The development head stands by the game's most controversial end-game decision.
Luke Smith, the director of Destiny 2, stands by the game’s fixed weapon roll system and believes the franchise is moving towards becoming a “collection game”.
In Bungie’s first post-launch interview with EDGE magazine (Issue #312), Smith reveals that a “shocking” number of players have completed the campaign and reached the level cap.
“There have been some pleasant surprises, but there are some that ask you to be introspective about them, too. An extremely high percentage of players have both finished the campaign and reached the level cap. Like, a shocking number of players. I think that’s a really interesting data point, and the team should be really proud of that. It means that, when people enter the world, they’re sticking around.
I think one of the things we’ve got to make sure we’re doing right is, if you play it for 80-90 hours, are you happy with where you got your character to? And where’s new stuff for you to do, are you interested in coming back?”
It’s clear from the interview that Bungie hadn’t anticipated such a large number of players reaching Destiny 2’s level cap and maxing out its end-game offerings so quickly. With this said, many members of the community aren’t satisfied with the game’s replayability, and have argued that there simply isn’t enough system depth to keep them engaged.
This backlash is partly due to the fixed weapon rolls that Bungie introduced with Destiny 2. In the original game, players would chase duplicate weapon drops for the chance of receiving optimal weapon perk combinations. Now this has been removed, players are getting tired of receiving duplicate items as there’s simply no benefit to getting the same weapon twice.
”I’m still a pretty big supporter of the change. I believe that, ultimately, the Destiny franchise is heading towards becoming a collection game. I understand that we have shortcomings there right now that we need to address. With respect to making duplicates matter, this is still one of the things we have ideas for.
“You project, when something comes out, what you think the problems are going to be. Sometimes you’re right, and you’re like, cool, we can just do the work we planned to do. Sometimes you’re not right, or you have something else come up that becomes a higher priority. So for us, what we’re doing right now is looking at the potential work we could do, and we’ll prioritize it.
I still believe, and so does the gameplay team, that we’ve done the right thing for the collection game.”
It’s clear that Smith believes in Bungie’s decision to remove random weapon rolls, but also acknowledges that some changes need to be introduced to make duplicates matter again. What form these changes will take is yet to be determined but we predict an overhaul of the existing Mods system which will enable players to tune weapons to their liking.
We’ll be covering any news of future Destiny 2 updates on the site, so keep an eye on the homepage for the latest.
