Destiny 2's demise highlights a problem all live-service games will face

It's summer, and as usual there's nothing to play. Instead of venturing outside into the gates of hell, reading a book or finally sorting out my garage, I was talked into jumping back into Destiny 2 for the first time since Covid. And within minutes, I understood why the game was no longer being supported and Bungie was being gutted like a cod pulled from the English Channel.

Once upon a time I was pretty good at Destiny. At the time I was too poor to buy an Xbox One, and so I played it on 360. I was there when the Traveller arrived, and I'll admit, it didn't look that great on the 360. I was there when Peter Dinklage was the Ghost and I was there when he was unceremoniously ousted and replaced by Nolan North. And to be fair to Pete, I thought he did alright. Did he sound monotone and uninterested? Perhaps, but he's playing a bloody robot.

Maybe that's where things started to go wrong for Destiny. That first blemish in an otherwise great launch for Bungie's big new thing after losing Halo in the divorce from Microsoft. While Master Chief was raised in an unhappy home, Bungie seemed to flourish with its newborn.
Then came Destiny 2. I played it a bit but dropped it fairly quickly once it became clear it was largely more of the same. Only this time with a distinct lack of Paul McCartney, which I can only assume also contributed massively to its downfall.

I understand a lot has changed since then, for better or for worse. So, what happened when I finally booted it up?

Mess-tiny

Instant information overload. A menu screen just full of planets and icons, with no indication or suggestion of where to go, it was just up to me to pick a direction and run with it. My vague familiarity with the first game was able to help me here, as I recognised the planets and the central point of the Tower, the game's nexus. So of course, I went there. And was hit with about a million HUD points and once again no clear indication of what to do as a priority. Only a lot of post to pick up and plenty of vendors and quest givers reminding me that I was too weak to do or buy whatever it was they had on offer. Thanks.

New player? Try this

So, if you're thinking of jumping into (or returning to) Destiny here's a quick crash course Bungie probably should have given you.

First of all, open up the start menu to check your character. To be able to do anything in this game you need a Light Level of 300, so organise whatever kit you have accordingly.
Next, if you want to head straight into shooting things, head to the menu with all the planets and pick Vanguard Ops (it's the blue icon of the five at the bottom). Choose any of the quickplays. Be careful of anything else, though. Destiny kindly shows a lot of missions you can't do, letting you through the front door only to then tell you that you're not strong enough to do it.

Or head to the Tower, as there will be plenty to do there. Don't get overwhelmed by all the vendors and icons, half of what they offer you won't be able to access right now anyway as you'll lack one of the thirty-seven in-game currencies used for buying and upgrading. Glimmer, shards, Twinkle, and Sparkle (two of those I made up) are all things you'll need to beef yourself up to hit the harder content later. And even then you might not be able to because you're not a Sagittarius or something.

What you'll want to do instead is head to the Monument of Triumph to get your triumps underway. From there it'll have you doing a bit of legwork around the place, going to see Ikora too. You'll get coins that you can use to get yourself some decent enough armour and weapons to knock you right up to 300. Alternatively, talking to Ikora will give you the lowdown on your subclass, and she'll give you a kit right off the bat to get you accessing the basic missions.
From there, you're free to tackle anything. And by anything, I just mean the quickplay and basic missions, as everything else is locked behind the paid expansions aside from a sprinkling of missions available on the Timeline.

The Timeline is meant to get you up to speed with what's going on in the world. I'm none the wiser having read it and done the few missions it offered. Alternatively, ask that one friend that has a thousand hours in it. Let them lore dump for an hour and eventually, they'll walk you through it.

It's a feature, not a bug

Destiny 2's problem is that it's steadily mismanaged itself and its new content into something only the veterans will recognise. And that is fair enough, as given they've stuck around, they should be treated well.

By constantly adding these new expansions, the size has bloated, and as a result Bungie made the decision that instead of making certain parts of the game optional installs, they simply vaulted old content so that nobody could play it anymore. Even the folks that paid for it.

Imagine playing Halo 3, and coming back to it years later only to find they've cut the first four missions because of a bunch of new stuff has been added. There'd be outrage, but because this is "live service", it's a feature. The result is an experience with no clear onboarding or legible story campaign for newbies to learn the ropes, which also has alienated core players along the way by essentially taking away things that they owned.

But this is a problem every successful live-service game will eventually face. Any game that survives for ten or twenty years accumulates not just content, but systems, currencies, mechanics, and storylines that newcomers are somehow expected to understand. Destiny won't be the last game to struggle under the weight of its data. What happens when World of Warcraft reaches forty years of expansions? Rainbow Six: Siege has already rebuilt itself once.

Live-service games are designed to keep expanding. Every season adds another destination, another activity, another vendor, another currency, another system. None of these additions are particularly difficult to understand on their own, but after ten years they stack on top of one another until new players are put off by the mountain they need to climb.

At some point every long-running live-service game has to choose between preserving everything or nurturing its remaining player base. Destiny chose the latter and still managed to upset everyone. They spent years keeping their players engaged and made themselves impenetrable to anyone else.

Was there a better way to do this? I'm not a developer, but I've seen Call of Duty manage gargantuan file sizes with part-installs, maybe Destiny can't because... reasons? I'm sure one day the revisionists will look upon Destiny 2 as underrated and misunderstood, but hindsight is a wonderful thing, isn't it? Doesn't keep the lights on at Bungie though.

The saddest thing about this is that underneath all the mess, the jargon, and the glimmer, the gunplay is still so slick and robust that I had a great time with it. Level design is still a bit repetitive but it felt great to play. It just took far too long and needed too much admin to get into the shooting in the first place. It's a game that should serve as a warning to all the other live-service games out there.

Maybe I should give Marathon a go, but I hear that's not doing well either. Maybe I'll give that five years too.