Destiny 2: The Final Shape and its immediate successor, the Echo seasonal episode, have done a whole lot of good for the game. Remember: things were bad less than a year ago, and now Destiny 2‘s enjoying a bit of a renaissance. Not all is perfect, though, starting with Pathfinder.
I’ll be the first to admit that I was a fan of The Final Shape‘s new weekly progression system early on: the Pathfinder looks and feels about as slick as it gets, setting you on a fast-track to endorphin-laden clicks leading you to XP, loot, and other notable goodies. Thing is, though, that the Pathfinder isn’t as efficient as the old Bounty system was, and the players have caught onto this as time went on. As it currently stands, the big Ritual Pathfinder is a bit of a mess, and a surprising number of players appear to be avoiding it entirely. The Pale Heart Pathfinder is pretty stellar, though; something to keep in mind as we go.
Bungie will need to change some aspects of the Ritual Pathfinder for it to make sense
In its current state, the Pathfinder is a unified progression interface that allows players to quickly and easily reference their reward track in the given activity set and unlock goodies as they come. It can be reset as many times as one wishes, and a new roster of objectives is provided upon doing so. The issue, however, is that certain objectives are extremely particular (e.g. get Jolt/Ignition/Volatile kills in the Crucible), and jumping from one activity into another gets tiring very quickly. It’s easy to start feeling like the game is forcing you into doing things you might not want to do, just to get through a given Ritual Pathfinder.
As shown in the Reddit thread featured above, many players have simply opted out of the Ritual Pathfinder entirely, and they’re not happy that this new system has slowed down their Bright Dust and XP earnings to a crawl. Redditor by the name of Zawrid has done the math, actually:
The reason why I, personally, believe this isn’t necessarily the way the Ritual Pathfinder is supposed to work is the existence of the Pale Heart Pathfinder. This is a far more focused version of the same system that works like a delight, with streamlined and sensible objectives opening up as you burn through a given set of objectives without ever having to leave the Final Shape‘s new Patrol zone. Bungie could feasibly tune the Ritual Pathfinder to behave in a similar manner. Though, on the flip side, it’s every bit as easy to say that the Pale Heart Pathfinder is the fluke, so it’s a toss-up for the time being.
Setting the Pathfinder aside for a little bit, it’s not like Destiny 2 is perfect in its current state. Bungie’s done very well with The Final Shape‘s massive roster of QoL improvements, to be sure, but an excessive reliance on time-gated content has effectively killed the Echo episode’s forward momentum, and the Vanguard Ops playlist is mired in slow, cumbersome Battleground missions that take away from its usually snappy collection of Strikes. Here’s the thing, though: time-gating is being done away with, and the new lineup of Echo Battlegrounds is awesome. So, Bungie is clearly learning and reacting more quickly than we’re used to. Perhaps something similar will happen with the Ritual Pathfinder, too?
Published: Jul 23, 2024 02:01 pm