At reset on July 4, the much-anticipated Exotic quest to hunt down the Wicked Implement scout rifle went live in Destiny 2’s Season of the Deep. Only a day later, players are ringing the alarm bells about what the quest has done to the core seasonal activity.
In a discussion spawned by u/naylorb on the Destiny subreddit earlier today, many players are reporting that the Deep Dive seasonal activity—which players can optionally activate the Exotic mission during—has become unplayable with randoms due to the split focus of objectives. With some players in it to complete it as fast as possible, others chasing the bonus loot activated via Toland, and now more entering the depths exclusively for the Exotic mission, just finishing the activity has become a challenge in and of itself.
“Went in a few times yesterday and over half the people I matched with were going for the Exotic,” the Reddit user wrote in their post, recounting their experience. “Even if they aren’t, you can encourage people along, but unless they know what they’re in for, there’s not much point because they’re unlikely to be much help.”
The Exotic quest requires you to activate three Hive statues hidden throughout the opening stages of a Deep Dive run with Broken Blade pieces found via fishing. Once all three are active, a secret door opens up that leads into a challenging, time-limited boss battle. Defeating this boss requires the right loadout, a lot of coordination, and an intimate understanding of the mechanics involved. For players running solo, that’s a lot of expectations to place on a matchmade fireteam who might not even be in Deep Dive for the same reason.
This reliance on luck and unspoken cooperation is exactly what is causing so many problems.
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“What’s happened a couple of times though is one person on my team went to activate the first statue and the other person completely ignores it, but they do go to activate Toland,” the Reddit user said. “I activated it anyway just to humor them, knowing the other person on my team wasn’t going to touch it, and sure enough once the Lure disappears, they quit out the activity and everyone’s time has been wasted.”
Activating Toland was a secret challenge that already existed in the Deep Dive activity from day one in Season of the Deep. If all three players activate their Lure during an encounter, they can defeat an additional challenging wave of enemies to get more loot at the end of the activity. But if all three players don’t activate Toland, everyone misses out. This could already cause tension in matchmade fireteams, and that tension is only exacerbated further by the addition of the Exotic secret.
“People are potentially going in with three different, conflicting goals,” the Reddit user said. “I really want to know if this just never crossed anyone’s mind when designing the quest or if they just didn’t think it would be a big problem.”
Other players in the thread have been supporting naylorb’s post by recounting very similar experiences in their own Deep Dive runs, including one response from u/GameSpawn calling the activity “toxic” now. “90 percent of people want to trigger the Exotic quest, but are WAY unprepared for what is coming,” they said. “Most of the matchmade ones I decided to tag along with couldn’t break 30 percent of the Tormentor’s health.”
“The activity is a complete disaster now,” wrote u/Synthwoven. “You are lucky to get a second person with the same objective as you. I have not had a matchmade group complete any activity since the exotic dropped.”
One particularly popular comment by u/Merzats suggested this specific disaster could be due to the delayed implementation of Destiny 2’s upcoming LFG system. “Matchmaking in activities where people might have different goals and skill levels was a mistake,” they said. “I am starting to believe in the theory that this activity was designed with the in-game LFG in mind and things didn’t pan out once that was delayed.”
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That in-game LFG in question has been pushed back a few times now. Most recently, the fireteam finding tool has been slated for a release in season 23—the final season of the Lightfall expansion cycle. It makes sense to imagine an activity like Deep Dive being developed with its implementation in mind, allowing any player to put up a post searching for a fireteam that wants to do the activity for the same reasons as them. Without it, though, players are subject to the whims of matchmaking or need to rely on third-party tools.
One thing is clear, however. As more players begin their hunt for the Wicked Implement Exotic in Deep Dive, the activity will continue to be a messy affair for matchmade fireteams. It’s difficult to imagine a way for Bungie to address this, beyond just waiting for the dust to settle and hoping the experience regains its consistency once the majority of Guardians have their hands on the elusive scout rifle.
