Datto slams Destiny 2 over Root of Nightmares Raid: “What happened here?”

Well-known Destiny 2 YouTuber Datto has slammed the latest Lightfall raid Root of Nightmares for its lack of challenge, particularly on Contest mode difficulty.

Destiny 2’s height of difficulty and spectacle normally comes is in its raids, specifically during the World’s First Race when Contest mode is active. The World’s First Race generally sees multiple teams of top-tier raiders face off to see which team is the quickest to complete all challenges laid before them. Alongside this, Contest mode is active throughout the first two days of the race, heightening the difficulty of encounters by locking Guardians at a power cap.

The World’s First Race for Destiny 2’s Lightfall raid has come and gone. The Root of Nightmares was taken down by a team in just under 2 and a half hours, making for one of the fastest races the Destiny 2 community has ever seen. Many raiders were able to complete the day 1 Root of Nightmares raid with relative ease, more than almost every other D2 raid combined, in fact, which has seen the community quite divided.

Some Guardians are glad that the raid was more accessible to all players, making for a more enjoyable experience. However, other more experienced and hardcore raiders felt that the new raid simplified what was supposed to be a challenge. One of these raiders was the well-known Destiny 2 YouTuber Datto.

Datto’s video titled “Destiny 2: Elitist Datto’s Thoughts on Root of Nightmares Contest Raid” has him expressing his thoughts about the raid. How he believed it was lacking in difficulty and challenge and raises his thoughts about the contest mode difficulty from the perspective of a hardcore raider.

Datto appears to be rather disappointed by the lack of challenge that the Root of Nightmares presented, even with contest mode enabled. He expressed his frustration at this difficulty issue, questioning, “what happened?”

“The difficulty. What happened? What happened here? Why is the legend version of the exotic mission more difficult than Contest Mode raiding. Why is the Legend, not even Master, Legend Nightfall Mars Battleground more scary than contest mode raiding?”

Datto further spoke about the reasoning behind the raid’s low difficulty, that being a lack of mechanics for players to meaningfully engage with, resulting in many team members sitting around idly clearing out ADs while others actually complete the encounter.

“I thought it really sucked not being able to help out with mechanics on day 1. We had 2 people start working on them and outside of that I just couldn’t do anything. Because trying to help would cause more issues, I was not able to help. We actually hindered ourselves by even having 2 people doing the mechanic in the first encounter… I couldn’t give any insight into anything, because at most you needed 2 people doing everything for 3 of the 4 encounters.”

Raids in Destiny 2 are made with a team of 6 raiders in mind, which may explain Datto’s frustration at the lack of things for players to do whilst participating in the raid. Whilst he agrees that clearing out waves of ADs at times can be enjoyable, it isn’t suitable for a day 1 experience.

Datto was sure to mention the damage frame rate bug that has been occurring in Destiny 2 recently, specifically noting that Nezarec would deal less damage to players on lower frame rates. This meant that the World’s First Race may have been skewed/ exploited and that the raid can still be easily exploited to this day.

He concluded his video by speaking more about how power creep has affected Destiny 2, and that Guardians have become so powerful that its repercussions have reached into day 1 raiding.

“It’s pretty clear that we’ve hit a new low when it comes to the absolute pinnacle piece of challenge content in Destiny. We have now power crept day 1 contest mode raiding, it’s happened.”

Datto is hoping that Bungie will look to alter the tuning of Day 1 raiding in the next expansion the Final Shape. However, he’s also uncertain that Bungie will look to bump up the difficulty of the raiding experience, considering how expensive raids are to make.

“I’m hoping that Bungie restores some glory to this piece of content once considered challenging for Final Shape. Because this tuning was not it… Root was not up to par, and feels wildly inconsistent in difficulty compared to the rest of the game… My fear is that raids will become metrics-driven, because they are so expensive to create… I hope it’s not a sign of things to come, however, I won’t be blindsided if it was.”

While it’s unlikely that Bungie will look to change Root of Nightmare’s difficulty anytime soon, it’s easy to say that the raid’s difficulty has been a divisive topic for both casual and hardcore players alike.