Over four years since its release in September 2017, Destiny 2 is still going strong. Bungie's looter-shooter is unique in its setting and style, with a combination of elemental abilities and guns that shoot small-scale black holes or fiery explosions, making gameplay an interesting mix. Destiny 2 is a live service title, which means that it keeps getting more content in the form of annual expansions and bite-sized Seasons that maintain players' engagement over time.
Because Destiny 2 is constantly evolving, it also means there is room for improvement, as the frequent iterations of Trials of Osiris show. It may be useful for Destiny 2 to look at what Outriders achieved with its free New Horizon update in terms of endgame content and character customization, which take that looter-shooter back on track after it launched last April. Specifically, Outriders managed to add a useful feature to its endgame content that prevents players from booting team members during an Expedition, and it also added a really clever transmog system.
Destiny 2 and Outriders: Comparing Endgame and Transmog Systems
One of the biggest gripes Outriders players had when the game launched was that endgame Expeditions needed to dump their timers for them to feel truly rewarding. This is precisely what New Horizon does, and now Outriders' Expeditions are not time-gated in terms of progression to promote more diversity of builds, which is great for the game and its players. Another change is that Outriders now prevents players from kicking fellow team members from Expeditions at any given time, which was abused when the game launched to the extent that some fans couldn't get their gear.
This is something Destiny 2 players encounter as well, and there have always been reports that some players were booted from Grandmaster Nightfall Strikes right before the boss or when they were about to defeat it. This is toxic behavior that doesn't benefit anyone, considering those who are left after someone is booted do not get increased loot - more often than not this feature is used to troll others. Because Grandmaster Nightfalls are already one of the hardest things Destiny 2 players can do, with everyone taken back to Orbit if the whole team dies, Bungie should lock parties when launching the activity.
Another thing Outriders does right is its transmog system, which is completely free and allows players to customize their characters in many ways. The way it works is that players unlock skins for weapons and armor whenever they get a new drop on any character on their account, and the entire pool makes a list of items players can turn into skins at any given time. The system is very intuitive and it doesn't require interacting with NPCs, which is great.
Destiny 2, on the other hand, has a convoluted transmog system that relies on talking to an NPC named Ada-1 to retrieve a bounty, which has to be completed by playing through activities. Then, players have to go back to Ada-1 to deposit the materials they obtained and get a single use of the transmog system on any item they found - with many gear sets now being unobtainable, thus that weapons cannot be reskinned. Destiny 2's system is inferior to that of Outriders, and it could take a look at what People Can Fly did to improve. Ultimately, if both games can influence one another for the better, players are likely to enjoy the results.
Destiny 2 is available on PC, PS4, PS5, Stadia, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.