Destiny 2: Lightfall’s release this week saw a massive influx of players on Steam and consoles to check out the next expansion for Bungie’s online shooter. As his second tale from the end of the saga of light and darkness, Lightfall paves the way for his The Final Shape in 2024, revising the gameplay system while heading towards the final chapter of the decade-long saga. Shift larger plots. However, the overall reception from the community seems to tell a different kind of story.
After launching on February 28th, players on social media, Destiny 2 reddit, and YouTube actively voiced their concerns about the expansion’s current state. The Destiny community hasn’t hesitated to share their opinions, though, on Lightfall’s core story, Neomuna’s new setting, the complex ways to unlock the Strand, and how difficult it will be for new and returning players. There was a wave of criticism of Return to a changed experience.
the current, Lightfall’s Steam reviews are rated ‘mostly negative’players are against the game’s narrative and overall approach to yearly resets. Bungie Blog Post of the Week.
main story
Since its introduction in 2014, a lot has happened in the Destiny universe. After major conflicts with the Fallen, Hive, Vex, Cabal, and Taken factions, the Guardians allied themselves with, and even accepted a portion of, the opposing military splinter groups. Limited power from the darkness. All the while, a new threat in the form of The Witness, the Emissary of The Darkness, and now the arch-villain of Destiny 2, seeks out the Traveler for their own nefarious ends.
At the end of Seraph Season (a now-defunct event that ran from December through late February), we saw the Witness lead the Black Fleet to Earth to capture the Traveler. With the Traveler remaining just outside of orbit, the Guardians and their allies turned against the Black Fleet, leading to the events of Lightfall.In this present-day expansion, the Guardians and the Allied Forces will lead the Shadows to Neptune, where his Legion has invaded Go to the hidden city of Neomna. Led by his Emperor Calus, a villain in his first year of D2 and now his servant of The Witness, he seeks to obtain a hidden source of power in the Hidden City. is.
I’m old enough to remember that the Veil was a new enemy race emerging from the Pyramid Ship. https://t.co/SFtzOBe8Jg
— Paul Tassi (@PaulTassi) March 2, 2023
Initially, Neomuna and its new characters, The Cloud Striders, were promising. However, the general reception cooled significantly once it became clear that the scale of the campaign and its story were smaller than expected. Additionally, the sense of urgency exhibited by the campaign’s opening act was muted once players settled into Neomna and began interacting with characters like Nimbus, the story’s comic relief. , now considers the campaign to be less serious than it was set to be and more in line with previous expansions.
Additionally, the expansion’s plot details and lore confused fans. Paul Tassi and D2 Lore Expert my name is byf One point of contention is the inclusion of Strand in the plot and the game’s lack of explanation about its origins.
“The full insertion of Strands into the narrative doesn’t help. It feels like it’s just put an obstacle in place to use this new subclass. It’s a big loss to the bigger one.” [invasion] reason to plot [Strand] Popular D2 Lore content creator My Name Is Byf says in a recent video: “As a season-by-season storyline this would have been great, but as an extended story when a literal attack on the Traveler happens – I mean, okay? [Strand] It appears out of nowhere and is not explained in the story at all. ”
One of the more common complaints among the community focuses on details regarding “The Veil.” This is a mystical power that the game presents as a long-established detail, but has only recently been discussed. became.
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Of course, Bungie has been tight-lipped about details regarding The Veil or any other story, but the developers have confirmed that Lightfall’s story will progress in the coming weeks, with the current Season of Defiance starting alongside Lightfall. The event states that more important details will be added. Story.
“I’m Destiny 2’s ‘lore dad’,” said My Name is Byf their video“I don’t know what the veil is.”
Acquiring Strands
One of Lightfall’s standout additions is the Strand subclass. This is a new playstyle since the 2020 Beyond Light expansion. A new subclass allows players to manipulate a weave of green energy to wrestle across areas, bind enemies, and summon green energy beings. Deals extra damage. So far, the class has been well received, with many stunt videos of him showing how far players can grappling.
Grapple feels good!#MOTW #Destiny2 @DestinyTheGame @Bungee pic.twitter.com/Qfla8VK3x7
— Senseileon (@Senseileon_) March 1, 2023
However, the community issue with Strand is that it feels minimal upon launch. Much like Beyond Light’s Stasis, Strand’s progression and power growth were meant to be tied into weekly challenges, and future story his beats were added in updates. Essentially, this meant that progression was tied to a set schedule dictated by his Bungie’s release of new content. This created concerns that new classes would be restricted for a long period of time. The concern is that players unlocked Strands after the campaign for permanent use and found that the distinctive grapple his ability had a long cooldown and required other unlocks to be purchased. It got even stronger. Uses a large amount of resources that take time to acquire. In addition to being rather weak, it weakened the sense of wielding chaotic and unknown elements.
In an attempt to fix this issue, Bungie announced a new update rolling out on March 2nd. This will allow players with subclasses to unlock all available Fragments. This new update unlocks Strand, giving players the chance to try out new options and games for the Power Grind.
“We have decided to release a live update that will allow all players to earn the full suite of Strand Fragments,” Bungie wrote. Acquiring them should be a great way to experience more of what The Strand has to offer before heading into next week’s raid. ”
Refocused gear system
In addition to new story content and locations, Destiny 2 also added an improved gear system and resource management. Previously, armor mods were tailored to specific elements and were also tied to unlocks from his seasonal activities. A new one resets progress. Some artifact mods, such as Anti-Barrier, Overpower, and other combat buffs, were essential to success if players wanted to participate in certain events, and players had to keep their gear matched. The new expansion has overhauled build craft and now adds many seasonal artifact mods to your character as perks that don’t need to be set.
While the range of build crafts continues to expand, the Destiny 2 community has expressed concerns about the best options for equipping characters in light of the many revised mods. Additionally, this made some of our favorite community builds unusable and required additional effort to adjust character loadouts. Added to this is the new armor charge system. This is a revised version of the phased-out Elemental Well mod designed to increase a character’s defenses. The new system brings up the underlying problem of adding certain game-specific buffs to characters or ensuring they deal with overly difficult encounters.
Revised mod customization aims to provide more flexibility and variety in creating builds. Screen credit: Alessandro Fillari
In another video, popular Destiny 2 content creators Dat I agree with his thoughts on modding. He said he still needed more time on it, but he was more optimistic about the system than most other fans.
“We have a great foundation to build on [mods] Hopefully Bungie plans to introduce more as the year goes on. However, those who understood the system in the past are now left with a less interesting world of mods and buildcraft, the equivalent of these major his mods now remaining seasonal unlocks. It has been. My concern is that Buildcraft consists entirely of just what’s in the Artifact mod and nothing more. ”
Currently, Bungie has yet to address concerns about the mod system, but the studio has added updates to tweak recurring issues with certain buffs in the game. Yes, and the community is still experimenting with new class updates and mod functionality.
road ahead
Lightfall’s launch was relatively smooth on a technical level, but expansion content has come under scrutiny from the Destiny 2 community. Aside from these major issues, community reaction to the annual update has been positive. However, given the nature of Destiny 2 as a live-service game that will evolve over the next year prior to The Final Shape’s release, there is still plenty of room for improvement.
It’s still too early to say how Lightfall will play out in Destiny 2’s expansion in a few days. We’re starting to see where Destiny 2’s larger plot implications go from here.
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Alessandro Fillari is a news writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter and his Instagram @afillari.
