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.

The US press now applauds Destiny 2, while players who spent so much time in Destiny 1 do not find it so funny and express their dissatisfaction on our site or others. They find “There is nothing more to do – and that is really not okay.”

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;

• The game is out, the story works initially. Players really enjoy the first 2, 3 weeks and give top ratings.
• 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.

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More on the topic:

Bungie, there’s nothing to do – Destiny 2 and long-term motivation

How useful are the Transversive Steps in Destiny 2? Are these exotic Warlock boots worth it?

The Transversive Steps are among those Exotics in Destiny 2 that were already available in Destiny 1 and are now returning with a new design.

In the predecessor, the “Transversive Steps” were introduced in Year 3 and offered the advantages of moving faster while crouching and automatically reloading the weapon as soon as the corresponding ammunition was picked up. It wasn’t an Exotic that directly sparked power fantasies, but it was practical in some situations.

In Destiny 2, the exotic advantages are similar yet different. Let’s take a closer look at the Warlock leg armor.

How to get the Transversive Steps – Here’s how you can obtain them in Destiny 2

First off: How do you get the Transversive Steps?

There are two ways:

• From all sources that can drop exotic engrams, you can randomly obtain the Transversive Steps randomly.
• Xur: Sometimes the Agent of the Nine brings the item, like this weekend.

What can the Transversive Steps do in Destiny 2?

The Transversive Steps are an exotic Warlock leg armor. They have a cool design and beautifully adorn the legs of your Warlocks, but a large part of the community deems them worthless.

This is the special perk:

• Strong Stretch Muscle: Movement speed is increased while sprinting, and energy weapons are automatically reloaded while sprinting. Compared to the D1 version, there are significant differences here.

Otherwise, you can either increase mobility or resilience and customize the armor piece with a mod and a shader.

The bonus of the talent sounds interesting at first. However, the benefits are by no means as good as one would hope:

• The movement speed is barely increased. You hardly notice any difference. It might give you that crucial second in the Leviathan raid circus, but the speed boost is far too small to provide noticeable advantages in general PvE or PvP.
• The automatic reloading while sprinting occurs in slow increments. That means, only a few bullets are reloaded every few seconds. If you have a nearly empty magazine, you’ll have to run around for over 10 seconds with some weapons before the magazine is full again.

This is impractical in most situations. In the middle of a fight, you cannot run in circles for 10 seconds until the magazine is full again. You’d rather reload manually right away. Most of the time, you simply don’t have time to utilize the perk of the Transversive Steps.

It does happen that you have to run a few meters to get the next enemy in your sights. However, during this time, you would rather fully reload the magazine yourself than wait for a few bullets that the Transversive Steps might provide you.

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In short: Many Guardians believe that the Transversive Steps in Destiny 2 are even worse than in Destiny 1. They look nice, but are currently not recommended. If you still need them for your collection, you can certainly purchase them from Xur.

What do you think of this Exotic?

We present all exotic armors in Destiny 2 here in overview.

The legend himself has done it again: Calus, the final boss in the Leviathan raid of Destiny 2, was defeated with just two players!

Slayerage, undoubtedly one of the best Destiny players in the world, has achieved this. Together with one other teammate, the entire boss fight against Calus in the Leviathan raid was mastered. How did they manage to do this? We give you the overview!

To set the mood, here’s the video:

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The Warlock as Immortal

Especially the part in the throne room, where you are practically overwhelmed by enemies, is extremely challenging. Fortunately, there is a class that makes you almost immortal, as long as there are enough enemies to smash.

This is the Voidwalker Warlock with its focus skill Hunger of the Void. With it, you can trigger a drain effect when you absorb a grenade. This drain effect regenerates your health and remains active as long as you keep killing enough enemies.

Slayerage manages to withstand the enemy onslaught throughout the entire battle. Slayerage’s teammate, Epicookiez, plays as a Striker Titan with the Barricade that reloads weapons immediately when you duck behind it.

This ensures that damage against Calus can be significantly increased. Combined with the empowering Rift of the Voidwalker, it creates a strong DPS combination.

Slayerage’s Loadout

Slayerage uses the Dead Orbit Hand Cannon Dark Promise in the kinetic slot, which grants an extra round in the magazine after three precision hits. However, he uses it only for Calus himself. For all the minor enemies, Slayerage uses The Annual Skate. This weapon has the special perk Outlaw, which allows you to reload significantly faster after precision kills.

For the tougher enemies, Slayerage fires a shot with the Wardcliff Coil. With the Hunger of the Void from the Voidwalker and the resulting drain effect combined with the weapon selection, Slayerage manages to maintain control over the throne room at all times.

His teammate uses the legendary scout rifle Midnight without a Name. Since he is pulled directly to the end in the other dimension, he needs a weapon with a high range that deals significant damage.

By the way: When asked if Slayerage wants to try it solo now, he replied: “With a Sunbreaker, it could work. But there isn’t one anymore – Luckily!”

What do you think of Slayerage’s and Epicookiez’s performance? Which teammate would you try this with?

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Already seen? Extensive class guides for the Warlock, the Titan, and the Hunter!