Yesterday we reported on the Niobe Labs situation. Many Guardians believed that the puzzles required to unlock Niobe Labs, the final Forge coming as part of the Season of the Forge, was designed to draw attention to Destiny 2. Whether this was through the general community activity around solving it, or those streaming the game on Twitch while attempting to solve it, the puzzle divided us.
Today it seems as though Bungie have heard our pleas regarding the incredibly difficult puzzle, which took up more time than any Destiny 2 raid. Today the Forge is unlocked.
In a short post after the 27 hour mark of attempting to solve the puzzle, Bungie said that they were unlocking the Bergusia Forge. This is the Forge that the Niobe Labs puzzle would unlock, but Bungie isn’t just taking that puzzle away.
The Niobe Labs puzzle is open for those who want to solve it, and they’ll get an exclusive Emblem and Ghost. The only thing that’s changed is that the Forge has been decoupled from the puzzle, effectively making this single quest into two activities.
But is it a good thing that Bungie opened Niobe Labs for us?
While Niobe Labs was a puzzle that drove the community to working longer than they ever have on trying to solve it, I don’t necessarily see that as a bad thing. I’m not sure how you feel, but up until now it’s seemed to me that every challenge in Destiny 2 has been solved by streamers and content creators within a couple of hours of being launched.
While this isn’t a terrible thing, it does take away from the feeling that any Guardian can complete a puzzle or raid first. When there are those in the community who’s job it is to play the game and do all of these quests first, it can feel slightly pointless even trying.
Niobe Labs felt different. It felt as if the community needed to work together for a much longer period of time in order to solve this one. Honestly if this puzzle had taken a week to solve, I think it would have been great for the community as a whole.
There are games out there that have puzzles solved after decades. The community don’t know they’re there immediately, but when they find them they work together, and slowly but surely the puzzles are solved.
Yes, there is a difference here in that Niobe Labs is technically paid-for content, and Guardians should be able to progress through the content they’ve paid for without needing to solve super hard puzzles. However, given the pedigree of this community, the puzzle would have been solved long before the next content drop, The Draw Exotic Quest.
I believe Bungie gave in too soon, and that the community should have been more patient. 2 days is a long time to wait for a puzzle to be solved yes, but a year or more is even longer. Games used to be happy with that, so what’s changed?
Let me know what you think in the comments.
Image Source: PCGamesN
