Destiny 2 is getting a potentially substantial difficulty increase in most of its activities with the launch of the Lightfall DLC, and Bungie's game director has gone on record explaining the developer's reasoning behind these changes. 2022, in particular, has been mostly all about empowering players in Destiny, with big subclass reworks and powerful gear coming out every season.
The fact that Destiny 2 is getting harder in Lightfall shouldn't be all too surprising, keeping the above in mind. The good news is that Bungie isn't simply bumping up Power Level requirements and calling it a day; there's a more comprehensive ecosystem rework coming in. However, this new difficulty ecosystem appears to be all-encompassing, and there's a real possibility that it might not end up being good for the health of the game.
According to Game Director Joe Blackburn, Destiny 2 has gotten far too easy over the past year, which resulted in the game becoming less engaging for the players. With the Lightfall DLC, Bungie wishes to course correct this growing problem and reel back how powerful the players are. "We want to make sure that content has kept up with the player power increases," explained Blackburn. The developer's goal is specifically to make Destiny's moment-to-moment gameplay more engaging than it's ever been, and for that to be possible, players shouldn't be able to steamroll all the game's baseline content without thinking about it.
It's no secret that Destiny 2: Lightfall is introducing new subclass abilities, providing even more utility and flexibility to player load-outs. This, combined with how powerful Guardians currently are, means that the game has generally gotten too easy, and Blackburn said that the regular playlist content won't be nearly as difficult as day-one Raids are, for example. One of the problems related to the announced difficulty bump, however, is that it doesn't seem like the rewards are being bumped up as well.
Bungie hasn't outright come out and said as much, but reading between the lines suggests that Lightfall is going to be making the game more difficult across the board, but better rewards for engaging with difficult content won't be coming until later down the line. This could mean that players will need to play old content made harder until Destiny 2's Season 21 comes out, which is a poor predicament indeed.
So far, Bungie has been very forthcoming with explaining the ins and outs of its new Destiny release, but there's a very real possibility that Destiny 2: Lightfall will make the grind worse in the end. Players won't need to wait long to see how it all pans out, but with substantial ecosystem reworks of almost every aspect of the game, Lightfall is definitely going to be a big deal — for better or for worse.
Destiny 2 is available now for PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S. The Lightfall expansion pack is due to launch on all platforms on February 28.