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Bungie needs to be more upfront about when content is being vaulted

Destiny 2 is a big game not only in terms of its play space, but the space it takes up on your console or PC as well.

At present the game takes up 91.3GB of storage space on a PC but the size isn’t so much of a problem as much as the issues a game of this size presents. So, in 2020, Bungie launched the Destiny Content Vault (DCV). This would allow the developer to keep building on Destiny 2 while also cycling older, irrelevant content out of the game.

When Beyond Light hit the stage in 2020, Io, Titan, Mercury, Mars, and Leviathan all cycled out of Destiny 2 so that Bungie could make way for new things. For that trade, Europa entered the game as did one new Raid in the Deep Stone Crypt and players were also able to explore the Vault of Glass from Destiny once more.

Was this a fair trade? Given that we lost four raids and five destinations, we’d argue it wasn’t, even though Europa really is gorgeous.

In February 2022, Bungie will drag the Forsaken campaign and Tangled Shore destination into the DCV. This move has been met with harsh criticism from the community mainly because Forsaken is currently available to purchase right now for R399 on Steam. At the very least, the content should be removed from Steam so that buyers aren’t spending money on something that will be unavailable in five months.

Bold move Cotton

As a result of this vaulting, Forsaken has been bombarded with negative reviews pleading with potential buyers to not spend money on the expansion as it will be free to play in December ahead of its fate.

With this move Bungie has effectively said that no content is safe from being vaulted, at least that’s how we read the situation with Forsaken, widely regarded as the best expansion since The Taken King. Sure, the story beats in Forsaken can confuse new players especially with Crow/Uldren being a big bad and yet taking a major role as the Vanguard’s newest ally in recent months, but a quick search will reveal everything a player needs to know.

But what makes this all the more egregious is the upcoming launch of The Witch Queen.

The Witch Queen purchase options

Many players in the Destiny community have complained about the fact that two new Dungeons slated for release in year five of Destiny 2 are locked behind a prohibitively expensive Deluxe Edition of The Witch Queen. This purchase option is priced at R1 039 on Steam. Bear in mind that this is an expansion, not a full game.

The problem here is that in order to get access to content that can and likely will be sunset eventually, you need to pay the highest price possible. Bungie has said that it will offer a purchase path for the year five Dungeons, but as of right now that path is unclear.

This is the equivalent of buying a car and the manufacturer telling you that the car needs to be returned so that you can buy a new one.

While this is a danger of live service games, we feel Bungie could do something to make it feel less like an arm is being removed.

So what is the solution?

While it seems like a complex problem to solve we’d argue it isn’t. The simple solution to all of this is transparency.

Right now Destiny 2 players don’t know how long content will remain in the game. For example, Battlegrounds, a seasonal activity from Season of the Chosen, is becoming a permanent fixture in Destiny 2 at the launch of The Witch Queen. This is despite the rest of the seasonal content for year four being rotated out of the game.

At the very least, Bungie should tell players at purchase how long an expansion and related content will be playable for before being vaulted. If that timeline gets extended, great but if it’s only meant to live in the game for two or three years, players should know that at purchase.

The DCV is a necessary evil and it has paid off already. When the DCV was announced, Destiny 2 used 115GB of storage, today, after three seasons loaded with content, it sits at 91GB.

Personally, knowing that I spent R1 000 for three years of access to the Throne World, Dungeons and activities would be far better than buying blind and hoping that Bungie doesn’t vault that content a year later because it decides the file size is too big.

The question that this raises is whether Bungie knows when content will be vaulted. While we suspect it has rough plans in place, it likely doesn’t want to jump the shark before it’s certain paid content will be vaulted. That having been said, the current trend appears to be two to three years of life before content hits the vault which is fine. Not great sure, but fine.

Bungie is already so good when it comes to communication it just needs to communicate on the matter of the DCV more frequently and possibly give us more than five months notice that content you can still buy won’t be available soon.

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