Did Bungie Make ‘Destiny 2’ Too Hard With Lightfall?

Bungie has been absorbing feedback over the course of the past year, and has arrived at a conclusion: Destiny 2 is too easy.

This has been the case at really all levels, from the basic “steamroll” Vanguard playlist to higher end content that top level players say isn’t enough of a challenge. Now with the release of Lightfall, Bungie has done a massive overhaul of difficulty in Destiny 2 and naturally, there’s now a debate over whether or not they may have gone…too far.

There are some areas where everything seems perfectly fine. Concerns that the new +0 difficulty strike playlist would be annoying have not panned out. It’s practically as easy as before, right down to the timing of boss burning. Barely any change there.

Similarly, the difficulty of the Lightfall campaign, outside of perhaps one or two tricky sections, seems to have landed well with its legendary, -15 power difficulty, which underlevels players and forces them into tough combat. The main thing here, however, is that this difficulty level does not come with health-regenerating champions, and allows for maximum loadout flexibility. I also think the -5 Battlegrounds playlist feels just as good as it did for Seraph, a good mix of challenge and doability.

Everything else, though? It’s starting to feel a bit…extreme.

A main cause for concern is that Legendary difficulty, now 1830 power which keeps players locked -15 power under enemies, has been elevated a bit too far. This is very much present in Lost Sectors, which are dramatically more difficult than before. They seem unsustainable for farming exotics due to how long they take now and the low drop rates. In my experience, I farmed them enough to get the singular new exotic I needed, and have no plans to touch them again.

Elsewhere, difficulty seems pretty wild in places like Nightfalls or Legend Dares of Eternity or Legend activities that scale up enemy health as you increase fireteam size. They feel very bullet-spongy, very quickly, and can be more exhausting than fun.

This week’s Nightfall in particular, the adoption of last season’s Mars Battleground, feels like a special kind of nightmare. There are general concerns that Battlegrounds were never balanced for Nightfall level difficulty, and that means a final boss room where enemies spawn as fast as you can kill them, forever, doesn’t really work with the concept. Even on Heroicwhere you’re just 5 under power, you get slammed in that room. Legend feels like a grandmaster. Master feels nearly impossible. And while we don’t have Grandmaster yet, I don’t think anyone other than the most masochistic players are looking forward to that.

Of course the pushback here is “well you asked for this!” but I think that’s an overgeneralization. Some higher profile top-tier players did, but I mean all I asked for was the strike playlist to get a little harder, and for Legend activities to get in-game matchmaking. I did not ask to permanently be locked -15 under power with loads of things one-shotting me at max resilience.

There is one final piece to this, the fact that everything may be even more difficult than it should be because of long, long-running bugs where damage from certain enemies is dramatically amplified to a higher framerate. This is most evidenced this season with the Shadow legion as Cabal Thresher ships and interceptors can one-shot you if you have a framerate of I believe 60 or above. During one particularly annoying campaign segment with Threshers, I literally locked my framerate to 30 to get past it lest I die to random insta-kill tracking missiles I could neither see coming nor avoid effectively.

The problem is we don’t even know what’s attached to this framerate bug and what’s just enemies hitting absurdly hard under this new difficult system. While I’m pretty sure Wyverns just do big damage at baseline, I think I’m getting evaporated instantly by Taken Knight floor fire because of a framerate bug, not because my character is underpowered.

This is of course a very fine line to walk. Too much power creep and too much overleveling for content means nothing is a challenge. But crank up the difficulty too much and cap players too low and everything feels like an exhausting, unfun slog. I do think there are some places that Destiny has this right, the strike and battlegrounds playlists, the Legendary campaign, but in other places, this really needs a look. And I am certainly curious to see how this Friday’s raid race goes, given all this.

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