#Future 2 is strolling again on its greatest player-oriented wins, and for what?

It feels to me like Future 2 (and Future at massive) is inoculated in opposition to repeated success. With Bungie decreasing the significance of weapon crafting and doubling down on the Energy grind, the group is slowly rising increasingly more uninterested in how the studio is dealing with the sport.

Particularly, we’ve now had not one however two enormous Reddit threads the place a Future 2 participant going underneath the identify of Techman- went deep into discussing what’s happening with Bungie’s flagship mission. Their evaluation? That Bungie is slowly however steadily dismantling the legacy of Future 2‘s former Sport Director, Joe Blackburn. I wasn’t too nervous when Blackburn, who was beloved by the group, introduced his departure. His substitute was a distinct Bungie veteran, Tyson Inexperienced, and the longer term appeared fairly shiny on the time.

That evaluation of mine can now safely be revised, because it hasn’t aged all that nicely. On high of releasing one buggy catastrophe after one other, the pleasant heights that Future 2 reached upon the discharge of The Remaining Form have now been changed by a collection of complicated lows. Techman- has bought an thought of why that’s the case.

Bungie is messing up the legacy of Joe Blackburn, and that’s not a superb signal for Future at massive

Techman-‘s posts, that are massively upvoted and in style on the DestinyTheGame subreddit, have helped me contextualize what’s gone flawed with Future 2 over the previous months. These assessments are exceedingly well-sourced and massively supported by different members of the group, they usually posit just a few easy claims:

• that Joe Blackburn’s de-emphasized gear FOMO is being achieved away with
• that Future 2 is reverting to its previous grindy self, necessitating a frankly excessive time funding from gamers

That is seemingly being completed primarily by means of a renewed give attention to Energy grinding and by intentionally not making cutting-edge top-of-the-line weapons craftable, which they have been underneath Blackburn. Weapon crafting is a very notable concern right here as a result of it provided gamers a comparatively simple and (extra importantly) RNG-free manner of incomes endgame-ready gear.

Techman-‘s unique put up garnered a number of help when it was first posted, however Bungie’s current developer replace spurred them into motion as soon as once more with a new evaluation of the matter:

The creator of those posts now feels that Bungie is working with “ego-based decision-making”, with Future 2 slowly peeling again all the various totally different quality-of-life enhancements it obtained underneath Blackburn’s umbrella. The group now feels that Bungie doesn’t perceive what the group needs and that the current Episode Revenant’s Tonic-based RNG optimizing system is a straight downgrade in comparison with the established weapon crafting methods.

From my perspective, it appears totally apparent that Bungie is floundering with Future 2. Earlier this yr, I lastly managed to place my emotions concerning the sport into phrases with a easy argument: that this franchise’s greatest downside by far has all the time been uncertainty. This wasn’t fairly as pronounced within the years previous once we knew fairly clearly what Bungie’s subsequent step is likely to be. Now, although, with Episodes falling flat on their faces again and again, and with Future 2: Frontiers being an enormous unknown, the group is totally beset by uncertainty.

Gamers simply don’t know what to make of Bungie’s present plans for the sport, and given the studio’s newest developer replace, there now appears to be a extreme disconnect between the group and the group. That’s an enormous concern for a live-service sport that lives and dies by how a lot its gamers care concerning the current and the longer term.

In comparison with what we had on the cusp of The Remaining Form, Future 2 is now grindier and fewer approachable. These points are compounded additional nonetheless by the truth that Frontiers is meant to be an enormous revamp of the core development loop with sandbox campaigns, Metroidvania parts, and extra. Techman-‘s posts are a strong mirror of the present state of Future 2‘s group, and I extremely suggest studying up on them in the event you haven’t saved up with issues. On the flip aspect, it looks like Future: Rising is healthier than anybody anticipated it to be, so hey.