Witch Queen burnout plagues season of The Haunted

I’d love nothing more than to settle down every night, shoot some aliens, and snag some cool candy-colored guns, but destiny 2 is It’s harder than usual these days. While Bungie’s live service track record is as promising as ever, the problems are piling up as well. It is determination Burnout season folks. We have stayed here before and we will be back. But for now it sucks.

The Witch Queenone of destiny 2the best and most ambitious expansions ever launched almost six months ago. It did some things really well like the campaignand other, like weapon making, very bad. After that peak, we’re now in the annual trough that players like me complain about build-up of bugs, listless contentand deficiencies in the course of the season. The community has spent the past few weeks making a huge bonfire amid floating ruins, and I for one feel cooked. It’s a bad time to actually gamble destiny 2, but a good one to take stock of the game’s overall health. And this year the ledger feels stronger than usual.

Some of the problems are temporary. Season of the Haunted, which ends in two weeks, wasn’t one of the game’s major updates. destiny 2The writing style of has never been so consistently excellent, and it showed in this season’s Sever missions, where players helped Crow, Zavala, and Caiatl come to terms with their pasts. The backstory that fans have been longing for is finally being plotted very intimate and affectionate way. The missions themselves were less steller. They felt awkward to navigate, without memorable encounters and repetitive.

The main seasonal activity, containment, wasn’t much better. I appreciated the return of the corrupted Leviathan as a mini patrol zone and enjoyed the occasional slice through easy enemies like a hot knife through butter. But it also felt repetitive very quickly. That’s the nature of a seasonal activity, but lacked variety from some determination‘s past distractions and the social spontaneity of a traditional public event. It’s more of a pit stop than a playground, and one you’ll need to constantly replenish to keep up in Season of the Haunted’s demanding, engram-centric economy.

Other problems feel more fundamental. The game is more focused than ever. With each new destination and story conquering Bungie Vaults each year, the universe contracts. Technical limitations and design compromises aside, the result is a once great and varied space opera that now laser-focuses on a very small cast of characters, locations and conflicts. Newer additions like the Cosmodrome and Europa also feel underutilized. The Communion took players into the Black Pyramid of the Ice Moon for one of the best missions ever The Witch Queena detour that was the exception rather than the rule.

The tunnel vision is also transferred to the playlists. Crucible has only received four new maps over the past seven seasons, less than half the number of vaulted maps. Only four of Gambit’s six maps remain, all of which are from 2019 or earlier. Vanguard strikes are also overdue for a refresh. Exodus crash is still occasionally a Nightfall, while the Pyramidion and eight more strikes sit in the vault. The playlist has received two excellent new strikes The Witch Queen but these are diluted by Proving Grounds Ops and other weaker strikes.

None of this would feel as bad if loot was the other pillar of destiny 2, were in a better place. years after the provisional sunset is imminent, the loot pool feels alive and healthy. The treadmill to earn it, no. When Bungie introduced crafting The Witch Queen I was hoping it would be a hedge against leaning into Space Crystal RNG so much. Instead, thanks to the Deepsight Resonance mechanic, it’s just another form of lottery.

In order to even be able to craft a weapon, a special red-rimmed version must be dropped a few times. Sometimes this takes weeks. It can take time in the new Duality Dungeon even longer. Only then can players begin their 12-hour journey to craft and upgrade their custom build for that weapon. It’s the worst of both worlds: there’s little reason to bother with a weapon until it’s crafted, and once it’s done you spend a lot of time splintering all the worse copies of it you’ve always been used to will still be flooded.

If the original determination When first launched it was notoriously stingy with legendary engrams. Some would even trick you and turn out to be lowly, disguised Rares. Bungie has addressed this with two major changes over the years. First, it gave players tons more Legendary Engrams. Second, it rendered most of them useless. This worked for a while as accessing new content required increasing your power, and the only way to do that was to meticulously search for new legendary gear that would increase it by a point or two.

That’s no longer possible, because Power is now anything but meaningless. Some activities limit your power to a lower number to level the playing field. Other, like Grandmaster Nightfalls, require you to grind a ridiculous amount each season. i play a lot determination compared to most people and I basically ignore it now. Once I’m raid-ready, which Bungie has always made easier, I forgo the rest. I’ve spent too many nights carving on top drops to barely hit a number that only gets revised every 100 days or so. The chorus of players calling on Bungie to remove Power entirely seems to have been growing in recent seasons. Until then, it feels like another dead end.

Perhaps nothing sums up this general boredom better than Solstice, destiny 2‘s annual glowing armor grindfest. On the surface it seemed fine. This year’s event has been revamped to benefit from a ticket with a list of challenges. Complete the book and you’ll max out your armor, complete with special glow effects that you can then pay to further customize. In practice, the required event Juggle multiple currenciesearn one through generic activities and convert it into another by completing a limited-time Solstice mission where you fight the Taken and build a campfire.

The ticket was also packed with mind-numbing challenges like completing 25 PvP matches or running over a dozen public events on Throne World. Every year since the beginning of the solstice I have tried and failed. This one was no different. I finished some gear and got within striking distance of it all and then looked at the 50 players I had left to kill in Crucible and reminded myself I could play Xenoblade Chronicles 3 and catch up The young instead of this. My apologies to the players in the half-dozen or so Vanguard strikes that I’ve been AFK on.

destiny 2 has never been friendly to new players. Despite repeated attempts by Bungie to rectify this, it’s truer than ever. Anything resembling a coherent narrative was cut off from it long ago. I find The Witch Queen and seasonal story missions can be enjoyed on their own, but recommending that this aspect of the game be recommended on its own feels like dragging someone to a theme park just so they can ride a roller coaster and then go home. For now, though, there’s not much else to recommend. It’s better to grab a few $10 hot dogs and call it a day than get dizzy and sunburned flying through the same loops over and over again.

The great thing about burnout season is that it never lasts too long. A new season begins later this month and Bungie may unveil its next expansion. incidence of lightand more at a showcase on August 23. No matter how tiring determination receives, it keeps coming back. I just hope it doesn’t last until the next expansion comes in 2023.