Bungie CEO Pete Parsons’s statement explaining the reasoning behind shedding 220 staff, some 17% of Bungie’s workers, is illuminating. In it, Parsons describes an organization that overextended, increasing into too many tasks because it tried to incubate a number of video games whereas making Destiny 2, the studio’s profitable live-service sport, and Marathon, a revival of a storied Bungie franchise. “We have been overly bold, our monetary security margins have been subsequently exceeded, and we started operating within the purple,” Parsons wrote. The results of this mismanagement is that 220 Destiny 2 builders from all groups misplaced their jobs, which is along with a earlier large spherical of layoffs in late 2023.
However critically, this second group of Destiny 2 builders misplaced their jobs at Bungie proper after transport arguably one of the best growth the sport has ever seen. Developers reportedly knew The Final Shape was make-or-break for the studio, and Bungie’s workers responded to that decision by turning out an outstanding addition to the sport. Lower than two months later, they realized that their herculean efforts to earn money for the corporate weren’t sufficient to avoid wasting their jobs.
The Last Form ought to have saved Bungie. It was an outstanding growth that acquired acclaim from critics and gamers, and regardless of the foremost stumble that was the Lightfall growth within the 12 months earlier than it, The Last Form nonetheless had the momentum of 10 years of Destiny 2 funding behind it. And but, according to Stephen Totilo’s reporting at Game File, The Last Form has offered much less properly than Lightfall. That makes a point of sense–Lightfall noticed big gross sales because of the hype that resulted from The Witch Queen, the growth instantly earlier than it, which was additionally wonderful. Lightfall was a serious disappointment, and gamers burned by it have been much less prone to prove for The Last Form.
Bungie management tousled with “our high quality miss with Destiny 2: Lightfall,” as Parsons places it, transport an growth with a weak story and burning a ton of participant goodwill and momentum within the course of. However that is solely a part of the problem with Destiny 2 that led Bungie to this place. It wasn’t simply that Bungie over-invested in different tasks whereas failing to anticipate issues like how the tip of the worst of the Covid-19 pandemic would have an effect on gross sales. Bungie management additionally didn’t put money into a key component of Destiny 2–for years.
Again in 2020 with the Past Mild growth, Bungie began to “vault” sure previous Destiny 2 content material, eradicating it from the sport. Amongst these parts it reduce was the Destiny 2 vanilla story marketing campaign. This one choice, I feel, has been quietly disastrous, with its wide-reaching results solely simply now coming into focus.
A number of complaints have been made concerning the Destiny Content material Vault taking away content material gamers have paid for. There is a debate available about how a lot eradicating content material from the sport broken Bungie’s credibility, and the way the technical limitations of Destiny 2 made it unattainable to maintain including to the sport indefinitely, however there was a extra insidious impact to the DCV: It eliminated Destiny 2’s on-ramp for brand spanking new gamers.
The Destiny 2 vanilla marketing campaign, like the unique Destiny’s story marketing campaign, labored as a guided tour via the sport. It took gamers to every planet, launched them to the foremost characters, and bounced them via content material like Strikes and Misplaced Sectors. It actually wasn’t an ideal introduction to the sport, particularly since Destiny 2 has added many different main parts, comparable to Gambit, since then, nevertheless it did a minimum of give an honest sense of the way you have been supposed to play Destiny 2. By following the story from the beginning of the sport and thru its growth campaigns, you would slowly acclimate to every piece of the Destiny 2 puzzle.
Ever because the lack of the vanilla marketing campaign, Destiny 2’s new-player onboarding has been a irritating mess. In 2019, Bungie added the New Mild function to Destiny 2, a brand new tackle the opening moments of Destiny 1 that was meant to convey gamers up to the mark on the best way to play the sport, which it expanded into one thing of a marketing campaign with Past Mild. However a minimum of anecdotally, New Mild nonetheless would not actually do the job. It takes gamers via the fundamentals, however does so in a speedy, synthetic means that is not significantly immersive–and when it is finished, the sport drops them into no matter’s at present occurring with virtually no steering.
The studio tried one other method to guiding gamers via Destiny 2 with Guardian Ranks, a brand new system it launched with Lightfall. Guardian Ranks are supposed to give gamers an ascending ladder of stuff to do to be able to “rank up,” which serves to stroll them via Destiny 2’s content material, from its simpler repeatable actions to its extra superior gameplay mechanics and endgame dungeons or raids.
However Guardian Ranks additionally do not do an particularly good job of truly main gamers. The system is well ignored and its significance typically is not properly conveyed; it isn’t significantly clear that it is displaying you the best way to play the sport; and it lacks a variety of data and context about what the actions it needs you to do truly are, how they work, or the place to search out them. It’s good that Destiny 2 has one thing that claims, “Okay, now you are prepared for a dungeon,” however you continue to must know what a dungeon is to be able to act on that data.
The difficulty is compounded by the live-game nature of Destiny 2. Boot up the sport in a brand new season (or within the present case, throughout a brand new Episode), and also you’re normally met with a cutscene about no matter is going on within the sport’s present storyline. If you’ve got been away from the sport for some time otherwise you’re new to Destiny 2, you are instantly blasted with a firehose of stuff you do not perceive. Even worse, the cutscene typically leads you into a brand new limited-time exercise as the sport kicks you into the present story robotically, so you are not solely confused about what is going on on, however now you are taking part in one thing you did not ask for and don’t have any context about. It’s an method that solely works for normal gamers and is completely off-putting for everybody else.
And that is to say nothing of the truth that even with New Mild, the Destiny 2 vanilla marketing campaign, or Guardian Ranks working as meant, Destiny 2 is only a dense and complicated sport, though Bungie has been working to reduce that difficulty and make it clearer actually all through the franchise’s 10-year life.
A nice instance is your character’s Energy stage, the measure of how sturdy you’re and, subsequently, what content material you are able to taking part in. Energy is decided not by any intrinsic measurement of your character “stage” like in different RPGs, however by the numbers hooked up to all of your gear. So to be able to improve your power, it’s essential to discover higher weapons and armor. You may get that simply by taking part in the sport for some time, as while you’re low sufficient on the Energy scale, each new merchandise you discover might be somewhat increased than what you will have.
That is effective till you hit a sure quantity often called the “smooth Energy cap.” From right here, solely sure actions drop gear that may improve your Energy stage, and solely below sure circumstances. These actions are denoted as dropping “Highly effective” gear, and whereas different gear is stalled on the smooth cap, Highly effective gear will drop increased than your present stage. There are a variety of these actions, so ascending remains to be fairly easy–until you hit the “Highly effective cap.” At that time, Highly effective gear stops being efficient, and the one option to preserve transferring up is with “Pinnacle” gear. Pinnacle drops additionally come from particular actions, however there are fewer of them and so they’re higher-end, like raids. In addition they advance your character a lot, rather more slowly.
And you then hit the “laborious Energy cap,” the height of what you possibly can attain from gear. On the laborious cap, the one option to preserve advancing your character is by gaining leveling up the Artifact, an object associated to Destiny 2’s present content material Episode. You stage it by gaining expertise factors simply by taking part in, so it isn’t one thing you must take into consideration, however if you wish to hit that actually powerful endgame content material, like Grasp-level raids, it’s essential to increase up fairly a number of ranges on prime of the laborious cap, which implies extra grinding.
I’ve simply defined how Destiny 2 leveling works in a fairly truncated means. It took me 319 phrases. I did not point out that Highly effective gear has a number of tiers, or which you can “infuse” higher-level gear into lower-level gear, or what drops are provided by repeatable actions, or the previous bounty system that was a part of the sport for years up till two months in the past. I did not point out something about gear stats, the loadout system, or Exotics.
Think about making an attempt to comply with that system within the sport and you’ve got a fairly good thought what new gamers are up towards. I have been taking part in Destiny for 10 years and typically need to search for the Energy system caps and variations after taking breaks from the sport.
What I’ve heard from individuals who’ve tried to get into Destiny 2 is that it is extraordinarily troublesome, and a variety of them bounce off. After a sure level, they are not certain what they need to be doing or what they need to be chasing, or what their effort results in. They typically want mates to elucidate the sport to them, and in the event that they haven’t any, they have a tendency to filter out. They actually by no means get to one of the best content material in Destiny 2, the stuff that actually makes the sport value taking part in and investing in, just like the raids and dungeons, or nice missions just like the two-player-only Twin Destiny.
Destiny has had this onboarding drawback, the place gamers get misplaced in a quagmire of methods which were constructing on one another and mutating over time, for years. Whilst the sport has gotten higher, with higher long-term storylines and extra affecting narratives, extra attention-grabbing gameplay methods and higher weapons, improved subclasses and extra endgame content material, it nonetheless has dropped new gamers into the deep finish and left them to sink or swim.
Think about how many individuals needed to get into Destiny 2 and couldn’t–especially after The Witch Queen, a well-reviewed growth that had the group buzzing. Once more, anecdotally, I knew many individuals whose curiosity in Destiny was out of the blue piqued after listening to about that growth. Most or all of them performed the sport. None of them have caught round.
That brings us to Lightfall. The growth was a flop amongst critics and veteran gamers, largely due to a narrative marketing campaign that felt prefer it made no sense and did little to set the stage for the final word throwdown that will be The Last Form. Good additions, just like the Strand subclass, have been overshadowed by weak new actions and a brand new vacation spot that did not do a lot to encourage gamers. What pleasure for the longer term The Witch Queen constructed up, Lightfall leveled on the absolute worst potential second.
However it’s essential to acknowledge that the injury that Lightfall did was amplified by the truth that Destiny 2 is so hostile to bringing in new gamers. The success of The Witch Queen attracted individuals to the sport, however the tough onboarding meant lots of them did not stick round, so Lightfall pushed individuals out of the present participant group with little means for the sport to exchange them. With no possible way for the Destiny group to get greater, a stumble like Lightfall meant it might solely get smaller.
For years, Bungie put its efforts into making the sport for the present group whereas largely ignoring the brand new participant expertise, and for some time, that was sufficient for the sport to see success. However clearly, that state of affairs was tenuous, and Bungie management’s failure to prioritize ensuring Destiny 2 might entice and preserve new gamers was a serious mistake.
To be clear, this is not an effort to position blame on Bungie builders, who’ve vastly and persistently improved the sport. As a substitute, the clear focus is on Bungie’s management, who determined the place to place funding and what parts to prioritize, and pumped cash into different tasks slightly than coping with the shortcomings of Destiny 2.
Now, Bungie’s management must cope with these errors, and rapidly. Each rounds of layoffs have had a large impression on the Destiny 2 group, undercutting pleasure for and confidence within the sport. Reviews say Bungie plans to maneuver away from massive expansions like The Last Form to smaller content material drops like Into the Mild, which does not sound nice, both. Perhaps that method will preserve Destiny 2 at a top quality stage excessive sufficient to maintain the group invested, however chopping the individuals who’ve helped make one of the best of Destiny 2 actually is not elevating Bungie’s possibilities.
Whatever the path ahead, Bungie must make the sport extra inviting to new gamers if it is ever going to thrive because it as soon as did–and which means investing in plugging holes, slightly than chopping the individuals preserving the ship afloat. If there’s any option to get well from the catastrophe of two devastating rounds of layoffs, it means making a Destiny 2 that may develop past what it at present is. In any other case, it feels prefer it’s solely a matter of time earlier than one other cataclysmic event–whether it is restructuring from Sony or only a few bouts of poorly acquired content–puts Destiny 2 down for good.