Destiny has been extremely successful commercially out of the gate, becoming the biggest new franchise launch ever and a top-ten game launch of all time. The title has more than 9.5 million players, and Activision Blizzard stated in its earnings call that future expansions and a full sequel are in development.
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Destiny seems like the type of game you'd be better served supporting for a long time by offering new content, but a new entry is definitely on the way (even if it will take several years). While it's early yet, there's plenty of room to speculate and wish for features we hope to see included in Destiny 2, whatever it ends up being. Here's our top five biggest hopes for the sequel:
1. A Fully-Realized Story
This one is fairly obvious (and a large undertaking), but the storytelling in Destiny is its most commonly criticized part. The game sets up the player for a grand, large-scale story set in a beautiful world but fails to ever deliver it. Context is hastily provided in only shallow fashion, and with generic-sounding names and places thrown around without explanation frequently enough that you likely stop paying attention.
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Destiny's sequel needs to do things completely differently. Following the same formula but trying to make better dialogue isn't the best solution, either. Delivering a few lines during cutscenes while you travel does not make a narrative, even if the writing improves. The game needs a real plot, characters with depth, and to make better use of its lore if the story is to improve.
2. More Commitment To Its Parts
Destiny takes elements from various genres, but doesn't wholly commit to any of them. It's a shooter, but is it really much of an RPG? It borrows many mechanics from the genre, but is it really an MMO? Surface-deep implementation of social features, a lack of character progression customization, and the flimsy story add up to a game that is short on focus and direction. If it's meant to be a game with a deep narrative--make one. If players are going to end up zoning out of dialogue to get back to improving their characters, provide more customization and progression options. The series needs to refine what it's attempting to achieve and focus on doing it well, not do many things decently.
3. More Variety And Base Content
Destiny seems like an endless supply of content at first look, but the offerings quickly dry up as you play through the game. Sure, there are plenty of titles with a beginning and an end, but that's not the type of game Destiny purports to be. In a game meant to be social and filled with content for high-level characters, there isn't all that much to do. We've all retreaded Earth, the Moon, Venus, and Mars countless times by now, running through the same areas with slightly different goals in mind hundreds of times.
Once you get at or near the level cap and play your fill of Crucible matches, there simply isn't anything new to do in the game. The constant grind wears you down, gear progression slows to a crawl, and only the Vault of Glass holds appeal. Without paying for future expansions, Destiny runs out of things to offer. A sequel must find a way to make leveling up a separate experience from endgame content--nobody wants to replay the same area for the hundredth time grinding for upgrades as a level 27 when they already ran through it to level up. You've seen most of what there is to do by the time you reach the level cap, and simply playing against enemies with more shields and health in the same environments can only be fun for so long--players need more.
4. Improve The Competitive Multiplayer, Or Drop It Altogether
The Crucible is generally enjoyable, I've played many matches, and I'm even pretty good at it (video evidence below). All of that said, it's severely lacking as a competitive multiplayer mode, especially one created by Bungie. There's no matchmaking to speak of, and Iron Banner or not, the higher-level players are at a massive advantage. Even though damage is equalized for weapons across all levels, fire rate and accuracy make the better weapons far easier to kill opponents with.
There are a decent number of maps and game modes, but there isn't much that makes playing more than a handful of matches at once very appealing. It should serve as more than a brief way to break up the monotony of playing missions, and if the developers don't want to add more depth or options, perhaps the resources would be better put toward more campaign content.
5. Greater Character Progression And Customization
This has been mentioned in other parts, but deserves its own section. There are options and basic paths in Destiny, but characters don't feel all that different. There are a couple of powers that help differentiate the classes and the Supers are unique, but characters generally play the same. The paths unlock themselves through playing, and the only choice you have is which subclass to use and a few small ability changes.
With only three classes, a lot of characters out there are roughly the same, and gear largely just offers stat increases. Creating your characters' look and changing shader colors is nice, but the mechanics of character building are very basic, and nothing like MMOs that the game half emulates. If the developers want those elements present, Destiny's sequel needs to expand upon them and offer greater depth.
