The lights are on
In a lengthy and wide-reaching blog post, Bungie today detailed a number of ways their shared world shooter is changing to address community feedback and improve the long-term play experience.
Destiny 2 has had a tumultuous couple of months. Despite a strong launch back in September, the first expansion in early December was met with a mix of negative and lukewarm responses by many, and issues connected to the endgame experience have siphoned away both players and popular streamers to other games. Today, Bungie took recent criticisms in stride, and presented an array of announcements about how Destiny 2 is aiming to change in the coming days, weeks, and months.
The updates included in the blog post are spread out across four major updates, one coming on January 30, on in February, and the other two coming in Spring and Fall.
One of the biggest changes is to the Eververse, which is being heavily reworked in favor of making other activities more rewarding by offering ghosts, ships, and sparrows at their end. Mods are also being reworked, and Bungie promises these changes will "focus on reducing redundant mods, more unique theming [sic], and greatly increasing their impact on your power."
Other additions include Masterwork Armor, the extra bonus of which reduces damage taken during super moves, new strike scoring, ranked Crucible play, and the ability to equip multiple emotes at once.
Raids are now more rewarding as well, with raid-specific mods, as well as economy changes that mean raid weapons drop after each major encounter, and that raid gear can be directly purchased with tokens.
For a full breakdown of what players can expect throughout the year and when, make sure to read the entire blog post.
[Source: Bungie]
Our TakeAfter a holiday break during which Destiny 2 players heard little communication from Bungie, the wealth of info in this new blog post offers a lot to ponder. Whether you agree with all the proposed changes or not, I think most dedicated players will appreciate some clear communication from the developer about how the game is changing.
Email the author Matt Miller, or follow on Twitter, and Game Informer.
So basically they're not really doing anything.
This is all D1 stuff that'll take 9 months to implement. Textbook "too little too late."
Basically in a years time it will resemble year 3 D1 a lot more closely. It still baffles me how they managed to make such a mess of the sequel when they fixed so many of the problems they had by the end of the first game.
Sound like good changes. They're not the most innovative and best things to get people back, but they've listened and they're making an attempt to fix Destiny.
.....Already deleted this game
Heh, that's still not enough. Also, these little tid bits I find hilarious;
"We recognize that the scales are tipped too far towards Tess at the moment, and Eververse was never intended to be a substitute for end game content and rewards. So, we’ll be making three changes for upcoming Seasons"
That is the biggest load of horse s- I've ever heard from Bungie. They knew exactly what they were doing.
"We are still investigating changes to XP earn rates. Our goal with any updates to XP are transparency and consistent XP gain
Again, the biggest load of horse s- and the second time they've talked about transparency. You want transparency? Show the Current EXP/EXP to Next Lvl. Simple as that.
A year to get some more quality of life improvements we had in D1.
Man, this is a game that I REALLY want to like. It has all the hallmarks of a good shooter (Great gunplay, cool settings). It truly pains me that the only reason I can't truly enjoy this game is that 5 or 6 people at the top of Bungie think they know better than everyone else. All the minor programmers, artist, composers, etc. are clearly great at what they do and they clearly enjoy doing it, but it is also clear that they are weighed down by this game. Shame, if the minor developers worked on a game where they were free to actually do something, I truly believe it would be amazing. All the things mentioned here were done by the live team, not the main developers. Most of them the live team already did in Destiny 1. It must be incredibly frustrating to have to do it again while your community calls for your head all because your bosses decided that the game should have less of everything.
So, not really much of anything is changing?
I've got to give Bungie and Activision credit. They are taking "The Sims" approach or the "Civilization" approach to Destiny 2. What do I mean by this? Give what seems to be an overall "improved" experience of the last game, but strip all the content it added via expansions over three years.
Then, you can re-release all of those expansions for your new game and charge everybody full price. It's a lazy, safe, and greedy way of developing games without actually innovating or expanding on them. It's the only way to milk this game for the next three years, until Destiny 3 resets everything all over again.
It's part of the reason I can't support this game. Players will never really progress in any meaningful way when everything you have will just reset with the "new" game. Why be duped over and over again?
6s pvp and raid mods sound right up my alley. I really hope the mods 2.0 system has more to do with perks than a reorganization of what's already there, or worse, them doubling down on what's already there.
Too little too late, trash game, ever-purse ever present.