Live-service games can be tricky beasts to balance when it comes to catering to veteran players while ensuring newer players can hope in and get immediate enjoyment. Bungie continues to walk this line with Destiny 2 as the franchise heads toward its seventh year. However, some players are warning potential new players they may want to wait because the game's current state is not the most welcoming.
Destiny 2 is currently in its final season before the release of 2022's The Witch Queen expansion, Season of the Lost. The season sees guardians having their first, long-awaited interactions with Savathun alongside the return of the Awoken Queen Mara Sov to the Dreaming City. Guardians are tasked with rescuing Mara Sov's coven of Techuens to help rid Savathun of her worm, break the curse on the Dreaming City, and save Osiris.
While there are big things happening in the Destiny 2 universe, some players feel the game is not in a state where it can grow the community. Reddit user Turbulent-Alfalfa-96 spoke to this in a thread talking about how the current state of Destiny 2 is not welcoming to new players, namely cause of the price of entry. They point out how they had two friends who started playing the free New Light version but stopped when they realized it would cost $120 to play all the expansions and seasonal content currently available.
The content Turbulent-Alfalfa-96 is refering to are the Forsaken, Shadowkeep, and Beyond Light expansions, Season of the Lost, and the previous three seasons. All three expansions are available to download in the Legendary Edition online which normally costs $79.99. The current seasons each cost $10, each, on top of that, bringing the cost up to $120.
Given the steep price, along with the apparent lack of content in the free version Turbulent speaks of, it is understandable why new potential players may be hesistant to jump in. Another factor is the relatively short window new players would have to play most of this content as all the seasonal content, along with the Tangled Shore, will be vaulted when The Witch Queen releases.
The easiest solution, according to other Reddit users on Turbulent's thread, would be to sit and wait until the release of The Witch Queen in February 2022. A new expansion is typically the best point in Destiny 2's yearly calendar for new players to jump in as it serves as a soft reset for the whole game.
Destiny 2 is currently available on PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Stadia, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.