Bungie is hard at work preparing to implement crossplay in Destiny 2. While there is no set date for when this might happen, outside of a nebulous “2021”, it is already proving to be a cause for concern for much of the player base.
What has kicked off this concern is a recent This Week At Bungie post that detailed changes that are on the way for PC players. Bungie is making some changed to different weapon archetypes that currently have their recoil reduced when using a mouse and keyboard.
The issue is that, if we are honest, recoil is not much of an issue on mouse and keyboard in Destiny 2 for any competent player. Switching from Destiny 2 to just about any other shooter is actually quite jarring. Controller players have a lot of recoil to contend with, which makes little sense as most people would agree that controlling recoil with a mouse is easier than doing it with a thumbstick.
The affected weapons are as follows:
- Auto Rifle
- Scout Rifle
- Pulse Rifle
- Submachine Gun
- Hand Cannon
- Machine Gun
Bungie has also made the classic mistake of having some slightly confusing messaging around the issue. Some weapon classes will have recoil increased, others will have recoil reduced, some will be mouse and keyboard changes, while others will also apply to controllers.
For veteran players, it is a classic Destiny snafu where Bungie wants to let us know they are working on stuff but only show us the most muddled of pictures, and then the community tends to panic. Bungie is, undoubtedly, in an unenviable position. Balancing mouse and keyboard against controllers with Aim Assist is not easy and will usually turn the PvP Sandbox into a complete shark tank for one group of players. If they really do want to introduce true crossplay to the game, it is a problem that they will need to solve.
Unfortunately for them, the easiest way to solve it is by making incremental changes to the live sandbox, gathering up data, and then tweaking it all some more. They cannot really do this without conveying the changes to the players, and the players don’t seem to be too happy about the simple reality of making crossplay work.
