It became a meme in the community that Bungie has failed to deliver a roadmap for the future of the series since it was announced last fall, but now, things are getting genuinely concerning. It doesn’t help that this is happening alongside the launch of Bungie’s Marathon extraction shooter, with it having long been a fear that Destiny 2 would be sidelined for the new game. To many it feels like that’s already happened.
By this point, it feels like something pretty big is coming to the game, and probably in a bad way.
I’ve previously reported that Destiny 2’s midseason update, Shadow and Order, will be delayed, probably by 1-2+ months, due in part to it landing in the few-day window between the end of the Marathon Server Slam and the beginning of its actual launch. But there is clearly way, way more going on past simple delays.
We got a year of the schedule that Bungie said it was switching to. Rather than four seasons of content and a big expansion, the game would get two smaller expansions and a “major update” three months after each. The first major update, Ash and Iron, actually caused players to leave the game given its quality. This next one is going to be delayed, barring some miracle.
It stands to reason that Destiny 2’s next two expansions, Shattered Cycle and The Alchemist, are being delayed as well. But pushing back a roadmap’s release for almost half a year indicates something much larger, and likely transformative, is coming.
I don’t know what it is. While I obviously do report some insider things, I don’t have firm information about the plan here. It is clear that it has taken a lot of internal debate and planning to come up with whatever is going to happen here, but we can make some logical leaps.
There are two main options here, one more likely than the other:
Destiny 2 is being scaled back even more – Despite a reduction in the total amount of content in a given year, by a significant amount, that still is not enough to satisfy Sony/Bungie’s requirements of where Destiny needs to be, even with reduced spending and a reduced team size. We are looking at sharply declining expansion launches, Edge of Fate was a third of the peak of The Final Shape, and despite being better, Renegades was 70% of that, and now there are record-low playercounts, which Destiny 2 is now hitting almost weekly.
But invest less, people play less, and you can see the spiral. A spiral we are already in, barring some big changes. And if Marathon is a big hit, there would be little reason to keep the majority of the studio on Destiny (which it currently is) instead of moving more people over there to boost the brand new game’s fortunes. But that does not leave much of a team to potentially develop the fabled Destiny 3, the one thing fans have said repeatedly would bring them back. Nothing else probably would.
Destiny 2 gets an infusion to go back to what it was – This, I suppose, would be the double down on Destiny 2. More resources, more team members, a boost back to the old format of the game with a big expansion, and a playerbase stabilized with four seasons or three episodes a year, so the game no longer has these yawning six-month gaps of time with little reason to return. I’m just not sure how this seems likely, as again, at this point, it really does feel like the only thing to get the playerbase to return is a Destiny 3, where even if development started now, that would be five years off. Even with a big shift like this in Destiny 2, the playercount will never be what it once was in the old era. But at least it would probably be better than it is now.
Bonus: Same schedule, replacing content – A common refrain from Destiny 2 players is that they hate The Portal as a main source of “gap fill” content. I would not rule out that could be eliminated or sidelined, but replaced with…what?
Something big is coming, and I don’t think Destiny 2 players should be shocked when it’s bad news. I would be shocked if it was good.
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