What is going on with the gaming industry? Normally, they are quick to engage with every trend; where are the competing games for Destiny 2? What multiplayer shooter with coop elements are the big publishers working on?
Since late 2014, it has been clear: Players are into Destiny. The success formula is quickly decipherable: You take good shooter gameplay and enrich it with RPG mechanics like experience points, skills, and especially loot. Then you focus on coop activities, like raids or strikes, which you know from MMORPGs.
There is a lot of money to be made from this. This is a new gaming trend. And competition is welcome among players, as Destiny has gone through several content droughts where Guardians would have liked to save another world.
Normally, other studios are quick to recognize such a trend and develop their own games in this direction. There were swift signals from other major publishers: We’re doing something similar.
However: It takes years for these huge coop shooters to be developed, and thus in 2017, we are still waiting for new titles.
Currently, four games are announced or at least “very likely” in development, which we believe are intended to be competing products for Destiny and aim to transport Guardians into foreign worlds.
Ubisoft: The Division or The Division 2
Ubisoft had already been developing its own shooter with RPG elements for some time when Destiny was released. After Destiny became such a huge success, they probably shifted Tom Clancy’s The Division even more towards RPG.
However, that only went moderately well – the launch version lacked much of the endgame and The Division was missing progress mechanics. These had to be patched into the game – here, they oriented themselves on games like Diablo 3 and introduced different difficulty levels and thus loot tiers.
Add to that were problems the development studio Massive faced. They seemed at times headless and unprepared. This led to relatively slow developments of The Division in the second half of 2016 and numerous problems – culminating in one or another shitstorm.
At the beginning of 2017, fans then realized: Not much is coming for The Division now. Ubisoft did not have a real plan for year 2 in the desk drawer.
The Division 2 or 1.5?
Currently, with Patch 1.8, a larger update is about to be released, but most assume that the next “bigger” content boost will then come with a successor, The Division 2, or perhaps with a truly large expansion that will turn The Division into The Division 1.5.
This would fit well with the film plans: After all, they have star Jake Gyllenhaal under contract. The film for The Division is set to hit theaters in 2018 – it would be a good match if a new game was on the shelf, rather than one that is two years old.
So far, there is no sight of a The Division 2 or an expansion – but the large The-Division team in Malmö must be working on something.
Turn the page for a game that is likely to compete with Destiny 2.
