Destiny 2

Bungie

Destiny 2 is about to achieve something significant. Its final update is about to have over 100,000 concurrent Steam players for two weeks straight, a feat we have not seen in over two years, and not even with any of the season/expansion launches since The Final Shape itself. Even then, the drop off was steeper.

Many are observing this phenomenon from the outside, saying, “Well, of course the numbers are good, it’s the last update of the game,” though at this point it seems pretty clear it’s more than that.

Keep in mind, this is a new Destiny 2 addition that is not even close to an expansion. It’s not even a season launch. There is a single new exotic mission, and the rest of it is loot updates and progression changes.

Sure, the final update factor is there, but the main observable thing here is that Bungie “fixed” the game, right at the last possible moment. How?

Breadth of Activities – A key here was making almost every activity in the game worth playing again. When the Edge of Fate hit and the Portal launched with this new tiered gear system, 80% of the game didn’t even have it, meaning things like all old raids and dungeons were giving out old gear. Now, every raid and dungeon was updated with relevant loot in a single release, and Bungie went so far as to even update things like the Shadowkeep-era Altars of Sorrow, it’s wild. I think I have found just a single activity that hasn’t been updated, Dares of Eternity. Past that, almost everything is worth playing and has at least a few things to pursue.

Loot Tiers – This was mostly fixed as well. Yes, everyone still wants Tier 5 everything, but this update brought the ability to upgrade a lot of old loot to be the equivalent of Tier 5, and in addition to that, no longer made lower tiers utterly worthless, given the ability to upgrade them as well. But with six perk options and some shiny versions, baseline Tier 5s are still worth pursuing as well. This “final form” update works.

The Portal – Well, they’re not calling it that anymore, that’s for sure. The menu has been returned to the director, and what was the Portal is just a streamlined way to play activities and farm loot, erasing much of the complicated math of letter tiers and gear hunting. The seasonal page remains in place with the bounty and order system, and that was never really an issue. The organization of the game is leagues better than it was when Edge of Fate launched.

Power Level – No more climb. At least not one that matters. Power was slowly being erased before this, but now almost everything is a set delta, meaning a lot less fomo for lapsed players who do not have to do some annoying grind to catch up. Hell, you can play most activities with your old gear at 10 power.

Builds – The unleashing of the set of Artifacts, plus the addition of armor sets, has made this the most expansive build crafting that the game has experienced in its lifespan. Just in time for there to be no content to play, of course. This also inadvertently fixed the annoying champion situation where, with no dedicated seasonal artifact mods, every gun now has some sort of champion assignment, making that long-running system less annoying and better able to blend with banes.

More than being some grand finale, players are playing Destiny 2 right now, and sticking with it, because the game is fun. More fun than it’s been in years, and that’s with 95% of what we’re playing here being often-lamented recycled content.

A key here was generosity. All this work to give out all this relevant loot, and on top of that, a bunch of earned cosmetics that would have been shoved into Eververse. Yes, this is an “fire all the guns” update, which took some things from future releases, but imagine if Destiny had its old development team back rather than a third of what it once was. This current setup combined with actual, substantive new content? The game would be healthy.

It’s too late. The decision is made, the layoffs or coming. I’ve heard nothing about any sort of decision reversal despite these numbers, despite player sentiment. Players, of course, continue to grumble about Marathon, a game that will now become Bungie’s main focus, which has declined since launch and now has 10% of Destiny’s players after this update.

It’s not just sad that Destiny’s ending, it’s sad that it’s ending with the game in its best state in years, but nothing else coming to take advantage of it. These numbers will not hold forever, of course. Declines are inevitable, but when you simply stop making content for a live game, it will eventually disintegrate. But it deserved better. Bungie could have pulled it off with more time and more resources. Or at least shown what they could have done for a Destiny 3, lessons learned.

Follow me on Twitter, YouTube, and Instagram.

Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy.