In Destiny 2 wish more and more Guardians want the old DLC model back instead of regular seasons. But would a return to the pure DLC model make sense or could that possibly kill the space shooter? MeinMMO wants to know what the German community thinks about it. At the end, vote with your opinion in our survey.
Seasons vs. DLCs – What is the difference? Currently, Destiny 2 offers its players a so-called “Season Pass model.” It was first introduced in 2019 with the DLC “Shadowkeep” when Bungie turned its space shooter into a free-to-play game.
- The season model has since mostly tied to the ongoing story content, but does not offer the scope of a full-fledged DLC. However, players receive new items every 3 months, such as weapons, exotics, seasonal armor sets, and cosmetic items.
- The contents of a DLC, on the other hand, are extensive. With “The Witch Queen,” not only was a large, engagingly staged campaign added, but also a new area, a 6-player activity, new strikes, and weapon crafting.
In the meantime, many players see the seasons merely as fillers between the good content. Even the current season of the Haunted could not really excite all players.
On Reddit and Twitter, Guardians are once again discussing whether the return to a pure season model for Destiny 2 might actually be better. Player TheOriginalFluff writes on the discussion on Twitter:
I would rather have one big DLC per year, and that’s it, or two medium-sized ones twice. The only way I have played seasons is to log in, do the weekly story/pinnacle/challenges, and then log out again. It’s boring, man!
Player TheOriginalFluff expresses himself via Twitter
Bungie is already optimizing season pass content: To ensure that a season does not feel the same, the developer has already tried to counteract it.
- Season 17 included, for the first time, a patrol area on the Leviathan. However, the area itself was not new, and longtime players were far too familiar with it.
- Old dungeons and raids have been adjusted so that they attract players to their activities weekly with top loot.
Especially longtime players want more: Bungie wanted to offer regular content through seasons. But one must also recognize that this model is simply no longer made for hardcore players who want to play Destiny 2 for several hours a day.
Instead, the focus is on the weekly return of players, who then complete their challenges with moderate effort and farm some weapons.
The progress of the seasonal campaign is now time-gated during a season. This means that Guardians can only continue it for a while after the weekly reset. Therefore, no one can experience the end of the story immediately, but one has to keep at it week after week, at least for a while.
This brings Bungie continuous player numbers: Looking at the figures via Steamcharts, Destiny 2 is currently doing quite well with the season model. In the past, you would complete a DLC and then observe how the player numbers of the space shooter rapidly declined. If multiple small DLCs were made, it would be similar.
Many longtime players still remember this old DLC model and they have not forgotten how tough the content droughts were back then. So does Guardian Joey Shaffer:
DLCs are crap, seasons are much better. They give me a reason to play every week. These content droughts with the DLCs were tough. I actually stopped playing between the DLCs because I got too bored […] and nothing interesting was happening.
Joey Shaffer writes via Twitter
Without seasons, Destiny 2 often “dried out”: In fact, smaller DLCs, like once “Curse of Osiris” or “Warmind,” added interesting content. But that was all.
At that time, well-known hardcore Destiny streamers, like Gladd, were much more active and grinded through the content in a flash. But even though he no longer hangs around in Destiny 2, he certainly seems to have an opinion on this controversial topic:
You are not even ready for my thoughts on Destiny’s content feed model: Seasons vs. DLC
counters Gladd on Twitter
Not everything was great with DLCs either: There were really long droughts of inaction with the old DLC model of Destiny 2. The campaigns were often completed so quickly that there was simply nothing left for Guardians to do. Quests were not time-gated either. If someone didn’t want to go into the Crucible, they simply no longer played Destiny 2. The longevity of the game was virtually nonexistent during that time.
The seasons, on the other hand, should give players the feeling that they are part of an evolving world. Bungie uses this model to advance the game a little bit every three months while still keeping the fate of Destiny’s story in suspense in the long term.
But now we want to know your opinion on the topic: What do you think about the seasonal format? Should Bungie abandon this model and switch to pure DLCs? Or are you in favor of the season pass model? Vote and feel free to leave your opinion in the comments.
