Destiny 2’s third and final Episode, Heresy, arrived on February 4, replacing what, by most available measurements, was one of the looter shooter’s worst-performing seasons by a country mile.
Throughout Revenant’s duration, player numbers on Steam took larger tumbles than ever before, resulting in the lowest concurrent player numbers since Bungie’s flagship jumped from Blizzard’s Battle.net client to Valve’s platform.
Attributing the lapse in popularity to any individual facet would be inherently inaccurate, but Bungie’s controversial decision to walk back the role of weapon crafting repeatedly became a recurring hot topic throughout Revenant’s duration.
Tonics, a system intended to provide some degree of deterministic loot chase, failed to prove themselves a worthwhile replacement, even after numerous buffs and bug fixes.
Clearly aware of the community disquiet – but stopping short of reinstating weapon crafting for seasonal content – Bungie once more returned to the drawing board in Heresy, settling on a new initiative.
Heresy’s loot cadence must be here to stay
The Nether has proven to be one of Destiny 2’s most warmly-received seasonal activities. Its non-linear nature, freedom to explore, and non-traditional roguelike difficulty quite effortlessly surpass the by-numbers activities offered by Echoes or Revenant.
Above all else, though, it showers players with loot, and lots of it. Any action, whether it be encounter completions, discovering secrets, or opening standard chests littering the Dreadnaught yields a randomly-rolled weapon of varying rarity.
Revenant’s Tonic system was criticized for being a poor, convoluted replacement for Crafting.
If randomly rolled weapons remain Bungie’s preferred method of loot chase, then the Nether’s status as a gigantic pinata must become the new standard for loot frequency. No more stingy one or two-weapon drops per activity completion, a la Tomb of Elders, or Breach Executable.
Likewise, the Tome of Want, essentially a simpler, hassle-free version of Tonics, is a system worthy of being carried forward rather than retired once Frontiers comes knocking in the summer.
Considering how little is known about the Apollo and Behemoth expansions that make up Frontiers, there’s no telling how much Bungie intends to carry over into what’s going to be a bold new era for Destiny 2.
Even if it decides to once again reassess how best to reward players, Heresy’s generous model needs to be considered the gold standard going forward. Anything less, and Guardians could once more consider their time better spent chasing dopamine elsewhere.
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