Well, it just isn’t Destiny if there isn’t some sort of drama going on, but this time, things feel a bit different. Yes, it’s true that players are always complaining about something or another, and PvP players in particular usually have a specific weapon or super they’re railing against at any given time, since it can often take many, many months for proper nerfs or buffs to come.
But these days, the PvP community seems like it’s reaching a breaking point. High profile players are quitting, others are taking to Twitter and forums to address Bungie both for its lack of action and lack of communication about the state of PvP in Destiny 2.
One common rebuttal to PvP players is that Destiny 2 is “a PvE game” and PvP is just a nice little side bonus that shouldn’t absorb much attention. But the numbers don’t bear that out. Destiny 2 may be a majority PvE game, but PvP makes up a massive portion of the playerbase at any given time. If there are 900,000 players playing PvE activities, for instance, there might be 600,000 PvP players. At worst, it might be half as many PvP players as PvE, but that’s still a large amount.
So, what’s going on? Why are PvP players so mad? In short, it’s because of a few short-term issues with the new expansion, but also a lot of long-running ones built on top of that.
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Despite launching a massive new expansion in Beyond Light with two zones, including the entirely new Europa, there was not a single new PvP map released.
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Not only that, but because of the Destiny Content Vault, PvP actually lost 13(!) existing maps and a number of game modes.
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Frequent requests for Crucible-specific rewards have gone unanswered, as Crucible now shares a weapon pool with the rest of the game, and the new vendor armor is merely a reskin of the Vanguard and Gambit armor. New pinnacle weapon, Adored, is great for Crucible, and yet does not need to be acquired through Crucible.
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Iron Banner has not gotten a new armor set in well over a year now since Shadowkeep. It has not gotten any new weapons short of one ritual weapon, Point of the Stag (which is not farmable now), and instead has only reprised old weapons. Iron Banner’s overall loot system remains stuck in Destiny 2 year 1, only rarely giving out loot through tokens and extremely infrequent end of match rewards. There’s zero way to target farm anything.
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Bungie has definitely put the most work into Trials of Osiris, but the more problems occur with PvP, the more average players drop out of the mode, which has made Trials beyond “sweaty” for many. There are persistent problems with cheaters, especially on PC, which Bungie has attempted to address, but it’s still a prevalent problem. This season Bungie did introduce Adept Trials weapons, as had been requested, and yet this has created weird situations like it being mathematically impossible to try to farm the right roll on an Adept Trials weapon you already have (but you’ll have to, because it’s being sunset next season, and the new one is not).
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Far and away, the biggest current problem with PvP is the arrival of Stasis in the game with Beyond Light, a subclass that plain and simple, does not appear to have been designed with any consideration for PvP at all. Despite the obvious question that was asked well before the arrival of Stasis, “how exactly is freezing going to work in PvP?” it arrived without a good answer and has been a nightmare across all modes, with players feeling like they’re at a distinct disadvantage if they’re not using the subclass. And given that you need Beyond Light to get Stasis, that has raised accusations of free-to-play Crucible now being “pay to win.” Despite a few nerfs here and there, Stasis, and the entire concept of being frozen or slowed in battle, is a hugely complex problem the game doesn’t seem like it’s anywhere near solving.
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- And then there’s just…a lack of communication about all of this. We rarely hear updates about PvP at all anymore from Bungie other than usually Trials-focused additions to the game, and players don’t feel like their years of active feedback has been considered, no matter how many times Bungie says “we’re listening.” Next week, players are expecting an actual address about PvP based on how bad things have gotten, but that’s certainly not a guarantee, and it’s unclear what, if anything, will translate into meaningful action.
That’s the situation the game is in right now. I have been there for every PvP debate in the past, but they’re usually a lot smaller in scope, based around which weapon or ability or exotic is overpowered at any given time. But the small problems have snowballed into much larger ones, and the future of Destiny 2’s PvP half remains murky, at best.