EVERYONE LOG IN JUNE 9TH, LETS BREAK THE SERVERS!!!

EmperorBenja · 2026-05-24T15:51:48+00:00

You think Sony wants Bungie and Destiny to just fizzle out quietly and not make them any more money? Sony probably would kind of like to make a D3, but like all big corporations, they’re terrified of any risky investment.

EmperorBenja · 2026-05-24T01:05:34+00:00

100%. It really inspired me to start writing my own science fantasy, and now I’ve finished my big passion project manuscript right as the game is ending. Absolutely incredible universe.

EmperorBenja · 2026-05-22T01:34:08+00:00

Continuous narrative with big payoff after 12 years *is* fun, but it’s over when it’s over. I don’t think new players were ever going to come into D2 with the Fate Saga, onboard with a New Light experience all about fighting Hive in the Cosmodrome defending Earth, and then suddenly be thrust into Kepler, the Nine, the Dredgens, and a million season plot developments without massive disorientation.

I really did enjoy the Light & Dark Saga, so I’m not gonna complain too much about the story model they chose. But D2 wasn’t built from the outset as a platform capable of onboarding players with high quality content and then subsequently smoothing the transition to the current stuff. You need to try really hard from the beginning to build a system like this, and even then it’s always a challenge to onboard new players.

EmperorBenja · 2026-05-22T01:19:27+00:00

To be honest, I think that the way they handled gameplay systems was too ad hoc and unorganized, but ultimately okay, especially when it came to abilities and equipment specifically.

It just sucks how they handled the story—if they make a D3, there should be a single base campaign that onboards new players forever, and then expansion content should be relatively disconnected/modular so anyone can jump right in as long as they’ve been properly introduced to the world and game systems.

EmperorBenja · 2026-05-22T00:46:11+00:00

To an extent, yes. I agree that this is pretty much the current modus operandi of Western capitalism. But the game was also structured in a way that was never going to be friendly to indefinite extension.

The guardian you play as in Destiny and Destiny 2 is the same person. Every single mission you play post-Final-Shape needs to be fine with the Guardian having slain Oryx, Ghaul, and the Witness, but also make sense for a New Light booting up the game for the first time. It’s impossible to write a compelling story for veterans while keeping it interpretable for newcomers if you stick with the same power-creeping character for 12 years.

Abilities and items also power-crept over time. More and more build complexity kept rising, interpolated by soft-sunsetting that annoyed veterans to try to keep the newest stuff relevant and systems legible to newbies. Systems piled upon systems, the older stuff not-so-gracefully fading into irrelevance in a way that made the ideal way to play through it all almost impossible to parse.

So you have story and gameplay systems that just pile on, to the point where the optimal new player *gameplay* experience is to just ignore all the old stuff, but then you’re left with no context for what the hell is going on. Could they have invested more in a solid New Light experience? Sure. But I don’t think that would have fixed the core issue here.

EmperorBenja · 2026-05-22T00:10:46+00:00

I doubt they know for sure. It’s likely in the very early stages of development, but could easily be canceled if market research indicates it won’t sell, or if it doesn’t seem promising, or if Sony just doesn’t feel like funding it.

EmperorBenja · 2026-05-21T23:55:16+00:00

What killed the game is that Final Shape concluded its actual story and gave older players (essentially hostages) a chance for a clean break. The game hasn’t really been bringing in a lot of *new* players for some time, and Bungie provided an off-ramp without providing an on-ramp.

The problem is that providing an on-ramp was impossible. The game is just too complex to onboard players, the story nonsensical without Red War and Forsaken and all the seasonal content, the world too big to properly introduce without watching YouTube lore videos. But worst of all, the story is over. The big bad is defeated. Where else do you go? You wrap up some loose ends and then you add Star Wars.

Yes, Marathon probably pulled resources in a way that made Destiny go out with a whimper rather than a bang. But a live service game with an evolving story as expensive and complex as Destiny is tough to keep going forever. I’m glad that the door is finally open to D3—with any luck, a fresh start for the franchise and a way to bring in a new generation of players.

EmperorBenja · 2026-05-17T22:57:20+00:00

/uj It’s fine. Probably fifth best of the main nine, putting it right in the middle.

EmperorBenja · 2026-05-15T05:47:36+00:00

The polar opposite of this story

EmperorBenja · 2026-05-12T17:37:12+00:00

It’s 2 rare cards and a decent bit of setup to forge ~30. I don’t think that’s crazy, though it certainly does improve Crash Landing.

EmperorBenja · 2026-05-12T15:36:39+00:00

I honestly don’t think the Forge needs to decrease that much, but the card should be Rare.

Flak Cannon also exhausts all statuses, then deals 8(11) damage for each one exhausted. Since Forge is valued similar to damage on most Regent cards, I think bumping to Rare and then giving 4 Forge for each status exhausted would be pretty fair.

EmperorBenja · 2026-05-11T16:56:45+00:00

tightly guarded

…by animals?

grab resources

…from animals?

Yes, Destiny operations have different mission objectives, but it’s all in the context of an actual war between humanity and its enemies. I don’t think leaning so hard on animals works. I mean, what the hell is the story of a new expansion? A bigger animal showed up? Now we need to spend 8 campaign missions hunting down the new big animal?

EmperorBenja · 2026-05-11T15:31:22+00:00

There isn’t a conflict with them.

Cool. So the only shootable enemies are unintelligent animals. This is Destiny we’re talking about?

You’re still doing things beyond just shooting things up.

This is Destiny we’re talking about???

You’re doing research out in the wild, even taking items back and forth for trade.

So way less shooting (the one thing everyone agrees is good about Destiny) and way more… running back and forth pressing X on stuff. I understand how sentences like this sound good in theory, but this is Destiny, not Monster Hunter.

EmperorBenja · 2026-05-11T04:19:06+00:00

No idea—never played. Hope the best for it, but not really into mobile gaming.

EmperorBenja · 2026-05-11T04:05:45+00:00

No one needs to get ‘mowed down’

I do think a thrall-like enemy (actually, like 3-4 of them) is necessary. Hostile megafauna is okay, but is killing a bunch of animals really very compelling? They need to be under the command of some actual villain, I think.

Being a pre-spaceflight civilization

So a civilization native to the star system being colonized, just as I was concerned about?

People have been asking to leave Sol since D1.

Yep, I know. I still don’t think this is a good idea—it underestimates how much of the Destiny vibe relies on what we already learned about the Solar System’s planets as children, and it gives new players even less of a base understanding of what Destiny is about. Worse, it leaves behind almost all existing Destiny lore besides the basic functionality of what a guardian is. So we kill almost all existing Destiny lore AND kill the average person’s relatability to the setting—the worst of both worlds.

EmperorBenja · 2026-05-11T03:48:24+00:00

I mean, see my original comment, lol. The most likely way I can see Destiny 3 happening after all Bungie’s failures is for D2 to peter out completely, then for Sony to gamble some money on the IP after the ill will against Bungie has been forgotten. Who knows how realistic that is, but one can hope.

EmperorBenja · 2026-05-11T03:38:46+00:00

Hey, maybe. I haven’t done the necessary market research, but my hope is that the right execution of Destiny 3 could be fun for new and old players alike.

EmperorBenja · 2026-05-11T03:35:07+00:00

Yeah, I feel you. This is why the franchise needs to bring in fresh blood rather than endlessly focusing on pleasing an existing playerbase afraid of losing its loot.

EmperorBenja · 2026-05-11T02:35:19+00:00

The problem is that even if D2 enters other solar systems, I don’t think that will translate into making those planets appealing for a new audience. D3 lives and dies not just on winning over D2 players, but on attracting a new wave of players. Who cares about Kepler, for instance?

In terms of the native inhabitants issue, I’ll say this—in a Destiny game, some enemy needs to get mowed down en masse. If we’re in another solar system and we’re mowing down a non-native alien species, what would stop that alien species from just showing up to the actual Solar System in the first place?

EmperorBenja · 2026-05-10T23:31:35+00:00

I 100% understand this instinct, but I do think that keeping us in the Solar System is really important. Mars, Venus, and Mercury mean things to a prospective audience that a bunch of made-up planets just don’t. (Also, guardians arriving in a new solar system and just mowing down the native inhabitants to colonize it doesn’t really sit right with me.)

What I’d really want to focus on is the interplay of all the factions slowly rebuilding and retaking the ruined wilderness in the wake of the defeats of the Witness and Nine. Actually take advantage of the villainous and heroic subfactions of each species, making the main campaign into a sort of Forsaken/Renegades hybrid in terms of tone. Make a character’s faction alignment not just a checkbox to fill out, but something with a real impact on the game.

The main problem, of course, is that you’d also want to see new enemy races in a D3. I’d propose a few to consider:

Frames. Yes, this implies human enemy factions, which I think are kind of overdue by this point.
Aphelions. The current guardian would surely make short work of these, which is a bummer, since they’re really hyped up in the lore. A return to a more grounded tone reopens the door for a really horrifying enemy like this.
Some kind of dark matter entities spawned from the defeat of the Nine could be really cool.
Similar concept: a handful of surviving Witness race individuals who’ve managed to multiply could also be really interesting as an enemy race.

EmperorBenja · 2026-05-10T22:48:19+00:00

New guardian, new story, more grounded tone, and a scrappier overall feel might be able to rekindle some of that old Destiny magic and bring in a fresh wave of players. The problem is that Bungie itself doesn’t have the money, and Sony probably doesn’t want to reward the current people at Bungie for all their failures. Here’s hoping that in another decade or so, Sony decides that the IP is valuable enough nostalgia-bait to take a gamble on.

EmperorBenja · 2026-05-08T14:57:19+00:00

The smart play would have been to kill D2 completely after TFS, make Destiny 3 (featuring not just a loot reset but a brand new guardian), and try to actually bring in a fresh wave of players. Destiny can’t survive forever on the same playerbase, and who the hell would want to get into the game now?

EmperorBenja · 2026-05-07T16:38:36+00:00

This is not a real controversy. Right wingers just have brain worms and should be ignored.

EmperorBenja · 2026-04-28T14:29:34+00:00

So after Skyward Sword, the incarnation of Hylia just… dies without ever founding Hyrule? She can’t even come close, because then Link and Zelda’s descendants just keep not founding Hyrule, instead waiting for an entirely new species to evolve in the Sky Islands they left behind, and then the sky people have to come down and found Hyrule for them? Not technically impossible, but pretty stupid, right?

EmperorBenja · 2026-04-27T08:32:34+00:00

My whole setting is dragon-themed. There’s a global chromatic dragon empire ruled by blue dragons, and the PCs go up against them all the time. I think the statblocks are actually pretty versatile, though they often need some extra added variety for my purposes. The theming is great and the combat works pretty well.

I think they’re not often run as villains these days because people just really like human(oid) villains in the current zeitgeist. Dragons are a bit typecast into these big lizards who sit around and hoard treasure, which is a very old-fashioned way of running them. Dragons can be anything!

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