For the first time in history, Bungie decided to extend contest mode for an additional day. Due to overwhelming server issues during the day one race, contest mode continued through Sunday, making this the first and only 48-hour raid event. The change has inspired a number of interesting debates around raid content, with some calling for Bungie to implement contest mode as a permanent option going forward. While more options naturally seem better, it may not be in Destiny’s best interest to keep contest mode around all year.
The day one raid is the biggest event of the year for Destiny players. It’s an opportunity for everyone to come together in celebration of the latest expansion and compete for a chance at the title of World First. Whether you’re competing with your clan or watching the race unfold on Twitch, there’s just nothing like seeing a new raid for the first time alongside the entire Destiny community. Part of what makes the race so special is contest mode, a special ruleset that limits players’ power level and available arsenal to create conditions for a long and exciting race. With contest mode, Bungie can restrict players from cheesing bosses with overpowered tools and ensure that the raid poses a significant challenge for everyone – even hardcore Destiny speedrunners. After 24 hours, contest mode ends and from then on the raid can only be played on normal difficulty. If you weren’t there on day one, that experience is gone forever.
There’s something to be said for the temporary nature of contest mode. Though Bungie has largely steered away from extremely narrow time windows for experiencing new content over the last year, day ones are still the exception. Getting a team together, planning carefully, and succeeding within such a short time frame are a big part of what makes contest mode so special. If you could just do it any time between now and the day when the raid inevitably gets vaulted, it wouldn’t feel like such an accomplishment – which is the entire point of contest mode.
There’s also the maintenance issue. The institution of the content vault made it clear that Bungie can only maintain Destiny 2 up to a certain size. Keeping contest mode available isn’t as simple as toggling it on or off. It requires oversight as new gear and mods are introduced, and it needs to be tuned separately but alongside regular and future raids. Throughout the first year of Destiny 2, each raid had a prestige version that offered a higher challenge and better rewards. Now we have master difficulty, which adds modifiers and higher power level requirements, similar to Master Nightfalls. One might argue that contest mode wouldn’t require additional development time since it already exists, but it would certainly require upkeep, and perhaps more critically, storage space.
On the other hand, contest mode is just a preferable experience for a lot of people. Those that participated in the day one experience often feel like the regular raid is a watered-down version that doesn’t offer significant enough challenge. The triumphs encourage a number of self-imposed challenges like running with a group of the players using the same class or completing encounters in a specific way, but none of those challenges are quite like contest mode. With more people completing the day one raid than ever before, it might be time for Bungie to re-examine the value of offering challenge mode year-round.
A permanent contest mode may also make the day one experience even better in the future. Unless you’re in a clan with dedicated, year-round players that are invested in high-level content like GM Nightfalls and day one raids, contest mode is fairly inaccessible. Because they exclude people that aren’t already engaging with this type of content, there’s a lot of people who will never be able to do contest mode simply because they have never done it before. Were contest mode to be available year-round, then more players would have the opportunity to form a team and practice the kind of content so that they’re ready for the next day one event. By allowing more people to try contest mode now, Bungie can build the pool of day one racers in the future.
There’s good arguments on both sides, but there’s also an aggressively bad take going around that’s worth squashing. With contest mode getting extended into Sunday, there were some players who were upset this made their achievement less rare, and therefore somehow less valuable. If your agenda is to keep contest mode limited because it necessarily excludes some people, then you need to get your priorities checked. Destiny is at its best when we’re all playing together, and no one who purports to love this game should be upset when more people get to enjoy it. Whether contest mode lasts one day or one year, we should be looking for ways to encourage more people to participate and earn their emblem, not fewer.
We likely won’t see another 48-hour contest mode again when the next raid – potentially a Wrath of the Machine remake – comes out later this year. Too many players who expected to jump into the raid on Sunday now have to wait until next weekend to try out the non-contest version. While that was the best option Bungie had this time, I can’t see it becoming the norm in the future. If contest mode is going to stay longer than one day, it will need to be an optional setting similar to the Master raids. Personally, I’d welcome unlimited contest mode. Even if it didn’t offer any additional rewards, it would at least offer some variety and a way for teams to practice and prepare for the best content Destiny has to offer.
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