Destiny 2

Bungie

Destiny 2 just maintained over 100,000 concurrent Steam players for just under two weeks since the launch of Monument of Triumph, the final update of the game. It’s not an expansion, and not even a season, but mostly a grand overhaul of the game’s systems and loot chase. And, it turns out, buildcrafting.

I think there is one obvious reason that players are being drawn to Destiny 2 now other than it being the big finale, which is the idea that there is no more FOMO with the game “complete” from here (at least as complete as it can be, missing the first two expansions and all the seasonal storylines). But in terms of why it’s so fun, I have to give credit to one specific thing Bungie did here, something that probably wouldn’t have been possible if Destiny continued on like normal: The Artifacts.

That’s Artifacts plural, as Bungie’s idea to solve the problem of no more rotating seasonal Artifacts was just to stack seven of them in a big pile, making them available indefinitely. This has dramatically opened up buildcrafting in a way we probably have not seen since Artifacts were introduced in the first place.

Previously, Artifacts herded entire seasons into just a few elements and weapon types. You might have two main features for two elements, say Solar and Strand, and then one sub-feature with a few options, say a few Void mods.

That also was the case with weapons, where only half or so of weapon archetypes were dedicated anti-champion picks. Between these two things, there were often a handful of “main” builds per season, with others crippled because of weapon choice or a lack of any elemental benefits in the Artifact.

Now, you can pick anything. All five elements, plus Prismatic, have at least one or two Artifacts that embrace their specific abilities, meaning more than ever, all types of builds are viable. I have not found any element that simply cannot produce amazing builds at all at this point, and there are plenty of hybrids that work well too (Tablet of Ruin’s Strand combos are popular).

The weapon issue is also solved as the restrictions are no longer hamstrung by champion counters, as every weapon in the game has been given anti-champion function, broadly opening up the potential there. There are still benefits to using certain weapons in these artifacts, but those are bonuses, not restrictions. There are few types that get no benefits, and this has done things like make glaive, trace rifle or fusion rifle builds good…forever, from here. They even still have the lightsaber-based Artifact from the last expansion. But nothing is at a significant disadvantage or plain unusable because of Artifact champion mod choice.

There are other buildcrafting factors here. One of them is the huge number of new armor set bonuses that can amplify builds even further (the Arc set has been insane for my Geomag Warlock), but I do think the Artifact deserves the most credit for letting players truly go wild. And it’s only broken the game a few times so far!

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