Destiny 2 has a strange problem – the game lacks the hated element, the grind. Yet many wish for it to return.
“The grind” – it is such a nebulous thing. Casual players hate the grind. However, some MMO players love it.
What is the grind?
The grind – it is something you do to achieve a goal in a game. You work towards something. You have to earn something through tedious work.
You can grind EXP, you can grind items, you grind for a specific achievement or trophy. Players are in a treadmill and are pedaling hard to achieve something. They’re staying in the same place.
According to popular belief: The “grind”, the pedaling, in itself is not fun, but the fun comes only from achieving the goal. You’ve completed your 10,000 meters and are happy about it.
Others say: It is precisely the pedaling that is fun. You set a goal and work towards it. According to Camus: One must imagine Sisyphus as a happy man.
Story vs. Grind
In any case: In the grind, you play something you already know, which you must or want to repeat.
The “grind” stands in contrast to experiencing the story. In the grind, you stay in the same place, playing content that you already know. While the story is forward-looking and brings “new things”.
Grind is bad – Dumb filler material
The view of many game critics and single-player fans is: “The grind is bad.”
They want to experience the story of a game, always want to learn something new. From their perspective, “grind” is an unnecessary inflation of content, it is filler material.
The worst accusation: “The game does not respect the player’s time.”
A game should rather tell its story, compress the best content, and come to an end, then players can experience the next game anew. For these critics, grind is something you have to do to “keep up,” even though you don’t really want to. It is an unnecessary, somehow crazy compulsion.
Often, the example is given of an RPG where you “need to beat dumb mobs” to be strong enough for the final fight, which you actually want to experience.
These players want “more story” – they want to experience something new and reject the grind.
Grind is good – Spending time on something fun
The counterpoint is: Grind is something good. Especially in Destiny, the gunplay has always been praised. It’s fun to spend time in the world, shooting and blasting. But something should come out of it too.
The grind serves as an excuse to work toward “something”, no matter what. In Destiny 1, players enjoyed farming a specific weapon with various combinations, the legendary “God-Roll.”
Forpeople who have spent 1000 or more hours in Destiny, these goals are essentially just an excuse to play Destiny. In reality, it wasn’t even about getting item X, but they wanted to play Destiny with their friends – to spend time on something they enjoy doing.
What they were grinding for wasn’t so important – as long as they got closer to the goal with every hour.
These grind fans have nothing against more story. But the most important thing is: they have goals. They can spend time in the world of Destiny.
Destiny 1 was the grind
In Destiny 1, the game was essentially the grind. Destiny initially had no real story, then there were long content breaks. The gunplay was outstanding and Guardians desperately wanted to spend time in the game with their friends.
They set themselves obscure goals that only minimally strengthened their characters: They chased various high scores, collected more and more items (the vault must get bigger!), looked for a “Holy Grail”, the God-Roll, or beat Crota to death.
In Destiny, the desire for the grind even went so far that players created “leaderboards” that were not even intended in the game to compare: Who is best in PvP? Who is the strongest in Trials? Who throws grenades best? There was even a competition about who spends the most time in Destiny 1!
Bungie went along with the game and introduced quite silly PvE leaderboards in prison and published the “winners” for a period in their weekly letter to the community. In Destiny 2, Bungie wants nothing to do with all this.
Destiny 2 removed the grind – Big applause from the US press
Destiny 2 has now listened to the group of “grind opponents” and removed the grind from the game. There are no longer any goals. This was announced long in advance. Time and again it was said: We reward you. We are more generous. We respect your time.
For the decision to make Destiny 2 “grind-free,” there was heavy applause from the US gaming press. Polygon wrote “Destiny 2 is like Destiny, just without the bullshit” or “Destiny 2 players have nothing to do and that’s a good thing.”
In Destiny 1, Polygon had heavily criticized Destiny, giving the title a 6/10.
Destiny 2 now has the common problem of “new MMORPGs”
Objectively speaking, the situation of Destiny 2 is now not so bad. It’s nothing special. Destiny 2 is now in exactly the situation many new multiplayer titles start;
But then the playtime stinks. Because the endgame is still missing. There is nothing to do.
This is a normal situation. In Destiny 2, it stands out only because it was so different in Destiny 1.
Moreover, Destiny is not an MMORPG – it lacks the typical “side activities” that MMORPGs offer: There is no housing, no crafting, you cannot collect pets, and there is no fishing.
In front of the problem where there were no goals was “The Division.” Then Massive later patched in difficulty levels and new item grades. They changed the formula of the game. Even large MMORPGs had these problems and expanded their content over time, giving players something to do.
WoW expansions only start with the story and much comes later with subsequent patches.
Bungie seems to be following this plan with Destiny 2 and is releasing “more content gradually.” The problem so far is: they are not really bringing in new goals permanently.
Give us something to do – if necessary cosmetics
Therefore, it is Bungie’s task to change the philosophy behind Destiny 2 and give players new goals, to bring them in with DLCs or patches.
This can either be a story that really goes forward – but that usually doesn’t work, because it requires too much production effort and players consume the story faster than developers can deliver it.
Or you simply give players something to do – no matter what, as long as Guardians have an excuse to spend time in Destiny 2.
Ideally, things like:
Obscure achievements like in WoW that unlock special shaders or titles
The collection of “extra-rare weapons and armor” – even if they only have different skins or outfits that are different colors
or “horizontal” progression like with the God-Rolls in Destiny 1 – items gain more variations, and Guardians can adapt them to their needs
For Destiny 2, it was a big mistake to link the outfit, like with the shaders, to the loot boxes – they need to be tied to such grind goals. God-Rolls should come back too. The power increase from these items is only relatively low but noticeable. With the next DLC, power levels can still be raised, making the “grind achievements” optional.
Basically, Bungie doesn’t have to bring anything that makes frequent players “really stronger”. It’s enough if they give players something to pass the time. A significant power increase is not necessary.
There just needs to be a visible, reasonable goal to play the content.
Stop respecting our time
The reaction of the players should now show Bungie: It is nice that you respect our time, but please stop it. Give us something to do. No matter what.
One should listen closely in the next weeks and months whether Bungie recognizes the signs of the community and responds accordingly.
You can criticize Bungie a lot, but at least in Destiny 1 they drew the right conclusions from player feedback at the beginning of Destiny 1 and recalibrated things. Bungie needs to do that again for Destiny 2.
Destiny 2 is a multiplayer online loot shooter with MMO elements developed by Bungie. It was released on September 6, 2017, for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, and ...
