‘Destiny 2’ broke playercount records and community morale with ‘Lightfall’

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. Destiny 2 just released its latest Lightfall expansion this week, which on launch day managed to break Steam’s all-time concurrent record for a game, even though we’re five years into this live-service sequel. It’s impressive, and pays homage to a great deal of the hype that’s been around Lightfall heading into release.

However, I’ve never seen a community start ripping out a new piece of content so quickly. and that is Saucepan, where complaining is very much the game’s patriotic pastime, though it’s a lot worse than usual. While yes, it is reddit, replete with thread after negative thread, it’s also Twitter, via its creators and in responses on the official accounts. It’s on Steam, where despite these record numbers, Lightfall user reviews are trending towards “Mostly Negative” near launch here.

I posted my list of pros and cons about Lightfall yesterday, but rather than just my own views, I want to zoom out and get a sense of why everyone is so angry and/or disappointed. Is this a little An overreaction? probably. Does Lightfall have too many real, too big problems? definitely. Here’s what’s pissing players off:

• The campaign’s story pales in comparison to last year’s The Witch Queen in a number of ways, namely rushing to give us two new Cloud Strider characters without any introduction or explanation (Cloud Strider history, lore, and more history from Nimbus and Rohan really come later in the campaign).
• Nimbus in particular is a character who drew particular ire, as her carefree posturing and constant banter are reminiscent of an ’80s surfer, which seems out of place given the supposed gravity of the story at hand.
• Strand is woven into the plot to such an extent that it works at the expense of the story. While Bungie said they wanted Strand to be a larger focus of the narrative, this actually comes off as a negative, as massive portions of the story are devoted to Strand alone, including missions that are merely “practice exercises”. Not exactly installation content.

• Lightfall’s macguffin campaign, “The Veil” has already become a meme. (spoilers He follows) We are supposed to find The Veil and protect The Veil and The Veil seems to be a major puzzle that connects the entire campaign. But after going through hours of campaign missions to find out the truth, we get… nothing. The veil is never explained, as it’s just some kind of bioluminescent structure that serves as a final boss’ arena. Trying to find out the continuation of the “veil” after the campaign, and there does not seem to be an answer on the near horizon.
• The ending in which the traveler is supposed to be “killed” is both baffling and surprising. NPCs are talking about the Traveler dying one moment and then the next saying we don’t actually know What He did The Witness to the traveler after a portal cut a triangle into him, but we all still have our light. It’s very strange.
• Strand herself landed awkwardly. While cooldowns are low in the campaign, they increase significantly in the live version of the sub after that, and that fantasy about squeezing all over the place doesn’t really work when you have a base cooldown of 1:45 on the gratings, and you have to crouch backwards to get On a design that makes cooldown feel close to where it needs to be.
• Overall, outside of a few rarities (Stareater Strand Hunter), Strand feels a bit weak at launch, which is on display in the Legendary Campaign where even with its low cooldowns it can’t compete with most lite 3.0 subclasses.
• Neomuna is a strange playable space that feels different than what Bungie promised about sliding across rooftops (there’s nothing interesting even on rooftops) and it’s not vertical at all.

• All seasonal and expansion weapons outside of the raid are either reforged or refinished.
• The new armor charging system, which combines elemental wells with light-charged mounts, is not going well. Many of the more interesting mods have been wiped out or significantly omitted, and it feels like a less interesting, less fun version of the system we had last week, even if the new mod app screen looks fine.
• Guardian Ranks seem meaningless now that everywhere you look, everyone is level 6, whether you have 50 hours in the game or 5000 hours. I’m not sure how it works as a qualifying system, because it feels like modified wins, and it doesn’t really seem to reflect the time a Veteran has at the moment, as so many aspects have to be reworked each season and nearly everyone starts at the same level, regardless of their history.
• The new praise system is a good idea in theory, but in practice everyone is just trying to spam everything they can before people leave so they can peak into giving out 20 recommendations a week.
• Strand Parts are time-limited and need to be bought back on all 3 characters using slowly farmed Strand Currency. And the new Campaign Skip Bonus to instantly unlock the Strand is $20 per character.
• New updated hits are now cracks with forced slow by flanking loads and disabling birdies.
• Barely anything has been added to Crucible at all outside of the new Strand sandbox. Of course nothing has been added to Gambit. Looks like Bungie forgot to make a new base playlist shield this year, too.

Is that all? Probably not, but it’s the biggest part of it, and a lot of this seems avoidable. However, a lot of it isn’t salvageable, you only get one chance to do a campaign right, and they didn’t get it here. More to come, but this launch is definitely missing, and we’ll see how Bungie responds soon enough, I think.

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