If there’s one thing that Destiny players love, it’s being locked out of content until they pay money. Curse of Osiris is happy to deliver, gating off many of Destiny 2‘s high-level activities to anyone who hasn’t bought the new expansion.
Curse of Osiris, which came out Tuesday, raises the caps on Destiny 2 character and Power levels. It also raises the requirements for endgame activities across the board, like the raid and Nightfall strike. Whereas in vanilla Destiny 2 the tougher, Prestige versions of both the raid and Nightfall asked you to have a minimum Power level of 300, they now want you to be 330.
The problem here is that if you don’t have Curse of Osiris, you’re capped at 305 Power, and you can’t actually enter those activities until you buy the expansion:
The Heroic strike playlist (which launched alongside Curse of Osiris) is also locked, despite only requiring a Power level of 270:
Longtime Destiny players might have known to expect this – after all, Bungie pulled a similar move with the Weekly Heroic Strike when The Dark Below launched in December 2014. For years now, Destiny devotees have come to expect that they will need to buy all the game’s expansions in order to keep up.
But for Destiny 2 newcomers or PC-only players, suddenly being locked out of high-level content might come as a surprise to anyone who didn’t want to drop $US20 ($26) on Curse of Osiris. It might feel as if the developers just took away something you’ve already bought.
Bungie’s PR rep has not responded to a request for comment.
Here’s the kicker: If you can’t beat the prestige raid or prestige Nightfall, you can’t get one of the game’s achievements (“The Prestige“). Which means you can’t get a Destiny 2 platinum trophy without the DLC. Yikes.
Comments
46 responses to “High-Level Destiny 2 Activities Are Now Locked Behind DLC”
“Games As Service”
Such a turd ???? of a game. Glad l didn’t fall for it second time around
Same….
Sad thing is, the game is decent. Theres just not enough to do once you get up near the power level cap.
So same issues as Destiny 1…
That doesn’t make it a turd of a game, especially if you put in 100+ hours to get to that point. That’s more than most games give you.
A bit confused by the article. Does this mean that activities that people who owned Destiny 2 could previously participate in are now locked unless they buy the DLC? If so, that’s shitty to the extreme!
Yeah. That is exactly the case.
I’ve been playing the trial the last couple of days since it became available. So you’re telling me that if I were to buy the full version of the game now, I would also have to buy the expansion, because the vanilla end game is no longer even available anymore? So what was a $59 game, immediately became at $59 + expansion price game? How is this an actual business model? o.O
You can still buy the base game. You just can’t do the high level stuff which previously you were able to do.
Ok, so basically as how I understood it. I just think it’s quite distasteful considering the PC version of the game has been out for a little over a month and already base game is out dated. I used to play WoW, and that had a subscription cost but I could also chat with people I came across in the world. Never would have thought I’d miss talking to randoms in my online games… lol
That’s terrible Muriel….
That’s certainly how it reads, that players used to be able to do the Prestige versions of certain raids and strikes, but now can’t because of level requirements that aren’t possible without purchase of the DLC. And having an achievement tied to that makes it even worse.
Yes, so the normal difficulty for these things used to be light level 260 or 270 with Prestige at 300 (305 is the non-DLC cap), now it’s 300 for normal and 330 (DLC cap) for prestige.
So everyone can still do the normal difficulties, though they’re scaled up which sucks for casual playing non-DLC owners already, but now the prestige modes are DLC-only – even though it’s exactly the same as it was before, just scaled up to a higher level.
So technically old prestige is now current normal mode?
not in terms of difficulty. getting to 300 light is fairly easy now so unless you’re literally sitting at 270 light (for nightfall) or 300 light (for raid) the content isn’t as hard as prestige
at this stage for me and my (WoW) guild it’s basically easier to treat the destiny expansions as being similar to WoW expansions… except it’s half the price (roughly) and comes more frequently (maybe… we assumed the second one will drop sometime in 2018)
assuming we’re getting Destiny 3 sometime in 2019 / 2020 and not a perpetual stream of DLC / Expansions… I’m sitting on the fence if I like this model
eh i would call them expansions, i would put them consider them to being equal to a major content patch like 7.3 which is what our 15 a month pays for (well that running the servers/support staff etc etc)
that’s a fair point, having been a WoW player for so long I’ve completely forgotten that you needed to pay real world money for subscription for the game… I switched to using tokens and I’ve made enough gold to buy tokens for several more years
I mean if DLC comes every 3 months that’s 3*15 which is > $30
Except unlike a WoW expansion, you’ll be finished with a Destiny expansion in 3 hours.
But if you are upto date with all other expacs and don’t purchase the new one you can still play all the old content. With Destiny they are looking out previous content unless you purchase the expac. Just terrible, terrible practice.
actually it’s only prestige (currently)
getting to 300 light level is super easy because even the old world events are now dropping blues 299 / 300, so the raid isn’t locked out (base recommended level has gone up to 300) and the NF strike is now recommended 270 light
the heroic strikes feels like strikes except it has ?1? dlc strike in it which is super odd imo. I haven’t played the original strikes yet so if heroic strikes is easy i can only imagine the original is even easier
with all that said… if Destiny 2 DLC 2 continues the trend then yes people would be locked out of the original content… which would suck
Yeah I stopped playing after the 4th week I think got my light level to 304. Back then I was able to do prestige strikes, but if I go back now does that mean I can’t do them and must purchase the DLC?
yep
you need 330 and you can’t get there without the DLC so… yea. not cool there on Bungie’s part
Yeah I see now so they have overhauled the old content for end game related stuff. So basically getting back into the game not only would I be stuck doing the stuff I was already farming, Iwouldn’t be able to do prestige strikes anymore. On one hand that kinda blows, but on the other I guess that wouldn’t leave much incentive to purchase the DLC. Oh well back to dark souls 3 😛
wait, destiny has acheesements? ive not seen any pop up while playing on pc
Xbox achievements and PS4 Trophies. The main reason people are annoyed about it is on PS4 they now can’t get platinum without the DLC.
its no different how MMO work, no new dlc/expansions expand the world and the level cap, so if you always want to be competitive, you will always need the latest upgrade.
Yep D1 veterans on the consoles shouldnt have expected any different, and PC gamers should be way more use to this, having a much longer and richer history of this type of thing.
Here gamers would scream if there is no level cap upgrade and you cant expect them to keep the prestige raid, what is supposed to be the pinnacle of activities at pre-dlc levels making everyone over leveled for it. likewise heroic strikes they are designed to be tougher to challenge those at the level cap
Or they could scale enemies and loot in the raids or strikes to the average level of the players doing them?
This doesn’t bother me since it’s nothing new for an MMO, but I would point out one big difference. Typically MMOs will release expansions that do this sort of thing every 1-2 years. In Destiny 2’s case, it hasn’t even been out 3 months on PC.
Which would be fine, except that in D2, level gated content is purely that – “you will be penalised if you are below this level.” In a 280 raid encounter, a weapon at 281 will do the same damage as that weapon at 301 – the only difference is a player at 301 will hit about 15% harder with their abilities.
There’s no real reason not to keep the raids as they were (at least in terms of level requirements).
dunno, i don’t mind new content being locked behind new expansion paywalls but it sounds like existing content is locked out with this expansion
LOL Glad I never bought into this game series.
LOL, glad I did buy into this series (including all DLC) and although there are issues it doesn’t stop me from playing it and really enjoying it (especially on PC).
More power to you for enjoying this game, but I personally can’t stand behind some of the controversial practices I’ve seen Bungie do with this game series. The game looks great imo (as does Battlefront II) but I choose to protest against such behaviour with my wallet by boycotting such games.
Thanks and I do agree that they have dropped the ball, and I wasn’t trying to be ironic just merely point out that there is a large base of players who still really enjoy the game.
For the downvoters — try and understand that it’s my opinion, not an illogical attack.
So this is my first time with a Destiny expansion and I have to say I’m pretty underwhelmed. The new zones are beautiful but the missions involve a disappointing amount of backtracking/retreading steps which is doubly lame because its so short on top of that.
The other thing is that they added a bunch of new cool stuff to collect but most of it (cosmetics only thank god) is behind a random chance loot box paywall or grindfest.
I’m still looking forward to the new “Raid lair” with friends but this first expansion hasn’t blown my socks off.
Yeah It’s my first one too (was waiting for the PC release) and I’m in about the same boat. I haven’t had much time to play yet so I haven’t finished it yet (think there’s only 1 or 2 missions left though) but so far it really is getting annoying having to backtrack constantly…
The actual missions on Murcury are great IMO, it just seems like a waste that they didn’t do more with it…
Jesus, an “expansion” already? I call BS on this. Another case of DLC that should have been in the base game. Period.
Not really. It’s been two months since the game launched on consoles and 90% of this ‘expansion’ is art/music who are the teams that always either move onto a new project just before launch or get laid-off (because their job is done).
A better argument would be that this expansion is pretty basic, and perhaps not worth the money but that’s subjective. Either way it’s certainly no Blizzard-level “expansion pack”, just a few new story missions, a new location and some new items (most of which got thrown into the microtransaction lootboxes).
They had this planned well before release date (as well as the second DLC). They are definitely not expansions and rather than trying to make the game more welcoming to increase its player base they are just isolating people more.
I’ll repeat my self here, D2 is a good game, but I recommend people also try Warframe, it is a good game in itself, and the business model is one of the best (IMHO).
Yep Warframe is legitimately awesome.
Don’t get me wrong, I really enjoy destiny for what it is and still play it with mates, but WF is just a more and more attractive prospect atm. Particularly with the new area which is like a whole additional game in itself 🙂
And ’round the mountain we go again…. It’s like they love to push gamers’ buttons, but when the sh*t hits the fan, they act all innocent and wonder what went wrong.
It is like nobody played the first game.
Refund requested. Blizzard should process in 24 hours.
How do you qualify for a refund?
You could try via the Australian Consumer Guarantee: https://www.accc.gov.au/consumers/consumer-rights-guarantees/repair-replace-refund
> A product or good has a major problem when:
> – it has a problem that would have stopped someone from buying it if they’d known about it
> You can ask for a replacement or refund if the problem with the product is major.
The ACCC enforces these laws and are not afraid to take on the big boys: https://www.accc.gov.au/media-release/valve-to-pay-3-million-in-penalties-for-misrepresenting-gamers-consumer-guarantee-rights
here’s the kicker ! …is the rest of the players who have purchased dlc inevitably getting to reach a higher power level not get a prestige version? or just a weak version..nobody is going to prestige with people at 300 when there’s 330s around so whether it’s locked or not is beside the point isn’t it??…pc players should be well aware and equipt against this