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Future 2: The Ultimate Form was speculated to launch on February 28, 2024. We’ve simply handed that momentous date and are staring down the barrel of three extra months of Season of the Want till we arrive on the new launch date of June 4. What ought to have been the final hurrah within the Mild and Darkness Saga is now simply one other date, although it’s one now marred by one other scar: it marks a day the place the Steam Future 2 participant rely is all the way down to its lowest level in years.

A fast take a look at SteamCharts paints a grim image, although it’s one gamers is likely to be used to within the lead as much as a brand new growth. The 24-hour peak participant rely on Steam was just a little over 31,000 on February 29, 2024. This quantity has been steadily dropping since Lightfall broke the concurrent participant rely document for Future 2 with some 316,000 gamers logging in.

Whereas it’s commonplace for Future 2 numbers to wane within the remaining season of an growth, Season of the Want’s numbers are far decrease than that of earlier seasons that led into a brand new growth. Season of the Misplaced (Future 2’s now second-longest season) nonetheless maintained a participant rely greater than 75,000 whereas Season of the Seraph by no means dipped decrease than 96,000.

All of that is within the face of Bungie’s efforts to generate some positivity in regards to the recreation with upcoming patches. Over the previous couple of weeks, Bungie has been detailing numerous adjustments to the core sandbox expertise that gamers can count on to reach in March, Might in addition to when The Ultimate Form launches. Issues like a Crucible overhaul, character customization, new weapons to farm, and talent buffs are simply a few the tweaks the builders are deploying to try to repair issues and make the sport really feel brisker.

So what’s the issue and why is Season of the Want struggling to retain gamers when earlier last-in-line seasons haven’t seen this precipitous fall in participant rely? For starters, there’s the statistical factor of this: A better concurrent participant rely means extra gamers to lose. However the issue is deeper than pure numbers; it’s seemingly a myriad of things together with participant burnout, public notion of Bungie, and the discharge of a number of wonderful video games.

The Future 2 playerbase has been experiencing the identical sort of seasonal content material for years now. The system has change into predictable and in flip stale. Gamers know that the story will unfold over a number of weeks, with every weekly quest involving enjoying the brand new seasonal exercise, operating between characters and video calls, solely to be advised to “wait till subsequent week”. At in regards to the midway level, they’ll see a cutscene that may flip the narrative on its head or supply a brand new perspective of somebody they thought as their enemy. It’s trite and pales compared to the dizzying heights of the narrative skilled in The Witch Queen marketing campaign.

Past the story, gamers are additionally stuffed to the gills with weapons and armor. Adore it or hate it, weapon crafting has basically upset the bedrock of the loot chase in Future 2. There are some outlier weapons price farming however for essentially the most half gamers can get god-tier weapons for endgame content material by merely crafting them. Any new weapon Bungie provides to the sport has to push the needle additional than it at present is, although that is unlikely given the corporate’s avoidance of energy creep.

So now you’ve acquired a playerbase that may predict the story – broadly talking – but additionally has all of the weapons they’ll ever must fight the toughest content material within the recreation. Why trouble farming for a Chilly Consolation god roll when you may simply make an Apex Predator that’ll do virtually as effectively? Until Bungie leans tougher into the problem and the slight distinction in injury output between the 2 issues, gamers have already got what they want.

Whereas Bungie has promised new and contemporary takes on storytelling in The Ultimate Form and past, that doesn’t assist the current. What additionally doesn’t assistance is the general public notion of Bungie as an organization. Just lately, Joe Blackburn left Bungie – a face that the neighborhood had grown to belief immensely, the corporate pulled the Starter Pack bundle from Steam following backlash, a number of excessive profile builders have been laid off, and a four-times World’s First raider was completely banned for having a Rome: Complete Warfare reminiscence editor software put in on his pc.

Including to the issue was a current remark by PlayStation chairman Hiroki Totoki throughout a Q&A session after Sony’s earnings report. Totoki stated that he had visited Bungie’s studio and whereas workers have been motivated, he famous that there was “room for enchancment from a enterprise perspective” particularly in regard to bills and “assuming accountability for improvement timelines.”

Taken in isolation this remark is quite innocuous however when you think about Future 2 gross sales have been operating 45 % under projections for the yr in 2023, it’s not a very good look. How a lot worse may gross sales be now that 70 % of the playerbase has dropped off for the reason that begin of the season, not to mention in comparison with the launch of Lightfall?

All of this culminates in a common dissatisfaction of Bungie and at worse, a mistrust of how the corporate is selecting to deal with the course of Future 2. There’s solely a lot speaking and promising of enhancements that may assist, sooner or later gamers must expertise these adjustments in-game. However for some Reddit customers, the current patch previews have finished little to ignite the joy for The Ultimate Form and what comes after.

These gamers, and plenty of others, are ready for that second the place a bit of stories or reveal provides them a goal to not solely play The Ultimate Form, however stick with this now ten yr previous franchise. The final ten years have been ramping as much as this remaining confrontation with the massive unhealthy, and very similar to how revealing the monster in a horror film strips it of its energy, defeating the Witness might need an identical impact on the franchise.

Compounding the problem of participant numbers are the current smash hit releases. Palworld surpassed CS:GO’s concurrent participant rely whereas Helldivers 2 has seen such crushing recognition that the servers couldn’t deal with the load. And now with the Ultimate Fantay 7 Rebirth launch, there’s much more nice video games pulling gamers away from Future 2.

It’s a tricky street for Bungie shifting ahead. It must over-deliver with The Ultimate Form similarly to Forsaken or The Witch Queen if it desires to reignite the eagerness in gamers and hold them coming again. There have been quite a few “final likelihood” moments within the recreation’s historical past and it’s managed to bounce again, however there’s one thing totally different within the air this time. The symptom that’s dwindling participant numbers speaks volumes and whereas it’s not splendid to play the identical recreation each day till the warmth loss of life of the universe, it could be nice if the sunshine in Future 2 doesn’t flicker out with a whimper.