Bungie today revealed key details about its upcoming Destiny sequel, including a new feature that will make it easier for solo players to pair up with larger groups to do multi-player activities. The feature, called Guided Games, will make it so players who don’t play in large groups or commit to a dedicated clan can enjoy the more challenging experiences like strikes and raids, as well as the more serious competitive multiplayer modes.
Destiny 2 is going to be far more accessible
In the first Destiny, players effectively had to use third-party services to pair up with strangers for group activities. Those have included Destiny subreddits and dedicated services like DestinyLFG, which let you fill out criteria to be find other players for a certain activity. This was a clunky process — it meant waiting for a message through PlayStation or Xbox’s chat system and hoping you were being paired with a promising group of players. For those who didn’t want to go through that process, the game felt half-finished and isolating, given its online-only requirement and its social infrastructure.
Now, in Destiny 2, Bungie will let players form official, in-game clans with distinct descriptions for the desired level and style of play, as well as rewards that help promote positive behavior. With Guided Games, solo players can pick a clan they want to be paired with, so that when they choose to start matchmaking for a group activity, there will be a shared expectation of the kinds of players they will be paired with, the type of skill level involved, and how serious or casual people are taking the experience.
It may sound like somewhat of a minor addition, but a lack of matchmaking for Destiny’s harder group activities meant that a vast majority of solo players never got to experience the initial game’s best and most rewarding content. With Guided Games, Destiny 2 sounds much more accessible.