Yes, I read all the articles on how the Anthem "VIP" early access weekend was a dumpster fire fueled by Burnt Edge Transits. Search "anthem is" with Google search suggestions for a few laughs. Ignoring the technical failures (a safe assumption since later articles reported the Anthem VIP early access was an old build missing many important patches), Anthem shows a lot of mechanical and design promise that will force Destiny 2 to adapt or lose out. Perhaps the biggest innate advantage for Anthem is the complete lack of PvP. With a PvE only game, you don't have to deal with balancing items against PvE and PvP a the same time, or maintaining some sort of balance split. You can balance the game around crazy paradigms that would be ridiculous and broken in PvP, because there is none. Other factors that suggest Anthem is gearing up to eat Destiny 2's lunch: A transparent Diablo-like stat system where you can minmax and view objective progression, deeper character customization, more gear progression, and much more differences between characters. No matter how much of a Destiny 2 fan you are, there's no denying it would be difficult to make a talent tree with fewer features. You get a choice of 2 class ability variations and 3 jumps (across all specs), then 3 elemental specs each with 3 variations. Even Shadowgun Legends (a mobile game often compared to Destiny) has a deeper talent tree system. With Anthem as a credible mechanically superior competitor, Destiny 2 will have an identity crisis: Anthem looks like it will have far superior PvE than Destiny 2. However, Destiny 2's PvP is also a joke (stale meta, terrible matchmaking, thorough inability to dodge or put up effective mitigation, excessively simple mechanics, poor design, poor control responsiveness, lag issues) compared to e-sports grade MOBAs. If Destiny 2 continues on its current path, a rational person will look at the situation and ask: "Why should I get Destiny 2 when I can play Anthem for PvE, and Overwatch for competiive FPS?" In short, this leaves Destiny 2 in a bad place as a jack-of-all-trades that comes up short against its peers in PvE and PvP. Earlier today I read an article regarding the modern trends in big-budget video games which said these days, there are only "A" grade and "D" grade games with little in between. You absolutely have to be on top of your game or fall behind - badly. What can (and should) Bungie to prevent Destiny 2 from falling behind? I recommend first and foremost, pulling out of PvP as much as possible. The video game market is already way too saturated with e-sports and MOBAs, and with how far behind mechanically Destiny 2 is on that aspect, it isn't worth throwing tons of resources at PvP to get something that looks like some semblance of an e-sports worthy title. Over the Forsaken expansion, Bungie has been increasingly falling into the trap of blurring the lines between PvE and PvP - pushing Gambit (the worst game mode), forcing players to PvP as part of new exotic questlines (Ace of Spades, and supposedly the more recent one that spawned many angry posts). This needs to stop ASAP. If you keep pushing Destiny in the PvP direction, Overwatch and Fortnite will eat your lunch anyway and by then you might as well start throwing your resources in a trash bin for all the good it will do. Throw all the focus on PvE, move as many developers and testers as possible over to PvE. Maintain a skeleton crew to maintain the existing PvP/Gambit (with the occasional balance update especially for new gear with every wave of content). Definitely don't waste time creating new PvP modes, ever. If you lose the upcoming battle to Anthem, it's because you didn't move enough resources to PvE. In fact, you should be moving resources to PvE while you're reading this. First thing to do, fix the character builds/talent trees into something with extremely deep customization specifically designed to outdo Anthem. Old-school World of Warcraft style talent trees would be a good starting point. Whether you like it or not, you've stepped into a talent tree and character build customization war with EA/Bioware. Next, itemization. Add more weapon and armor perks, make their effects far more pronounced and have major effects on gameplay. Add more sockets and socketing options on weapons and armor, vastly increase the drop rate. Add a PvE progression system where characters actually get stronger as they gear up rather than some arbitrary power level that only serves as a way to gate content. Finally, there are way too many weak exotic items. For every great exotic item, there seem to be 2 or 3 that are for all practical purposes hardly an improvement over a purple. This needs to stop. Every exotic item should be a defining, even game-changing part of your build, instead of something that throws a lackluster 10% bonus on something you only use 20% of the time, for instance.