Bungie entered full crisis response mode Tuesday following several rough weeks for Destiny 2 due to player complaints about the end-game, a lackluster response to the Curse of Osiris expansion, and the revelation that XP gains have been throttled. A livestream planned for Wednesday to discuss new Curse of Osiris gear has been canceled as Bungie tries to quell the growing discontent among the fanbase by laying out plans for the future of the PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC shooter.
The Destiny 2: Curse of Osiris livestream planned for Wednesday, November 29 is now canceled, per a forum post from Community Manager David “Deej” Dague. Bungie will instead share a blog post sometime tomorrow from Creative Director Luke Smith, Designer Mark Noseworthy, and possibly other members of the studio leadership team. They will give their assessment of Destiny 2, plus talk about their goals for the game going forward. There is also the promise of game updates in the next few weeks to address player complaints.
The timing could not be more critical for Bungie and Destiny 2 with Curse of Osiris set to launch in exactly one week on Tuesday, December 5. The growing negative reaction from the fans over the past few weeks due to the token economy, lack of something to chase in the end-game, plus disappointing Crucible and PVE changes reached a crescendo with the revelation that XP gains have been throttled during certain activities. Bungie made the additional mistake of turning off the XP scaling that was causing the throttling but not communicating it doubled the required amount of XP needed to level in the process.
With character leveling now so intricately tied to Bright Engrams and the Eververse Shop, Destiny 2 players have been revolting, given that the game also sold XP boosters in-game and through a Pop-Tart promotion.
Bungie previously acknowledged player complaints and high-level plans to address them immediately after the PC launch in October. The items listed at the time include:
- New systems and rewards to give our most engaged players additional, optional pursuits.
- Better incentives for players who complete challenging Prestige activities.
- Better rewards and replay value for strikes, adventures, and Lost Sectors.
- Private matches for the competitive community (we are targeting early 2018).
- Crucible tuning like adjusted Supremacy scoring and better spawning rules.
- Better incentives for completing Crucible matches (and penalties for quitting competitive games).
- Continued improvements to Iron Banner and Faction Rallies, including uniqueness of rewards.
- Changes to make the mod economy more interesting and impactful.
- Ongoing improvements to Exotics, including adjustments to reduce instances of duplication.
- New ways to spend surplus currency and materials (looking at you Legendary Shards).
- An emote interface that allows players to equip Salty, Spicy Ramen, Six Shooter, and Flip Out all at the same time.
Some changes will be introduced with the start of Season 2, which comes with the Destiny 2: Curse of Osiris launch. Other changes will obviously happen later down the road.
It seems extremely unlikely Bungie would consider delaying the release of the Curse of Osiris expansion at this late of a date, as YouTube channel, Aztecross Gaming, among others, has suggested. Ubisoft’s The Division did delay its expansion plans due to multiple issues with the game following launch, but Bungie has already established it will have a regular cadence of major changes at the start of each Destiny 2 Season with smaller changes coming in between the seasonal updates.
Regardless, the Destiny 2 community is currently wavering on the amount of time they spend with the game with even extremely pro- Destiny outlets like Planet Destiny calling Bungie’s recent responses to player concerns “inadequate.” How adequate the studio’s details are on the future of the game will definitely be something to watch on Wednesday.