Destiny 2 PVP players reach breaking point as Bungie stays silent on Stasis balancing

Destiny 2’s PVP community finally reached a breaking point when Bungie remained silent after overwhelming fan condemnation for the lack of any meaningful balance changes to “overpowered” Stasis abilities in the Crucible.

Destiny 2’s fourteenth season, Season of the Splicer, released to high praise from the game’s community due to its new seasonal activities and weapons, interesting story beats, and excitement over the return of iconic Destiny 1 content in the Vault of Glass Raid.

Despite its many highlights, opinion from the PVP side of the game’s community quickly soured, and soon snowballed from simple frustration into all-out indignation and open rebellion from a part of the community that feels they’ve been neglected by Bungie for the last two years.

Season of the Splicer changes push PVP players over the edge

In Season of the Splicer, Bungie introduced new Stasis aspects — ways to customize the game’s three Darkness-based subclasses. Yet, despite previous commitments to reining in these overpowered abilities in PVP, the new aspects broke their balancing more than ever in the Crucible.

The community was quick to point out that Revenant Hunters, already one of the most oppressive and powerful subclasses in PVP, received major buffs that now made them even deadlier than before — the exact opposite of the nerfs that players had been begging for.

Stasis is even more Broken now.. YAAYY (New hunter aspect) pic.twitter.com/hIcWW7nvkj

— ZkMushroom (@ZkMushroom) May 12, 2021

When it became clear that Stasis balancing had taken a step in the wrong direction, PVP players quickly and overwhelmingly called out Bungie’s misstep, and the hashtag ‘Nerf Stasis’ trended across gaming Twitter as the community came out in droves to express their frustration.

Dozens of content creators and thousands of players organized the most coordinated pushback against Stasis since its release. Virtually all of the top PVP players chimed in, with a singular piece of feedback across the board: if Stasis remained unchanged, it would ruin PVP in Destiny 2 completely.

New aspects that ship broken are one thing, but what makes it so much harder to stomach is the continual neglect of any communication regarding PvP's vision outside of balancing intentions. The silence is deafening, and we are once again compelled to scream into this void.

— Ascendant Nomad (@AscendantNomad) May 13, 2021

While many were hopeful that so many players talking about the issue would force Bungie to respond, that didn’t happen, as the studio declined to address the situation on social media or in their weekly news blog released a day after ‘#nerfstasis’ exploded on Twitter.

Bungie’s TWAB posts after a major content release tend to be brief, and the blogs, in general, are prepared days in advance and it was likely too late to pivot entirely to address the community’s latest round of pushback against Stasis.

It's time. We gave it a fair shot. The pvp community morale is the lowest it's ever been and Stasis is still an over-reaching influence in the crucible. @Bungie ya'll are doing great. Take the ultimate W here and #nerfstasis in pvp.

Delete Aspects/Fragments
Limit freeze/slow

— G1 Makowski (@OlManMakowski) May 12, 2021

However, fans were still left disappointed by the lack of any acknowledgment from Bungie about the community’s feedback, which seemed to continue the longstanding trend of silence about their future plans for the Crucible — something that many players take issue with.

Many still believe Destiny 2’s PVP is worth saving

Rumors abound that one of Bungie’s next titles will be a competitive PVP experience, and many Destiny players speculate that the studio has likely shifted much of its former Crucible team over to work on that project, leading to the drought in PVP content for Destiny 2.

For some, the lack of communication and content has proved to be too much. Several content creators that previously focused on Destiny left the game in the wake of Stasis. Michael ‘MTashed’ Tash used to base much of his content around the Crucible, but has mostly moved on to other titles.

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Is that pretty much every PvP content creator now?

I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw the new hunter fragment thing.
I've played for 1 day and I'm almost burnt out https://t.co/ZA3hJBW5QA

— Mtashed (@MTashed) May 12, 2021

For other creators like ‘illPhysics’, Bungie’s lack of commitment to the sweeping Stasis changes requested by the community was the last straw. After the ‘Nerf Stasis’ movement trended and received no response, the respected PVP creator shared with the community that he was quitting Destiny 2 entirely.

“I love this game and I respect the hell out of Bungie, but they are not listening and haven’t been for a long time,” he shared in his farewell message on Twitter.

I quit Destiny 2.

I love this game & I respect the hell out of @Bungie, but they are not listening and haven't been for a long time.

PvP is neither fun, nor rewarding to play.

To my community: I'll elaborate more on my plans going forward soon. Thank you for holding me down.

— Tony💯 is LIVE 🩸 (@illPhysics) May 15, 2021

Fellow content creator ‘nathINSANE’ voiced his agreement with illPhysics’s stance: “Until we get some transparency [from Bungie] it’s just not worth stressing over anymore. It sucks [that] people who are actually trying to better the scene are done with it.”

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Destiny’s true focus has always been on PVE content, and yet, the Crucible remains an important pillar of the game for countless players. The recent reaction on Twitter from the PVP community is further evidence that many Destiny 2 fans still want to see that side of the game succeed.

While Bungie has not responded to the recent round of Stasis criticism at the time of writing, we will make sure to update you if they address the community’s concerns in a future news release. Don’t forget to check out our roundup of where you can find Xur this week.

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