As a digital technology expert and avid gamer, I‘ve seen the gaming industry undergo massive shifts over the last decade. One of the most prominent and concerning trends has been the rise of live service games. Perhaps no franchise exemplifies the pitfalls of this model more than Bungie‘s Destiny series.
On the surface, Destiny 2 appears to be the perfect sci-fi shooter. Polished gunplay, an endless grind of loot and activities, and the social glue of clans and guilds. Under the hood though, nearly every design decision is laser-focused on maximizing player engagement and monetization, often at the cost of the game itself.
I‘m intimately familiar with these issues because for the better part of 5 years, I was a die-hard Destiny 2 player. Thousands of hours spent chasing god rolls, optimizing builds, and sherpa‘ing raids. However, after taking a hard look at how the game was impacting my life, I realized I needed to quit.
What I discovered was that Destiny 2 is a masterclass in exploitative game design and predatory monetization that actively disrespects the player. In this article, I‘ll break down exactly why I believe all gamers should avoid Destiny 2 and the dangerous precedent it sets for the industry.
The Skinner Box: How Destiny 2 Manufactures Addiction
At the core of Destiny 2 is an interlocking set of gameplay loops and reward mechanics designed to stimulate dopamine release in the brain and keep players engaged daily. Central to this is the variable ratio reinforcement schedule.
Coined by famed psychologist B.F. Skinner, a variable ratio reinforcement schedule is a reward system where a behavior is reinforced after an unpredictable number of times. This is the underlying mechanic behind slot machines and lootboxes. It‘s also the foundation Destiny 2 is built upon.
Nearly every activity in the game has some element of randomness determining what rewards you get. Legendary and exotic engrams decrypt into a random piece of gear. Completing a strike, crucible match, or public event has a random chance of dropping a specific weapon or armor piece you need. Even the perks on a given weapon or the stat splits on a piece of armor are governed by multiple layers of randomness.
As Dr. Kelli Dunlap, a clinical psychologist and game designer, puts it:
"Random reward systems like those found in lootboxes and MMO style games are so effective because they tap into our brain‘s natural tendency to look for patterns. Since the rewards aren‘t tied to a consistent action, our brains get a surge of dopamine every time we win, making us want to repeat the behavior over and over."
What this creates is a constant cycle of dopamine seeking via in-game actions. And since the potential rewards are essentially infinite, it‘s easy to fall into a pattern of playing far longer than intended. Countless stories have emerged of Destiny 2 players sacrificing sleep, ignoring responsibilities, and damaging relationships due to overplaying.
Bungie has only further optimized this Skinner Box over the years. Limited time events like Iron Banner and The Revelry use even more punishing RNG on top of a restricted timeframe to maximize FOMO (Fear of Missing Out). The recent introduction of crafting, while ostensibly a means to limit RNG, simply adds yet another grind layer (patterns, crafting materials, leveling) to increase playtime.
The results speak for themselves. According to the playtime tracker WastedOnDestiny, the average playtime for Destiny 2 players with at least one character over 100 hours is a staggering 636 hours. The top 1% of players average over 3500 hours. Destiny 2 is regularly in the top 10 most played games on Steam, with daily concurrents often exceeding 100,000 players.
All that engagement directly translates to Bungie‘s bottom line. With a reported 38.57 million total players, even a conservative estimate of $60 spent per player (base game + 1 expansion) puts Destiny 2‘s lifetime revenue at over $2.3 billion. Eververse, the game‘s real-money microtransaction store, generated over $300 million in 2021 alone.
Microtransactions and Manufactured Discontent
A common refrain you‘ll hear from Destiny 2 players is that the actual lootboxes (engrams) and premium cosmetics are "just cosmetic" and "you can earn them for free." This is a vastly oversimplified take that ignores the larger context of how Destiny 2‘s in-game economy and progression systems are purposely designed around driving Eververse purchases.
Since the game‘s launch, Bungie has steadily moved away from cosmetic rewards being earnable in-game to them being sold piecemeal in Eververse. Items that were once aspirational in-game grinds like raid ships, sparrows, and ghost shells are now almost exclusively premium ornaments or silver-only purchases.
Eververse gets refreshed with the best looking cosmetics every season while in-game rewards remain largely stagnant and recycled. Even the seasonal event armor sets, once earnable through gameplay, have been moved to the premium track of the season pass or sold as silver-only bundles.
Destiny 2 Eververse Yearly Revenue (Millions USD) – Superdata
But it goes beyond just cosmetics. The gameplay itself, from the power level grind to the artifact grind to exotic quests, is constantly prodding you to spend money to speed it up.
The season pass ($10 per season) offers a paid track with bonus rewards and significant XP/progression boosts. Feeling burnt out on running strikes or crucible matches to complete your bounties/challenges for the week? You can buy XP tokens from Eververse to complete them. Hit a wall in your power level grind? Spend some upgrade modules or buy a few season pass ranks to even out your gear.
As much as Bungie tries to downplay it, the fact is that nearly every system in Destiny 2 is now designed to frustrate and create friction in the player experience, then sell you a way to bypass it. It‘s textbook manufacturing a problem and selling the solution.
Even minor inconveniences like changing mods or changing weapons in activities are "softly" monetized. The glimmer and upgrade module economy makes constant experimentation painfully expensive for the average player. But of course, you can buy upgrades from Eververse to make the process less punishing.
It‘s a death by a thousand cuts strategy. No single purchase seems that egregious in isolation. But in aggregate, it creates a clear pattern of a game contorting itself to create more avenues for microtransaction revenue.
Disrespecting Player Investment
The concept of respecting the player‘s time investment has been a core tenet of game design for decades. Games, especially MMO or live service games that demand significant time to progress, should make players feel that investment is worthwhile and valued.
Destiny 2 not only disregards this principle but actively disrespects and devalues player investment at every turn. Look no further than the recent spree of "vaulted" content. Entire expansions that players paid $40-50 for, along with the zones, raids, and activities therein, have been deleted from the live game.
If you purchased Forsaken or Shadowkeep, that content and the money you paid for it is now essentially erased. All the hours you spent exploring those destinations and earning those weapons and armor are now meaningless in the context of the live game.
Bungie‘s justification for this vaulting is that the game was becoming too bloated and cumbersome to maintain. The technical reality though is that Destiny 2 is built on a bespoke engine with fundamental limitations in how content can be delivered.
Because of how assets are packaged and loaded, much of Destiny 2‘s content is interconnected. Changing one thing in one location can have cascading impacts across the game. This technical debt makes developing new content at the pace players expect while ensuring stability an uphill battle.
Rather than invest the resources in migrating to a more modular engine or implementing smarter content delivery systems, Bungie‘s solution has been to start deleting swathes of the game to make room for new, revenue-generating content.
It‘s a short-sighted approach that prioritizes short term profits over long term stability and player goodwill. It tells players that their time and money is only as good as the next expansion cycle.
PvP: A Lag-Ridden, Unbalanced Mess
For a significant portion of the Destiny 2 playerbase, PvP is the main reason they continue to play. Competitive modes like Trials of Osiris and Iron Banner are some of the most popular activities. However, the state of PvP in Destiny 2 is so compromised by technical and balance issues that it borders on unplayable at times.
Destiny 2‘s netcode and server infrastructure are notoriously sub-par. With a server tickrate of only 30hz and reliance on peer-to-peer connections, multiplayer matches are often a laggy, stuttering mess. Players regularly rubberband, skip around corners, and register damage well after the fact.
Things are even worse for high level competitive play. Trials of Osiris matches are routinely plagued by players straight up teleporting due to lag switching and network manipulation. It‘s not uncommon to trade kills full seconds after you‘ve broken line of sight.
On top of the basic functionality being spotty, Destiny 2‘s sandbox and mod balance is constantly out of whack. Due to the need to balance abilities and weapons for both PvE and PvP, there‘s a constant churn of dominant, bordering on game-breaking weapons, exploits, and ability combinations.
Stasis, Loreley Splendor, Classy Restoration, Omnioculus – the list of PvP metas that were left to cause havoc for months on end before being adjusted is endless. Bungie‘s sandbox team is constantly playing whack-a-mole to reign in unintended ability and weapon interactions while introducing new ones.
And then there‘s the elephant in the room – cheating. For a AAA game with a purportedly robust anti-cheat, the prevalence of cheating in Destiny 2 PvP is staggering. Aimbots, wallhacks, infinite abilities, you name it. On PC especially it‘s a rampant issue at the highest levels of play.
Despite these issues being well known and widely complained about for years, Bungie has been painfully slow to address any of them. PvP updates and balance passes are irregular and almost always underwhelming. Meaningful anti-cheat improvements are virtually non-existent.
It‘s inexcusable for a game that pushes PvP as one of its primary engagement drivers to neglect the competitive experience so thoroughly. When winning or losing a match often feels like a dice roll based on who has the least network issues, what incentive do players have to take it seriously?
Better Ways to Spend Your Time Gaming
With all the issues outlined above, it begs the question – why bother playing Destiny 2 at all? There are so many other fantastic games out there that don‘t rely on player-hostile monetization schemes or skinner box mechanics.
If you enjoy Destiny 2‘s core gameplay loop of mowing down enemy hordes and collecting ever shinier guns, check out Warframe. It captures a similar power fantasy and has infinitely more build crafting and customization. The monetization model is also far more player friendly.
For a more relaxed MMO-lite experience, give Final Fantasy XIV a try. It tells a brilliant story, lets you progress at your own pace, and has an endgame that respects your time. Guild Wars 2 is another great option with horizontal progression and a generous free-to-play model.
Ultimately though, the healthiest thing is to develop a balanced gaming diet. Constantly chasing the adrenaline high of the next loot drop or god roll is a recipe for burnout and dissatisfaction. Rotate through different games and genres. Spend time offline pursuing other hobbies and spending time with loved ones.
No game, no matter how alluring, is worth sacrificing your real life responsibilities and relationships for. Games are meant to be an enjoyable diversion, not an endless obligation. If you find your gaming habits are consistently making you unhappy, stressed, or interfering with your life, it‘s okay to step away.
At the end of the day, Destiny 2 is a game designed to keep you playing it and spending money above all else. It employs every psychological trick in the book to maintain engagement at all costs. The best way to win is not to play.
