What Is Happening With Destiny 2 Content

With the November 10 release of Beyond Light, Destiny 2 lost approximately half of its existing content. The returning Pyramids have shrouded Mercury, Mars, Titan, and Io in Darkness, while the Leviathan has disappeared, leaving behind a mystery for characters and players alike. Whatever the explanation, all those locations have been rendered inaccessible. While some of the gear tied to those destinations has been made available through other means (namely the Monument to Lost Lights Exotic Archive), all other related content including strikes, raids, quests, and PvP maps is no longer available.

Reasons

This move by developer Bungie has understandably caused concern and anger among the player base. Removing content in an expansion is always controversial, and such a mass removal is probably unprecedented. However, Bungie argued that they were facing an unprecedented problem. Over the first three years of its existence, Destiny 2 has reached an enormous size, causing major performance problems and bugs while making updates more difficult to roll out. According to the developers, the removed content was comparatively underused, effectively becoming a deadweight that was dragging down the more popular parts of the game. While those arguments did not win over everyone, it did not take long for Beyond Light to demonstrate the short-term benefits of removing content. The team could now develop and implement patches much more quickly than before, while drastically reducing download time and size.

Content Vault 

Bungie has emphasized that the removed content is not gone forever. Instead, it was moved to the Destiny Content Vault – a new content management system that also includes classic locations and activities from Destiny 1. The team will rework “vaulted” destinations and return them to the live game in future updates, though other content will probably move to the vault when that happens. Technically, the “unvaulting” process already began, as Beyond Light saw the return of the Cosmodrome from Destiny 1. Likewise, Vault of Glass – the series’ widely acclaimed first raid – is expected to make an appearance during Season 13 or 14. It’s not yet clear when Destiny 2 content will return; so far, creative director Luke Smith has denied that any of it will show up in The Witch Queen (the next expansion), so it may take some time.

Prior to the announcement of Beyond Light, it was widely speculated that Destiny 2 was drawing to a close, to be replaced by Destiny 3. The new content model was created to support an alternative plan of ongoing development and content rotation for Destiny 2. If this plan succeeds, the game will be around as a fully-supported cutting-edge experience for a long time.