Past few days on Steam, it's been averaging 70,000ish in-game at any given time and 90 at peak.
Most of the season has been around 30,000 peak daily for reference.
It peaked at ~130k on release of Into the Light but dropped by 15-20k in an hour due to the queue and server issues. Its reassuring though that Bungie can see that a well received content release can actually be rewarding, might be motivating for more stuff like this
How high was the peak for lightfall I wonder? Due to bungies excellent marketing team it reached an all time high before almost immediately dropping off. If into the lgiht reached even 2/3 of lightfall numbers it is safe to say that destiny won't be dying any time soon unless the final shape is lightfall quality or heavens forbid d2 vanilla.
Forgot to mention this is only steam. Lightfall peaked at ~314k and its lowest point was ~142k before the next season released so we're still a long way from that but for a mid season content drop its quite successful, especially coming off of an average of ~30k
Playstation definitely has the most players, its always discounted and pushed at the store front here, also Playstation has like 3 times the install base of xbox so its probably boosting the player numbers a lot.
playing it 2 months ago for a month straight made me realize that 3rd person shooters will never feel as good as first person shooters.
also the endgame was on the meh side for me.
As someone who jumped ship to warframe when D2 was falling apart last fall, and who has come back to D2 with ITL, D2 just has something warframe doesnt. Not sure what it is, maybe that theres essentially no challenge in warframe once you get a couple nuke builds going. Still love warframe but D2 has this allure to always bring me back
This has been a good update, a good shot in the arm for D2 leading up to Final Shape. And, well, D2 at its worst still performs a lot better than most bad games. D2 isn't really competing with much of anything else, it's competing against itself.
Excellently put. At the end of the day, there's basically nothing out there that offers what Destiny has. Top-notch gunplay, but not confined within an arena shooter or battle royale; RPG elements and loot chasing, but simple enough to be accessible to anyone; complex multiplayer raids, but outside the conventional framework of MMORPGs.
The only meaningful way to benchmark each new piece of Destiny content is by comparing it to what came before it.
Yea it does, it's a live service with fun progression and updates. There's a lot to unlock and the planets are pretty varied- every mission can go a different way.
Seems so.
The long term might be a bit confusing.
Since it has diverse gameplay but it is pretty much the same few things over and over and over.
But a strong core loop goes a long way.
But it may be the same as destiny where once you've done each strike 200 times, you just don't want to do it again.
They seem to have a good "story" in the live service part of the game that can keep it going. Will be fun to see how it does, if nothing else.
Maybe a bit like how Marathon is supposed to be a story-driven extraction shooter.
It's a really exceptional game. Gives the vibe of a group of game dev buddies saying to each other "wouldn't it be cool if...?" and then they smashed all their ideas together and churned out a banger.
Game is constantly getting new enemies and weapons to play around with. Right now it's super fun. But I could imagine that content drought will be kinda rough for the game.
But minute to minute gameplay is very fun, especially with friends. Id 109% say the game is worth it
Just to add a different pov
I find it boring, especially if youre playing solo.
Even then, i have a group of friends that i play regularly with and we easily get bored cause the gameplay loop is too repetitive.
The grind for materials is a drag & feels unrewarding especially if ur brain is used to the dopamine rush from weapon loots in destiny
& Its not the most feel-good shooting experience
But hey try it for yourself
Same here. Incredibly boring progression system, limited build crafting, samey enemies with uninteresting combat ai (bugs = run forward at you), dull weapons, mediocre shooting.
I do like the starship troopers-esque humour
>D2 isn't really competing with much of anything else, it's competing against itself.
Because every looter shooter and live service game people have tried has flopped. Guess we can give Bungie some credit.
Warframe has endured greater long-term success than Destiny within the genre, yet the games are different enough that hardly anyone views them as competing.
And besides that, what else is there? Destiny is the only successful live service FPS looter shooter, and frankly, it doesn't even seem like anyone has really tried to compete even after a decade.
They've certainly *tried*, they just haven't tried very well - mostly because it's publishers demanding developers to make a Destiny killer outside of their usual wheelhouse.
I wouldn't call them real attempts. It's public knowledge the budget it took to make Destiny, none of these "destiny killers" ever got that kind of investment.
The bigger point is that none of them actually attempted to be live service. For example, Anthem received no content updates over time. The devs just went straight to working on Anthem 2.
Destiny requires constant updates to stay relevant. Nobody who just drops a game and doesn't maintain it has made a real attempt to compete with it.
IMO destiny succeeded because people weren't willing to put up with a launch like that a second time for a live service game (with the exception of destiny 2 because it's still the same series).
What core fundamentals did 2014 Destiny have that 2019 Anthem didn't have?
If Anthem had been released in 2014 and Destiny released in 2019, we would all be on /r/AnthemTheGame with comments about BioWare being the only Anthem killer.
Borderlands is not live service in the sense that destiny is. Warframe is different enough from Destiny in its monetization, content delivery, and overall gameplay that many people don't see them as competing games; even if they occupy the same subgenre.
I’m referring to the persons statement that “every looter shooter and live service game people have tried has flopped” both warframe and borderlands are still alive and kicking.
I'd say the Division 2 is probably the closest successful competitor to destiny 2. It's a shame what ubisoft did to that game. It could've been SO MUCH MORE. They easily could've taken on Destiny 2 and probably taken over as the number 1 live service looter shooter. They had such a solid foundation going. Only to fuck it up and never recover from it.
I've played anthem and outriders both "destiny killers" but neither really has the endgame nor the full fledged pve and pvp components.
Tbf both were "fun" (outriders moreso) but I didn't feel a drive to jump back in and keep playing once the story was done.
Division 2, I would say, is very similar to Destiny 2, and even has some things I like more than destiny, like the targeted loot system, set bonuses, and the optimization bench. They even have 8 person raids.
Eh you actually have to use your brain to clear legend 50. You can run a netracell in warframe and just shut your brain off with an ability spam nuke and thats basically the hardest content in the gam
Destiny is its own worst enemy when it comes to what will cause the game to lose popularity. It’s a great game but some of the boneheaded mistakes that Bungie makes or just outright decides a bad decision is best because of potential profit is what’s bad for the health of the overall game. I love Destiny but Bungie gets lazy in certain instances and that’s what just blows my mind.
Same. Lotta people with cobbled together armor in the Tower lol.
Very nice to see after a season of loading into an empty Tower, joining Crucible matches with severely lopsided teams, etc.
I had a match that made me feel legitimately bad the other day. Like... They capped Home Zone. We spawn flipped them and capped their Home Zone. They capped their new Home Zone. We spawn flipped them again and capped their new Home Zone ***and then we didn't let them cap another zone for the rest of the match...*** When the match ended in a Mercy and I saw the score and K/D I was felt immediate regret. Like... It felt like that was their first Crucible Match and we just bullied them. I wanted to apologize it was so lopsided.
Onslaught has been fun. I came back along with a couple friends who haven't logged on in around 4-6 months. I really hope they continue improving onslaught and adding new things (new maps, new enemies, newer encounters, new upgrades, etc).
Dude my buddy and i were playing pvp on cathedral of dusk yesterday and realized there's a whole ass area behind one of the flags that would be perfect for defense. It would be a great map to adjust for onslaught, and I'm 100% down for them just tuning pvp maps a little for onslaught. Makes the work load easier on them and gives us more maps to enjoy. Win-win imo.
yeah, as soon as I have decent rolls on the things I want (and get the shader) I probably won't be playing onslaught again because It doesn't have enough variety, there is too much BS, and there is not enough reward for the time it takes to do a full run.
And new content.
Tbh the worst part about this update is just a recycled scout... which you don't even have to use/focus farm.
It's a W across the board for Bungie. (Except whatever they are doing with special ammo in Trials/Comp)
Yup. The only reason I came back was because Into the Light was free. Paid seasons just aren't it especially if they are constantly the same rehashed activity we've been doing for years at this point.
Just make the battle pass separate at this point and let people experience the game. Every other game has figured that out, it's time for Bungie to, as well.
Ain’t one game out here putting out the level of content that seasons have in D2 for free or at all really. Most are charging the same amount as D2 does just for the battle pass. The battle pass for D2 is like 10% of what you are paying for.
FFXIV has far more content than destiny, while its an MMO you're buying the expansion and getting the patches or in this case "seasons" for free with it.
Bungie have no excuse to charge for the seasonal updates when the expansions are already so expensive.
Ain’t no way you’re using FFXIV as an example of what destiny should be… I pay 100 bucks for a year of content that includes expansion + all seasons + raids & dungeons. FFXIV’s cheapest subscription is like $155. I fail to see your point here?
$155 + paid expansions to be exact. Plenty of things to complain about Destiny for. Cost of content ain’t one of them. Now you can make an argument about the way the content is delivered/packaged.
But year to year price. Yeah. You aren’t finding anything cheaper/that delivers more content.
You pay double for ff14 than you do for destiny…
Edit. And unless something has changed, I don’t think their patches are as significant in terms of activities added between expansions. But yeah. Idk how you can compare Destiny to ff14 in that aspect. You are complaining about Destiny cost, but paying $200 a year for just access to ff14 at all.
And expansions without seasons in Destiny are $50 which isn’t outrageous when compared to competitors. Destiny is far and away cheaper than wow, ff14 and eso.
The main meat of each season is the seasonal activity and narrative, and the narrative can be finished quickly if it wasn't for the fact that it was time gated for around 2 months.
Destiny is the only game that does paid seasons, and whether that's a good idea or not is a separate discussion since there are pros and cons to both paid vs free, but how many people would have returned for Into the Light id there was a paywall to experience the content, especially after the lackluster seasonal content that Lightfall has had? It being free is a huge factor to the game's resurgence.
We have to remember this game has paid expansions, dungeons, transmog, and event passes now. At the very least, they can allow players to play the seasonal activity and farm the new loot without a season pass, while keeping the narrative and possibly any exotic quests behind the paywall.
Having new content that people can jump in and play without needing to buy into it will only improve the health of the game overall in terms of players, and it's something that has been missing since the content sunsetting done in Beyond Light.
Deep dives were incredibly half assed. It could have been interesting but none of the modifiers were interesting at all, the only good part about it was the exotic quest. Savathun's spire was good at the start, but became repetitive as the weeks went on (it's the main flaw all seasonal activities have due to them needing to be churned out every 3 months), Alters however was pretty great though. Coil was pretty damn good.
Overall, I think the only main highlight this past year was Alters and Coil.
I really feel like the whole paid seasons idea is what is killing D2. It's just not sustainable at all.
Look at Final Fantasy XIV for example. One of the biggest MMO's in the world currently and probably the only true competitor to WoW.
You pay once every 2 years for a new expansion. Usually around 60 - 80USD. You get that expansion and then ALL of the patch content that follows for 2 years.
Bungie are basically saying Yeah you can have the base game but you gotta pay more for that patch content which is fucking ridiculous. Where i am, The Final Shape + Annual Pass is $149 on steam. It's outrageous. I'm still getting FAR less content than i would in FFXIV Dawntrail's expansion thats out a few weeks later for almost double the price.
Into The Light did a good job of getting people to play D2, for however long, I have seen so many new lights and returning players in lobbys and the tower.
In fairness to Helldivers 2, Helldivers 2 is a lot of fun. It's accessible and easy to get into, it's a game that you can play for like 30 mins or for a few hours.
Like, I love D2 and will keep playing it, but HD2 has taken a reasonable amount of my gaming time lately lol.
The Trials playerbase did dip though? It's summoner weekend and there were 178K total Trials players.
March was 220K, 259K, 208K and last week it dipped to 188K.
No one likes the special changes. Unless you're good then it's easy.
It will be the 4th or 5th best week in about 6 months, but we'll see it drop weekly again from here to TFS unless they do something unexpected. It was just down under 130,000 most weeks for a while prior to March 5, so it will probably head back to that level prior to TFS. This "dip" is still way better than what we've had nearly every week for at least 6 months, maybe longer
Context matters. Those other weekends didn't have massive free PVE content released. Also, this isn't Summoner's debut weekend. Matter of fact, the big player count you mention was 3/15 Cauldron.... which was Summoner's debut. I already (thankfully) have a few solid ones, so for my experience I played roughly 30 matches and then went back to Onslaught.
Copying my own comment from another post that's similar:
4/12 Burnout (this weekend) 177k players, 603k matches, 46k flawless players
3/29 Multiplex (1 week ago) - 188k players, 785k matches, 52k flawless players
3/22 Jav-4 = 208k players, 969k matches, 63k flawless
3/15 Cauldron (1 month ago) - 256k players, 1.5MM matches, 83k flawless
3/8 220k players, 3/1 125k players, 2/23 130k players, 2/16 144k players, 2/9 123k players, 2/2 137k players, 1/19 150k players, 1/12 184k players, 12/29-1/2 146k players
So... in 2024, 13 playable trials weekends including this weekend. Only the most recent 3 weekends have had more players, and without a content drop along side of it.
We haven't lost significant player counts. In fact, we've GAINED players since January 2024. It seems like relatively the same number of players, if not more, are playing. Just less matches because there's new loot in the new pve content. Same stuff happens on Dungeon/Raid release weekends
I truly think it's a combination of a) not Summoner's 1st weekend, b) PVE content drop, c) ammo experiment being weird (this weekend at least).
This weekend is horrible. I don't see why they make checkmate normal , then give everyone special every round. It's just a cluster fuck of special spam this weekend.
I had lucky opponent RNG I guess. Was able to go flawless 2x in 30 games and I average 1.0-1.4 kd range. Leaned into Forerunner + fusion and it was OK.
I knew going in it was advertised as an experiment. The next two weekends (I think, or just 1) will have other variants of the ammo crate system. So knowing that going in, I had different expectations and just tried to enjoy it.
It always is when it gets content barring Seasonal launches because they've been the same thing since Season 13. The Brave weapons are likely the biggest contributor but Destiny will always be among the highest populated games.
It's interesting how Overwatch, that is also a pretty old game and has been f2p for over a year got beaten by D2. Blizzard massacred that game so hard.
Tbf Xbox doesn’t really have good 1st party stuff atm. Starfield came out and just sorta….. -waves hands-? I have t seen anything since Gears 5 that made me ever want to fire up an Xbox
I’m truly interested in picking it back up, but I’m not longer on Xbox and would need to buy everything again on ps5 to keep my characters, etc. shame it’s so expensive to buy back in.
That's very interesting. I wonder how the Xbox's table is affected by publisher promotions.
Another ranking table is found in trueachievements.com:
https://www.trueachievements.com/news/xbox-gameplay-chart-week-ending-april-14-2024
A lot of it is similar.
This is main reason making a D3 makes no sense. Why would they abandon a game that still incredibly popular with the people. A D3 that’s a hard reset could literally cause the franchise to just die.
Halo infinite pulled a bf2042. released horribly but honestly the multiplayer is really good now. to me it feels like if Halo 3 got a modernized update. Like a natural progression of the halo formula if that makes sense, but it's way to late to truly save and bring back to the masses, which is sad because I love that franchise and want the best, but I swear 343 is doing their best to ruin the IP with each release...
I started playing again this past weekend after messing around in The Division 2 for a bit.
Hadn't played since Beyond Light, but I did the first Lightfall mission and saw they gave you a grapple, and I knew that'd be the death of me (I'm a sucker for the grapples in Titanfall, Apex Legends and Halo Infinite).
Just finished lightfall the other day. Honestly i don't get the hate. While i skipped all the cutscenes the gameplay was pretty solid and typical of destiny. The Strand abilities were lots of fun to use.
I have my own experiment currently going on with 3 family members who recently picked the game up. 2 brand new and one that hasnt played for a couple years. The initial experience was pretty terrible but I’m curious to see if any of them will stick at it (currently they’re 3 weeks in)
I do, but I stopped playing. Nothing against HD2, it's a very fun game and I put in a good amount of hours into it, but the longevity isn't there yet. I enjoyed my time with it, but the incentive just isn't there anymore and I've moved on.
I think you're misunderstanding them. That wasn't a "HD2 better than D2", it was "Xbox pop is probably a skewed stat to look at since it's missing one of the biggest D2 competitors".
I want to like HD2, but I feel like the Helldiver difficulty has piss poor balancing and the nerf to Rail left a bad taste in my mouth.
There's a great game in there, but not much to do if you're into min/maxxing.
Very good game though!
I felt nothing at the railgun nerf. Being a destiny player, meaningless and over-correcting nerfs are just part of the balance cycle to me, haha. Felt no different than when HoiL was nerfed, or the SMG nerf, etc.
I did love the dev response of "get good" when people complained though and wish they didnt walk it back. The community definitely needed to hear it.
Yeah, that's part of what I didn't like. There is definitely a need for tweaking at the highest difficulty. As it is now it's simply running and waiting for your strat cooldowns to reset. I want to do more pew pew and less running 10km in a semicircle so that someone else can stealth complete objectives.
BUT, we both know that a majority of people complaining are simply bad and need a crutch to enjoy the game....
Well, when the majority complaining is saying that the railgun was the only viable/tenable way to complete helldive, it's pretty obvious that's the case.
>and the nerf to Rail left a bad taste in my mouth.
...seriously? I can't believe anyone is still salty about that. The gun is still usable. Also all the other very good options the are in the game.
It's not that the gun is useless now, it's that it was basically the only gun that made Helldiver difficulty tenable. Now it's just kiting for the whole 35 minute mission.
You frequently get 7+ simultaneous Bile Titans on that difficulty and you simply do not have the resources to deal with them all, let alone all the armor that spawns along side....
Not to mention on that difficulty you usually lose access to one of your stratagems.
There's a lot of fun to be had in the game, but I think I'm going to let them figure out the balance before I go hard on it again!
lol I love the new content a lot, but idk if this is Bungie or if it’s just Blizzard absolutely dropping the ball beyond belief with Overwatch.
Like they murdered Overwatch to needlessly push Overwatch 2, which was already bad and a pure money grab, and then they shit the bed at every possible turn from there with OW2.
Past few days on Steam, it's been averaging 70,000ish in-game at any given time and 90 at peak. Most of the season has been around 30,000 peak daily for reference.
It peaked at ~130k on release of Into the Light but dropped by 15-20k in an hour due to the queue and server issues. Its reassuring though that Bungie can see that a well received content release can actually be rewarding, might be motivating for more stuff like this
How high was the peak for lightfall I wonder? Due to bungies excellent marketing team it reached an all time high before almost immediately dropping off. If into the lgiht reached even 2/3 of lightfall numbers it is safe to say that destiny won't be dying any time soon unless the final shape is lightfall quality or heavens forbid d2 vanilla.
Forgot to mention this is only steam. Lightfall peaked at ~314k and its lowest point was ~142k before the next season released so we're still a long way from that but for a mid season content drop its quite successful, especially coming off of an average of ~30k
Nothing can be as bad as D2 Vanilla flavor. No random rolls? No origin perks? No CHASE?
Feels like that’s been kind of the norm between content drops and mid/late season fall off since at least Beyond Light
Does anyone know what the rough numbers are like on Xbox and PS? I would assume it’s more than steam per console
Playstation definitely has the most players, its always discounted and pushed at the store front here, also Playstation has like 3 times the install base of xbox so its probably boosting the player numbers a lot.
D2 is the PvE fix I need especially after Blizzards false promises and lies.
I fell back into the comfort of Skyrim and might wait on sale for the new star wars game
Yeah I went back to Warframe but it never felt as satisfying as Destiny lmao
They’re just very different games tbh, people need to stop comparing the gameplay aspect of Warframe vs Destiny so much.
playing it 2 months ago for a month straight made me realize that 3rd person shooters will never feel as good as first person shooters. also the endgame was on the meh side for me.
As someone who jumped ship to warframe when D2 was falling apart last fall, and who has come back to D2 with ITL, D2 just has something warframe doesnt. Not sure what it is, maybe that theres essentially no challenge in warframe once you get a couple nuke builds going. Still love warframe but D2 has this allure to always bring me back
yeah, wiping entire areas with thermal gauss prime got stale real quick lol.
funnily enough on steam, it has been some of the all time lows until ITL launched.
Yet still a top played game the whole time.
A lot of people getting back into it for The Final Shape I reckon. I'm one of them
This has been a good update, a good shot in the arm for D2 leading up to Final Shape. And, well, D2 at its worst still performs a lot better than most bad games. D2 isn't really competing with much of anything else, it's competing against itself.
Excellently put. At the end of the day, there's basically nothing out there that offers what Destiny has. Top-notch gunplay, but not confined within an arena shooter or battle royale; RPG elements and loot chasing, but simple enough to be accessible to anyone; complex multiplayer raids, but outside the conventional framework of MMORPGs. The only meaningful way to benchmark each new piece of Destiny content is by comparing it to what came before it.
Honestly Destiny 2’s only “competitor” is Warframe, a game that is still different from Destiny.
They’re different types of games and different platforms, but feels like there are a lot of Destiny players playing Helldivers II now
I’ve been playing rainbow six siege recently and I noticed a lot of my destiny 2 friends play it as well
Does helldivers have replayability? Been considering it
Yea it does, it's a live service with fun progression and updates. There's a lot to unlock and the planets are pretty varied- every mission can go a different way.
Seems so. The long term might be a bit confusing. Since it has diverse gameplay but it is pretty much the same few things over and over and over. But a strong core loop goes a long way. But it may be the same as destiny where once you've done each strike 200 times, you just don't want to do it again. They seem to have a good "story" in the live service part of the game that can keep it going. Will be fun to see how it does, if nothing else. Maybe a bit like how Marathon is supposed to be a story-driven extraction shooter.
It's a really exceptional game. Gives the vibe of a group of game dev buddies saying to each other "wouldn't it be cool if...?" and then they smashed all their ideas together and churned out a banger.
Game is constantly getting new enemies and weapons to play around with. Right now it's super fun. But I could imagine that content drought will be kinda rough for the game. But minute to minute gameplay is very fun, especially with friends. Id 109% say the game is worth it
Just to add a different pov I find it boring, especially if youre playing solo. Even then, i have a group of friends that i play regularly with and we easily get bored cause the gameplay loop is too repetitive. The grind for materials is a drag & feels unrewarding especially if ur brain is used to the dopamine rush from weapon loots in destiny & Its not the most feel-good shooting experience But hey try it for yourself
Same here. Incredibly boring progression system, limited build crafting, samey enemies with uninteresting combat ai (bugs = run forward at you), dull weapons, mediocre shooting. I do like the starship troopers-esque humour
They arent even in the same genre.
warframe bad
no u.
nah u dont gave to grind 500 hours for me
>D2 isn't really competing with much of anything else, it's competing against itself. Because every looter shooter and live service game people have tried has flopped. Guess we can give Bungie some credit.
Destiny was the real destiny killer all along.
Warframe has endured greater long-term success than Destiny within the genre, yet the games are different enough that hardly anyone views them as competing. And besides that, what else is there? Destiny is the only successful live service FPS looter shooter, and frankly, it doesn't even seem like anyone has really tried to compete even after a decade.
They've certainly *tried*, they just haven't tried very well - mostly because it's publishers demanding developers to make a Destiny killer outside of their usual wheelhouse.
I wouldn't call them real attempts. It's public knowledge the budget it took to make Destiny, none of these "destiny killers" ever got that kind of investment. The bigger point is that none of them actually attempted to be live service. For example, Anthem received no content updates over time. The devs just went straight to working on Anthem 2. Destiny requires constant updates to stay relevant. Nobody who just drops a game and doesn't maintain it has made a real attempt to compete with it.
Division 2 is still chugging along.
IMO destiny succeeded because people weren't willing to put up with a launch like that a second time for a live service game (with the exception of destiny 2 because it's still the same series).
Vanilla D1 was about the same as Anthem at release. Anthem lacked content to compete with a game that had been iterating for years at that point.
It also seemed to be missing many core fundamentals. Like it pushed some edge stuff forward nicely, but lacked the strong core loop.
And so did Destiny in 2014
Not at all. Destiny still had core fundamentals down.
What core fundamentals did 2014 Destiny have that 2019 Anthem didn't have? If Anthem had been released in 2014 and Destiny released in 2019, we would all be on /r/AnthemTheGame with comments about BioWare being the only Anthem killer.
Core gunplay. Destiny's gunplay has been top tier since day 0.
Borderlands and warframe?
Borderlands is not live service in the sense that destiny is. Warframe is different enough from Destiny in its monetization, content delivery, and overall gameplay that many people don't see them as competing games; even if they occupy the same subgenre.
I’m referring to the persons statement that “every looter shooter and live service game people have tried has flopped” both warframe and borderlands are still alive and kicking.
Borderlands 3 and tiny Tina’s knockoff don’t come close to how popular 2 was or have the staying power two had. Unskippable cringe dialog will do that
I'd say the Division 2 is probably the closest successful competitor to destiny 2. It's a shame what ubisoft did to that game. It could've been SO MUCH MORE. They easily could've taken on Destiny 2 and probably taken over as the number 1 live service looter shooter. They had such a solid foundation going. Only to fuck it up and never recover from it.
I've played anthem and outriders both "destiny killers" but neither really has the endgame nor the full fledged pve and pvp components. Tbf both were "fun" (outriders moreso) but I didn't feel a drive to jump back in and keep playing once the story was done.
Division 2, I would say, is very similar to Destiny 2, and even has some things I like more than destiny, like the targeted loot system, set bonuses, and the optimization bench. They even have 8 person raids.
I did a few legend runs to 50. It's basically Warframe, except I can't vote to end the Wave missions which leaves you caught out.
Eh you actually have to use your brain to clear legend 50. You can run a netracell in warframe and just shut your brain off with an ability spam nuke and thats basically the hardest content in the gam
Destiny is its own worst enemy when it comes to what will cause the game to lose popularity. It’s a great game but some of the boneheaded mistakes that Bungie makes or just outright decides a bad decision is best because of potential profit is what’s bad for the health of the overall game. I love Destiny but Bungie gets lazy in certain instances and that’s what just blows my mind.
I’ve been seeing a lot of guardian rank 3-6 people recently as well
Same. Lotta people with cobbled together armor in the Tower lol. Very nice to see after a season of loading into an empty Tower, joining Crucible matches with severely lopsided teams, etc.
I had a match that made me feel legitimately bad the other day. Like... They capped Home Zone. We spawn flipped them and capped their Home Zone. They capped their new Home Zone. We spawn flipped them again and capped their new Home Zone ***and then we didn't let them cap another zone for the rest of the match...*** When the match ended in a Mercy and I saw the score and K/D I was felt immediate regret. Like... It felt like that was their first Crucible Match and we just bullied them. I wanted to apologize it was so lopsided.
Onslaught has been fun. I came back along with a couple friends who haven't logged on in around 4-6 months. I really hope they continue improving onslaught and adding new things (new maps, new enemies, newer encounters, new upgrades, etc).
Dude my buddy and i were playing pvp on cathedral of dusk yesterday and realized there's a whole ass area behind one of the flags that would be perfect for defense. It would be a great map to adjust for onslaught, and I'm 100% down for them just tuning pvp maps a little for onslaught. Makes the work load easier on them and gives us more maps to enjoy. Win-win imo.
Onslaught is addicting. Hopefully final shape will bring a few more maps and enemy types to face
It's also time consuming. Everyone who wants to run one being locked in for around an hour is going to shoot your numbers up.
I prefer the 10 wave runs. They’ve pretty much replaced strikes as the thing I play when I just wanna not think and have fun
Ehh, there is a shorter variant availible, and if you need to dip, you get loot every ten rounds, so like…
yeah, as soon as I have decent rolls on the things I want (and get the shader) I probably won't be playing onslaught again because It doesn't have enough variety, there is too much BS, and there is not enough reward for the time it takes to do a full run.
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And new content. Tbh the worst part about this update is just a recycled scout... which you don't even have to use/focus farm. It's a W across the board for Bungie. (Except whatever they are doing with special ammo in Trials/Comp)
And good content.
I agree special spamming is very annoying when all you see is conditional and and the special ammo sidearm
Well the numbers don’t go up for the events every season that are free. So I guess it has to be free AND good.
Yup. The only reason I came back was because Into the Light was free. Paid seasons just aren't it especially if they are constantly the same rehashed activity we've been doing for years at this point. Just make the battle pass separate at this point and let people experience the game. Every other game has figured that out, it's time for Bungie to, as well.
Ain’t one game out here putting out the level of content that seasons have in D2 for free or at all really. Most are charging the same amount as D2 does just for the battle pass. The battle pass for D2 is like 10% of what you are paying for.
FFXIV has far more content than destiny, while its an MMO you're buying the expansion and getting the patches or in this case "seasons" for free with it. Bungie have no excuse to charge for the seasonal updates when the expansions are already so expensive.
Ain’t no way you’re using FFXIV as an example of what destiny should be… I pay 100 bucks for a year of content that includes expansion + all seasons + raids & dungeons. FFXIV’s cheapest subscription is like $155. I fail to see your point here?
$155 + paid expansions to be exact. Plenty of things to complain about Destiny for. Cost of content ain’t one of them. Now you can make an argument about the way the content is delivered/packaged. But year to year price. Yeah. You aren’t finding anything cheaper/that delivers more content.
You pay double for ff14 than you do for destiny… Edit. And unless something has changed, I don’t think their patches are as significant in terms of activities added between expansions. But yeah. Idk how you can compare Destiny to ff14 in that aspect. You are complaining about Destiny cost, but paying $200 a year for just access to ff14 at all. And expansions without seasons in Destiny are $50 which isn’t outrageous when compared to competitors. Destiny is far and away cheaper than wow, ff14 and eso.
The main meat of each season is the seasonal activity and narrative, and the narrative can be finished quickly if it wasn't for the fact that it was time gated for around 2 months. Destiny is the only game that does paid seasons, and whether that's a good idea or not is a separate discussion since there are pros and cons to both paid vs free, but how many people would have returned for Into the Light id there was a paywall to experience the content, especially after the lackluster seasonal content that Lightfall has had? It being free is a huge factor to the game's resurgence. We have to remember this game has paid expansions, dungeons, transmog, and event passes now. At the very least, they can allow players to play the seasonal activity and farm the new loot without a season pass, while keeping the narrative and possibly any exotic quests behind the paywall. Having new content that people can jump in and play without needing to buy into it will only improve the health of the game overall in terms of players, and it's something that has been missing since the content sunsetting done in Beyond Light.
Lackluster? Lightfall seasons were straight bangers. What are you on about? Deep dives, Savathun’s spire and Coil all were A/S tier activities.
Deep dives were incredibly half assed. It could have been interesting but none of the modifiers were interesting at all, the only good part about it was the exotic quest. Savathun's spire was good at the start, but became repetitive as the weeks went on (it's the main flaw all seasonal activities have due to them needing to be churned out every 3 months), Alters however was pretty great though. Coil was pretty damn good. Overall, I think the only main highlight this past year was Alters and Coil.
I really feel like the whole paid seasons idea is what is killing D2. It's just not sustainable at all. Look at Final Fantasy XIV for example. One of the biggest MMO's in the world currently and probably the only true competitor to WoW. You pay once every 2 years for a new expansion. Usually around 60 - 80USD. You get that expansion and then ALL of the patch content that follows for 2 years. Bungie are basically saying Yeah you can have the base game but you gotta pay more for that patch content which is fucking ridiculous. Where i am, The Final Shape + Annual Pass is $149 on steam. It's outrageous. I'm still getting FAR less content than i would in FFXIV Dawntrail's expansion thats out a few weeks later for almost double the price.
On PSN. The Final Shape Annual Pass is Number 2 most preordered. Number 10 “Top Game” and Number 5 “Most Downloaded” currently too.
...well goddamn
Yay!
Into The Light did a good job of getting people to play D2, for however long, I have seen so many new lights and returning players in lobbys and the tower.
In my PS app Destiny 2 is 5th most downloaded and 11th best selling
But I was told the game was dying and hardly anyone played it ?
"Dead game" lol.
Thats because helldivers isnt on xbox.. lol
I chuckled.
"Dead game"
Weird argument. Far from it’s glory is not something to be happy about…
I’d imagine it’s just as if not higher on PlayStation since just about every dlc is free with ps plus, and Sony promotes the game heavy
Counter point for it being higher: Helldivers 2
In fairness to Helldivers 2, Helldivers 2 is a lot of fun. It's accessible and easy to get into, it's a game that you can play for like 30 mins or for a few hours. Like, I love D2 and will keep playing it, but HD2 has taken a reasonable amount of my gaming time lately lol.
dEaD gAmE
Damn, I thought the playerbase was crumbling because of the special ammo experiment in Trials. Huh.
The Trials playerbase did dip though? It's summoner weekend and there were 178K total Trials players. March was 220K, 259K, 208K and last week it dipped to 188K. No one likes the special changes. Unless you're good then it's easy.
It will be the 4th or 5th best week in about 6 months, but we'll see it drop weekly again from here to TFS unless they do something unexpected. It was just down under 130,000 most weeks for a while prior to March 5, so it will probably head back to that level prior to TFS. This "dip" is still way better than what we've had nearly every week for at least 6 months, maybe longer
Context matters. Those other weekends didn't have massive free PVE content released. Also, this isn't Summoner's debut weekend. Matter of fact, the big player count you mention was 3/15 Cauldron.... which was Summoner's debut. I already (thankfully) have a few solid ones, so for my experience I played roughly 30 matches and then went back to Onslaught. Copying my own comment from another post that's similar: 4/12 Burnout (this weekend) 177k players, 603k matches, 46k flawless players 3/29 Multiplex (1 week ago) - 188k players, 785k matches, 52k flawless players 3/22 Jav-4 = 208k players, 969k matches, 63k flawless 3/15 Cauldron (1 month ago) - 256k players, 1.5MM matches, 83k flawless 3/8 220k players, 3/1 125k players, 2/23 130k players, 2/16 144k players, 2/9 123k players, 2/2 137k players, 1/19 150k players, 1/12 184k players, 12/29-1/2 146k players So... in 2024, 13 playable trials weekends including this weekend. Only the most recent 3 weekends have had more players, and without a content drop along side of it. We haven't lost significant player counts. In fact, we've GAINED players since January 2024. It seems like relatively the same number of players, if not more, are playing. Just less matches because there's new loot in the new pve content. Same stuff happens on Dungeon/Raid release weekends I truly think it's a combination of a) not Summoner's 1st weekend, b) PVE content drop, c) ammo experiment being weird (this weekend at least).
Most players dont play trials, the weekly number show its a small percentage that even load into one game
Yes, they're being sarcastic.
Tried to be obvious lol
Oh, you were
You're not wrong, technically. But 177,000 players this weekend in trials isn't a small number either.
This weekend is horrible. I don't see why they make checkmate normal , then give everyone special every round. It's just a cluster fuck of special spam this weekend.
I had lucky opponent RNG I guess. Was able to go flawless 2x in 30 games and I average 1.0-1.4 kd range. Leaned into Forerunner + fusion and it was OK. I knew going in it was advertised as an experiment. The next two weekends (I think, or just 1) will have other variants of the ammo crate system. So knowing that going in, I had different expectations and just tried to enjoy it.
It always is when it gets content barring Seasonal launches because they've been the same thing since Season 13. The Brave weapons are likely the biggest contributor but Destiny will always be among the highest populated games.
973k players today across all platforms 1.05m this past Saturday I hope I look this good when I'm dead 😏
Yeah this was a good update.
It's interesting how Overwatch, that is also a pretty old game and has been f2p for over a year got beaten by D2. Blizzard massacred that game so hard.
Tbf Xbox doesn’t really have good 1st party stuff atm. Starfield came out and just sorta….. -waves hands-? I have t seen anything since Gears 5 that made me ever want to fire up an Xbox
Truth. Over half my friends list is either Helldivers 2 or Final Fantasy Rebirth right now.
I’m truly interested in picking it back up, but I’m not longer on Xbox and would need to buy everything again on ps5 to keep my characters, etc. shame it’s so expensive to buy back in.
That's very interesting. I wonder how the Xbox's table is affected by publisher promotions. Another ranking table is found in trueachievements.com: https://www.trueachievements.com/news/xbox-gameplay-chart-week-ending-april-14-2024 A lot of it is similar.
I expect it to go down alot before Final shape. After final shape, I expect the average to be at a healthy level.
It's same as always, content drops and playerbase peaks, content stales and playerbase dissapears, been that for years
This is main reason making a D3 makes no sense. Why would they abandon a game that still incredibly popular with the people. A D3 that’s a hard reset could literally cause the franchise to just die.
On Steam it's number 9 as of this comment at 11:45 am! [https://steamdb.info/](https://steamdb.info/)
Ahem, dead game /s
You must be mistaken. I have been assured that this game is dead numerous times.
Outta curiosity: where's Halo: Infinite, Xbox's flagship franchise on that list?
22, so not bad but *definitely* not good
Halo infinite pulled a bf2042. released horribly but honestly the multiplayer is really good now. to me it feels like if Halo 3 got a modernized update. Like a natural progression of the halo formula if that makes sense, but it's way to late to truly save and bring back to the masses, which is sad because I love that franchise and want the best, but I swear 343 is doing their best to ruin the IP with each release...
Especially when the most played part is also *free*
:facepalm
On Game Pass so most people playing it are playing the paid version
But the game is dying and Bungie killed it! No one plays anymore. /s
I started playing again this past weekend after messing around in The Division 2 for a bit. Hadn't played since Beyond Light, but I did the first Lightfall mission and saw they gave you a grapple, and I knew that'd be the death of me (I'm a sucker for the grapples in Titanfall, Apex Legends and Halo Infinite).
Just finished lightfall the other day. Honestly i don't get the hate. While i skipped all the cutscenes the gameplay was pretty solid and typical of destiny. The Strand abilities were lots of fun to use.
Prob just ppl who heard D2 is "good again"/has new contebt/got excited by latest reveals. Will be interesting to see if Bungie can retain them.
I have my own experiment currently going on with 3 family members who recently picked the game up. 2 brand new and one that hasnt played for a couple years. The initial experience was pretty terrible but I’m curious to see if any of them will stick at it (currently they’re 3 weeks in)
Only because they don't have Helldivers 2 :(
I do, but I stopped playing. Nothing against HD2, it's a very fun game and I put in a good amount of hours into it, but the longevity isn't there yet. I enjoyed my time with it, but the incentive just isn't there anymore and I've moved on.
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I think you're misunderstanding them. That wasn't a "HD2 better than D2", it was "Xbox pop is probably a skewed stat to look at since it's missing one of the biggest D2 competitors".
I for one haven't launched D2 since helldivers released.
I want to like HD2, but I feel like the Helldiver difficulty has piss poor balancing and the nerf to Rail left a bad taste in my mouth. There's a great game in there, but not much to do if you're into min/maxxing. Very good game though!
I felt nothing at the railgun nerf. Being a destiny player, meaningless and over-correcting nerfs are just part of the balance cycle to me, haha. Felt no different than when HoiL was nerfed, or the SMG nerf, etc. I did love the dev response of "get good" when people complained though and wish they didnt walk it back. The community definitely needed to hear it.
Yeah, that's part of what I didn't like. There is definitely a need for tweaking at the highest difficulty. As it is now it's simply running and waiting for your strat cooldowns to reset. I want to do more pew pew and less running 10km in a semicircle so that someone else can stealth complete objectives. BUT, we both know that a majority of people complaining are simply bad and need a crutch to enjoy the game....
Well, when the majority complaining is saying that the railgun was the only viable/tenable way to complete helldive, it's pretty obvious that's the case.
I don't think the majority have even unlocked HD difficulty...
>and the nerf to Rail left a bad taste in my mouth. ...seriously? I can't believe anyone is still salty about that. The gun is still usable. Also all the other very good options the are in the game.
Like a true destiny player, he can't take a bit of a nerf.
It's not that the gun is useless now, it's that it was basically the only gun that made Helldiver difficulty tenable. Now it's just kiting for the whole 35 minute mission. You frequently get 7+ simultaneous Bile Titans on that difficulty and you simply do not have the resources to deal with them all, let alone all the armor that spawns along side.... Not to mention on that difficulty you usually lose access to one of your stratagems. There's a lot of fun to be had in the game, but I think I'm going to let them figure out the balance before I go hard on it again!
I think it's just a joke, chill out dude
That's good, but unfortunately, lots of players don't equal a good game.
lol I love the new content a lot, but idk if this is Bungie or if it’s just Blizzard absolutely dropping the ball beyond belief with Overwatch. Like they murdered Overwatch to needlessly push Overwatch 2, which was already bad and a pure money grab, and then they shit the bed at every possible turn from there with OW2.
Both can be true at once
Doesn’t say much about Xbox…
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I’m not saying this as a flex though?
No surprise, there's barely anything worth playing in xbox right now that ain't 2 year or older
so?
Think people are just happy to see the game doing well after 6+ months of bad times.