Taking A Cleaver To Destiny 2’s Over-Monetization

We are still in the wake of Aztecross’s big video last week which took a flamethrower to years of Bungie’s monetization of Destiny. It has slowly but surely increased over time to the point where this is one the games that sells the widest range of content in the AAA space I’ve ever seen, even if it’s avoiding things like loot boxes and gacha mechanics.

I think it’s time for a serious look at scaling back Bungie’s monetization of and within Destiny 2, a supposedly free-to-play game, which at best, is free-to-try. Yes, I do want Bungie to make money, yes, I do want Destiny 2 to survive and make great new content. But yes, I fundamentally believe the current monetization pathways are turning people off to the game, whether we’re talking about game bundles or shop items.

Maybe all of these in aggregate are too far, but I’m just going to take an axe here and start chopping everything I see that I think is overkill.

Forsaken Pack – Dead. Forsaken was released almost five years ago. Make Last Wish and Shattered Throne free, throw all the exotics (including some must-haves) in the general pool.

Shadowkeep – Free. This is part of what I believe Bungie should be doing with expansions, which they claim they are no longer sunsetting. To ensure the game keeps getting free content and is no longer demanding players buy more and more to catch up, expansions should be made free on a rolling basis. Shadowkeep should be free now, leaving Beyond Light, Witch Queen and Lightfall paid. Next year, Beyond Light goes free, etc.

Stasis – Free it from Beyond Light. An entire subclass that’s four years old should not be locked behind a single random expansion this long. Strand, for now, is fine tied to Lightfall, but it should be made free eventually.

Dungeon Pass – One idea here is to mildly increase the cost of seasons and integrate those dungeons directly into them. But with only two seasons per year getting them, that’s tricky, plus seasonal prices just went up anyway. I believe they should be included in seasons regardless, but if that’s too far, at the very least, the dungeons should be able to be purchased separately, instead of paying an additional $10 for a dungeon two seasons from now you may not even be around for. But I don’t really like the way this has played out at all, especially as dungeons have now become fully integrated into seasonal themes and storylines, and often are the best part of seasons they are technically not a part of.

Armor Ornaments – Streamline these prices. No reason these new collab sets should cost more than normal ornament sets. They look good, all ornaments look pretty good, but there’s just no real reason for the difference 0ther than seeing how far they can push it.

Event Passes – This was always a bad idea and now it’s done something I hate, which is gating individual shaders, often good ones, behind a $10 wall when there may not be anything else in that bundle you actually want (and there almost never is). Events are already mainly about selling cosmetics to players rather than gameplay, the Event Pass is just overkill.

Transmog – One of my least favorite ideas in history. Should not be sold, at all. I am also over the seasonal grind for this, and want a normal Diablo 4-style “if you get it you can use it as transmog” concept. This still means people are paying for seasons and getting two ornament sets for transmog there, rather than spending earned or paid transmog to convert the base seasonal armor set. This should have never been monetized.

Deepsight Activators – Absolutely get these out of the battle pass. I am generally not on board with the “Destiny sells power” train based just on exotic engrams or Ascendant Shards as that’s whatever, but these being in the battle pass, half on the free track, is absurd. They should all be earnable, and not have a bad stacking system that causes you to need to spend them all in a single season.

These are the primary culprits of Destiny over-monetization if you ask me. Open to others or suggestions on these, but this is what I think about the current setup.

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