During a recent roundtable Q&A session with Bungie on Destiny 2's Season of the Deep, I asked him why the bosses in the newest dungeon have so much health. I asked. But I'm sure I'm not alone in that. At the time of release, much of the reaction from players, especially those who like to solo Destiny 2's dungeons, was that it takes many phases to defeat two bosses.

That answer surprised me. Because it became clear how much each dungeon was designed as a response to the previous dungeon.

"There's a certain story behind the release of a dungeon. Grasp of Avarice was fun, fast, less challenging, and more lighthearted," says design lead Brian Frank, "and Duality was a big jump in difficulty and mechanical complexity. ...... There were bugs. There were bugs, too. And "Spire of the Watcher" was mechanically simpler. Intentionally, we felt it was important not to put out any more buggy releases; we did not anticipate network-related problems like Duality's teleportation.

Each dungeon is a reaction to the one before it; Spire is intentionally a different experience than Duality because it is a nice change of pace, and in the weeks following Duality's release, the shifting The Duality shift mechanism often caused players to die unintentionally in the process.

So what are Ghosts of the Deep responding to?" After all, Spire of the Watcher also featured several bosses with a lot of health. According to Frank, for this latest dungeon, Bungie made a conscious decision to prioritize Fireteam tuning, or balancing the dungeon experience for up to three players over a solo experience. This release was made in the context of the game director's stated intention to bring back the spirit of challenge to Destiny," he wrote.

The difficulty of Ghost of the Deep was also a response to the Root of Nightmares raid, which launched simultaneously with Lightfall. Most agreed that it was one of the easiest raids in the game, and the raid race on its launch took only two and a half hours to complete. Similarly, he continues, for "Spire of the Watcher." We tracked the initial completion time and that kind of analysis and it may have been less than we anticipated. So we are increasing the difficulty [of Ghosts of the Deep], sorry, no pun intended." He continues.

This focus on fireteam balance makes solo play more difficult by design, and especially makes perfecting solo play (completing a dungeon alone without dying) more demanding.

"Solo Flawless is one of the most difficult achievements in Destiny, and we wanted to establish and maintain it as a coveted achievement," Frank said.

"Also, if you look at the trajectory of our past activities, they have always universally gotten easier over time. We know that players will develop new strategies and we are going to introduce tuning updates to the subclasses and give them more tools. So again, we've taken a small leap this time around, putting in the tuning up front for players to overcome and achieve.

This explanation is probably not comforting to those who, after spending hours fighting their way to Šimmumah ur-Nokru, were removed by Lucent Mos. But there is a plus side. If we wait long enough, Bungie will inevitably release something too powerful, which should make things easier.