Destiny 2’s new dungeon launch did something pretty surprising

In the last few months since The Final Shape, there’s been a lot of noise made about Destiny 2’s often record low player count based on Steam data (sometimes by myself, of course). did). But when I checked the same chart, I noticed something pretty cool happening this week.

Unsurprisingly, with the release of Destiny 2 Episode 2, “The Revenant,” player numbers more than doubled from their previous lows. But usually the first day of a season launch is the highest number, regardless of what happens after that, but this time we’re looking at the new Vespers Host Dungeon launch and subsequent Contest Mode Raid Race, in which the first day numbers are actually the highest. 89,000 concurrent participants. 78,000 on Tuesday. As I write this at noon Saturday, they have “reduced” to 79,000 people. still Topping release date.

This is very good! In a time when it’s easy to be negative about Bungie and Destiny’s prospects, this is certainly a pretty positive sign that the new content could be well-received and widely played. Dungeons are generally considered to be a big hit, but the actual dungeon races, “Raid Races,” turned out to be cool, and this weekend’s contest mode is proving to be a real challenge. The World First race was actually longer than the Nightmare Route raid race, and that’s saying something.

In general, Episode 2 – The Revenant seems to be rated higher than Episode 1 – Echoes. That means a better and more interesting theme, Onslaught, solid weapons and equipment, and a greater investment in this dungeon. That’s fine.

But what could be a factor here is that players can complete all of the next six weeks of Act 1 story content in about 90 minutes. This could be completed on launch day (as I and many others accomplished on that day). So from here on out, you won’t need to check in for story updates on weekly resets, just automatically grinding gear, resetting for things like Nightfall and Iron Banner launches. Despite the current highs, I think it could lead to new lows. But let’s see.

For now, Vesper’s Host has the potential to be a bit more difficult, even if Bungie scales back the content overall, with tougher mechanics and the idea of ​​racing in this contest mode, turning dungeons into a kind of “mini-raid.” I think it shows that it is possible. We’re planning to do this again in the next episode, as passes for the two dungeons are already on sale, but with the start of Frontier, that will be reduced to only one raid and one dungeon per year as Destiny content continues (Dungeon Pass will be gone). Scale down.

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