Season of the Deep ushered in a new format for seasonal activities with Deep Dives in Destiny 2 — it’s similar to a roguelite with a few twists. Deep Dives is a timed seasonal activity where fireteams journey through the depths of the Titan’s methane sea and fight hordes of enemies. This seasonal activity was the foundation for story beats, a secret Exotic mission, and other objectives; a fresh change of pace from the usual Battlegrounds we’ve been getting the past few seasons.
Yet, its multipurpose quality is tedious since players entering Deep Dives in the matchmaking mode are all after something different. While some are trying to complete the timed Wicked Implement mission, others might be after the Pressure Trials, triumphs, tier loot, or searching for the Aquarium Vivarium collectibles. Even the roguelite features lack variety beyond the kind of enemies you fight and the base objective each enemy type carries. This is Destiny 2’s first foray into this sort of game mode, and although its newness is exciting, Deep Dives has some wrinkles that need to be ironed out.
There is the secret challenge mode, Pressure Trials, that players can activate by interacting with a hidden Toland at every level. Completing each challenge offers better rewards. However, getting random players to interact with Toland in the matchmade mode is tough, sometimes shooting at them or spamming emotes isn’t enough to get their attention. Despite matchmaking, players have to resort to LFG if they are targeting a specific objective in Deep Dives.
Moreover, the Wicked Implement Exotic mission can be frustrating to those who can’t complete it in time. You don’t get rewards for doing two-thirds of Deep Dives, and you have to restart the activity and run through the Wicked Implement mission again. Like Pressure Trials, the Wicked Implement Exotic mission is easy to trigger, but accessing it requires active participation from the fireteam — a struggle to coordinate when matchmaking. It’s nice to have Deep Dives layered with worthwhile objectives, but the way players engage with such a multifaceted activity needs to be streamlined, and the private mode isn't enough.
Timegated across three weeks, new levels of Deep Dives started to feel more like a roguelite. Along with that, another feature that makes this a roguelite are the power-ups players earn after each level. Players complete different objectives across three depth levels and gain power-ups before fighting a final boss. Benefits like additional damage for abilities/weapons or damage resistance are helpful, but aren't quite thrilling — which feels like it goes against the seemingly arcade-like nature of the game mode. Eventually, the predictability of Deep Dives levels soured the roguelite feeling it was going for by the end of the season.
Then there’s Tier 7 Deep Dives. At the Tier 7 encounter, which starts at 4450 meters deep in the methane sea, enemies are stronger but the objectives themselves feel unbalanced concerning the time limit, especially in Pressure Trials. Players have shared their struggle on forums like Reddit. The near-impossible objectives, like protecting the drills from hordes of enemies or clearing multiple waves instead of one, takes more time and are much harder to do in Tier 7 Deep Dives than a Tier 3 one. Completing Tier 7 Deep Dives can depend on luck even for players with mightiest builds. Some Redditors pointed out that they’d only do Tier 7 Deep Dives to unlock the Wicked Implement catalyst and then never touch them again. Another person even went as far as saying their fireteam backs out if they get the “Protect the Drills” objective because it’s likely to go awry.
Despite its issues, Deep Dives weren't all that bad. The activity offers significant rewards at higher tiers like Exotics and Ascendant Shards, along with red borders for seasonal and Reckoning weapons — which are costly to focus at the HELM Sonar Station. Still, with so much funneled into a single activity, too many players are chasing after something that determines the outcome of the entire run, and are at the mercy of random teammates. Ultimately, this is a roguelite mode being implemented in an MMO like Destiny 2, so there are all sorts of caveats to be accounted for concerning what’s important to the mode and what’s important to both the looter shooter and multiplayer aspects of Destiny 2.
Hopefully, these concerns will influence the direction of future iterations of activities like Deep Dives.
