Opinion: Why Destiny 2 Coming to PC is Bad for Fans
By Weston Albert 29 September 2016
Rumor has it that Destiny 2 is coming to PC in 2017, but one Game Rant writer and Destiny fan explains why he thinks it would have a negative impact on the game’s fan base.
According to the latest rumors about Destiny 2, the official sequel to Bungie’s popular sci-fi shooter (whatever it officially ends up being titled), will come to PC and feel like an entirely new game. Bungie has said again and again that it is looking into the possibility of bringing Destiny to PC, but this is the first time the possibility felt substantial and many fans are excited about the potential a PC release could bring.
Destiny being on PC would offer a lot. Many players would prefer to use a mouse and keyboard to play the shooter, which almost certainly would also see a boost in frame rate (it currently runs at 30 FPS on consoles). It also would introduce the game to a whole new audience and prospective fan base. Those and many more advantages sound very attractive to some, but the news that Destiny 2 could be coming to PC doesn’t have me as excited. In fact, I’m not a fan of the move at all.
That primarily comes from the assumption that Destiny 2 being available on PC would be bad for the community of fans that have formed around the game. While Bungie has not revealed how many people play Destiny on PlayStation 4 versus Xbox One, it’s safe to say that the majority plays on PS4. From the game’s initial launch, it was clear that Destiny favored PlayStation, no doubt in part due to Sony paying for exclusives and helping market the PS4 especially as the place to play Destiny.
While there already exists some splintering of the Destiny community because of the divide between PS4 and Xbox One (that’s a topic for another time), the community has an amazing sense of connection with each other, content creators, and the developers at Bungie because many of them all play Destiny on PS4. A lot of that comes from the fact that the “full” Destiny experience can be found there—playing on Xbox precludes players from all the content Destiny has to offer from Crucible maps to exotics.
Gamers play Destiny on PS4 because they want to experience a game at its “best.” Look at a game like Overwatch. Sure, it’s on consoles, but the game is much more casual. The PC and console versions are even balanced separately. Everyone knows that if you want the “true” experience, especially when it comes to competitive play or eSports, PC is the place to play. I can see the same happening with Destiny 2.
If the PC version of Destiny 2 ran at 60 FPS (one of the most requested features by fans) and became the home of the competitive scene, a good portion of the community may gravitate towards it. To introduce a PC version into the mix would undoubtedly splinter the community more than ever. Especially when it comes to streamers and content creators who have the means and/or commitment to play Destiny in its “best” form.
And with eSports being such a big draw – and remember, Destiny just dipped its toes into the MLG pool recently – it’s not farfetched to foresee Bungie focusing much more of its efforts on making the PC version of the game the best and allowing that version to drive design decisions. That could see the console versions suffering because they would become more of a port than the original design. For someone like me who believes Bungie makes the best feeling shooters on consoles, having that performance be compromised would be demoralizing.
Maybe it’s just me not wanting to see the landscape of Destiny change with new PC pro gamers moving in to dominate the competitive scene, displacing those who have good thumb skill with a console controller. Or seeing my friends list dwindle as friends move onto a PC version. Or me just grasping onto what I’ve always known a Bungie shooter to be, whatever that subjectively means.
Maybe instead, all this could create an even better community in the end. But when you’re a part of a fan base that is generally positive and can do awesome things like raise over $500,000 for charity, it’s hard to see things change.
Obviously, this is all based on rumor and conjecture at this point, so we’ll have to wait and see what happens. In the meantime, I have to get back to the Plaguelands.
Destiny: Rise of Iron is available now on PS4 and Xbox One.
