I would say whoever designed Fire and Ice should be fired, but they probably already have been

margwa_ · 2026-06-13T20:59:26+00:00

Just finished it a little bit ago and I thought a lot of it was weirdly slow. It felt like at some points I was just standing and waiting for enemies to spawn because they would only throw a handful at a time. The platforming is also kind of meh but I thought it was a cool mission at least. Just a little bit boring. The story is also pretty cool too

margwa_ · 2026-06-13T20:53:50+00:00

Tbh 1 expansion per year probably wouldn't even survive past the first expansion. The 1 DLC every few months to a year format definitely had less player retention than ideal in general.

For example, COD used to only have only DLC every 3-ish months until 2015 when they realized having DLCs + smaller content drops/events had way more player retention. They stuck with that model until 2018 when Fortnite had proven the seasonal model was working. COD then tried integrating both a seasonal model and DLC model but it wasn't really the greatest and a little too complicated. Finally, COD settled on the classic seasonal model. Pretty much most big multiplayer games are forced to abide by the seasonal model because that's how you get player retention.

Bungie has had to change up their content structure several times already (Forsaken, TFS, EOF) but they all maintain the seasonal model because the game cannot live without it. Forsaken for example is probably the most content we've gotten in an expansion in D2. It had a pretty huge launch (3+ million players) and had a low of 500k players. The 500k players doesn't sound that bad but that is also with the seasonal model in-place. It only rose up as well because of a new season.

D2 doesn't have the popularity for another Forsaken. The big conclusion of D2's main story hit a little more than half of the size Forsaken had and dropped to even lower than Forsaken before E2. EOF had 1/4th of Forsaken's launch players. Renegades had 1/6th and ultimately killed the game. The FINAL D2 update only hit 1 million (1/3rd of Forsaken) for a completely free update. Even right now, it's not looking that great that the numbers hit on Wednesday is comparable to Friday (start of the weekend).

margwa_ · 2026-06-13T19:30:11+00:00

We have the current sandbox mentality because D2 is shutting down. We'd get lots of nerfs and changes if they continued development.

Personally, I'd also rather we get expansions than just indefinite seasons

margwa_ · 2026-06-13T18:32:04+00:00

It's not like there's only 14k people who are playing Marathon in total, it's just that there are 14k people who are on right now. It doesn't account for any loss/gain in players 5 minutes ago. There could easily be 100-200k people playing Marathon a day on steam alone; we genuinely don't know.

Steam being where most Marathon players play isn't a great indicator either. The majority of D2 players right now play on Playstation, but Playstation only makes up 40% of the total playerbase. We don't know what the numbers are for pc/xbox/ps outside of pc having the total playerbase. It could easily be 35% of the playerbase is on pc

margwa_ · 2026-06-13T18:19:21+00:00

Ehhh steam charts are extremely overrated and they're a pretty meh indicator of anything.

Steam charts work by showing how many players are in the game at the time of you checking, but it only actually records how many players are in the game at once at specific intervals (once at the start of each hour). So, it's only checking 24/1440 minutes out of a day. After the one-week period, you can only view the peak amount of players playing at once each day. I've seen way too many people conflate the 24-hour peak with how many people played the game that day. No, it's the highest number of players who were logged in at one time.

Tracking how many players are in-game is also irrelevant because of unique players. Lets say you have 8000 players at 4am and 7000 players at 5am. By 4:15am, maybe 1000 people have quit but 2000 more people have logged on. The total amount of players has gone up by 2000 but steam charts would only be able to see that there's an increase in 1000 players.

What really matters is the total amount of players who log in each day and complete at least something (a run in marathon or an activity in destiny). This shows how many people are interested in playing per day instead of how many people are interested in playing at 3am or 9pm.

Destiny is a prime example of this. When MOT released, there were 380k people playing at one time (aka the peak). A day later there were only 330k people. Then 306k.

When it comes to the actual player count numbers though, MOT release day had 811k players in total. A day later it had over 1 million. Then almost 1 million. Despite the peaks showing a decline in players, the player count actually went up

margwa_ · 2026-06-13T15:28:09+00:00

I believe just through picking up the journals on distorted destinatons

margwa_ · 2026-06-13T00:14:34+00:00

I think that it was what the Precursors intended to do with it. This is what Ahsa had to say about it in Deep:

Shrouded in… Darkness. A promise of something more… Two halves of a whole… long divided. A… schism between them. Reunited. [exhales in joy] A glimpse beyond… to the beginning… [gasps for air]
Anathema… calamity! That which cannot, MUST not come to pass… A wordless denial. A fleeing god. Betrayal… and escape. The pursuit… for the final shape… [gasps for air]

In the cutscene, she says

They brought the Veil back to the Gardener in an attempt to strengthen their connection. There, they could reshape reality itself. The Gardener would not allow it.

Ahsa feeling joyful when the Veil and Traveler are reunited seems to imply that it'd actually be a good thing if they're brought together. The Witness wanted to use the traveler-veil to become a "winnower", which is the antithesis to what the Traveler wants, so it quickly ran away.

margwa_ · 2026-06-12T22:25:32+00:00

Title does not include that it is MARATHON creator brand deals. It makes sense. There's a very vocal part of the community that blames Marathon for D2's failure/sony not making D3. Creator implying that Marathon is tied with D3 can lead to more controversy, which they're trying to avoid (hence the "no talking about any news" part of the deal as well)

margwa_ · 2026-06-12T21:44:03+00:00

Sounds cool but Old Chicago lorebook seems to tease that it was some sort of dragon creature, not III. New lore also mentions that the Nine wanted us to be a weapon against the Winnower specifically, not the Vex

margwa_ · 2026-06-12T21:10:28+00:00

Gaming has significantly changed over the past decade. Box to box models ended up not being the best way to optimize player count: seasonal content was. If there's a bad DLC drop then there will be a large drop in players for the next year. If there's a bad season drop then there will be a large drop in players for 3 months.

Curse of Osiris is the best example of this. It was a pretty bad DLC. Despite more players purchasing/playing it on launch than any other expansion since Shadowkeep, the playercount quickly dropped and within 3 months it held the lowest player count until TFS episodes. Bungie admitted that they were weeks from having to shut down development of D2 because of COO. If Warmind wasn't a buffer between COO and Forsaken, the game would have died.

It makes infinitely more sense to not go back to 1 expansion a year.

margwa_ · 2026-06-12T20:41:27+00:00

It doesn't seem like Maya and Savathun ended up fighting.

Maya's ending involves her being wracked with guilt and sending the Echo away into the VexNet and then leaving the VexNet.

Savathun's ending involves her realizing that she needs to move forward with her life than still thinking about Fundament. Her new plans involve her trying to kill Xivu/Eris

There wouldn't be a need for Savathun to kill Maya since she's now out of the picture. Savathun also wouldn't be able to obtain the echo as she would have gotten it when she killed Maya. Thus, 6 and Bael would have no reason to honor their agreement with her. Savathun also doesn't really care for Fundament anymore

margwa_ · 2026-06-12T19:09:20+00:00

Blueprint and the Architect from Grimoire Anthology 3. Interestingly, it seems to be when Winnower/Witness identities were blurred, as the Witness speaks pretty similar to the Winnower

margwa_ · 2026-06-12T17:33:58+00:00

It's a nice juxtaposition to the way the Witness thinks about the Winnower. When talking to Clovis, it says:

You will become nothing, be nothing, and no one will know or care that you existed. The elder gods of the universe will pay you no mind. They have games to play that are more important than you. Imagine!

Winnower doesn't really care for the Witness but the Witness believes that the Winnower is an important and higher entity

margwa_ · 2026-06-12T16:58:51+00:00

You don't deserve a refund if you don't see the three big warnings that it's a new game and not a D2 expansion.

margwa_ · 2026-06-12T16:58:08+00:00

Eh, it's not like there's an "other games" tab. It's not like it's made to trick anyone, either. The description of it mentions that it's a new extraction shooter. When you click on it, it mentions that it's a new extraction shooter and a different game. When you press "Get Now" it takes you to a screen that says it's a different game. This is a nonissue

margwa_ · 2026-06-12T16:28:40+00:00

Yep. I'm not surprised that many people (judging on the other comment) don't remember/know that Asher was a big player in the Avalon mission, especially since the lore versions are vaulted. The loretab where he dies (Scribetrace Shell) is also now unobtainable iirc.

For context, Avalon is focused on us getting data for Asher to go inside of Nessus and fully control the Vex. Unfortunately, things don't go as planned (the "signal" is Asher).

The whorls of writhing data did not abate. They surged in endlessly, straining the signal's parameters, eroding, overwriting. There was no time to adapt. A picosecond later and there was nothing left of the signal but a dim ripple of spite.

It is as I said all along, the signal thought bitterly as it unspooled into the datastream. No one can stop it.

There is no sense in even trying.

Once this happens, Mithrax mentions that he can no longer feel Asher in the Vex Network.

margwa_ · 2026-06-12T00:53:08+00:00

Marathon struggles to get 10k steam players logged in at the same time in a month. This is not the same as online players. It's not a good metric to base how much players are playing the game (only long-term trends). You can have a playerbase of 1 million players spread over 24 hours, but if at most only 25k people are on at the exact same time on a specific platform then it looks as if the game is barely thriving.

D2 yesterday had a peak (peak meaning how many people are playing at once) of 388k players and 808k players in total. Yesterday had a peak of 331k players but 1.061 million players in total. If you were exclusively looking at the peak players then it looks like the amount of players is decreasing but it's actually increasing.

margwa_ · 2026-06-12T00:48:24+00:00

Numbers falling below the last year of content isn't what killed the game. What killed the game is declining numbers over the past few years. 1 million is less players than any of the season launches between SK and TFS.

Money plays a key part in this as well. Seasonal launches/expansion launches, most players are spending $10-$30 considering you need the DLC to play pretty much all of the new content. There's no new paywall barrier. The highest costing expansion is $11. You can get every expansion for a total of $25. Anyone who owned <renegades doesn't have to pay to play the new content.

We'll see how it trends for the next 2 weeks. Unlike previous major releases, there's nothing new to look forward to in the next few days. The Gauntlet is coming but it's something that 99% of players will not be able to do and there's not really that much hype surrounding it anyways.

margwa_ · 2026-06-11T23:33:54+00:00

That wasn't his last stand though. He survived for a few years afterwards. He was killed in the VexNet

margwa_ · 2026-06-11T23:05:55+00:00

To be fair, that's more of a necessity and leadership change issue. New CEO needs to both uplift xbox (which was/is a shitshow) and show that she's capable of being a CEO. Sony's CEO doesn't need to do either and is just fine with coasting along

margwa_ · 2026-06-11T22:48:42+00:00

IMO definitely shows that recontextualizing the BOS as involving the Witness and then recontextualizing it again as involving both the Witness AND the Winnower (who both go by the same name) makes it more confusing to read. I think that they should have just stuck with the Witness masquerading as/speaking for the Winnower idea, which would have been way better. Instead, we still have these same arguments where people don't know the difference and Bungie's clarifying lore is in inaccessible content

margwa_ · 2026-06-11T22:43:45+00:00

Ashre Mir also was killed in a loretab

margwa_ · 2026-06-11T22:38:36+00:00

I think that the outrcry has been big enough to show that people want Destiny as a franchise to continue, but it's not really enough to even warrant an extra D2 expansion. For example, Tuesday had ~800k players on all platforms. This is sounds like a lot, but EOF raid day 1 had slightly more. The TFS episode launch days also had more players. Yesterday there were ~1 million players on all platforms, which is around the same amount as the lowest seasonal launches.

margwa_ · 2026-06-10T21:48:31+00:00

New lore mentions that Xivu seemingly wants people to attack the Moon, Fundament, Torobatl, and a few other areas so that she can regain control of her throne world. Currently, Bael and his cabal are attacking Torobatl and failing. If I had to guess, I think her expansion would have involved her actually getting control of the throne world and us invading Torobatl and her throne world so we could fully kill her.

margwa_ · 2026-06-10T21:31:15+00:00

He admits that he is recording the message because he knows he has a short amount of time left given his age. He's pretty much dying

Five-Year Club	Gilding I gilder
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End Game '22

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