With the amount of change that Destiny 2 is about to go through, it can be kind of hard to get a grasp of what all players can expect once The Witch Queen releases. The new expansion will introduce an entirely new campaign to Destiny 2 as well as a new location and a new class of enemies. While new tends to be good, and all of this is necessary to progress Destiny 2’s story, it also comes at the cost of content vaulting. The Destiny Content Vault itself has been controversial since it was first announced, and its implementation has resulted in the loss of some key locations.
As its effects are about to be felt once again, fans of Destiny 2 are already bracing themselves for the loss of the Forsaken campaign and the Tangled Shore, as both are a part of the content being vaulted when The Witch Queen launches. Other less noticeable but still significant losses will be the seasonal activities that were introduced throughout Year 4 of Destiny 2. These activities are some of the best alternatives that Destiny 2 has introduced for strikes, and fill a niche that desperately needed attention.
Destiny 2 Seasonal Activities
Pretty much since the first Destiny game was released, and its most devoted players began racking up hours of playtime, fans have commented on the franchise’s need for more diverse strike options. While the Vanguard strike playlist is one of the key pieces of the game and helps to define the weekly Nightfall and Grandmaster Nightfall rotation, it can also feel pretty repetitive. Some of this comes from the fact that previous strikes have been vaulted, but much of it stems from the fact that many strikes tend to have the same pacing, making them feel all too similar to one another.
This criticism of strikes might not be perfect, but it does highlight that the community has long wanted extra content for players to enjoy that also breaks up the monotony. Expunge Missions are one of the best ways this has been addressed in the past year. As activities, they aren’t super complex, but their challenge is comparable to a strike while still requiring a different play style and having varied boss encounters.
This is something that has shown up in some strikes, but as a whole, finding boss and mini-boss encounters that feel unique or varied can be limited to the dungeons and raids in Destiny 2. Being able to introduce more accessible content that did so has been big for the game, and is part of what’s made certain seasonal activities so unique.
This has helped the different seasons of Year 4 stand out, and the mixed approach that was used for the Proving Grounds strike has made it one of the most memorable additions to Destiny 2 in a while. As a whole, unique strike approaches aren’t the most common occurrence in Destiny 2, and this year’s seasonal activities have shown players that there are gameplay options that shift away from what they’ve come to expect over the last eight years. While over time these activities might not be able to stand up on their own, many of them do have the potential to be kept in Destiny 2’s PvE rotation alongside Battlegrounds and strikes for the foreseeable future.
Destiny 2’s Vanguard Operations
This could be done by adding more seasonal activities to the Vanguard node. Reworking the Vanguard playlist from being strike-focused to incorporating select additions from seasonal activities is not only a way to introduce more diverse gameplay, but also help keep fans a little happier.
This approach is already pulling the Vanguard playlist away from just hosting strikes, but it could also help things feel less repetitive, and ease the effect actions like vaulting everything in the HELM can have. This doesn’t mean every Expunge mission or Wrathborn Hunt needs to be kept in rotation, but one or two options from each seasonal activity could be dropped into the Vanguard playlist at the end of each year moving forward.
This would be especially beneficial since currently, three out of the four main nodes for the Vanguard activities are strikes. Using only strikes and Battlegrounds for Vanguard operations could force Destiny 2 to face the same problem it had at the beginning of last year. Reworking the Vanguard playlist further to address this is probably one of the best ways to do so, and would help keep some extra pieces of legacy content around, which in turn could help improve the new player experience in Destiny 2.
An approach like this could also be done relatively simply. Rather than focusing on introducing revolutionary strike activities in Destiny 2 that completely subvert player expectations, keeping a greater number of previous seasonal activities could keep new content relevant. This would help the couple of strikes that are generally introduced with expansions feel more substantial, while also taking some pressure off of the activity as a whole. This doesn’t mean new strikes shouldn’t be introduced, but rather that after The Witch Queen expansion releases, the option to expand Vanguard Operations to include more seasonal options needs to be explored.
Keeping the Nightfall and Grandmaster Nightfall strikes will still be important moving forward, but expanding the Vanguard Operation playlist to be more general is probably Destiny 2’s best option as it looks towards the future. Positive aspects of Destiny 2’s plans for 2022 shouldn’t have to disappear at the end of the year while some of the more repetitive activities remain. Fans enjoy Destiny 2, and the game has done well at encouraging players to return. However, if the philosophy of a centralized experience is what’s being used to justify the Destiny Content Vault, then there should also be a greater effort to ensure that it isn’t stripping the game too much.
Destiny 2 is available now on PC, PS4, PS5, Stadia, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.
