1,769 hours into Destiny 2 on Steam, The Edge of Fate has killed my interest in playing with one of the worst leveling systems I've seen in an MMO

It's Lightfall blues all over again here in Destiny 2. The Edge of Fate had the unenviable responsibility of following The Final Shape, the long-awaited finale to a 10-year saga and quite arguably the best expansion in Destiny history. Just as Lightfall fumbled it hard after the high of The Witch Queen, The Edge of Fate has landed with disappointment. It's not abysmal, but I would call it pretty bad and I'd probably rank it at or below the level of Lightfall, because I have no real interest in playing it after finishing the campaign and trying the (genuinely good) raid.

The big difference this time is that this is a medium-sized expansion, the first in a line of smaller but more regular releases for Destiny 2. Expectations have to be adjusted. Additionally, where Lightfall had a bad campaign and a boring destination offset by cool new Strand powers, The Edge of Fate actually has a great campaign and a solid destination, but the expansion is dragged down by a stale sandbox, repetitive content, and new gear and leveling systems which feel like a massive step back for the game.

Closer to the final straw

After finishing the campaign and grinding out some new Exotics and quests, my non-raiding Edge of Fate experience has quickly been reduced to repeatedly running old content using worse versions of old builds in pursuit of new gear that's demonstrably worse than most of my old guns as well as all of the Tier 5 gear I would eventually unlock if I hadn't already decided to jump off this hamster wheel.

There's not a lot of replayable new content, the old missions and playlists have never been creakier, and the new Portal activity hub has done real damage to the feel and fantasy of Destiny 2's world by quarantining it in sterile, artificial menus. Bungie even admitted to purposely desaturating the old destinations page – in essence, the entire universe – in some misguided attempt to make the Portal stand out, which feels like cutting off your thumb so your index finger really pops. It will soon re-saturate it, thankfully.

The moment I caught myself farming the once-amazing Whisper mission from seven years ago just to collect throwaway gear with a slightly higher Power level, I knew I was out. Yeah, I could run some other stuff instead, but I just can't microwave these leftovers again. Many of my old stomping grounds and loot routes are straight-up unavailable in this new Portal era, at least at lower levels. The Portal feels like an appetizer that Bungie has mistakenly positioned as a main course, and I have to say, it ain't appetizing.

Meanwhile, the sandbox doesn't have a fun new tentpole like Lightfall's Strand or The Final Shape's Prismatic. To make matters worse, every build in my loadout collection is now significantly weaker thanks to the new armor setup. The gameplay sandbox is just less interesting than it was two weeks ago. There is buildcrafting potential to the new armor stats, and I knew going in that there would be an adjustment period, but I wasn't prepared for Destiny 2 to suddenly become dramatically less fun to play moment-to-moment. Peerless gunplay has always been Bungie's saving grace, and that has been neutered by spongy enemies, scarce ammo, and bugs upon bugs upon even more bugs. The new ammo generation system is nicely controllable, sure, but it shoehorns buildcrafting by all but mandating a high Weapons stat, because without it the uptime on your most enjoyable guns is dreadful.

Bungie seems to have bet on systemic changes standing in for sandbox additions, but I'd say that backfired spectacularly. It feels like Bungie has thrown our old builds in a hole that we have to buildcraft our way out of. Harm reduction is not exactly a back-of-the-box blurb for a new expansion. The ceiling for some builds is a bit higher, sure, but the floor has cratered, and the updated Power system has obliterated any interest I might have had in reaching the new ceiling. I think the general number crunch has been healthy for Destiny 2, but the new Power system is about as approachable as a mama grizzly bear near her cubs. It's a monster assembled from the worst elements of several other MMOs but with almost none of the payoff.

Power fantasies

Steam tells me I've played 1,769 hours of Destiny 2, though my total play time is higher if you count consoles and Battle.net. Most of those hours were logged years ago. For a while now, I've been what I'd call a hardcore casual Destiny 2 player. I don't play a lot, but when I do play, I generally only do difficult and endgame content like raids, dungeons, and Grandmaster Nightfalls. This is where the game really shines, and I don't have the appetite to farm seasonal content a zillion times anymore, though I did love me some Onslaught (an activity which, in any sane universe, would've become the new Call of Duty Zombies-style cornerstone of Destiny PvE, but I digress). Bungie has supported that play style, which I consider the best burnout remedy, by making that content accessible and rewarding, and it did that partly by increasingly deemphasizing Power level with each expansion.

It felt like we'd all realized that Power serves no real purpose apart from extending an unenjoyable grind and it could easily be removed through systemic changes that instead prioritize game feel and tangible rewards. Instead, The Edge of Fate has swung back 180 degrees, making Power more important, and more annoying, than ever. It is less confusing than I'd once feared, and it's less fragmented and time-gated than Destiny 2's old Pinnacle system, but it's also less enjoyable than I'd ever imagined.

As your Power goes up, you get access to higher-tier gear and higher-difficulty activities. You increase your Power by running the hardest stuff you feasibly can, using custom challenge modifiers to bump up your rewards to ensure relevant and plentiful drops. Once you hit the soft cap of 200, you get into temporary seasonal Power which will reset with future content rotations. Seasonal power is primarily gained through Portal activities or higher-difficulty campaign missions. So far, so MMO.

I like that "literally just play the video game" is a viable path to Power now, and it's cool to see the new scoring system reward proficient play, but that's about the only positive stuff I can say about this system. Some of the decisions here are baffling. Your rewards are now tied to your equipped Power, not the highest Power across your collection, undoing years of quality-of-life. Gear tier rewards feel inconsistent, with even the raid itself, the premier endgame activity, dropping pitiful Tier 1 gear as a baseline. The road to the good stuff just feels too long.

Across the community, high-Power players have reported a rain of low-tier gear that feels wrong for their investment level, and the fact is, most people will not get to Tier 5 because they don't have the stomach for it. I've been playing this game for nearly 11 years and even I don't have the stomach for it, and nearly all of my clanmates and raid buddies have expressed similar concerns. It sounds like a lot of people will dip out well before they hit even 400 Power.

To top it all off, increasing your Power doesn't feel good or satisfying because most of the meaningful activities are Power-locked anyway, meaning you're capped at a certain Power deficit that determines the difficulty level. You are not getting stronger; you are unlocking harder versions of the same content. That content was released years ago in most cases, yet the Portal pool also inexplicably excludes some of the best activities in the game. Destiny 2 doesn't feel fresh. I have done all of this stuff before. Now it's just more cumbersome, and tied to a number that doesn't actually mean anything. You can't have your cake and eat it, and you can't make Power simultaneously mandatory and worthless for hard content.

The Edge of Fate feels precision-engineered to turn off players like me, who very specifically liked Destiny 2 because it didn't have the same humdrum level grind as many other MMOs. Power is now slowly gained through repetitive content, easily lost with seasonal resets, and completely immaterial in practice, plus all the gear you get on the way to Tier 5 is totally outclassed. It feels like a problem for an MMO to have all of these bugbears at once. I still have a lot of love for Destiny 2 and I'll come running back if Bungie improves the grind, but for now there are too many good games out there for me to spend time spinning this wheel.

Bungie says "we never intend to ship 'stealth nerfs' in Destiny 2" as Edge of Fate players find unmentioned changes: "We would be completely out of our minds if we thought we could slip something under the rug without players noticing."