Bungie Developers Discuss The Challenges Of Player Engagement In 'Destiny 2'

Video Games

Jan 13

Destiny 2’s Episode Revenant has seen its third act release earlier this month. Unlike previous acts, which had time-gated progression to keep people coming back weekly for new content, everything was released at once. Now, in an interview with GamesRadar+, Bungie’s senior design lead, Tom Farnsworth, speaks about the challenges of adapting to a new content release approach.

“The challenging thing with the new model is that players have clear expectations about what things were in the past in terms of how they interact with the vendors, or what the story's pacing is, or the amount of content.” Changing things up is always a difficulty with any live service game, as is achieving the right balance between player agency and sustainability for the game.

Bungie’s plan for Destiny 2 going forward is to invest “in as many areas of the game as we can to make sure that players have something to do for each mood that they’re in. Whether they want to engage with the story, or they want to engage with an Exotic mission, or they want to play the core game, or they want to play PvP.” Such investment will make sure that “if players feel like they’ve gobbled up everything somewhere they’ve got something else they can hop over to.”

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Also part of the interview was Destiny 2’s narrative lead, Jerome Virnic, who commented with this fun metaphor regarding the issue. “This is in some ways a good problem to have. Because this is only a problem if your cake tastes good, right? If your cake is trash, nobody wants to eat it and it’s not a discussion at all.” Bungie is likely hoping players will like the taste of their new MOBA, codenamed Gummy Bears, when it eventually releases.

The next episode for Destiny 2, Heresy, will stick to this new approach. A majority of the content for an act will be released on the first day of it going live, with extra content rolling out across the weeks. The final act of Episode Revenant will last until February 4, when Episode Heresy will launch.

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