With the recent revelation that the upcoming Final Shape DLC for Destiny 2 will be delayed from February 2024 to June 2024, Destiny 2 players brace themselves for an impending seven-month-long Season. Normally I’d be okay with this to ensure the quality of the DLC is better than what we got with the Lightfall DLC, but with no content announcements for February and beyond, Bungie needs to crack open the DCV (Destiny Content Vault) now more than ever to ensure they keep player retention before The Final Shape arrives.
Season 22, Season of the Witch, ends on Tuesday, Nov. 28, less than four weeks from now. When it ends, Season 23 (we don’t know the name of it yet) will begin. Instead of running until late February when the Final Shape would originally launch, it will now last until the beginning of June, taking the throne as the most extended Season ever in the Destiny franchise.
The last time something like this happened was two years ago when Bungie announced that the Witch Queen DLC release date would be pushed back from November 2021 to February 2022. That meant that the upcoming Season at the time, Season 15, otherwise known as Season of the Lost, would run for six months rather than the standard three.
However, to compensate for the extra downtime, Bungie announced that in the middle of the Season, around the third month when the first batch of content would be getting stale, the 30th Anniversary event would be held, giving players new activities and loot to chase to hold them over until the Witch Queen DLC released. It’s no secret that without the 30th Anniversary event, Season of the Lost would go down as one of the worst Seasons in franchise due to how long and stale it was.
So what happens now? Bungie has yet to make the official announcement regarding The Final Shape’s delay. Still, it seems very unlikely we’ll receive another 30th Anniversary-type event to keep players busy with the extra time on their hands. Thus, I believe now more than ever, Bungie finally needs to start cracking open the DCV to keep player retention high while we wait for The Final Shape to arrive.
Season 23’s roadmap will go as follows:
- New Seasonal Story that lasts 6-8 weeks
- New Dungeon
- New Craftable Raid weapons from Existing Raid (Will either be Garden of Salvation or Vault of Glass)
- New Seasonal Weapons & Armor
Essentially, the usual amount of content that keeps players occupied for the standard three-month duration of a given Season. However, now add an extra four months to the Season due to the delay, and now what? Players are left with virtually no content/updates for longer than a typical Season runs for. This is why opening the DCV will be crucial.
Bungie has steadily released vaulted content from the DCV over the last few years since it was introduced, but has kept the crucial components such as old Raids, Strikes, and PvP maps. With the extra downtime from the delay, introducing an “Age of Triumph” type of event from Destiny 1 would be a fantastic way of keeping player retention high, while also keeping players busy with activities until The Final Shape arrives.
In Destiny 1, before Destiny 2 arrived, Bungie announced the “Age of Triumph” event, which revitalized old Raids like the Vault of Glass, Crota’s End, and King’s Fall and brought them up to the current light level of the Rise of Iron DLC activities. On top of that, they introduced new loot for the Raids, such as amazing Armor Ornaments, Emblems, Exotic versions of the weapons, and more. It was a fantastic event that many veteran players, including myself, remember fondly as we headed into the new age of Destiny 2.
Now, Bungie should use this strategy again by re-releasing the older, vaulted Raids like The Leviathan, Scourge of the Past, and even the Leviathan Raid lairs, giving them new, updated loot. In a perfect world, the Garden of Salvation and Last Wish Raids could also use an update similar to that nature, given how old they are. Player’s have been asking for the return of these Raids for quite some time now, so re-introducing them in such a fashion would greatly boost the morale of the community.
It doesn’t need to be just Raids, but we also discussed recently how the DCV should re-release some Strikes, as the Nightfall playlist has been stale for quite some time now. Bungie has already announced a PvP map pack releasing sometime next year, so this could also be an excellent time to introduce them into the mix.
Overall, when Bungie announces the inevitable delay of The Final Shape DLC, they need to make another announcement of a 30th Anniversary-type event, or something similar to the Age of Triumph as we’ve discussed, or it’s going to be a very long seven months while we wait for The Final Shape.
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