“Destiny 2” hits an unfortunate milestone in the content vault

This week, Destiny 2 hit a milestone that's not worth celebrating. The game has reached a point where the quests, expansions, and downloadable content (DLC) that Bungie put in the “content vault” have been around longer than they were in the game in the first place.

As in, there have been 1,611 days that content has been out of the vault for Destiny 2 for the Beyond Light expansion, which has now been released 1,162 days ago as of yesterday, according to stats Destiny Bulletin.

The process of elimination is already written into the story, with the Pyramid Ships arriving and wiping four planets/moons out of existence. Although temporarily in some cases, both Mars and Titan have returned in bits and pieces depending on the story, but not as full-fledged rotating spaces. As a refresher, here's the grand total of what's been placed in the content vault during this time, which is a lot more than the four Pyramid kidnappings:

• 4 campaigns (base game, DLC and expansions)
• 9 strokes
• 5 raids (and dens)
• 8 Crucible maps
• 2 maneuver maps
• 6 destinations
• 15 seasonal stories
• 2 events
• 17 seasonal activities
• 3 strange missions
• 27 unique and strange missions
• 1 Honoring Hall

A small handful of things are back, like a few Crucible maps, but overall, the list stands. Bungie has indicated that they will be bringing back some other things like at least one of the Gambit maps and a couple of Vertigo Exotic quests. There is also some speculation about Bungie possibly bringing back some of Destiny 2's raids as there is only one other raid from Destiny 1 to put in Destiny 2 at this point, Wrath of the Machine. But we don't know for sure if Bungie has plans to continue repeating raids after this, or even beyond the final form period.

I said earlier that the content vault was a turning point in the game. Maybe the biggest one. The two main issues were that it a) removed content that players had explicitly paid for, including when they purchased a boxed copy of the game at launch and b) erased the vast majority of substantive content that could feature new players while switching the game to be free-to-play.

This is correct Technically In Bungie's terms of service, they said they could remove content at any time, so there's not exactly any class action lawsuit to file for this. But it's also hard to think of any other game that has done something like this, resulting in the game being removed To this degree Paid content of the game. Literally years worth. Even in events like WoW's Cataclysm, it wasn't the same situation as a little of it was cut and a lot of it was modified elsewhere. Here in Destiny 2, it was just those things gold They went, and then they tried to split the teams by doing things like just deletion half Forsaken expansion (and continuing to sell the other half). They have now promised that they will not be deleting any further expansion content from here.

Bungie has of course said repeatedly that this is technically necessary for the game. Managing this much content behind the scenes while trying to update things like the engine, lighting, and other changes just wasn't sustainable. Players said a lot of that content won't be played much now anyway.

But I think a lot of this is principle. We know Bungie Can Return things. We've seen them bring back pieces of Mars and Titan with ancient origins. They basically brought back every piece of the original Leviathan raid for content in Season of the Haunted (which was then deleted again).

I realize it's certainly possible to rotate seasonal content (although I think some of the best content should stay, even though Bungie only did that with Battlegrounds). But the main campaign? First DLC? forsaken? Five raids and bunkers? Some of the most classic alien quests in gaming history?

The point here should have been that if there was an artistic reason to remove these things, there should be some focus on bringing them back over time, even in bits and pieces. Instead, Bungie has focused on either new content or just remastered Destiny 1 content, which I somewhat understand but again, that's the principle. Many players have never forgiven Bungie for deleting all of this, and from an outside perspective, this is a truly bizarre turn of events that we've never seen again in any other game like this.

Even if it is He is It was obviously a lot of work and this content probably won't play as much as the newer offerings, and I would look at this as a loyalty-building exercise in the way we've seen with other “redemption” stories across games, from FFXIV to No Man's Sky and even Cyberpunk more recently. . It's definitely a changing situation, as Cyberpunk isn't… deleting its core campaign, it's making other fixes, but it's the same job. Get the players back on your side. And I think it's pretty clear that didn't happen when it comes to the justification for the vault and the fact that all that content is still rotting inside.

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