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Can Bungie Win Back Destiny 2 Players?

Can Bungie Win Back Destiny 2 Players?

Anyone who has been playing Destiny 2 since its 2017 launch has known that this is a solid game surrounded by issues that appear whenever Bungie decides it needs to add to or alter the game. One after another, things add up and go wrong. People get upset. Internet controversy rages, rightfully so. Bungie promises to do better. But then, another instance occurs. So far, we’ve seen Curse of Osiris suddenly lock people out of high level content, including one of the trophies needed to get a platinum, an issue where Three of Coins items weren’t giving increased odds at Exotics during Heroic Strikes, and Faction Rally throttling the number of tokens people could get. It makes you wonder if and how Bungie can get Destiny 2 players to trust the company again.

Especially since the Faction Rally issue happened to occur after a massive statement where Bungie committed to doing better with Destiny 2. It promised to dole out more rewards from in-game efforts, rather than having them tied to the real-cash Eververse. It promised to bring back 6v6 PVP, private PVP, and strike scoring, all things that were in Destiny , were removed from Destiny 2 for its launch, and for some reason are all being added later in 2018 instead. It seems like the company still isn’t getting that its message needs to be clearer and it needs to be less stingy with content.

I think a big part of this would involve more internal testing from Bungie. A lot of the most recent conflicts have to do with something not working right after it launches in-game. With Faction Rally, it was there being a cap on tokens earned. More internal testing would have led to the developer noticing a problem before people started participating and wasting their time. The same goes for the Three Coins issue. Bungie would have noticed Heroic Strikes’ exotic drop odds weren’t going up if it had spent more time when preparing the event. I know there is always a drive to get things out as soon as possible, but Destiny 2 players would be fine with waiting an additional week or so if it meant the event would work well and not waste their time.

More transparency is also a big issue. Each time something goes wrong in Destiny 2 , Bungie promises to do better next time. Yet every time, it doesn’t. When the Three of Coins was introduced, Bungie should have immediately provided people with the odds. How difficult would that have been? “You’re not guaranteed an Exotic Engram, but it will boost the odds of getting one by 50%.” See? That took me less than a minute to write and could have easily been inserted in patch notes. When Bungie realized the Faction Rallies in the past were being too liberal with tokens and decided to alter the rates, it should have said so.

Can Bungie Win Back Destiny 2 Players?

But one thing that really bothers me is the delays when it comes to responses. I consider this an issue separate from the transparency problems. Bungie clearly knows what it is doing with the events. Yet whenever one of these issues happens, there is always a delay between fans’ investigations and the official responses. We hear how Bungie is going to look into things, then have this wait before they decide to actually be transparent about what they are doing. Instead of having this happen the next time a problem occurs, Bungie should be more timely. In the Three of Coins and Faction Rally instances I mentioned above, it seems obvious the developer knew what was going on. Why make people wait?

If Bungie can address these three issues, it could go a long way toward repairing the Destiny 2 situation. As it currently stands, it is easy to see why people may want to give up or not participate in certain events. Instead, Bungie should do more testing, cut response times, and be clearer about everything happening to make the experience better for everyone and restore confidence.

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