The last time we spoke about Destiny: Rising, it was a lot of doom and gloom. The numbers didn’t look great for the game, and it seemed very possible — given the little information we have — that whatever long-term plan NetEase had for their Destiny mobile game spinoff could be cut short.
Now it’s still too early to tell if any of those predictions will come true, but Destiny: Rising is fighting back. The game’s latest update, which hit at the end of March, retooled much of the game, making some systems almost unrecognisable to even long-term players. Fans are calling it Destiny: Rising 2.0.
The biggest thing NetEase has done with this update — and what is likely to “save” the game — is smooth out the two most controversial (and blatantly monetised) mechanics in the game: gacha-only character acquisition and the Pinnacle Energy system.
We’ll start with the gacha changes.
Rising has a similar system to gacha games like Genshin Impact when it comes to getting new characters. As a player, you have to “draw” for characters via a token-based slot machine. You can get these tokens by playing the game for long periods of time or you can just spend some real-world cash for extra pulls.
Since launch, the draw system has been the only way to get new characters. And while that system remains almost entirely intact with this new update, NetEase has added a secondary way to get both new and old characters.
Players can now get crystals from activities and loot boxes that correlate to certain characters. Get enough crystals, and you get a guaranteed unlock of that character, meaning that there is now a semi-guaranteed “no cost” path to getting every hero in the game.
But the shift away from an exclusively gacha-based system isn’t even the biggest news for this Destiny: Rising update. That bombshell is reserved for the Pinnacle Energy system, which NetEase has removed entirely.
Pinnacle Energy was a controversial system that limited how much players could do every day. Each real world day, players would get gifted a certain amount of energy. They could then spend that energy to get rewards at the end of activities. But once that energy was spent, activities would give players next to no rewards, which incentivised them to stop playing and come back tomorrow. Unless, of course, they wanted to throw down some real-world money for an energy recharge.
With the Pinnacle Energy system now retired, the game operates more like Destiny 2 did for years. Some activities have a certain cap of weekly rewards they can give you, and then you’ll need to do something else until the weekly reset refreshes those rewards. But there is nothing stopping you from playing Destiny: Rising whenever and however long you want, which is a major win for player agency.
Now there’s an argument to be made that these drastic moves from NetEase are concerning. It’s two moves away from monetisation, which could signal that NetEase is in some kind of desperate tailspin with Rising. But even if that is the case, and Rising never has any kind of real recovery, these changes are undeniably good for players who love the game and just want to enjoy it on their own time.
Ultimately, money is all that will matter for the future of Destiny: Rising. But happy players are far more likely to spend their hard-earned cash, and NetEase certainly seems to be making players happy with this latest update.
