Destiny 2
Destiny 2 is feeling real apocalyptic right now, and it's greatJul 8, 2020 - Rock, Paper, Shotgun After dragging its heels for a fair while, the ‘living world’ of Destiny 2 has really come alive again as Bungie start building to the next expansion. Four of its planets and moons will be removed from the game when Beyond Light hits, and the ongoing in-game events behind that are starting to get well doomy. As of last night, the vast and ominous pyramid ships of The Darkness are lurking over the four doomed places, zones are bustling with deadly foes, and we’re being sent on quests to check that everyone’s, y’know, okay. It feels like an apocalypse brewing, and looks stunning too. (more…) Destiny 2 starts Moments Of Triumph event, opening raids for farmingJul 8, 2020 - Rock, Paper, Shotgun Ahead of Destiny 2 shuffling five raids out of rotation next season, Bungie have relaxed restrictions on loot so you can fully rinse them before they go. Usually each character can only get drops from each raid once per week, but for the rest of the season these five can be repeated over and over for loot galore. This comes as part of the latest Moments Of Triumph event, which started last night. Players are challenged to complete a long list of accomplishments, including some raids, to claim cosmetic rewards plus a new title. (more…) This Week At Bungie – 7/2/2020Jul 2, 2020 - Community AnnouncementsThis week at Bungie, Lord Saladin has an iron grip on the Crucible. While it’s only been two days since the weekly reset, our feeds have been themed to the Iron Banner. Power-enabled combat can be a tough challenge, but it’s well worth the effort. This Season, The Forward path and Fool’s Remedy made their return with random rolls and brand new Iron Banner perks. Some weapon specialists among you have been diving deep into perk combinations, giving recommendations on the best rolls for success. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/35190912/c6f1a42b74fbaeab5b400a51acba05437e44ec17.jpg Additionally, some changes were made to our Seasonal quest offering to make these returning weapons a bit more accessible. If you haven’t already, stop by Lord Saladin in the Tower to kick off your Seasonal quest, and make sure to grab your four weekly bounties to earn some Pinnacle gear as you play. A few of you also noticed that Enhanced Armor Mods have a chance to drop on match completion, so games have felt a little more rewarding. Gear up, form a fireteam, and get out there. Lord Saladin is waiting. For the rest of the article, hit the jump.This Week At Bungie – 6/25/2020Jun 25, 2020 - Community AnnouncementsThis week at Bungie, we pause to reflect. Before we talk about the game, we are going to talk about the incredibly important conversation that is taking place online and the events that lead to it. Many courageous women have come forward with stories of harassment and abuse. There has been a lot of pain laid bare in story after story told by these survivors. Some of us have not experienced this pain first-hand and can’t truly understand it. Yet, there are many people in our community feeling empathy, sadness, and anger when confronted with the truly awful harassment and abuse that so many of our friends have had to endure. Sadly, this wasn’t isolated to our corner of the world and has also affected men and non-binary folks as well. In the days that followed the initial revelations, we witnessed more people who have been similarly affected coming forward. This is a bigger issue that the entire gaming industry needs to face. Together, we can take action to make the spaces we share better for everyone. Amidst all of this heartache, it has been inspiring to see these stories met with a wave of love, belief, and support that is turning into momentum for more change. Thank you for reaffirming that, though every community has problems, ours doesn’t shy away from confronting them and banding together to overcome them head-on. We have reaffirmed our commitment to enforce the standards of our code of conduct on the platforms and channels we control. We are currently working on other ways we can help combat toxicity and abuse in the gaming community. This is going to take time, but we pledge our support to help make things better. Now, let’s talk about the game we have made, in the hopes that it might further inspire friendship. Strike While the Iron’s Hot There is a time for harmony among players and a time for honorable battle as well. The venerable Lord Saladin will see to it himself. Next week, he’ll return to the Tower for the first Iron Banner of Season of Arrivals. Bonus Valor will also enabled throughout the week. Iron Banner and Bonus Valor Begins: 10 AM PDT on June 30 Ends: 10 AM PDT on July 7 The event will work similar to last Season with a few new rewards. We will be adding two reprised weapons and curating the weapon reward pool down to eight weapons. Reprised Weapons The Forward Path The Fool’s Remedy {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/35190912/c6f1a42b74fbaeab5b400a51acba05437e44ec17.jpg All weapons listed below are considered “reissued” and will have Season of Arrival Max Infusion Caps. Shining Sphere Swarm of the Raven Talons of the Eagle Bite of the Fox Orewing’s Maul Crimil’s Dagger The Forward Path and The Fool’s Remedy will also be updated to have two additional perks specific to these Iron Banner weapons. Here is a look at what they do: Iron Grip - Improves weapon stability at the cost of reload speed. Iron Gaze - Improves weapon target acquisition at the cost of stability. The armor set this Season will be a reprise of the Iron Fellowship set. Here ...This Week At Bungie – 6/16/2020Jun 18, 2020 - Community AnnouncementsThis Week At Bungie, we’re streaming… for the kids! Hello there. If you’re reading this right at the moment of publication, then congratulations. You’ve just hit the $100k benchmark for our slot on the GCX stream! If you have no idea what I’m talking about, let’s break it down. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/35190912/8872958eed39ef8a0a1211465ae33058589080cd.jpg Between 9 AM and 1 PM PDT today, we’re live on the GCX Marathon Charity Stream, raising funds for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital to help support children in need. Your donations help families around the world by contributing to the research and treatment of cancer. While you can take pride in helping by donating a few dollars, we also have a variety of incentives to provide some additional motivations. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/35190912/9def3d14363975819a9b96e083edab738aae50e9.jpg If you haven’t donated, this is your chance! And if you missed our live stream, no worries – this initiative is being supported by many in the gaming community. Jump in and check it out. We have some information regarding known issues and upcoming hotfixes in the full TWAB. Head over to Bungie.net for more!Destiny 2's Xur is worth visiting again now he has better rollsJun 13, 2020 - Rock, Paper, Shotgun Every weekend, mysterious tentacle-faced merchant Xur pops up in a corner of Destiny 2 selling a selection of Exotic gear. For the past eight months, his stock has been a bit rubbish. He’s sold fixed armour rolls with bad stats, see, which are useful if you don’t have the item at all but worse than any random drop. Good news: Xur has started selling armour with new, better rolls, making him again worth visiting even if you have it all. (more…) Destiny 2 has removed skill-based matchmaking for most PvP modesJun 12, 2020 - Rock, Paper, Shotgun Bungie have now removed skill-based matchmaking from most of Destiny 2‘s PvP Crucible playlists, by popular demand. What kind of a pubstomping monster wouldn’t want matchmaking to factor in skill? Ah, it’s a tricky issue. SBMM has become a semi-controversial topic in multiplayer games, and in Destiny specifically its knock-on consequences have included longer waits for matches and some real laggy laggers lagging up the place. (more…) This Week At Bungie – 6/11/2020Jun 11, 2020 - Community AnnouncementsThis week at Bungie, we launched a whole bunch of missiles. It’s been an action packed week. Over the weekend, we watched as Rasputin sent literal ordnance into the sky to take down the Almighty in Destiny 2’s first live in-game event. We followed that up with a mighty salvo of virtual launches in the form of media, articles, and a stream to showcase the future of Destiny. Season of Arrivals has started building a bridge to this fall, when Guardians will wield the Darkness for the first time in Destiny 2: Beyond Light. Here’s the full stream in case you haven’t had a chance to watch yet. Don’t have time to watch the full stream? Here are a couple of the first looks at Destiny 2: Beyond Light. We’re excited about the future of Destiny. To lay the groundwork, we have to make some changes to the core game. Several less-explored locations and activities will be going into the Destiny Content Vault (DCV) to pave the way for new hotness like Europa coming this fall. We lay out a lot of information on what to expect in our Building a Viable Future in Destiny 2 article. We know you have a lot more questions and we’ll have answers to share throughout the summer. Since Season of Arrivals acts as a prelude to Beyond Light, we have held our plans for the Season close to our chest until the reveal this week. The Pyramid ships have begun to arrive on Io and Eris is hard at work trying to decipher their intentions. She needs your help. Oh, and did we mention there is a brand new dungeon? Prophecy is free to all players and transports you into a strange dimension to seek out the IX. It’s got some real Rainbow Road vibes too. Here’s a peek. The future is bright and full of new challenges to tackle. We hope to see you out there. Make sure you check out the full TWAB for more info on Matchmaking changes, Bungie Rewards and more. Destiny 2's new Exotic is mysteriously one-shotting bossesJun 11, 2020 - Rock, Paper, Shotgun The Season Of Arrivals started in Destiny 2 this week and while the whole season was kept a surprise up until launch, one arrival is a bigger surprise than the rest. Witherhoard, the new Exotic grenade launcher you can grab from the season pass track, will sometimes mysteriously spit enough damage to melt a boss. Most, if not all, of a raid boss’s health bar can vanish in the blink of an eye. Witherhoard already seemed strong to me but this, damn. (more…) Destiny 2's new season seems more promising so farJun 10, 2020 - Rock, Paper, Shotgun Amid the megablast of news about Destiny’s future yesterday, Bungie started the latest season, the Season Of Arrivals. After nine rocky months of decreasingly good seasons in Destiny 2, Season 11 feels like Bungie are starting to turn a corner. I don’t know how I’ll feel about Arrivals in two months, but right now I’m pretty excited about a lot of its newness. Not just because I get to spend a lot more time with my shady spaceuncle, Drifter. (more…) Destiny - Past, Present, and FutureJun 9, 2020 - Community AnnouncementsJune 9 was host to a bunch of announcements and conversations about Destiny 2. We have new content you can play right now and we’re looking out years into the future at where our journey will lead us. All of this has been informed by where we’ve been on this adventure in years past. If you missed any of it, here’s a full rundown of everything we've shown off and talked about today. Building a Viable Future In Destiny 2 MORE INFO Beyond Light Article Season of Arrivals Article SUPPORT PAGES Beyond Light Support Season of Arrivals SupportDestiny 2 announces next three expansions, and plans to revive old D1 contentJun 9, 2020 - Rock, Paper, Shotgun A busy livestream has brought a whole lot of Destiny 2 news today. Bungie announced the next expansion, named Beyond Light, for launch in September. Today they also start the next season, named Season Of Arrivals, and launch a new dungeon. Looking into the far future, they’ve a further announced two expansions for 2021 and 2022. And to keep the game manageable, they plan to starting cycling out some older content into a ‘Destiny Content Vault’ – but also use that Vault to bring back older bits from the first game, with one area and a raid already confirmed. Whew. (more…) I like that Destiny 2's first live event was slow, but I wish Bungie communicated this betterJun 8, 2020 - Rock, Paper, Shotgun On Saturday, Destiny 2 held its first live in-game event, inviting players to witness the destruction of a vast spaceship on a collision course with Earth. Perched on the gantries and rooftops of the Tower, we watched the ship looming large in the sky and… waited. What many expected to be a few minutes of fireworks turned out to be 90 minutes of watching projectiles move almost imperceptibly slowly. I genuinely liked the big, sci-fi slowness of it all – even if I did miss part of the climax because I’d walked away to do household chores. (more…) Destiny 2 gets its first Fortnite-style live event todayJun 6, 2020 - EurogamerUPDATE: Destiny 2's first live event has now completed. THERE MAY BE SPOILERS AHEAD. Bungie had signalled Rasputin would take aim at The Almighty at 6pm UK time. An hour and a half later, red trails in the sky above the Tower caused a massive explosion on the Cabal superweapon, which then proceeded to fall to Earth. Read more Sister's VengeanceJun 6, 2020 - Community AnnouncementsThe Almighty hangs in the sky above the Last City, for now. Make your way to the Tower and await Rasputin's countermeasures.Destiny 2 will finally blow The Almighty out of the sky todayJun 6, 2020 - Rock, Paper, Shotgun It’s about damn time. After months of preparation, Destiny 2 is ready to blow up The Almighty, the massive Cabal spaceship that’s been threatening to smack The Tower all through this season. The fireworks kick off in a few hours – and in a new move for Bungie, it sounds like you’ll be able to watch the calamity as it happens in what may be Destiny 2’s first live, in-game spectacle. (more…) This Week At Bungie - 6/4/2020Jun 4, 2020 - Community AnnouncementsThis Week At Bungie, Season of the Worthy is ready for departure. We've got a lot to cover this week. Black Lives Matter, Pride, a June 9 tune in, patch note previews, and more. Head on over to Bungie.net for all the details.Destiny 2 trailer teases Europa for September expansionJun 3, 2020 - EurogamerDestiny 2 looks like it's heading to Europa for its next big expansion. Jupiter's icy moon is the setting for a quickly-deleted teaser trailer, uploaded to Bungie's Instagram account. The video shows fan-favourite character Eris Morn crossing the frozen wastes of the planet to find... something. Bungie's teaser concludes by promising more next week. Read more The Darkness vocalises its impending return to Destiny 2May 30, 2020 - Rock, Paper, Shotgun Always acting, but never quite seen. It seems one of Destiny 2‘s most elusive antagonists is preparing to finally play its hand. Lurking in the shadows of Bungie’s space-knight loot shooter, The Darkness have finally put voice to their long-awaited return by broadcasting an ominous hum on the Destiny 2 Twitter account. Whether as another season or as the game’s next expansion, it may soon be time to work out what, exactly, The Traveller’s been running away from all this time. (more…) Bungie signals The Darkness is finally coming to Destiny 2May 30, 2020 - EurogamerIt has been a long time coming - nearly six years, in fact - but it finally looks like The Darkness is coming to the world of Destiny. Developer Bungie signalled the Destiny universe's pantomime villain is on its way via a tweet that included a mysterious audio clip. But it is the background to this audio clip that has set Destiny fan tongues wagging - and speculation is running rampant. At first glance the background simply looks like the waveform of the audio. It is not. Rather, it reveals the outline of a number of pyramids. Read more Destiny 2 Had a Peak of Over 200k Concurrent Players During its First Day on SteamOct 2, 2019 - GitHypWith Bungie and Activision officially parting ways, yesterday marked Destiny 2's first day on Steam after leaving the Blizzard launcher.
Now free-to-play on Steam with a brand new $34.99 "Shadowkeep" expansion, Destiny 2 peaked with 219k concurrent players on Tuesday.
That number might have been even higher if not for technical issues that prevented many users from logging in and Bungie taking the game down for “emergency maintenance.”
However, with Mostly Positive reviews right now on Steam, it doesn't seem like said issues being fixed tomorrow will have a drastic impact on the player counts.
Destiny 2's player count hitting 200k was enough to help the game rank in as the #3 most played game on Steam for a couple hours yesterday. But D2's numbers were far behind yesterday's peaks for Steam's top 3 games: Dota 2 (606k players), CS:GO (605k players), and PUBG (566k players).
Destiny's biggest competition over the years has been the growing popularity of Warframe -- a similar free-to-play loot shooter -- which is still in Steam's top 10 averaging around 50k concurrent players and peaking at 132k players back in November 2018.
Yesterday also marked the first time we've ever been able to see Destiny's actual player counts. So, it'll be interesting to see if Destiny 2 is able to grow any more to compete with PUBG or if its player base will decline closer to Warframe's numbers.
However, with Mostly Positive reviews right now on Steam, it doesn't seem like said issues being fixed tomorrow will have a drastic impact on the player counts.
Destiny 2's player count hitting 200k was enough to help the game rank in as the #3 most played game on Steam for a couple hours yesterday. But D2's numbers were far behind yesterday's peaks for Steam's top 3 games: Dota 2 (606k players), CS:GO (605k players), and PUBG (566k players).
Destiny's biggest competition over the years has been the growing popularity of Warframe -- a similar free-to-play loot shooter -- which is still in Steam's top 10 averaging around 50k concurrent players and peaking at 132k players back in November 2018.
Yesterday also marked the first time we've ever been able to see Destiny's actual player counts. So, it'll be interesting to see if Destiny 2 is able to grow any more to compete with PUBG or if its player base will decline closer to Warframe's numbers.
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