’s playerbase grow increasingly frustrated, that’s a question the developers need to answer for themselves. In the end, the ball comes to rest on Bungie, who wants to have his multi-faceted MMO experience and eat it too.