The Most Despised ‘Destiny 2’ Strike Is Being Removed Next Week
Destiny 2 players know all too well the feeling of selecting the Heroic Strike playlist and finding themselves at the start of the Exodus Crash Strike and watching as the Guardians they have been paired up leave. The Strike is easily the most reviled single activity in the PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC shooter and Bungie are taking it out of the rotation next week for an overhaul.
“Exodus Crash will be removed from Heroic Strike Matchmaking next Tuesday with Update 1.2.1,” Bungie announced via its official Twitter account late Friday afternoon. “Teams are investigating changes for aspects of the Strike, and we’ll provide additional information in the future.”
For those unfamiliar, Exodus Crash was part of the initial launch of Destiny 2 and has one of the most disliked boss encounters in the franchise. Fighting Thaviks, the Depraved, takes place in a circular arena with little cover on platforms and Thaviks himself comes in to attack for a phase where players can damage him, then turns invisible and disappears while a new set of minions enter the arena to attack the Guardians.
Multi-phase boss encounters have become common in Destiny 2 and are generally praised. Thaviks turned out to be particularly troublesome due to his health pool and how quickly he would disappear.
Destiny 2 owners did complain about other aspects of the Strike, such players needing to collect light from certain points at the start of the Strike; however, the boss encounter was the main complaint.
These complaints only escalated when Bungie introduced the modifiers to the Heroic Strike playlist with the 1.2.0 update as part of the Warmind expansion release. Certain modifiers such as Glass or Blackout made Exodus Crash almost impossible to get through. Meanwhile, the Grounded modifier apparently counted against players riding Pikes or Sparrows during the opening segment where they collect light.
Exodus Crash will be removed from Heroic Strike Matchmaking next Tuesday with Update 1.2.1.
Teams are investigating changes for aspects of the Strike, and we'll provide additional information in the future. pic.twitter.com/79ArqQfWrl
— Bungie (@Bungie) May 25, 2018
It was completely unsurprising to see the Destiny community cheer Bungie’s move to extricate the troublesome Strike from the Heroic playlist, as a result. The overwhelming majority of the Destiny Reddit group cheered the move with the biggest debate being which parts of the Strike were hated the most.
“I don’t think I’ve ever been this relieved to hear that content has been removed from a game before,” SirNastyPants wrote.
“Bungie, thank you for continuing to listen to the feedback of the players. This is greatly appreciated and we are happy to hear the strike is being reviewed for improvements,” added x0x_CAMARO_x0x.
It is obviously too soon to say how long the Exodus Crash Strike will be out of the Destiny 2 rotation and what improvements will be seen when it returns. However, this is a classic “addition by subtraction” move until those improvements are delivered.
