Destiny 2’s Verdant Forest is the Perfect Foundation for a Guardian’s Endless Dungeon
Written by Jonathan Lee, April 28, 2019, 9:00pm. Tweet to: @Writerscube
Bungie has continued to do its best in keeping Destiny fresh in the minds of its player base, even in the face of new live-service games such as Ubisoft’s The Division 2 and Bioware’s Anthem. With the Division 2 boasting around 2k-3k viewers on Twitch and Anthem having dramatically dropped due to recent news of both negative survey results and a delay in Bioware’s developmental roadmap, Destiny 2 has persevered, with over 6k views on Twitch when last checked during the writing of this article.
There is a variety of reasons as to how Destiny 2 has remained so strong in the gaming and the streaming communities, aside from establishing its brand with Destiny 1, but a lot of it has to do with how Bungie has worked hard to craft new game modes (such as Gambit, which now sports Gambit Prime and the Reckoning, both of which are immensely fun). These new game modes have worked wonders in keeping the players engaged and coming back for more. Then there’s the implementation of Seasons. With each Season, like the current Season of the Drifter, we’re given another morsel of story progression along with new gameplay, and of course, new sweet, sweet loot.
And still, Bungie keeps giving us more to come back.
Enter Destiny 2’s Spring Revelry
Recently, we had an event known as Revelry, celebrating the start of Spring and bringing us back the endless Forest of the Vex. It started on April 16 and will be ending on May 7 along with the weekly reset, according to Bungie’s own blog. Along with the event came a familiar face, Eva Levante. Some of you probably remember her from the wintry events that came before. The way to get the best loot out of this event is to grab bounties from Eva and take the fight to either the Verdant Forest, Crucible, or Strikes. Meanwhile, you can acquire Revelric Light and use them to give yourself some boosts while participating in game modes, or you can use them to take your chances at random engrams and save up for an exotic weapon that only becomes available for purchase when you complete a certain Triumph.
Bungie’s Step into Randomized Dungeons for Destiny 2?
All in all, Revelry has been a blast so far! And I’m sad that there’s only a week left of it. This has a lot to do with what Revelry brought to us in the form of the Verdant Forest. When you go to the Forest, you have to complete various, randomized stages of the Forest while under a timer. But every kill you make adds to your time, as well as the timer for the final stage. So, as long as you can keep killing before the timer runs out, you could just keep building up time. This is important because the final stage involves fighting multiple bosses. And you’ll need that final stage timer to be as built-up as possible.
This is a fun way to keep a randomized stage activity engaging for players. It gives them incentive to give it their all. And what’s more, the more bosses you beat, the more loot chests you get at the end (which means more Revelric Light and possible loot). You start getting the picture, there’s a well-designed system here of player participation and player reward. If I had to draw a comparison, it would be like Grim Dawn’s Crucible DLC or Diablo 3’s Nephalim Rift, you get rewarded more for the deeper you get (and survive) into the game mode.
My hope is that Bungie will take Revelry and turn it into something of a permanent fixture in the Destiny 2 world. The randomized dungeon generator has been an effective way of prolonging a game for many titles, and with this being an online game, it’s especially important to provide players with more engaging ways to dive in. We can only take on the same Strikes and Crucible maps over and over, for so many times.
How Could Bungie Pull It Off… and Better?
Bungie may have to do more though than making the Vex Forest a permanent location for players to visit. Currently, the Verdant Forest of Revelry provides a randomized arrangement of preset terrain. These stages phase in with the activation of each new gate upon killing everything. To make it truly endless for players to challenge themselves and enjoy, there would need to be a true system of randomization that will craft new terrain arrangements each time. Over the weeks of playing, I felt like I had memorized all the terrain sets by my second week. But wouldn’t it be neat if you could never guess what was going to phase in past that next gate?
Next, will be the loot. Right now, getting more loot chests at the end per boss beaten is working great. And building up that Final Stage time is a great way to add some challenge. But with an endless mode, there comes ways to amp up the loot game, to push players to go further. One could add greater challenges for players to explore if they manage to get through that first set of bosses at the end. Or there could be an increase in better loot chances or stats for loot drops as you fight your way through tougher and tougher iterations. There’s all kinds of possibilities and players would gobble it up because the endless dungeon concept can always promise more.
Final Thoughts
I think this is a sweet, sweet opportunity for Bungie to add to Destiny 2’s quality-of-life as well as longevity. Making it a temporary event does encourage players to scrabble for the loot and goodies while there’s still time. But making a truly randomized dungeon mode could provide a lasting sense of player motivation. While I’m splitting my attention between Destiny 2, Warframe, and Anthem, I certainly find myself returning to Destiny 2 still more than the rest. And that’s because Bungie has really hit its stride. I’d love to see them continue that with giving players another major addition to game modes, much like they’ve done with the wonderful Gambit, Gambit Prime, and Reckoning.