Is Destiny 2 Too Hard?
With the Forsaken Expansion having been out for a few weeks, I’ve been seeing a lot of discussion around the community that Forsaken has spiked the end game content difficulty up too high. This started when the newest raid, Last Wish, dropped and brought with it a power requirement of 550, with Kalli herself hitting 558. Let’s compare it to the original raid in Destiny 2, Leviathan. It has a recommended power level of 270 so to be fair let’s take the grind up until the Leviathan. Going in the Raid, I was Power Level 289 and that was putting at least six to nine hours a day in up into the raid. We had from the 6th till the 13th of the month to get raid ready and I was more than ready.
Now let’s take a look at the grind for Last Wish. We had from 4th to the 14th, so that was three more days as well. After the grind for Last Wish I was at 533 on Raid day, putting in at least eight hours a day. Keep in mind for both Raids I was just grinding with my Titan so I never really touched my Hunter or Warlock. So with another three days that we had for the Last Wish, I spend more time grinding and was still not even at the recommended light for the raid even with all that grinding. I don’t believe however, that it had nothing to do with being harder. There is a few things to take in mind: One, Exotics are way harder to get in Forsaken then they was in Destiny 2 at launch so you could grind for them and get your light up way faster doing so. In Forsaken though, you had more opportunity for powerful gear. Back then, you had one Nightfall and it was time based that week. So you had a certain amount of time to compete the Nightfall.
Now, in Forsaken you have another version of the Nightfall that is score based. That was not in Destiny 2 at launch so that is another powerful engram as well and that does not include the original nightfall. Now in Forsaken you have prime engrams, something that did not exist. This could drop when you had the perk prime attunement. Now you could get it without the Attunement but the chances were really low. Now, what a prime engram does is it grants you a gear that is higher then what you had most of the time. You also have daily milestones that could give you powerful engrams with the prime engrams. So I’d say when it comes to chances of getting powerful gear after the soft cap, I’d add that as another reason it hasn’t been too bad in Forsaken, as well as the fact that they gave us another three days to grind for it.
Now for the Raid in general. These encounters were not hard, as a lot are pure DPS (damage per second) and the odds of surviving the damage that these high Light level enemies do is good. I’ve not beat Riven however and I’m told she is hard, but then again people are learning to just go to one side of her and if they get lucky and they hit that one side first to all DPS her off the start and one phase her. So I think the raid is one of those things that is pure light based when you are higher light and understand the mechanics of the raid it would have been way easier to do. Where Destiny 2 Forsaken was the worse was the way Powerful engrams would often give you the same stuff that you had or never give you that boots that you been grinding for and are holding you back 4 to 6 light level. This was the case for everyone I know a lot of the time the RNG was the issue not difficulty which I am going to say that is a issue.
Take the Ace of Spades into consideration. Why can you get that from a exotic engram when you did the quest to get it? Why are they giving you a gun that you did an exotic quest line for? When that happened to me it annoyed me because that could have been that heavy that won’t drop and I could have infused it to increase in Light. So I think that is the biggest issue of the difficulty: everyone is getting bad drops and blaming it on the difficulty. Made the Last Wish raid start at 520 and see how quick people would have done it when they are not getting one-shot by simply stepping on a rock.
I don’t disagree with the direction that Bungie is going with this, as one of the reasons that people loved the Last Wish Raid is cause everyone for the most part was under leveled and it felt like you was on the edge the entire time playing. Destiny 2 had no grind. No Exotic desire cause everyone had everything the first few weeks of Destiny 2 we all blazed through the content mad fast. End game content should feel unfair and we should be under leveled: it’s called end game content for a reason! We are supposed to feel the pressure. Activities like Ascendant Challenge, Nightfalls, Raids, Iron Banner and especially activities like the Shattered Dungeon, that’s end game content.
There is an option for people that think that activities are too hard. If you think the Raid is too hard, play some strikes. If you think Iron Banner is too hard, do quick play. Use these options to increase your light level and get in a good clan to make the harder stuff easier. I personally see nothing wrong with how the Forsaken expansion changed Destiny 2. Before, Bungie tried to make the game as a whole easier and it almost killed the game. These games are not for the topical gamer that moves on after a few hours to the next game. Destiny is a Wife that demands all your time and punishes you for stepping out on her. So you either grind, or maybe Destiny 2 is not for you.
