On Aug. 3, Bungie released one of its State of the Game blog posts for Destiny 2 to address some of the growing negative sentiment surrounding the title during Season of the Deep. But the State of the Game in question missed the mark and player outcry only grew in volume following its publication.
In a new video released today by Destiny 2’s game director Joe Blackburn, he admitted the recent State of the Game post “wasn’t up to our standards” and said Bungie plans to “be talking to you all more” going forward. Not only did he cover the negative reactions that players had to the sections on PvP and armor, but also revealed how the devs are shifting their priorities for both in response to that feedback.
“A few weeks ago, we put out a State of the Game communication that wasn’t up to our standards for what y’all have come to expect for those kinds of communications,” Blackburn said. “It didn’t provide the high-level vision that we normally provide, and really, truly, a bunch of us were heads down working on The Final Shape and weren’t able to give it the care and love that we normally put into these kinds of communications.”
It was a mistake that he put on himself, “so I wanted to come in, talk to you all directly, and give you an update about that State of the Game we put out and what we think about Destiny as a whole.”
Most of all, Blackburn wanted to emphasize that the showcase coming on Aug. 22 “is not a reaction to the State of the Game last week, it’s not a reaction to a bunch of the sentiment online and it’s definitely not a reaction to this video. It was recorded a while ago.” It’s also a showcase meant for a wider audience than most posts that Bungie puts out, and so it won’t include details on things like an update to how buffs and debuffs are presented on the HUD in The Final Shape—a quality-of-life update Blackburn revealed in this video.
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Even if the showcase itself won’t offer the more open and expansive communication that the players want, Blackburn promised “we’re going to be talking to y’all more.”
But that does come with caveats. “Talking to y’all more, our number one priority, we have to keep our community members and our community leaders safe on the Bungie side,” he said. “I don’t want anyone who signs up to come work at Bungie and to talk to you about the game to have to worry about their personal safety. So we’re going to keep using our branded accounts. We’re going to be using those accounts with more personality, going and talking to you all more.”
Some of those expanded points of communication were discussed in the video, such as a talk that will be hosted after the showcase livestream to answer more in-depth questions about The Final Shape and beyond, as well as Blackburn himself committing to some streams throughout the next two seasons to sit down and talk with the community while he plays Destiny 2.
On the topic of PvP, Blackburn further said the team had been focused on “sandbox balance,” prioritizing foundation elements of the Crucible, like making sure Strand came out in a good place, over the new content—such as maps—players have been asking for.
“This approach is not producing the Crucible that our players expect of us,” he said. “It’s clear the slow trickle of PvP maps isn’t having the effect we want.” He said new maps “aren’t going to solve a foundation” but announced that next year, Destiny 2 will begin to focus efforts on releasing singular, large map packs for free for PvP.
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The response to the State of the Game’s discussion on ritual armor also came up in the video, and while Blackburn believes Bungie has the “right priority” going forward with where it focuses its armor releases for Destiny 2, he admitted that “what we failed to do when we re-prioritized this was communicate this to you.”
Ritual armor was originally supposed to release with each expansion, but Lightfall did not feature one due to Bungie not deeming it as possible in its reprioritized production pipeline. But to make up for the uncommunicated shift, an armor set originally scheduled for the Eververse store will instead be released as a free, ritual set toward the end of next season.
The video doesn’t address every topic of issue but it does offer a remedy to some of the sour taste left behind by the State of the Game blog for the player base at large. While other areas such as Gambit remain notably omitted from Bungie’s response, the answers around its approach to PvP, armor, and communication can ease some of the tension ahead of the Destiny 2 showcase next week.
