Destiny 2’s Season 17 raid rotation is still missing one necessary change

Bungie has promised that Destiny 2’s raid rotation will make them more rewarding in Season 17, but it needs to go a step further. It’s time for raid and dungeon matchmaking.

Destiny 2, like Destiny 1 before it, has always been a tricky game to describe to people. You fight through the same areas, missions, and encounters (often on three characters) to get better gear so you can tackle the endgame because the endgame is the best part of Destiny 2 for many people.

Six-player Raids and three-player Dungeons are not only where you’ll usually get some of the game’s best loot (a big draw in any loot shooter), but they’re also full of the game’s most memorable moments. A perfect mix of puzzle-solving and white-knuckle combat, Witch Queen’s Vow of the Disciple is a perfect example — whether it’s scraping by on that last Caretaker DPS check, getting to the hidden chest in the platforming section, or finally offing Rhulk himself.

It’s also where Bungie’s environmental design really comes into its own, like Grasp of Avarice’s pirate-themed treasure spelunk under the Cosmodrome.

Bungie’s latest blog post has revealed how the developer is planning to make Raids and Dungeons more rewarding, too. The short version is that new raids and Dungeons, like Vow of the Disciple and the upcoming Season 17 Dungeon, will drop Pinnacle rewards for each encounter, while older raids and Dungeons will offer a Pinnacle reward for the completion of them once per week.

For those, like myself, that hit the Powerful cap and are now getting a little tired of Vow, this is great news. But it does leave a sizeable elephant in the room.

Now is the perfect time for endgame matchmaking in Destiny 2

Destiny 2 has never had matchmaking for Raids, and for the most part, we’ve made our peace with that. Hell, I write about Destiny as part of my job, and yet I’d barely raided in Destiny 2 because LFGs can be cumbersome and a bit of a gamble.

On one hand, I get it: Six players, with most encounters requiring that team huddle before you start so you can assign roles, prepare for challenges, and occasionally do a little DPS arithmetic, is definitely best experienced with players that have open comms.

On the other, though, Bungie said this:

“All lockouts on encounter rewards for Legendary gear are being removed, which means all Legendary drops in both raids and dungeons will be 100-percent farmable if you so choose. Throw on some lo-fi music, grab a cozy beverage, and farm to your heart’s content.”

With the new Destiny 2 raid rotation, we can farm Raids now (great!), but we’ll still need to find five like-minded players to do it with (not so great!). If you’ve got a clan, that’s no big deal, but if you haven’t, you’re a little out in the cold, and that’s a real shame given how good Destiny 2’s PVE endgame is.

• Read more: Everything we know about Destiny 2 Season 17

It’s even harder to justify with Dungeons. Ok, sure, there are Dungeon mechanics that are way beyond what you can reasonably expect in Strikes and Public Events, but once you take some time to learn them, they become fun to experiment with, switching between different roles and strategies.

Maybe Bungie is leading us down this path, though. The Witch Queen campaign had a lot more mechanical diversity than prior story content, and the Legendary Campaign has had players testing out new Void 3.0 builds. Is this the developer’s way of coaxing us into feeling braver if/when matchmade endgame arrives?

It’s not beyond the realms of possibility, either. Trials of Osiris spent years demanding pre-made teams, but when those walls came down I was finally able to jump in for the first time. Without that change, I’d never have touched the mode, and now I still jump in occasionally.

Here’s hoping Bungie finds a way to balance things with Destiny 2’s raid rotation. Sure, the first week or two would be chaos while newcomers wrestle with roles and the like, but it’d be nice to have the option — especially as more and more content is vaulted and Bungie prepares to bring back a new Raid this year. Come on, Bungie, trust us, we can handle it.