We Destiny 2 diehards are used to receiving weekly messages from Bungie. This can amount to thousands of words during times of great community crisis and pre-expansion hype. I can’t speak for other live service games, but the amount of communication feels unparalleled, even if you don’t necessarily like the answers.Still, we’ve identified the issues from the recent release of the Lightfall expansion, what the studio is doing to fix those issues, and a roadmap outlining some of the major changes slated for future seasons. I didn’t expect an unscheduled paper to do. Obtained (opens in new tab).
In our Lightfall review, Phil Savage echoed the community consensus that while the campaign was a disappointing mess, features like the new Strand subclasses and loadout system were big positives. A Bungie post titled “Launch and beyond” said that despite all the criticism, Lightfall hit Destiny 2’s highest player concurrency, surpassing 2021’s The Witch Queen in terms of users per day. Beat the studio’s own sales forecast.
But handing the mic to game director Joe Blackburn, he was quick to admit that things haven’t gone entirely smoothly for the penultimate installment of the series’ nearly decade-long saga. To provide complete clarity of what we originally planned when we started making Lightfall, the team is looking forward to this year’s schedule and any feedback on how we’ll end the story of light and dark in The Final Shape. I keep it. ”
From there, the post changes details about Guardian Rank and the Commendation system, which was also introduced in Lightfall. While Guardian Rank was meant to show your proficiency in various activities in the game, Commendations were a way of recognizing good teammates. However, both feel undercooked and have seen multiple changes since their release. In particular, he was frustrated with the fact that commendations were tied to Guardian Rank, leading to ridiculous situations where he was LFGing to find a group of players wanting to commit suicide over and over again. rice field. Just praise each other afterwards.
According to the blog, the commendation requirements have been significantly reduced so that ranks no longer reset so dramatically between seasons. “The rank displayed for everyone will reflect the highest rank you earned last season, and if you achieve a higher rank than last season, that will be your new display number”.Both systems are fundamentally flawed. I think it reflects having to wait longer in the oven instead.
Yeah, about those threshers…
A blog post details the additional tweaks made to the difficulty across PvE activities, which again seemed overly tweaked in response to legitimate complaints that most of the content was too easy. Felt. There’s an entire section devoted to the absolutely ridiculous situation that the Threshers, a type of gunship used by the Cabal, were supposedly one-shot players in entry-level activity. It was so bad that I assumed it was due to a bug that tied incoming damage to framerate.
“Thresher has always done more damage to Guardians than intended, but in pre-Lightfall combat at lower power levels, it wasn’t lethal enough to require a nerf. Neomna’s As part of our goal to make Invasions feel more threatening, we’re deploying Threshers more frequently and assigning them difficulty modifiers that were previously only found in Nightfall. has greatly increased the ferocity of the Thresher.”
you don’t say! Anyway, they are already weakened. Also of interest to many players is the Lost Sectors section. It’s basically a mini-dungeon designed to be completed solo, with a chance to earn exotic tier gear. People are complaining that these are too difficult and have poor drop rates. it was This content can be overleveled, so it should feel more relatable as it’s difficult at the start of the season. And I agree that is the case.
Bungie recently gave a modest buff to the drop rate of Exotics, but now that we’re at the right power level, we don’t want to easily farm them. It says it’s going to be a source of gear, and that it works with a knockout system (i.e. items you haven’t unlocked will drop before the dupe). ).
This alone isn’t enough to appease players who have long asked for a way to target farms for specific Exotic armor. A solution will come later, but be warned that it will be eye-bleedingly expensive when it comes to materials. , and will start dropping from places that previously received random Exotic gear. He has two flavors of Focusing.
- Advanced Decryption: Focuses on some of the exotic armor from specific expansions and their associated seasons. Requires 1 Exotic Engram, 1 Ascendant Shard, and 30,000 Glimmer.
- Accurate decoding: Focus on specific Exotic armor (meaning you’re guaranteed the item you want). Requires 1 Exotic Engram, 3 Ascendant Shards, 60,000 Glimmer, and 1 Exotic Cypher.
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Bungie says they’re raising the cap on Exotic Ciphers to 5 (from 1 now), but that still seems very expensive to me. If you really want a Gyrfalcon’s Haulberk (as I do), I think it makes sense. Target-focused exotic engrams will be the most well-received part of Season 21’s stuff, but there were some other pretty good quality of life changes listed as well.
- under construction Upgrade 15 or more pieces of unloved exotic armorBungie also says there will be balance changes coming to others as well, so Warlock will be keeping Starfire Protocol robes nearby tonight. The nerf is certainly in the post.
- new powerful attraction The mod will make sure your character vacuums up nearby orbs of light every time you use a class ability. This is useful for armor charge builds that rely on picking up orbs that often get stuck in tricky locations.
- new elemental charge The mod generates an armor charge each time you pick up subclass-specific objects such as Stasis Shards, Firesprites, and Ion Traces. Again, this makes build crafting feel more flexible.
- of shoot to route Perks let you shoot and collect orbs, as you might expect. This is in addition to its current ability to hook ammo bricks. For now, stick with guns with these perks.
- three more side of the strand Inbound: flechette storm for the Titan thread specter hunter and Wanderer for Warlock. These will drastically change how classes are played with each character, and given how good Strand is currently, I’m looking forward to seeing what they add.
One thing the post lacks is a candid look at what went wrong with Lightfall’s storytelling. Bungie clearly isn’t going to throw a narrative team under the bus, but the plummeting quality from The Witch Queen’s brilliantly delivered campaign to Lightfall’s unexplained morass of macguffins has been noted by everyone who’s played. Done. I’m pretty sure a big part of the explanation is that Lightfall was originally meant to be the final part of this story. As originally planned.But in over 20 years of writing about games, I’m not sure I can explain how Nimbus came to be, possibly the most annoying character I’ve encountered. Poochie From The Simpsons but with flying surfboards and bad dialogue. lattice.
Still, as Destiny 2 does most of the time, I’m pretty confident the game is very sound, even if it pulls back on complaints that seem petty to outsiders. My suspicion is that much of the more substantial story material moved to The Final Shape when the aforementioned split with Lightfall took place, so the latter inevitably felt a bit cobbled together. But between systematic improvements like the loadout system and the promise of an in-game LFG finder coming later this year, the underlying structure is stronger than ever. Or, at least, I’ll tell myself that, as my Raid teammates are being left to die later tonight by a malfunctioning jump pad.
