With the release of Curse of Osiris on Tuesday, Destiny 2 players were treated to a bunch of new content alongside some endgame changes to the pseudo-MMO shooter. One of the primary changes is an increase to the level cap, both player level and gear. With Destiny 2’s Power level (the aggregate score of all equipped gear) now jumping up to 330–or 335 with mods attached–from the base game’s 300, that means that endgame activities are seeing an increase too. That means that the Destiny 2 Platinum trophy is now unobtainable without the expansion.
Two of Destiny 2’s toughest activities are the Prestige Raid and Prestige Nightfall Strike. The Nightfall rotates weekly between the available Strikes, including combat modifiers and a timer. Prestige is a higher level and more constrained time limits. The Prestige Leviathan Raid features tougher enemies and slightly different mechanics that can make some of the encounters a little more difficult to complete.
Without the Curse of Osiris expansion, players are stuck at the previous Power level cap of 300 (305), but the Prestige difficulty activities have moved up to requiring a Power level of 330, meaning they require the Curse of Osiris expansion to complete. Destiny 2 has a Gold trophy called “The Prestige” which requires players to “Complete the Leviathan Raid or a Nightfall Strike on Prestige difficulty.” As of Tuesday December 5, this trophy is now completely unobtainable for anyone that does not own the Curse of Osiris expansion for Destiny 2, which means that if you didn’t get it before then, the Platinum trophy is now not possible without paying extra money. Curse of Osiris didn’t introduce any new trophies/achievements to the game.
It’s the nature of living games and MMOs to have to deal with power creep as they add new content and increase player levels, but most of the time the doesn’t include locking players out of content that they previously had access to. The new “base” level of the Nightfall and Raid is now 300, making them as hard as the Prestige mode was before. Although players without Curse of Osiris can play them, they are much more difficult than they were before the launch of the new expansion. The Prestige Leviathan Raid also rewards exclusive gear and is the final step in Exotic Raid shotgun quest that was previously available to all Destiny 2 players, but is now locked behind a DLC purchase.
While it’s understandable that endgame activities will shift with the living game and require the latest expansion, it’s up to the developer to maintain a balance if they are going to split the playerbase with paid additional content. Those who bought and paid for Destiny 2 ought to have access to all of the content that they paid for without the fear that it will suddenly become more difficult, or as is the case here, inaccessible altogether.
It will be interesting to see if there are any Sony policies that will require Bungie to make changes, specifically regarding the locking of a Platinum trophy behind a paywall outside of the vanilla game purchase. At this time neither Bungie nor Sony have commented on the issue, but we’ll update you if there are any developments.
[Header Image: Planet Destiny]
