Summary
As of the weekly reset on July 25th, players can now join in-progress Deep Dive activities through matchmaking inDestiny 2, instead of only matchmaking for a new instance. Going forward, this new feature will help many players not only in the current Season but in the Seasons followingSeason of The Deepas well. When players are busy prioritizing the activities from the newer Seasons as they become available, anyone who still wants or needs to complete Deep Dives will have a much easier time finding teammates to help out. Otherwise, during the remainder of Season of the Deep, it will now be a lot more reliable for layers to find the help that they need during the activity.
This change is especially helpful because some players who start this activity will leave before it ends, which puts any players who stay at the disadvantage of being understaffed. Given how many different quests and challenges are tied to Deep Dives inDestiny 2, players don’t always have to complete the full activity to get the rewards they are looking for. Also, with the way that the pressure trials work, some players may intentionally abandon their teammates for the purpose of restarting any challenges that have failed.
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Season of the Deep has Proven to Be a Divisive Period for Destiny 2
Before theWicked Implement exotic Scout riflewas available, pressure trials were one of the main reasons that players would intentionally abandon the Deep Dive activity. Pressure trials progressively make Deep Dives more difficult and rewarding for every consecutive challenge completed. When a challenge is failed, this locks in whatever tier of rewards that players have reached and disables any further pressure trial challenges for this specific attempt. Failing a challenge, or missing the opportunity to start the next challenge means that players are forfeiting potential rewards, and doing so often turns away teammates.
No matter how many pressure trials are completed, including none, one of the reward chests at the end of Deep DIves will consume a key when opened, so many players prefer to maximize their rewards when spending Deep Dive keys. This approach to Deep Dives conflicts with players who are, more or less, “speed running” the activity for seasonal vendor reputation, or the rewards from weekly completions. Since completing the activity without attempting the pressure trial challenges is much faster, this has created the same kind of division thatDestiny 2’s fishing activitysuffers from.
Overall, Season of the Deep has been a pretty divisive Season in terms of the current activities that players can participate in. Given howDestiny 2’s fishing and public eventsinterfere with each other, the new in-progress matchmaking feature for Deep Dives is a step in the right direction. Future Seasons inDestiny 2would be wise to learn how this feature can provide a better experience for seasonal activities and other existing content that it may be missing from.
Aside from players leaving when pressure trials are failed or skipped, the newExotic weapon questis another major contributor to players leaving the Deep Dives activity mid-game. There are also various triumphs, challenges, and collectibles in the Deep Dives activity that only involve specific sections of the activity instead of full completions. The Deep Dives activity ultimately has too many things going on within any single attempt at completing the activity for it to go over smoothly with randomly matched fire teams. Each player can potentially have individual and conflicting objectives within the activity that result in teams getting disbanded before the finale.
Given how many different varying motives players have for participating in individual parts of Deep Dives, it tends to get plenty chaotic. Nevertheless, the ability to matchmake and join in-progress Deep Dive activities is a gift that will continue to give for as long as the activity is available.
Destiny 2is available now for PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.
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