If you’ve been to the Destiny Reddit anytime recently (or really anytime at all), you’ll find a list of suggestions, demands, complaints, and other rants about quality of life fixes in Destiny 2. Everything from “why can we still not use Sparrows on Mercury?” to “why is there still no bad luck protection on Mars’ Sleeper Nodes?” (I’m stuck at 37/40 on Sleeper Nodes, so I feel that one.) In a reply to one poster, Bungie Community Manager Dylan Gafner (better known as dmg04) explained that some of these seemingly basic quality of life fixes have been left untouched for so long simply due to prioritization of resources.
The thread that Gafner replied to was calling for a “housekeeping update” to come in and sweep up a bunch of old quality of life issues players have been dealing with for so long. Everything from bad luck protection, to Sparrows on Mercury, to Reckoning being a poorly balanced game mode now that some Exotics have been changed. Gafner said that quality of life requests need to be prioritized based on importance to players and the available resources to not only implement the fix, but do extensive bug testing to make sure it works.
To give some context on why QOL is sometimes delayed or not acted upon, I want to call out the Mercury Sparrow bullet in particular. This was something that players were asking about many, many moons ago. It’s something that the team actually tried to implement, but it ended up causing some bugs that would crash the game, or impact various activities on Mercury. This jammed up our development timeline, as we essentially lost resources that could have been allocated to testing other content that was being cooked up.
While he made it clear that this didn’t mean this options were off the table, he did go on to talk about the trade-off that each quality of life update has. Is it worth it to use up test time to add Sparrows to Mercury, or is that time better spent testing and fixing new and upcoming content? “What if a simple QOL request ends up bringing deep rooted bugs that require more time to hammer out? Keep working on that, or hit other items that are easier to implement?”
He added another example that came up with the Season of the Drifter update. At this time, there was a decision to be made on adding bad luck protection to Sleeper Nodes, or bad luck protection to Raids and gear needed for titles. The bigger priority was title acquisition, as Sleeper Nodes didn’t contribute to anything other than completionists who want them all done. “Sometimes we have to make these calls knowing that we won’t have time to address the items we couldn’t hit, so we have to prioritize what to tackle ASAP based not only on community feedback, but our release timelines and people we have available to work on the content,” Gafner wrote.
He did encourage players to continue offering their feedback, however, as it helps them know which issues to prioritize when they do need to make a decision. With each new update, it seems that there are some new things added along with some old things that get fixed. For example, with the last update, an unlisted change was made to make the visuals on the Pursuits tab easier to distinguish, which is an easier fix than giving it a complete redesign.
What do you think of Bungie’s explanation about why some Destiny 2 quality of life updates haven’t made it into the game? Do you agree with them prioritizing new content over old? Are you surprised that simply adding Sparrows to Mercury is causing entire game crashes? Let us know what Destiny 2 quality of life fixes you most want to see in the comments below.
[Source: Reddit]
