For the past few weeks, Destiny 2: Lightfall has caused frustration and a sense of disappointment among Guardians with a lackluster story and many bugs. Now Bungie has responded directly to the criticism, acknowledging mistakes and sharing what improvements players can expect in the future.
What was the biggest criticism of Lightfall? The biggest criticism of the Lightfall experience was the lackluster story. Fans were disappointed with the way the story was told and how little clarity and accuracy the story offered them.
Bungie had shown in many previous expansions that excellent storytelling is exactly their thing. But the Lightfall DLC lacked a clear direction and it wasn’t the brilliant “beginning of the end for the greatest saga in Destiny 2” hoped for.
This led to frustration and a sense of disappointment among Guardians, which they expressed in reviews and posts on Steam and Reddit.
Bungie has now acknowledged mistakes in a detailed blog article and announced that they want to work hard to improve the Lightfall experience and the points criticized by guardians.
Bungie responds to the allegations with strong improvements
Here’s how Bungie responded to the criticism: The developer had been silent for a long time. The Guardians initially only got a few answers and relief, which were not really satisfactory for many.
Bungie was quietly working on fixing many bugs that had appeared in the loot shooter since Lightfall. Therefore, many had not expected how detailed and insightful Bungie has now responded to every point of criticism.
[…] it’s clear that the initial experience we delivered on day one didn’t offer the full clarity that we initially envisioned when we began development of Lightfall. The team has listened to your feedback on both what’s coming this year and how we’re going to end the saga of light and darkness in The Final Form. […] We are determined to ensure that the resolution to our first saga lives up to that legacy.
Bungie’s GameDirector is aimed at the disappointed Guardians
The story team under fire: Bungie deliberately avoids throwing its story team at the feet of the angry mob. Because no further than this concession did you go into the story shortcomings of Lightfall.
MeinMMO summarizes for you which problems the studio has identified. There will be some important changes that should improve the gaming experience again.
Guardian Ranks and Commendations
Guardian Ranks should be a useful guide season after season, meaning they reflect the latest content in the game. But the guardians don’t like the new number over their heads at all. To say players don’t like the system would be putting it mildly. Some guardians even demonstratively wanted to remain rank 6 forever and boycotted the new ranks.
Bungie is now improving again and bringing the following changes:
Difficulty levels of PvE activities
Threshers and bosses were way too strong: Some players liked the new difficulty of Destiny 2 in the Lightfall DLC. But not the majority. It was often assumed that the well-known frame rate bug was behind the opponent’s hard shots. But in this case that wasn’t the case.
The “Drescher” Cabal ships were originally designed to fight Guardian tanks. […] As part of our goal, the [Lightfall-]To make Invasion of Neomuna feel more menacing, we used the Threshers more than ever before, giving them difficulty modifiers previously only found in Dawns. This significantly increased their brutality.
explains Bungie in the latest blog post
So Bungie conceded that the difficulty level complaints are legitimate, as most of the content has actually been raised too much. Also, non-boss units had a bit too much health and could therefore feel like bullet sponges, which was not intended.
Destiny 2 wants to challenge with a new level of difficulty – players believe this is the worst change that “Lightfall” has brought
Lost sectors with hard difficulty but bad loot
Another major criticism from players was solo-focused endgame activity in Lost Sectors. Earning new or old exotics was too hard for some keeper, which too often ended in frustration at the loot box.
Additionally, in Season 21 there will be a targeted focus on Exotic armor pieces at Master Rahool, but it’s disgustingly expensive.
Season 21 brings more QoL changes
Bungie also allows the guardians a look into the near future and thus Season 21. However, we will first start with information about a date change. The endgame will start much earlier in Season 21 because there will be no power level increase.
In addition, the Guardians can expect the following quality-of-life improvements in Season 21:
The announcements are a big step in the right direction for us, especially because they specifically address player criticism.
And who knows, maybe Bungie can also stand up for the suffering Guardians in the “Root of Nightmares” raid, who continue to be skilfully thrown to their death by jump pads.
However, it’s important to note that the improvements won’t arrive overnight. It will take time to fix the bugs and roll out the new content and stories. So once again, Guardians will have to be patient and wait for Bungie to live up to its announcements.
Despite all the criticism, it’s also fair to say that between systemic improvements like the new loadout system and the promise of a future LFG system also coming in 2023, Destiny 2 has never been stronger in its underlying structure.
This is how strong Lightfall is in sales compared to Witch Queen: So far, many players thought that the Lightfall DLC was an economic failure and certainly couldn’t top the sales figures for “The Witch Queen”. This was mainly due to the fact that Bungie avoided reporting a new and higher Lightfall sales record on Twitter in 2023.
But Bungie has now made up for it and announced:
What do you think of the adjustments? Did they satisfy you and do you now have hope that the game will be better and more fun in the future? Or do you see nothing good about it? Please leave us your opinion in the comments.
Other things in Destiny 2 are also extremely strong right now, like this submachine gun beast that kills everyone in seconds in Iron Banner right now:
Weapon from Destiny 2 kills at lightning speed, is taking the community by storm, and is now easier to obtain