It’s me, your local Destiny 2 doom poster back again with another take. But for real, while I often try to give the game at least the benefit of the doubt, especially with Bungie’s reduced headcount these days, I have to be honest here. This is the fastest after a new update my motivation to play Destiny 2 has hit zero.
This took place about a day after the release of “Major Update” Ash and Iron, but I thought I’d give it the week to see if my mind was changed as Bungie threw out patches and buffs. It hasn’t, and it’s not just because of Borderlands 4, as I was playing my review copy of that for 40 hours even before Ash and Iron launched (though I won’t say that’s not a factor).
Ash and Iron is one of the worst updates I’ve ever seen in Destiny 2, an ill-conceived stopgap meant to fill time between mini-expansions in this new schedule. Previously, we were promised something like Into the Light. That was a good update. A great one. This is horrible.
The bugs were one thing, but at this point, barely a real consideration. Some of the worst ones were patched quickly, but the main things here are:
A) The new Reclaim activity in Ash and Iron, a return to a corpse-ified version of the Plaguelands for a brain-dead activity that’s 10% as fun as what it’s aping, Nether, is not something I want to play. I’m not kidding, I did three runs of this and just…stopped. I have no plans to ever play it again. I have quite literally never done that for a Destiny activity in my life.
B) Reclaim does not even fit into the game properly. You cannot simply launch the activity, matchmake and start farming the new gear. At my level, you have to play on Grandmaster difficulty with annoying modifiers while being underleveled, you have to use Fireteam Finder to get a group, and the mode still drops old gear at times that we’ve already been getting for three months. And it’s just another Portal activity, where other, less-terrible ones are more worth farming.
C) The “why” of this remains the biggest problem. We all spent the last three months grinding up power get higher tiers of weapons. Now, the goalposts have been moved again, reinforcing that the entire game now is just the endless pursuit of a light level, something fans have hated so much in Destiny it was reduced or even removed in the past. Now, it’s all the game is. The new climb to 550 after the old cap of 450 (which was absolutely insane to reach before), is just not motivating at all.
D) The current buffs aren’t enough and the others are miles away. After much complaining, Bungie reverted some nerfs like hampering the hyper-efficient Solo Ops farm. They also left drops alone in Pinnacle Ops and increased some drops in Fireteam Ops. But nothing has changed. It’s back to how it was before where Solo Ops are usually the most efficient way to farm yet again, they haven’t solved the problem. They have also increased power gains, which is good, but again, the motivation of getting power gains remains a poor motivator in the first place.
E) They have not solved the new armor issue. And by that I mean the fact that they do have a good idea to have cool set bonuses for armor sets now. They do not have the ability to currently fix the issue that you may want multiple sets for multiple builds for multiple classes where that is almost impossible to store in our current vaults. A vault space increase is coming, but the way this current system works, that still may not be enough.
F) I’m actively offended by what they’ve done with Eververse this season, and last, apparently. It’s been revealed that a past Eververse set was meant to be an Iron Banner set before they threw it in Eververse and are currently giving us a reskin for the mode this season. “New” armor sets in Ash and Iron are also reskins, and there are going to be five paid sets in three months including a long-awaited Taken set. Long-awaited in that players hoped they would someday earn one, not buy it.
G) PvP balancing. Lol.
It’s bad. Really bad. I have almost never seen it this bad. I can’t believe I’ve dropped Ash and Iron this quickly where I was hoping for a promised Into the Light-quality activity. But Reclaim is bad and even if it wasn’t, imagine trying to jam Into the Light into the Portal somewhere. Oh wait, they have, and tell me how Onslaught is going in there? God, what a mess.
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Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy.
