The Status of Destiny 2

[The3rdWalker 1,263]

Source: https://www.bungie.net/en/News/Article/46504

 

Hey everyone,

 

With Destiny 2’s console and PC launches behind us, we want to take some time to talk with you about Destiny 2 – specifically where it’s at today, and where it’s going. Our team has been reading feedback and working on updates to improve the game. We’ve also been reading some tough criticism about our lack of communication, and we agree we need to be more open. 

 

Going forward, Destiny 2’s post-launch game systems, features, and updates are being designed specifically to focus on and support players who want Destiny to be their hobby – the game they return to, and a game where friendships are made. We want Destiny to be a game that fits into your life, providing you with reasons to log in and play with your friends, clans, and families. We want Destiny to be a world you want to be a part of.

 

A month ago, we published a list of improvements on the blog. Today, we’re going to revisit that list and update its status, and share some of the work the team is readying for December, January, and beyond.
We know it’s frustrating when there isn’t enough of a dialog with the development team. You have our commitment that we’re going to do a better job going forward.
- Luke Smith & Chris Barrett

 

Upcoming Updates Overview
We previously published a list of upcoming Destiny 2 improvements we want to deliver. Some of these updates will be introduced on December 5 and December 12. Others will land in the New Year.

• New systems and rewards to give our most engaged players additional, optional pursuits, including:
  • A new Weapon Tier: Masterworks, which will feature stat trackers, random, re-rollable stat bonuses, unique item tooltips, and item details screens (see the December Update Details section below for more info)
  • Improved vendor rewards, adding ways for people to purchase items directly with their Legendary Shards and Tokens (see the December Update Details section below for more info)
  • Adding Armor Ornaments that grant visual permutations of armor as players complete specific Challenges (see the December Update Details section below for more info)
• Better incentives for players who complete challenging Prestige activities
  • We’re targeting a January update to provide better incentives to complete Prestige activities
• Better rewards and replay value for Strikes, Adventures, and Lost Sectors
  • In December, we will be introducing a Heroic Strikes playlist and more generous Strike rewards
  • Rewards for Adventures and Lost Sectors are still on our radar, but will not be delivered for our December updates
• Private matches for the Crucible
  • Still targeting early 2018 and expect to have better insight into exact timing in the New Year
  • We are also moving Ranked PVP to the top of our priority list for next year to support the competitive community
• Crucible tuning like adjusted Supremacy scoring and better spawning rules
  • In December, we will introduce additional updates and bug-fixes intended to improve these areas of the Crucible
• Better incentives for completing Crucible matches (and penalties for quitting competitive games)
  • A "Quitter Penalty" system is currently in development, and you can expect an update on the deployment of this system in the New Year
• Continued improvements to Iron Banner and Faction Rallies, including uniqueness of rewards
  • The next Iron Banner and Faction Rally will introduce improvements in both these areas (see the December Update Details section below for more info)
• Changes to make the mod economy more interesting and impactful
  • The Gunsmith will have some updates to how Mods are acquired (see the December Update Details section below for more info)
  • We are exploring more updates to this system in the New Year
• Ongoing improvements to Exotics, including adjustments to reduce instances of duplication
  • We plan to tune under-performing Exotics and will continue to make targeted updates and improvements
  • Duplication protection will be added for Exotics in the New Year
• New ways to spend surplus currency and materials (looking at you Legendary Shards)
  • Players will be able to spend Tokens and Legendary Shards on Vendor inventory (see the December Update Details section below for more info)
  • Xur will have new items, as well (see the December Update Details section below for more info)
• An emote interface that allows players to equip Salty, Spicy Ramen, Six Shooter, and Flip Out all at the same time
  • Emote interface improvements are still on the list, and you can expect an update on the development of this system in the New Year

 

We will continue to revisit and update this list in the weeks and months ahead to keep you up to speed on what we’re working on. Below, you’ll find more specific detail about each of the features and updates you can expect to land in December.

 

December Update Details
There are four key areas we’re targeting for improvements in December. Some of these updates will arrive with the December 5 update, and some additional updates will be included in a patch that will be deployed the following week on December 12.

 

Both updates combined include improvements set against the following goals:

• Deepen Rewards for advanced players
• Provide More Player Control over obtaining rewards
• Make Shards Useful by adding things to use them for
• Provide General Quality fixes wherever possible

The following changes are the first steps towards achieving these goals, with more planned for our next release in January. Here is a preview of impending changes to Destiny 2. Each category is marked with a forecast delivery date.
Masterworks Image Link - Image Link

• [DEC 12] Legendary Weapons will drop as or be upgraded to become Masterworks versions
  • Masterworks will have a few advantages over the baseline Legendary weapon:
  • Track and display the number of kills with that weapon (with choice between total count or Crucible-only count)
  • Generate orbs for you and your allies on multi-kills
  • Add weapon stat bonuses that are selected randomly from a small pool and are re-rollable
  • Masterworks drop from any source of Legendary weapons for characters above 250 Power
  • Unwanted Masterworks can be dismantled into materials that can upgrade an existing Legendary Weapon into a Masterwork
  • Raid and Trials of the Nine Weapons will have a very high chance to be Masterworks
  • We have future plans to extend Masterworks to other gear and expose your kill counts in more places (e.g. Crucible kill screen)

 

Armor Ornaments Image Link

• [DEC 5] Armor Ornaments will be added to some existing Armor sets for more visual customization without losing your Shaders or Mods
  • These ornaments will be unlocked by completing objectives specific to each set, and are permanently unlocked account-wide, just like Exotic Weapon ornaments
  • They will be applied to the base pieces that you may already have collected, and can now unlock on Vendors if not
  • In Season 2, the following sets have ornaments unlocked in their respective activities:
  • Vanguard Faction Armor
  • Crucible Faction Armor
  • Trials of the Nine Armor
  • Iron Banner Armor
  • Dead Orbit Armor
  • Future War Cult Armor
  • New Monarchy Armor
  • Eater of Worlds Raid Lair Armor

 

Image Link

• [DEC 12] Faction Armor and Weapons will be unlocked for purchase for Legendary Shards and Faction Tokens on most Faction Vendors
  • All five Armor Slots will always be present, and Weapons will rotate weekly on Factions that have them
  • Slots will be unlocked by claiming Reward Engrams from the respective Faction
  • You will get credit for engrams you may have already claimed since launch

 

Image Link

• [DEC 12] Xur has some new offerings for players collecting Exotics:
  • Every week, you’ll be able to acquire one of the new Fated Engrams using Legendary Shards that will decrypt as Exotics that aren’t already in your collection
  • A simpler Three of Coins that boosts Exotic drop rates from any source for 4 hours
  • No obscure stacking mechanics or need to re-apply before every boss
  • These cost Legendary Shards and you can have as many as you like

 

General Investment Image Link

• [DEC 5] Banshee has some updates on the Weapon and Armor Mod front:
  • For players wanting to clear some Mod inventory space, Rare quality Mods will dismantle into Gunsmith Materials and have a chance to produce Legendary quality Mod Components
  • For players chasing specific Legendary Mods (including Legendary Kinetic Mods), Banshee will offer a selection of specific Legendary Mods for direct purchase, with a selection that will rotate daily and cost Legendary Shards and Mod Components
• [DEC 5] For players chasing a world Legendary or looking for Masterworks, Master Rahool will sell some of his rumored hoard of Legendary Engrams for Legendary Shards
• [DEC 12] Commander Zavala and Lord Shaxx will sell Gift consumables for Legendary Shards that can be used during a Strike or Crucible Match that will serve the following functions:
  • Grant bonus rewards to everyone in that activity upon completion, friend or foe alike
  • Award anything from Faction Tokens to a round of Exotics for everyone in the match
• [DEC 12] Exploit safeguards on Chests and Resource Nodes are greatly relaxed and players should encounter them less frequently
  • Even if they do, drop rates for Tokens is only reduced to 30% instead of 0%, and Glimmer will be unaffected
  • We want to associate a visual indicator with this in a future update, but we weren’t able to pull that off in this update (but we hear you!)
• [DEC 12] Vendors will now beckon you to hand in your Reputation Tokens only when you’re carrying enough to earn a Reward Engram
• [DEC 5] Changes affecting Reputation Tokens:
  • Daily Challenges will have Reputation Token awards increased across the board
  • Cayde’s Treasure Chests still offer variable rewards, but now guarantee (at minimum) a payout of destination appropriate Reputation Tokens
  • Strikes will drop a larger number of Vanguard Reputation Tokens
  • Common quality Destination Resource Tokens will have their drop rates increased to 100%, and values per Token increased as well (by 50% for common quality Tokens and 250% for rare quality Tokens)
  • On the balance, Reputation required per Reward Engram will increase for Destination Factions (+37%) and Gunsmith (+50%)
  • Leviathan Raid Tokens will be redeemed at Benedict immediately upon obtaining a Token, instead of requiring a full clear before unlocking

With the launch of Curse of Osiris, and the beginning of Season 2, you can expect to see a full suite of patch notes that will document all of the changes outlined above, as well as additional gameplay and sandbox tuning changes the team is making to improve Destiny 2. We’ll also soon be providing pre-load and launch day details, as well as a roadmap for our Season 2 content, which includes The Dawning in mid-December.

XP Mechanics
Last weekend, we disabled a scaling mechanism that adjusted XP gains up and down without reflecting those adjustments in the UI. Our intention was to keep slower-paced activities as rewarding as high intensity grinding without confusing variations in displayed XP values, but the silent nature of the mechanic betrayed the expectation of transparency that you have for Destiny 2.

 

We were able to disable the system with a server-side change, but a new solution is now needed to rebalance XP in Destiny 2. We have begun that work, and will continue to provide updates to you about timelines and specifics. The values coded into our website API are being updated today (and may already have been as you read this post) to reflect the removal of this scaling mechanism. In a future update, we intend to link these internal and display-only values together for greater consistency, and to ensure that when changes are made they are accurately reflected everywhere we report them.
We already see that the newly adjusted 160K XP per level value means that leveling is too slow for some activities, and we have begun the process of collecting data and recalibrating XP earn rates to improve them as quickly as possible.

 

XP boosts, including both consumable items and passive bonuses like the Well Rested 300% bonus, were always applied after this system and never resulted in early slowing of XP. They should be unchanged by the disabling of this system and will continue to provide their stated increase in XP gain.
Expect to see a lot of conversation from our team on this front, as XP rewards are updated and brought back in-line with player expectations.

 

The Future
Going forward, we plan to continue this dialog as openly and frequently as possible. This will be an ongoing process, but one that we are committed to.

 

This week we’ll be publishing a new episode of the Bungie Podcast where we will sound off on the current state of Destiny 2, how we think about our communication challenges, and what it takes to update the game in the wild. You’ll be able to listen on both Apple and Android devices. 

 

Thank you for playing, for being passionate about the Destiny 2 experience, and for working with us as we look to continuously improve our game and studio communication.

[The3rdWalker 1,263]

Bungie has quite a ways to go before I say they are back on their game an I am optimistic of Destiny's future. However, this update to me is a great start. The masterclass system I will be diving into as soon as possible as this will give the advanced player a bit more of a grind/ something to work for. All of the different armor on sale at all times is a huge positive. Private matches need to happen in Crucible, so hopefully that is very early 2018. Three of coins, to be fair I never used in D1 because the gear was pretty easy to get but it's great to put it back into Destiny 2. All of the shit in D1 should have been here at launch.

 

Good patch, but can they keep it up?

[GazzaGarratt 10,878]

I am super impressed to wake up to this. I'm staying grounded and there's a lot more that needs to be done but this makes the December updates pretty significant now.

They really need to keep updating the community like this every few weeks so people understand what is on track, delayed, being developed, etc.

They had to do something and I don't think many can grumble that this reaction was a very good start.

I'll be looking to get the DLC now and internally hoping we can revive many lost clan members cone December.

[Baabcat 1,642]

The masterclass system sounds like it will add some depth, but nothing really done on armour. Problem with armour is there's three basic sets, and other than cosmetic differences there's no real reason to grind for them. Would have liked to see a bit more of an extensive change in this respect, but at least they are addressing some of the issues

[techno 3,476]

I see very little to get hyped about before trying it out but in not hopeful. Also how long have they had this to fall back on? 

The other thing I got from the video I watched, PvP is terrible but add ranked but still no gamemode choice option ? Really ? Yup that's listening bungie.

Someone also commented how they'd be happy to purchase vault space ffs.

 

AAA titles really have sunk to new lows.

[J4MES OX4D 9,793]

16 minutes ago, techno said:

I see very little to get hyped about before trying it out but in not hopeful. Also how long have they had this to fall back on? 

The other thing I got from the video I watched, PvP is terrible but add ranked but still no gamemode choice option ? Really ? Yup that's listening bungie.

Someone also commented how they'd be happy to purchase vault space ffs.

 

AAA titles really have sunk to new lows.

It's great PR to butter people up prior to the first 'expansion' but I can't see it being signifcant enough to keep me interested. I see a lot of 'better, improved and changed' points but I doubt it will translate to anything substantial. Certainly wont bolster the mediocre foundation that is already in place. This could be a good get out of jail for Bungie as a few people will likely overlook the games damning faults now and see these updates and DLC as the second coming of christ with their wallets and pants zippers wide open.  

[MrBiron 1,406]

"hey guys, Bungie here. We're adding back a load of features that were in Destiny but we took out of Destiny 2 for no fucking reason whatsoever. We REALLY hope you'll be happy with how much we're adding to the game even though it should have been there at launch. Enjoy! Bungie out."

[Sennex 1,903]

The list was shit, and I refuse to suck Bungie cock to make them feel better about "fixing" what they should have never broken to begin with.

 

Nothing in that list was inspiring.

 

I don't care about heroic strikes, we all knew they were coming anyway.

Masterclass Weapons? When we still have only 3 options for armor in the game?

Fixed Exotics? Really?

 

PVP and PVE are still merged as far as stats go.

 

Ranked PVP? Bungie needs shit or get off the pot. Embrace MLG or Story based games. Don't fuck around and try to do both

 

edit:

 

This is probably going to be an un-popular opinion and I need to see it in action before I obviously make a final decision but the masterwork slot is probably the most disappointing thing on here for me personally.

The weapons should be completely roll-able / modifiable or its just adding an extra node that everyone will have the same.

[GazzaGarratt 10,878]

Tbh Bart, I actually expected your view to be the most favoured.

I'm trying to be objective on what happened over the last few days. It was a good reaction. They had no choice. Its not a publicity stunt for DLC.

In reality, its very bad publicly to cancel a live stream just for a blog post. But it wasn't written in a 'hey, look at me guys I'm awesome' way. It is very serious and to the point.

Before this, the game and communication was poor. After this, my view is its on the right track.

The real dealbreaker is the next move. I want to see a detailed status update / blog in c. 2 weeks. Otherwise, they clearly haven't learned.



Oh, gary/bob. My view on armour upgrades is that its their answer to bounties. I like the idea of every having a challenge. Isn't that what CoD has had for years and works?

[Sennex 1,903]

Datto's thoughts on this:

 

 

Just posted 20 minutes ago, figured I'd pass the link onto you guys for discussion.

 

Here are my thoughts: Let's remember that Curse of Osiris was most likely already 85% done by the time Vanilla launched. Bungie didn't have much time to alter this DLC from Vanilla feedback and make long-term changes...even though that's what I feel like a lot of people were expecting. They can't pull entirely redesigned systems out of their ass in only a month. No, Curse of Osiris isn't going to fix the endgame. Or introduce a brand new engaging new loot system. No, Curse of Osiris was not meant to bring back a new weapon format, a dozen new mods, and strike specific loot. Those kinds of decisions are made when the DLC is first being developed, not 4 weeks before it is launched.

 

They developed this DLC while building off Vanilla. Vanilla showers us in loot, so that's how this DLC was meant to be as well. Did it turn out that is what we needed? No. Is that what they had? Yes.

 

I'll still take the feedback changes and QoL updates they were able to put together rather than sending the whole thing back to the drawing board. There's still The Dawning to look after for, and if it's anything like Destiny 1, we can expect a pinch of fresh content there too (and unlike Curse of Osiris, this content could be much better adjusted to feedback).

 

---------------------

 

More thoughts:

 

The issue in D2 isn't "lack of loot". Loot comes in at a pretty generous amount. The issues with loot are:

gap between common, uncommon, rare, legendary and exotic gear is almost non existant - Leads to a sense of "non-progression" when you do acquire higher rarity gear

• loot quality is minute - armor is meaningless and weapons are too bland and unappealing in terms of performance
• weapon layout is illogical - this is felt a lot in PVE and leads to boring PVP to watch and experience
• there are no exotics that are trully worth chasing - and now that you'll even be able to get them faster, even if there was, you wouldn't need to chase it Armor and how it functions within the gameplay experience is very lacking     
• Lack of unique loot items like lost sectors/strikes/patrols/mission exclusive weapons or armor pieces instead of weapon reskins over and over again
• If they bring back some exotics, then do us a favour and bring them all back and all legendaries and all the other stuff so that we have so much different stuff to chase and get that we have a reason to grind the game and collect it all

 

[The3rdWalker 1,263]

1 hour ago, Sennex said:

Datto's thoughts on this:

 

 

Just posted 20 minutes ago, figured I'd pass the link onto you guys for discussion.

 

Here are my thoughts: Let's remember that Curse of Osiris was most likely already 85% done by the time Vanilla launched. Bungie didn't have much time to alter this DLC from Vanilla feedback and make long-term changes...even though that's what I feel like a lot of people were expecting. They can't pull entirely redesigned systems out of their ass in only a month. No, Curse of Osiris isn't going to fix the endgame. Or introduce a brand new engaging new loot system. No, Curse of Osiris was not meant to bring back a new weapon format, a dozen new mods, and strike specific loot. Those kinds of decisions are made when the DLC is first being developed, not 4 weeks before it is launched.

 

They developed this DLC while building off Vanilla. Vanilla showers us in loot, so that's how this DLC was meant to be as well. Did it turn out that is what we needed? No. Is that what they had? Yes.

 

I'll still take the feedback changes and QoL updates they were able to put together rather than sending the whole thing back to the drawing board. There's still The Dawning to look after for, and if it's anything like Destiny 1, we can expect a pinch of fresh content there too (and unlike Curse of Osiris, this content could be much better adjusted to feedback).

 

---------------------

 

More thoughts:

 

The issue in D2 isn't "lack of loot". Loot comes in at a pretty generous amount. The issues with loot are:

gap between common, uncommon, rare, legendary and exotic gear is almost non existant - Leads to a sense of "non-progression" when you do acquire higher rarity gear

• loot quality is minute - armor is meaningless and weapons are too bland and unappealing in terms of performance
• weapon layout is illogical - this is felt a lot in PVE and leads to boring PVP to watch and experience
• there are no exotics that are trully worth chasing - and now that you'll even be able to get them faster, even if there was, you wouldn't need to chase it Armor and how it functions within the gameplay experience is very lacking     
• Lack of unique loot items like lost sectors/strikes/patrols/mission exclusive weapons or armor pieces instead of weapon reskins over and over again
• If they bring back some exotics, then do us a favour and bring them all back and all legendaries and all the other stuff so that we have so much different stuff to chase and get that we have a reason to grind the game and collect it all

 

 

I love that I can expect you to stuff from Reddit, including comments you agree with. It makes my job easier of not having to post as much. 

[Baabcat 1,642]

9 hours ago, techno said:

PvP is terrible but add ranked but still no gamemode choice option ? Really ? Yup that's listening bungie.

 

And you wouldn’t have thought it was that hard to do would you, at least add control in its own list ffs