The first time Destiny 2 reintroduced past Seasonal playlist activities into the Strikes playlist was the PsiOps Battlegrounds activities from Season of the Risen. By Lightfall, the Strikes playlist has received even more content from past seasonal playlist activities, such as the Heist Battlegrounds from Season of the Seraph. With Destiny 2’s current Season of the Defiance’s playlist being named Defiant Battlegrounds, it’s a safe assumption that it will return as Strikes sometime after the current Season ends.
While Lightfall isn't the first time that Destiny 2 has brought back old seasonal activities as Strikes, it once again shows how painfully similar the seasonal playlist activities are to existing content. Most of the seasonal playlist activities can be compared to the Strikes playlist, while others bear close resemblance to Ritual activities and heroic Public Events. Bungie has previously mentioned that changes are coming to future seasonal content, and hopefully it addresses how the playlist activities compete with existing content, just to get blended together down the road. Ultimately, the similarities between Strikes and seasonal playlists are harmful to both of the activities.
Destiny 2's Seasonal Playlist Activities and Strikes Need a Change
The seasonal activities are engaging during their featured Season because of how their difficulty can evolve during the course of the Season. Consequently, when the seasonal activities return as Strikes without any of their evolutions available, it's like the community’s progress was all for nothing. Also, when the seasonal content returns as Strikes, it doesn’t bring any of the rewards from the related Season with it, which is a major contributor to the troublesome FOMO in Destiny 2. The playlist activities in most of the recent Seasons aren’t much more than Strikes with exclusive rewards, which ultimately puts both activities in an awkward competition.
Some of the recent leaks for the upcoming Season of the Deep and beyond in Destiny 2 point toward returning destinations from Destiny 2’s vaulted content as well as legacy content from the original Destiny. Hopefully this will bode well for the Strikes playlist, and it will bring along some of the beloved Strikes from the series’ retired content. Even though returning content makes up a sizable portion of the Strikes playlist nowadays, it could still freshen up the activity with some nostalgic scenery and enemies. This would give seasonal playlist activities the breathing room that they need to differentiate from Strikes without leaving the Strikes playlist in a poor state.
Before too long, future Seasons in Destiny 2 will see changes to the seasonal content as they progress throughout each Season. While this may be geared toward the seasonal storylines instead of the playlist activity, hopefully it puts the spotlight on the playlist activities soon after. The dependence that Strikes have on returning seasonal content could be avoided by differentiating the two activities with new and returning features for the seasonal playlist activities. Things like larger team sizes and exclusive ordnance weapons have distinguished the seasonal playlists from existing content in the past, so seeing those again in future Seasons would be a step in the right direction. While unique features to the seasonal playlists would alleviate the problem at hand, it doesn’t entirely solve the issue of the Strikes playlist relying on returning seasonal content to have new content for itself.
Limited variety is one of the many problems in the Strike playlist at the moment, so having more Strikes in general would revitalize the activity. Having past seasonal content return to the Strikes playlist is eventually helpful for the Strike playlist, but permanently bad for seasonal content. Introducing seasonal content that is intended to eventually assimilate into the Strikes playlist is a symptom of some bigger problems. As is, the Strikes playlist is overdue for some changes just as much as the seasonal playlist activities.
Destiny 2 is available now for PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X|S.
