Destiny 2offers players a massive amount of cosmetics and customization options, including fully-body animated emotes. There are numerous emotes in the game, with no signs of slowing down on new additions any time soon. The emotes inDestiny 2span a wide variety of contexts, like taunts, lore references, and pop culture memes, but none of the emotes really serve as dedicated communication tools.
There are several activities that offer in-game matchmaking to find a full team of players, and lower-difficulty activities like these don’t quite warrant using voice chat to communicate. These activities are generally straightforward enough that a group of players can have little interaction with their teammates and stillcompleteDestiny 2activities in record time. However, the simplicity of the activities shouldn’t dissuadeDestiny 2from adding in-game ways to communicate outside the voice chat because it would still be beneficial to the game overall, especially in endgame content.
RELATED:Destiny 2 Disables Emote to Stop God Mode Glitch
How In-Game Communication in Destiny 2 Could Benefit From Dedicated Emotes
When players use emotes inDestiny 2, the emotes show up in the player feed alongside casting Supers,generating Orbs of Power, and fireteam changes. Even though emotes already have a highly visible platform for communicating with everyone on the fireteam, they serve little to no functional purpose. The handful of emotes that are somewhat communicative are few and far between. Also, unless fireteams discuss and assign certain meanings to any of the few communicative emotes, it’s very likely that their meaning could be misunderstood, or easily missed by players that don’t know enough to recognize them in the feed.
WithoutDestiny 2overhauling the current emote systems firsthand, it would take an impossible effort from the community to get everyone on the same page about the meaning behind particular emotes in the context of communicating mission objectives and other cooperative concepts. The biggest reason forDestiny 2to explore quick chats and an expansion to the emote system is that it would improve accessibility throughout the game.
Not everyone that playsDestiny 2speaks the same language, so in this particular scenario, in-game communications could bridge the language gap between players in both casual and endgame activities alike. Any player that has utilized external LFG platforms to find teammates forDestiny 2activities without matchmakinghas likely encountered a language barrier that affected playing with other teammates. IfDestiny 2were to expand upon the emote system, the hurdles of language barriers could be mitigated and/or entirely overcome.
In-Game Communications That Destiny 2 Should Learn From
Overwatch 2’s ping system, emote wheels, and quick chats are popular examples of what a modern game’s in-game communications can look like and how effective they can be. The most prominent examples inOverwatch 2are the ability to request healing, to reveal how close players are to obtaining their Super/Ultimate ability, and to mark the location of enemies. Options like the “group up here” communication are also invaluable to the performance of the team inOverwatch 2.
Having the option to communicate to the team as effectively as the variety of methodsOverwatch 2offers would be particularly useful inDestiny 2’s endgame activities, like the new Root of Nightmares Raid. WhileOverwatch 2’s cosmetic wheels like emotes, images, and voice lines offer no functional purpose,Destiny 2fans would make good use of an expanded inventory for equipped emotes, beyond the current maximum of four.
Another game that handles in-game communications extremely well isRocket League’s quick chats. Being able to tell teammates call-outs such as someone needing to be “in position” makes a big difference for teams that have little experience playing together. Given the massive concurrent player count inDestiny 2and the sheer diversity in available playstyles, it’s very likely that some, or most fireteams, just don’t have the desired amount of awareness and synergy with each other to coordinate efforts. Especially since there are so manyactivities inDestiny 2that have matchmakingwith random teammates by now, the need for an update to in-game communication methods has never been higher.
Destiny 2is available on PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.
