The following post is Sponsored.
Witch Queen brought so much cool stuff into D2 but unfortunately it was built on top of the core systems which were already being pushed to the limits prior to the DLC release. Here are a few arguments that support this simple fact. We’re not going to even begin talking about the outdated UI and menus that make build creation a pain.
- You cannot swap builds on the fly, like in most looter-shooters.
- The game doesn’t have any sort of firing range where you could test the builds.
- The menus are so horrendous that you are bound to be scrolling through pages of mods to find what you need.
These are just a few of the examples of what makes UI design too old for the current situation. But it’s not just the menus. There are far more fundamental flaws in the game’s design.
There are essentially two types of enemies in the game. The instance-based ones, like in some vault of glass raid are so powerful they will make you feel like an idiot for not using the absolute meta weapons on them. But then there are the open-world enemies that die just by looking at you. The open-world gameplay has no use for builds that let you clear a room full of enemies in seconds. In an open world, you can clear a room using literally anything. Wellspring is a great example of that. With all of the weapons players have managed to gather after farming the Destiny raid Vault of Glass, and with all the reworked Void powers, the enemies die fast no matter what kind of half-build you’re using. People queue up for the Wellspring while being heavily undergeared or lacking in power levels. And still, the enemies are simply vanishing without any struggle. It’s all because of the void abilities spam. Some of the raids from this year are like this too. The Destiny 2 Last Wish raid is like that. The contest mod feels like a joke.
Is being all-powerful fun?
Now, you might think that this is a good thing. After all, this is the ultimate power fantasy when you’re 20–30 light levels under and you’re still having no problems killing enemies. But if all of the enemies are pushed over no matter the difficulty setting, while the bosses require you to waste all of your ammo on all of the 3 weapons, then this is a design problem. This wasn’t as much of a problem with the content that is now in the Destiny Vault. Back then, power creep wasn’t that big of a deal. Besides, now, when everyone is just so powerful, there’s no need for dedicated roles. In raids, most of which are in the Destiny 2 vault, there’s no need for a dedicated healer, or damage dealer. This also means that no matter how many new weapons Bungie releases, the only thing that will matter is if they can deal enough damage to a boss in some Destiny 2 Last Wish or any raid for that matter. If the damage of the new weapon doesn’t compare to the performance of older weapons, no matter how interesting the perks are, D2 fans will throw them in the garbage bin along with everything else that isn’t useful against bosses. This essentially kills building diversity. Because you don’t need specific builds to clear most of the content in the game, since enemies drop dead anyway. And when you go to the real content of last wish destiny 2 or other raid, there’s like one or two things that you’re supposed to run and nothing else matters.
It is challenging for all the wrong reasons.
On the contrary, there are Master difficulty nightfalls, which gamers often compare to the Last wish raid in difficulty. There you have to use different builds. But there’s no creative freedom there. The developers are essentially telling us what guns we’re supposed to use that will work against the enemy modifiers in the current rotation. Anything that falls out of that category that Bungie has specifically chosen for us will not work. This season we have the Pulse-unstoppable mods. So, you better be using Pulse rifles for the entirety of the season in the Nightfalls or you’re going to have a bad time. Back when Last Wish was the most recent raid, it was something different. But this is what Bungie does to solve the problem of the irrelevance of modding and building creation. It basically goes against creativity just as much as bosses with near unlimited amounts of health.
There are just no mid-tier enemies in the game. There’s a huge gap between proper mid-tier enemies in the game. The Destiny 2 loot cave was the perfect example of Bungie trying to artificially push up the difficulty with boss health to compensate for the push over enemies players were fighting. There are just so many trash mobs, as the MMO gamers call them, and bosses that have way too much HP, it seems like they compensate for the lack of difficulty. Doing enough damage is a real problem, because you either need to get lucky with the green ammo drops or have a build that doesn’t burn through ammunition. The heavy weapon economy is fairly inconsistent in the game. A good example of that would be playing through the Grasp of Avarice solo.
Make every encounter matter!
If only the common enemies were a little more challenging, then the fireteams would have more things to worry about and the overall difficulty of the raid would increase. This is actually a good thing. It would be nice to be challenged by something other than a lack of ammo and massive HP pools.Again, not trying to make it look like destiny 2 grasp of avarice was bad. None of the dungeons or raids are. Some of them are easier, it’s true. Some raids are difficult for all the wrong reasons. The thing is: Bungie knows how to fix it. They’ve already done this with the new DLC campaign. The 3-man Legendary scale had a whole lot more to it. There are enemies that pose a real challenge, with abilities that need to be played around with. It has a more consistent combat loop and a better loot economy. It’s just more interesting than the Grasp of Avarice. Anyway, there’s the issue, and the developers know how to fix it, at least some of its parts. Here’s hoping the future expansions will address the issue of outdated design choices.
