February 23, 2023

Destiny 2 Game Director on Lightfall Difficulty Increase

Bungie’s game director, Joe Blackburn, revealed interesting details about the Lightfall difficulty increase.

It's me, Joe, your local Destiny 2 Game Director, wading into the waters of the internet to talk about increasing the base difficulty of the Vanguard Ops playlist.
— Joe Blackburn (@joegoroth) February 22, 2023

Over the past years, the FPS title has become too easy for players. With the arrival of the new Strand subclass abilities, the Guardians will be more powerful than ever before. But the content is not evolving at the same pace. This leads to a lack of challenge and a decrease in gamers’ engagement with the title.

Thus, the developer decided to reel back players’ power in an effort to make the game more challenging. The new difficulty ecosystem is not a half-hearted pump. Instead, it’s a comprehensive rework. However, the in-game rewards are not keeping pace with the increased difficulty level. This has led to a sense of dissatisfaction among those who feel that their efforts are not adequately rewarded.

While we still have a lot of reward tweaks planned throughout this whole year, when we ask Guardians to play Vanguard Ops for pinnacles or weekly challenges next season, we want to make sure that content has kept up with the player power increases over the years.
— Joe Blackburn (@joegoroth) February 22, 2023

As of now, it’s still too soon to say if their ambition will successfully realize in Lightfall. But one thing is for sure, it will significantly impact the expansion.