Why is Destiny 2's latest dungeon so hard? In part because the Root of Nightmares raid was so easy
At a recent roundtable Q&A session with Bungie for Destiny 2's Season of the Deep, I asked why the bosses in its latest dungeon have so much damn health. And sure, I know what you're thinking: get good. But it's not just me. On release, plenty of the player reaction—particularly from those who like to solo Destiny 2's dungeons—was about how many phases it takes to bring down its two bosses.
The answer surprised me, because it reveals just how much each dungeon is designed as a response to the previous one.
«You know, there's kind of a story that the dungeon releases tell,» says design lead Brian Frank. «I'm over the moon with how awesome they've turned out. You've got Grasp of Avarice, which was fun, fast, not as challenging, more lighthearted. Duality was a big jump in challenge and mechanical complexity… and also bugs. But it was really strong thematically. And Spire of the Watcher was more straightforward mechanically. Intentionally, because we felt like it was critical to not ship another buggy release. Like the teleportation with Duality, we just did not anticipate the network related issues we were going to have with that, that became very intractable.»
Each dungeon, then, is a reaction to what came before. Spire is deliberately a different experience from Duality, both because it's a nice change of pace, but also because—for weeks after release—Duality's shifting mechanic would often unintentionally kill players mid-run.
So what is Ghosts of the Deep reacting to? After all, Spire of the Watcher also featured a couple of bosses with a lot of health. According to Frank, for this latest dungeon, Bungie made a conscious decision to prioritise fireteam tuning—that is, balancing the dungeon experience for the maximum of
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