The genre “online loot shooter” or “MMO shooter” was considered a new trend in online gaming a few years ago. However, over the past few years, some hopes have been dashed. 2020 saw two major expansions for the loot shooters, but little innovation. Where do the loot shooters Destiny 2, Anthem and The Division 2 stand before the year 2021?
This is the genre: The genre of loot shooters is essentially “Diablo as a shooter.” Players collect increasingly powerful gear by killing enemies, who in turn drop stronger gear.
The gameplay relies on shooter elements, enriched by abilities, the skills. It primarily depends on agility, accuracy, and coordination with teammates. The customization of one’s character, the “build”, also plays a crucial role. There’s a special allure in continuously collecting better items and developing the character according to one’s playstyle and preferences.
The trailblazer of the genre is Borderlands (2009). The current generation of online loot shooters began about 6 years ago:
- In 2014, the SF shooter Destiny was released – 2017 saw the release of its successor Destiny 2
- In 2016, the dystopian tactical shooter The Division was released – 2019 saw the follow-up The Division 2
- 2019 saw the release of Anthem, an online shooter in a sci-fi world
Today, we look at where the three titles stand before 2021.
Destiny 2
This happened in 2020 with Destiny 2: For the most famous and largest loot shooter, Destiny 2, everything in 2020 revolved around the release of the annual autumn expansion. However, the release of “Beyond Light” was postponed due to the outbreak of the Corona pandemic to November 10, 2020.
Until then, there was mainly everyday fare: Destiny 2 relies on a season model instead of previous DLCs. The seasons bring a few new items, activities, and content to bridge the time until the next, larger expansion. Through time locks and extensive grind, Bungie artificially prolongs the content: The three months of a season must be filled somehow.
The highlights are set by time-limited events like the gigantic puzzle in January 2020, the release of exotics like “Outbreak Perfected” or the first live event in June 2020.
Many of these elements rely on the “FOMO” effect (Fear of Missing Out): Either you play the events at release when they are relevant, or you miss them and they drop out.
This, however, takes away some of the already limited development time of the team for elements that do not enrich Destiny 2 in the long run, but merely offer a momentary reason to visit the world of Destiny 2. Bungie has already announced that they will move away from this concept in the future, but in 2020, FOMO and the grinding of the seasonal content were defining for Destiny 2.
In everyday life, players in Destiny 2 found this mix too grindy. The year 2020 felt like Bungie was stretching little new content far too thin. The last season, season 10, dragged on endlessly due to the delay of “Beyond Light”. In September, October – normally the peak season of Destiny – morale hit a low. There was simply nothing more to do.
“Beyond Light” was supposed to usher in a new era of Destiny 2 in November. With “Stasis”, a new damage type was introduced and with Stasis, new subclasses joined the shooter.
Overall, the expansion was received mixed by players. While there was praise for the campaign, overall the long-time players found a lack of new items and content to keep Destiny 2 fresh in the long run.
A highlight at the end of the year was the “next-gen” version: Destiny 2 now plays on PS5 and Xbox Series X as smoothly and fluidly as many console players wished for at the release in 2017.
This is how it continues in 2021 with Destiny 2: Bungie has already announced that they will address some of the issues with the expansion. Otherwise, it should continue as before. More seasons are planned, by the end of 2021 we can expect the next expansion “Witch Queen”. Another expansion, “Lightfall”, is also set to come in 2022. The next two expansions are set to form a trilogy with Beyond Light and tell an ongoing story.
This is the state of Destiny 2 before 2021: Disappointment has set in. Bungie has produced a lot in recent years but has hit little:
- The Free2Play model could only provide a brief upswing, now Bungie has removed many free contents.
- The idea of “removing content from the game” was not well received by many. This received massive criticism, which Bungie denied, but it seems that the critics were right: Destiny now lacks content and rewards.
- Reviving PvP with the Trials of Osiris and turning to Twitch worked only moderately well. Certain Twitch actions made big streamers like Gladd happy and brought him a rain of money, but from the top spots on Twitch, Destiny 2 is still far away.
The last major highlight in Destiny 2 came in 2018 with Forsaken. After the split from Activision Blizzard, Bungie announced that “a new era in Destiny 2” had begun. At first glance, this sounded like a departure into new territories: they no longer wanted to make compromises.
It is suspected that Activision Blizzard pressured for the release of a Destiny 3, while Bungie preferred to continue working on Destiny 2.
After the separation, Bungie can now freely determine the fate of Destiny 2.
In reality, this also means that now fewer people are working on Destiny 2 than before and at Bungie they have to bake smaller rolls. This is because Activision Blizzard had sent Bungie two supporting studios, Highmoon Studios and Vicarious Visions, to help and had taken much work off their hands in publishing – all of this fell away in 2019 with the separation from Activision Blizzard.
Before the release of Beyond Light in November 2020, franchise head Luke Smith even admitted that it is unlikely Bungie will ever deliver anything on the scale of “Forsaken” again.
For Destiny, this is a heavy blow. Because the game always seemed to fans to have tremendous potential and could offer so much more than it is currently doing. But Bungie’s ability to tap into Destiny’s potential seems to be decreasing rather than increasing.
While Bungie hired many new people during the pandemic year, most of them are apparently working on new projects. Bungie wants to offer more than just Destiny, to develop more than just one game.
Destiny 2 continues to feature outstanding gameplay and leads the genre. However, it also carries some problems that have not been solved for years: What can players do in Destiny 2 when there is no new add-on available that offers a campaign, new items, and rewards? Bungie must answer this question, and they are still struggling with it in year 6.
Compared to Destiny 1, PvP and raids are less frequented, which impacts long-term motivation.
It is becoming increasingly clear that Destiny 2 requires a massive effort to provide enough content and items to keep hardcore players engaged. In 2018, Bungie still had help from Activision’s supporting studios; in 2021, they will have to manage it alone. Perhaps new people like Joe Blackburn can provide ideas here that make up for the missing working hours. It is to be hoped that the game and the Bungie team can come up with solutions to compensate for the loss of labor.
On the next page, we’ll take a look at the supposed hope for MMO shooters.
