Battle Pass Fever

Fortnight is a very popular game at the moment and makes its publisher, Epic Games, a lot of money. It uses a system of montazation it calls a “battle pass”. It is something you can buy with your in game currency (that you can also buy with real money) and play the game to rank up. It sounds not that bad once you hear it, but I think that it is bad for the player. It has also be wiggling its way into other AAA games and I think that it should stop. Why is the this monetization system getting into game so fast. One answer I can give is… money. Money is what drives this popularization and I will explain the ways it has also impacted my favorite game.

The image above is from the last DLC for one of what use to be one of my favorite game to come back too, Destiny 2. Destiny 2 is the sequel to Destiny and it is a FPS MMORPG. I was an avid player of Destiny 2 for about a year until Shadowkeep dropped and I did everything to do for it. Destiny 2 switched to a “battle pass” season system for the future. This has changed a story driven experce to a gameplay grind for a “special” sub-name under your screen name. It makes the game a daily grind-fest that some people who don’t have either the time or the drive to grind out the pass. It costs about $20 in in game currency to get the pass and you only have about three months to finishes the pass. Then at about 2 weeks until the the pass ends, you can buy the levels by paying real money. This really infuriates me to an unbelievable extent.

I have spent over $100 on Destiny 2 now because I have payed for all of the DLCs and the passes so far. I love the Forsaken and Shadowkeep DLCs for the story they tell and the interesting plot in my opinion. I have played though all of the DLCs content that I can and have enjoyed most of my experiences. I also think the game was flawed before this whole thing has happened. I love the game and take its flaws with stride, but this whole battle pass system has lost my interest because it doesn’t add anything new. Now the first two seasons had some story as the season of the Undying had shadowkeep come with it and season of Dawning had the reintroduction of Saint 14 which is a popular character of the original Destiny. This new season however, adds almost nothing new to the game.

The new season is called season of the Worthy. It starts with something that I think would be better experience that the entire seasons gameplay. Once you open Destiny 2 you will get a cutscene with Zavala and Ana Bray infiltrating the Almighty, the ship of the cabal empire that they are going to crash into earth. Now the season is about the Guardians stopping the almighty by getting Rasputent (a computer built by Ana Bray’s father to save humanity from danger) to shoot it down. Now I personally think that it would’ve been better if we were told that we would infiltrate the Almighty to stop it and not have a grind fest of season where the main focus is harder lost sectors. They could of also made a better concept because this has no urgency. There is no consequences if the guardians fail to do anything. They would not destroy the city and the world because it would devalue the entire story mode where we rebuild the last city. This season only reminds me of this meme:

SEASON OF THE BASKETBALL from DestinyMemes

I know that this post was manly me ranting about Destiny 2 but that game is the one that the battle pass has ruined for me personally. I know that there are other games that also suffer from publishers putting this crappy monetary system into the games. I just want to explain my frustration with this business model specifically in this one game. I know why it is there but it still frustrates me. So remember, to keep your eyes up Guardian.