Bungie Devs Pushed For ‘Destiny 2’ Player Housing At One Point

My favorite Bungie ex-community manager, Liana Ruppert, chimed in regarding a recent question about why Destiny 2 had not added player housing over the years, something that many other games in similar genres, including Warframe, had eventually gotten. The initial question (highlighted via GamePost):

“How has Destiny not added player housing? This feels like a goldmine for playtime, player enjoyment & investment, and monetization?”

The answer from Liana:

“Oh man, so many devs wanted this when I was there. It’d be so dope but phew would a lot of things need to change in the game and resource-wise internally to make that happen with the ROI at a level that would mark it as a beneficial inclusion. The dreaaaaam.”

So what this means it that this would take a lot of resources and there was likely not going to be enough of a return on investment to justify that. Though it is also easy to imagine some sort of separate in-store cosmetic being sold to decorate your ship or Last City apartment or whatever it would be, as the original poster says. The main draw for players would be earning fun things to keep there like say, Oryx’s sword after you beat him or Calus’ goblet. Mounting your favorite weapons on racks. The ability to hang out with other friends at your place.

I remember writing about this idea years ago, and I had to go digging to find it. Here’s what I said about how it could function as a long term investment for the game. This was back in 2022, and according to this I had written about it previously (I can’t find those earlier articles, but I’m sure they exist). I said:

“Trophy Room/Apartment/Ship Interior – I have been saying some version of this for years now, but I think we need a literal, physical manifestation of our lifetime triumphs in a way that isn’t just a number or a single title on display. I’m thinking of a physical, personal space like our own version of the HELM that has mementos based on achievements. Titles could equal physical mementos. Descendant Title? Here’s Taniks’ helmet on the wall. Dredgen? A copy of Drifter’s egregore plant that grows after every gilding. Take a crafted weapon to level 30? It can now be mounted in a display case. Complete 30 transmog bounties? You now have an armor mannequin to display a favorite look. It may sound silly, but it would be something that feels like a culmination of everything you’ve done for all these years.”

It’s heartening to know that at least some Bungie devs were on board with this idea, but it seems irritating that it was shut down when it’s something players clearly would want to see and other games have it, somehow getting around that pesky “ROI” problem.

I also suspect there is some sort of technical complexity to this because well, there is technical complexity with practically everything in Destiny’s aging engine and this is one again one of those “it’s not as easy as it sounds!” problems that always get brought up when new ideas are proposed. Annoying.

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