Destiny 2’s March Update May Be One Step Forward, Two Steps Back

Highlights

• Destiny 2’s state has worsened due to ongoing microtransaction issues, layoffs, and content delays, which has impacted communication and player retention.
• The delay of The Final Shape expansion has led to a prolonged content drought and concerns about the game’s future.
• The upcoming March update brings some changes to abilities and guns, but primarily numerical rather than behavioral changes, which may not address the game’s bigger issues.

Destiny 2 has been lauded as one of the few live-service success stories for quite some time, but the tides started turning with the underwhelming release of Lightfall, which failed to meet players’ expectations and delivered what feels like an incomplete tale. Unfortunately, Lightfall was but the starting point of several issues with Destiny 2‘s state, which ended up becoming gradually worse as time went on due to ongoing microtransaction numbers and prices, a dip in content quality and quantity, layoffs at Bungie impacting communication with fans, and then the delay of The Final Shape expansion. Today’s TWID blog post included several upcoming changes to the game that will go live in March, but it may be one step forward and two steps back for the looter-shooter.

With the delay of The Final Shape, Destiny 2‘s Season of the Wish went from a planned duration of three months to well over six, becoming the longest season ever for the game. This is not only concerning due to the expansion’s delay, but also because of the imminent content drought that the game is going to face – and this is where the March update comes in. Planned as a sort of mid-season update, the March patch will have several sandbox changes to both abilities and guns, and while this is a good thing, it is also concerning.

Destiny 2’s March Update Looks Promising, But It’s Not What The Game Needs

Why Balance Changes Should Go Deeper Than Numbers in Destiny 2’s 7.3.5 Patch

There are some significant changes to the sandbox and balance overall, but they are not a lot or not as significant in the grand scheme of things – and according to what the TWID post states, a lot of these changes were meant for The Final Shape and the Into The Light April update. The main problem with this is that the changes are primarily numerical rather than behavioral, and that is not what Destiny 2‘s meta needs, if not the game at large.

Destiny 2’s Season 23 was supposed to be all about Stasis, for example, but since it lacks the tools other subclasses have, it was stil underused and underwhelming.

Numerical changes are good and healthy at times, but it’s not necessarily what the game will benefit from right now, especially seeing how the bigger issues going into The Final Shape are content drought paired with player retention, giving Destiny 2 a fresh coat of paint, and building up hype. The Final Shape pre-orders were lower than expected a few months ago, as Bungie stated, and it’s hard to imagine they will go up now after all the controversies and issues the game has endured. As such, it may be time for something more drastic.

Destiny 2 Needs More Behavioral and Systematic Changes Over Numbers

Destiny 2’s Exotics and Mod System Should Get Massive Changes in The Final Shape

Balance changes do help the overall state of the game with every patch, Destiny 2‘s revamped mod system made builds much more streamlined, removing a lot of the creativity and mechanical knowledge that went into them before. The Final Shape should address this, instead, to make the gameplay an improved version of its current self, all while making more drastic changes to Exotic weapons and armor. These also play a major role in builds and gameplay flow, so making behavioral changes to those is always going to be much more impactful than numerical alterations.

Bungie did state that more changes to Exotic weapons, specifically, are coming. However, pulling changes intended to come with The Final Shape just to provide Destiny 2 players with content, and then it not being the content that is really needed, doesn’t look great on the company’s end. Essentially, all this fails to address the elephants in the room, while also taking content from what is going to arguably be the game’s most important release to date, and it feels like a step in a good direction and then two steps back.