News - Building a Viable Future in Destiny 2

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Building a Viable Future in Destiny 2

• Destiny 2 is too large to efficiently update and maintain.
  
  
• The size and complexity of the game are also contributing to more bugs
  
  and less innovation.
  
  
• Instead of building a Destiny 3 and leaving D2 behind, each year, we
  
  are going to cycle older, less actively played content out of the live game and
  
  into what we’re calling the Destiny Content Vault (DCV).
  
  
• This will allow us to add to and support D2 for years, including the three
  
  new annual expansions we announced today, starting with Beyond Light this
  
  fall.
  
  
• The DCV will include all content from Destiny 1 and anything that
  
  cycles out from Destiny 2. 
  
  
• We will bring back (or “unvault”) activity and destination content
  
  from the DCV each year. 
  
  
• Unvaulting starts in D2 Year 4, with the Cosmodrome coming back, as
  
  well as its three strikes and the return of the Vault of Glass raid.
  
  
• The primary D2 content leaving the game and going into the DCV this
  
  fall are the destinations – Mars, Io, Titan, Mercury and Leviathan – and their supported
  
  activities.
  
  
• There will be new ways to earn the Exotics originally linked to content that
  
  has entered the DCV.
  
  
• When Beyond Light ships, the Director will have the following
  
  destinations: 
  
  • • Europa (new)
      
      
    • Cosmodrome (unvaulted) 
      
      
    • Moon 
      
      
    • Tangled Shore 
      
      
    • Dreaming City 
      
      
    • European Dead Zone 
      
      
    • Nessus
      
  
  
• This approach allows us respond to player feedback more rapidly,
  
  enable more innovation, and will keep Destiny 2 and your characters thriving for
  
  years to come.
  
  
• More details to come
  
  soon and throughout the year.
  

Earlier

today, we laid out a vision for Destiny’s future, built right inside of Destiny 2. A future where we maintain your

characters, accounts, and continuity with our game systems and build on each of

them for years. This fall ushers in a new era in Destiny’s journey, launching

off a trilogy of expansions where your Guardians will explore the true nature

of Light and Dark:



Put plainly, we are investing in Destiny 2 for years to come. But to

continue your Guardian’s journey and deliver on this roadmap, we need to make

some changes to our ever-growing world so it can flourish.   

The Limits of Growth

Over the

past couple months, we’ve mentioned the problems that come with maintaining a

game the size of Destiny 2; and we’ve said that it cannot grow infinitely.

After three years of non-stop growth, the scope and complexity of Destiny 2 has

ballooned to unprecedented scale.

As of this

writing, Destiny 2 features nine destinations, 40 story missions, 54

adventures, 42 Lost Sectors, 17 strikes, 31 PvP maps, 12 one-off special

activities (like Menagerie or Zero Hour), seven raids, six Gambit arenas, three

dungeons, many, many

quests, patrols, public events, and of course, thousands of associated rewards.

All of that, plus hundreds of game systems which layer on top of that content.

This

unrelenting growth has resulted in a game that requires players to download up

to 115GB to play, as well as huge patches tied to frequent updates. And those numbers

are rising rapidly, as we’ve been adding approximately 25GB of content each

year to Destiny 2 since launch. Those sizes not only stress hard drive capacity

but also push the limits of patching capability. It also makes the time to

generate a stable update for the game after all content is finalized, tested, and ready to go balloon to literal days instead of hours.

Worse

still, that 115GB includes a lot of content that isn’t relevant anymore – and

can’t remain relevant – as we evolve the world and introduce new experiences

that will take center stage instead. For example: Warmind’s campaign represents

only 0.3% of all time played in Season of the Worthy and yet the Warmind

Expansion accounts for 5% of our total install size. This dramatic

imbalance between player engagement and overall cost to maintain is found in a lot

of our legacy content.

Impact on the Live Game

Maintaining

that much content in perpetuity slows down our ability to update the game with

fresh experiences, reduces our ability to innovate, and delays our reaction to

community feedback. The test surface alone is massive, to say nothing

about how it impacts our designers, artists, and engineers trying to make cool

new stuff every day under the weight of the crushing complexity of our scale.

Unfortunately

it also means that we sometimes ship content that doesn’t meet the quality bar

we’ve set for ourselves and that our players have come to expect. Recent

examples are the issues with Felwinter’s Lie quest or when we had to perform

our first-ever rollback of player progress due

to a bug. 

Our

ambition is for Destiny 2 to be the best Action MMO in the world and that means

being far more agile and nimble than we are today. But the simple fact is that our

game’s size and complexity prevents us from improving Destiny as fast as we –

and you – would like. 

The “Destiny Content Vault”

With Destiny

1, we solved the “ever expanding, exponential complexity” problem by making a

sequel in Destiny 2. We left behind all of Destiny 1’s content and many of the

features players grew to love. We believe now that it was a mistake to create a

situation that fractured the community, reset player progress, and set the

player experience back in ways that took us a full year to recover from and

repair. It’s a mistake we don’t want to repeat by making a Destiny 3. We don’t

believe a sequel is the right direction for the game and for the past two years

we have been investing all of our development effort into new content, gameplay,

and new engine features that directly support a single evolving world in Destiny

2.

To create a sustainable ecosystem where the world can

continue to evolve in exciting ways, and where we can update the game more

quickly, we’re going to adopt a new content model that we’re calling the Destiny

Content Vault (DCV). Each year, usually at the expansion boundaries, we

will cycle some destination and activity content out of the game (and into the

DCV) to make room for new experiences.

The first cycle of Destiny 2 content going into the DCV

begins this fall, with the appearance of the Pyramid ships in Season of

Arrivals and the Beyond Light expansion, which we revealed today. Those

events will usher in dramatic changes to the Destiny universe, affecting characters,

destinations, and Guardians for years to come.

To set a

new maintainable foundation for the game this fall and to create room for Beyond

Light and the future roadmap, the first Destiny 2 deposit into the DCV will

be larger than those to come in the future.

Curating the Vault

Content

that goes into the Destiny Content Vault may return in the future, altered (if

necessary) to fit the new state of the universe. Furthermore, we consider all

Destiny 1 and 2 destinations and activities part of the new DCV and we’re going

to be pulling from that archive – revisiting some of the most interesting

places in Destiny’s history – from now onwards. It’s why the original Destiny 1

Raid – the Vault of Glass – will be returning to Destiny 2 in Year 4.

Going

forward, our explicit goal will be to try to keep the scope and scale of Destiny

2 at a relatively consistent size in order to increase our agility and to be

able to properly support and maintain the game. Over the course of each year,

the game’s content scope will grow as we add new destinations and activities in

our expansions and Seasons. As we approach the next expansion, another cycle of

content will go into the DCV to make way for a new influx of destinations and

activities. 

We will

always do our best to give early notice of what’s being cycled into the DCV, to

help you and your friends plan around how you want to complete your collections

and build up your account before the new Destiny year starts. The vast majority

of content we choose to vault will also be from destinations and activities

that have been free for all players for several months prior to their

departure. For example: the Curse of Osiris campaign, which has been free since

Shadowkeep launched in October 2019, and part of the Destiny 2 experience since

December 2017, will go in the DCV later this year. 

Year 4 Destiny Content Vault

Preview 

Here is an early

preview of some of what’s going into the Destiny Content Vault (DCV) and what’s

returning in Year 4.

Returning from the DCV

• On September 22, 2020:
  
  • • Cosmodrome as a selectable, explorable destination (but not yet at
      
      full Destiny 1 parity on 9/22).
      
      • Note: We’re looking to leverage Cosmodrome’s initial return to expand
        
        the new Guardian origin story to the world of Destiny. Veteran players will be
        
        able to experience that story as well.
        
        
      • Cosmodrome’s Will of Crota strike will also be added to the strikes
        
        playlist for all players.
        
  
  
• During Season 13:
  
  • • Cosmodrome will be
      
      fleshed out to roughly Destiny 1 Year 1 parity. 
      
      
    • Cosmodrome’s The Devil’s Lair and Fallen S.A.B.E.R. strikes return.
      
  
  
• During Year 4:
  
  • • Destiny 1’s first raid, Vault of Glass, returns.
      

Heading to the DCV

• On September 22, 2020: 
  
  • • Io, Titan, Mercury, Mars, and Leviathan will be cycled out and no
      
      longer be accessible. 
      
      • This includes all PvE activities (including campaigns) on those
        
        destinations.
        

Other Key Year 4 Details:  

• There will be three raids playable this fall, including a new one set
  
  in the Deep Stone Crypt on Europa as part of the Beyond Light expansion.
  
  
• There will be new ways to earn Exotics originally tied to destinations
  
  and activity content that have entered the Destiny Content Vault. 
  
  
• Available strikes will be based on a pool of possible strikes from
  
  active destinations. When a destination goes into the DCV, so too will its strikes.
  
  
• The PvP Map playlist will remain a curated ‘best of’ mixture of maps
  
  from Destiny 1 and 2.
  
  
• Gambit and Gambit
  
  Prime are being merged into a single mode, with their original armor visuals
  
  available to earn from the Drifter.
  

To be

clear, the DCV does not apply to any weapons and armor in a player’s inventory

or vault. The DCV is about activities and destinations. We know you will have a

lot of questions about how this will work. We will share more updates about our

content plans throughout the summer. This includes a detailed overview of

everything changing via patch notes, extensive DPS articles that will help

break down what’s changing and when, as well as lots of opportunities for you

to ask us questions along the way.
A New Beginning

This fall,

we will begin delivering on the future of Destiny by making way for new adventures,

locales, and stories dreamed up by our creative team, and forging the

truly evolving world that it was always meant to be. These changes allow us the

freedom to finally weave an overall experience for the Destiny universe that

can truly live, starting with Beyond

Light. We can now fit puzzle pieces we haven’t been able to pick up since

the beginning of the original Destiny – including the true nature of the Darkness and

Light and how such power will change you as a Guardian. We can now bring some

of the greatest experiences in Destiny to the forefront of the current game alongside

new ones to come.

The past

six years, we’ve seen the Destiny universe grow and our community along with

it. We want our quality of service to grow in kind, to be able to react to

community feedback quicker, to innovate more often, and to continue to tell new

stories with your characters. We’re excited to continue that journey with you.

– Destiny 2

Dev Team