Bungie explains why Destiny 2 keeps going down — and how it plans to fix it

polygon.com:

Destiny 2 has been in a tough spot since Bungie launched the Lightfallexpansion earlier this year. While many fans have complaints about the expansion itself, the biggest issue with the game has been one of stability. In a recent blog post, the studio finally explained why these issues are happening in-game, and gave players a roadmap for fixes coming later this year.

Over the past few months, players have been disconnected from the middle of activities on a far more frequent basis than usual. From a player perspective, it feels as though the helpful <a href=«https://twitter.com/BungieHelp?ref_src=» https:>Bungie Help Twitter account

is letting players know the game is going down for “emergency maintenance” more often than ever before.

This instability — and the frustration it creates in the community — has led to Bungie’s most transparent update yet on the health of the game. In Thursday’s blog post, Bungie explained that the studio actually invested heavily in improving the stability of the game around high-traffic moments like an expansion launch or a raid race. And to Bungie’s credit, both Lightfall and the Root of Nightmares raid were very smooth launches from a player experience.

Unfortunately, these upgrades came with unexpected disruptions to Destiny 2’s “Claims” service, which is key to the game’s ability to function. All gameplay messages — every enemy killed or item picked up — create a Claim and route it to a specific server so the game can respond properly. Claims now remain functional even when loads of Guardians are all trying to login and play at once, but the system no longer repairs itself properly.

When a Claim communication channel breaks and doesn’t restore itself like it’s supposed to, players