{{
`${userDetail.user.displayName}${userDetail.user.cachedBungieGlobalDisplayNameCode ? `#${standardizeBungieGlobalCode(userDetail.user.cachedBungieGlobalDisplayNameCode)}` : ""}`}}
{{getUserClans()}}
12/16/2025 2:36:23 PM
4
The Difficulty Problem in D2
I'll try to keep this brief, as I have a bad habit of being overly long-winded with these kind of posts. tl;dr at bottom.
Difficulty is a highly subjective topic. With the right skill, know-how, and practice, anything can become much easier. D2 is no different. If one wants to "get gud," one just has to learn the game and practice and that's literally all it takes. I personally don't find 95% of the game to be "too hard."
The biggest problem that I see with the game is that the difficulty feels forced, or mandatory to fully participate. There's little to no "casual" gameplay that also rewards meaningful progress once you hit about 500+. Because of this, Bungie has had to reduce the difficulty of the basic high-end, which has created an odd situation. Those who want a challenge are let down because they can't crank up the challenge higher, and those who are less experienced and don't want to play at higher difficulties are let down because they now are forced to play at higher difficulties to make any progress.
This problem is compounded when we take into account Bungie losing their ability to discern the difference between "good" and "bad" difficulty design. The majority of players left playing are veterans who know the ins and outs of the game and usually know how to power game, dominating anything Bungie throws at us. This causes Bungie to feel the need to overtune the difficulty to compensate, but this often just ends up with bullet sponges and annoying enemy design.
My suggested solution is to simply make all difficulties allow meaningful progress. Drastically increase the difficulty and rewards of the higher tiers of gameplay. If players want a challenge, give them a challenge. If players want to just kick back and unwind with a bit of a power trip, allow them to have fun while still making meaningful progress (albeit at a slower pace compared to harder content). Allow players to play at their desired level for their current mood.
tl;dr All players are eventually funneled into the highest difficulty modes as they increase in power, which creates an odd situation where Bungie has to balance one difficulty to suit everyone which ends up suiting no one.
-
What you're suggesting is how the game used to be. A good portion of the community complained and accused bungie of catering to the elites and content creators. They said they didn't have the time, skills, and/or didn't play with others, so it wasn't fair. Bungie's response to that was slowly change difficulty and how we got loot. It first started with the changes to banner and light no longer mattering. Then, we were able to get raid loot without doing raids. Trials loot without playing trials. Bungie started raining down loot on us. That led to an odd response from the community: they started saying the game was too easy cause of all the loot, and it's being so strong. Bungie's response to that was to start using deltas. First was -5 on neomuna, then they applied it to strikes, nightfalls, etc. Now people are complaining the game is too hard, but they still want the same loot drops. Also, while at the same time still complaining, the game caters to the same people. That's why bungie got rid of adapt weapons, and we have the tier system now. As you see, loot and difficulty go hand in hand. If they make the game easier but less loot, people will complain. Make the game harder, but with more loot on harder levels, people complain. Bungie is dammed if they do, dammed if they don't. I actually like the way the game is now. We get a lot of loot no matter the difficulty we play on. The problem is getting the rest of the community to realize that.
-
Increasing the difficulty and the rewards towards the high end would only result in more "gtEkEePiNg" accusations and "you live in your ma's basement and survive purely on MD and hot pockets".
-
We need meaningful progress for sure. I'm tired of having my fingers bleeding to just try and complete a normal ultimate renegades mission. The difficulty spike they threw in, the a.i. changes, and the modifiers from HELL that NEED to go away. Seriously... daily, random modifiers are ruining the game.
-
1 Rispondi[quote]IThe biggest problem that I see with the game is that the difficulty feels forced[/quote] This has long been the case with D2. There is nothing with meaningful rewards outside of higher level content. Over the course of TFS, only Raids, Dungeons and GMs were worth any player's time. The lack of craftable patterns from Seasonal Activities served as a time-gate on top of a game that's already predicated and designed around time-gates. The seasonal model we saw from The Witch Queen through Lightfall really granted casuals an opportunity to build impactful loadouts through Armor Focusing and pattern collection in lower end activities. They could structure builds that encouraged engaging the real Endgame of D2, as their powercreep really pubstomped all the Seasonal Activities or lower end content they typically engaged. This resulted in higher player retention. The best D2 had to offer wasn't out of reach with buildcrafting and grinding gear. However, the sweats and diehards whined that casuals were "just as good" as them given how little time achieving Endgame Loadouts and Builds were during that era. SO in response, Bungie dumpstered the Seasonal Model with patterns in favor of hard timegating quality loot, OR putting it behind the most intense difficulties the franchise had to offer. All this did was malign casuals and new players, who have since opted out of the franchise. Diehards are all that remains. At the end of the day, the main issue I see with Destiny 2 is that the entire structure is one giant time vacuum. I spent YEARS getting dogged on by people for claiming there was an Armor/Weapons algorithm regarding drop rates. I'll never forget farming 'The Quarry' on Masters during Witch Queen to try and snag a 'High Strength' pair of Synthos. Then I wound up in Perdition. All in all it took 51 runs to actually snag another pair of Synthos, only for it to SOMEHOW have a worse Strength stat than my existing pair. At that point I truly understood how BS this all was. Then during TFS, Bungie admitted that drops are weighted. It was a huge fiasco here and on all platforms, but especially amongst my small community -blam!- what I said 3 years ago, that there was an algorithm behind the scenes vacuuming up all of our time. Despite all the changes that have taken place since WQ, the franchise has not really faltered in existing as a time vacuum. Its the same BS, just a different flavor now. Might be less RNG, but it's not less time investment for players. And that is ultimately why this franchise is in sharp decline. Gamers are tired of slogging through activities only to be met with unforgiving RNG. The changes to activity difficulty only reinforce the demands of time. The soft sunsetting of our Vaults headed into EOF was just another reinforcement of the vacuum. And it's ultimately why myself and my community evacuated this franchise leading up to EOF. We all have careers, relationships and health to manage. I CANNOT afford to spend +30hrs a week grinding this franchise in order to queue the only content that rewards players a damn thing. It's simply not a fun franchise to engage anymore. And that's all that really matters.
