Over the course of its 5-year+ run withDestiny, developer Bungie has put out a lot of content. Some fans would say that the studio didn’t put out enough content over that time, but those who empathize with game developers understand that even simple concepts can take time. For example, theZero Hour mission for Outbreak Perfectedtook about 7 months to design.
To that point, Bungie director Luke Smith gave some insight into the patching process and how it, too, can push the developers to work extreme hours. Specifically, Smith explains why Bungie has notfixed Lord of Wolvesalready, stating that the decision was made to wait until July’s patch in order to preserve work-life balance.
For those that haven’t been following theDestiny 2meta, the Lord of Wolves shotgun has been running rampant in the Crucible. Because Bungie made a change that allows the Release the Wolves perk to be active at all times, the exotic shotgun is capable of reducing an enemy to ash in seconds. To make matters worse, Lord of Wolves can kill an enemy in super almost instantly, which has led toBungie re-evaluating how roaming supers workin the future.
Considering how much of a problem Lord of Wolves is in the Crucible, especially on PC, some Destiny 2 players might have wondered why Bungie didn’t make a change sooner. Now it makes more sense.
“We’re looking at this summer, something like July. We have a patch that we’re readying right now, the patch is going to come out in a couple weeks. We could take the patch off the patch factory, more or less, and ask people to work super long and add this thing in. And we’re having the conversation that, ‘Is it worth doing that or is it better to preserve the work-life balance and ship it later in July.'”
Bungie has a majorDestiny 2expansion in the works called Shadowkeepand it is likely all hands on deck in order to get the content ready for release in September. So, pulling a developer away from upcoming content in order to fix or change current content could lead to extra work, or what is known as “crunch” in the game development industry. Smith also explains that Bungie just had to do put the focus on a single feature when finishing up the Gahlran boss fight in the Crown of Sorrow raid. Doing that again for Lord of Wolves, even if it is broken in PvP, was not advisable.
Since splitting with Activision, Bungie has spent a lot of time being more open with theDestiny 2community, explaining why certain changes are being made and why some things are kept the same. Hopefully, this trend continues intoDestiny 2Year 3 with Shadowkeep, because right now the fans seem pretty happy.
Destiny 2is available for PC, PS4, and Xbox One.
