In a lengthy blog post today, Bungie outlined future content plans for Destiny 2, including a new tier of weapons, private matches for player vs. player battles, and better rewards for Strikes, Adventures, and Lost Sectors.
The blog post, attributed to the Destiny dev team and introduced by directors Luke Smith and Chris Barrett, comes after weeks of anger from the Destiny 2 community and offers a ton of specific details on what’s coming and when it will arrive. “We know it’s frustrating when there isn’t enough of a dialog with the development team,” the pair wrote. “You have our commitment that we’re going to do a better job going forward.”
Smith and Barrett also addressed widespread fan complaints that Destiny 2‘s endgame had left them cold, signalling that they sympathize with those who miss the grind.
“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,” they wrote. “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.”
Some of the new features will be implemented on December 5 with the launch of the upcoming downloadable content Curse of Osiris, others will go live on December 12, and a few more will be available in January.
One new addition will be “Masterwork” weapons, which the studio says will have “stat trackers, random, re-rollable stat bonuses, unique item tooltips, and item details screens.”
These are essentially elite versions of legendary purple weapons, and Bungie says you’ll be able to upgrade current legendaries to Masterworks or just find them in the wild. (“Raid and Trials of the Nine Weapons will have a very high chance to be Masterworks.”)
Bungie is also adding armour ornaments as a more permanent version of cosmetic customisation, allowing players to deck out their characters’ gear without worrying about consuming shaders.
Xur is going to start selling Three of Coins again – a simpler version this time, Bungie says – as well as an item called Fated Engram that turns into an exotic you don’t currently own.
A better emote interface is en route, allowing “players to equip Salty, Spicy Ramen, Six Shooter, and Flip Out all at the same time.”
Bungie says it’s prioritising private matches and ranked PvP for launch in 2018. We already knew private matches were coming, but this is the first we’ve heard of ranked mode. Ranked PVP is easily the most requested feature for hardcore competitive players.
The controversial XP system will be changed once again. “We already see that the newly adjusted 160K XP per level value means that levelling 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.”
There are other granular details in Bungie’s blog post, but perhaps most noteworthy is the studio acknowledging its communication issues and promising to do better:
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.
Comments
30 responses to “After Outrage, Bungie Promises To Do Better, Lays Out Plans For Destiny 2”
Random rolls coming back? FFS. Well you can reroll (more grinding) at least.
don’t blame them… the community asked for it.
“WTF fixed rolls? F U BUNGO, tell me, how is my 1st crappy exotic is different than my 5th crappy EXOTIC”
Random rolls is what made the hunt for weapons brilliant in D1. Comparing weapon rolls with my mates was always great conversation and testing weapons out was enjoyable. Currently in D2 you get a gun and thats it, nothing changes on it except the shader and the possibly the elemental damage type. You cant do anything to a weapon except infuse and even then when you play around with all the weapons you’ll end up choosing scrapping a bunch you dont like and then scrapping that same weapon indefinitely when it drops for you. With random rolls you could test out a the weapon a bunch of times and even have a new favourite weapon loadout every week. It gave the game a lot more variety and makes it very enjoyable
Exactly this. Not only for yourself either it was always an awesome moment when a friend got a weapon they really wanted and the first question was always “what’s the roll? Is it God tier?”
So the community prefers to keep mindlessly shooting shit to get a chance at a better roll on a weapon they’re using to better mindlessly shoot shit to get a chance at a better roll on a weapon they’re using to better mindlessly shoot shit to get a chance at a better roll on a weapon they’re using to…
Yep – dangle a carrot and it’s all good. The weapons as they are currently don’t have a lot of character – if perks can make them interesting then all the better.
There is nothing wrong with the core mechanic of mindlessly shooting shit in Destiny, no-one complains about that – just need a justifiable reason to do it and random rolls are good enough for me.
Well, it is marginally better than mindlessly shooting shit to get a chance at exactly the same gun you’re already using.
Armour ornaments that will no doubt require the Eververse currency to install.
Nope you unlock doing things in battle. But given how unchallenging the challenges are it might be like: two two kills or something
Well that is a plus. Destiny 1 made you buy silver to install the ornaments.
Really? I don’t recall ever having to pay silver to install ornaments in D1, and I have 5-6 sets of ornamented raid gear and a bunch of ornamented exotics.
How do they define a multi-kill on an autorifle?
I think when you kill within x seconds of killing another…
Like most things in Destiny, it’s all pretty vague.
All of this is positive – if this is what it took for them to turn a corner then bring it on. 🙂
So glad I quit this addictive shit. It became a mindless chore, repeating the same thing over and over again just to get “better” gear to repeat the same thing over and over again.
Good guy Bungie here to save us from…Bungie.
More saving themselves from Activision. Still feel all thier issues are things Blizzard solved 7 or 8 ears ago.
The board could still in one swoop from palming the whole game to Blizzard and relegate Bungie core team to engine and asset developnlment only.
Well I can see the hand that gives. Now just to work out where the one that takes is hiding.
The improvements sound good so far….but only if there is no eververse involvment. (Especially weapon rerolls!)
I want to believe. But I’ll believe it when I see it.
Hopefully these random rolls will stop me getting the same fucking legendary with the same stats, 10 times in a row.
I’ve been trying to do the nightfall strikes, but I quite often only get one other person, and the enemies aren’t scaling to accommodate. It takes 3 clips from an auto-rifle to down a Hive Knight.
Still sounds like PR fluff to me, the proof is entirely in their actions at this stage, not their words.
Yeah, has that PR stink about it, doesn’t it. Its just missing the Dare To Dream tagline, or something equally as stupid.
I’ve said elsewhere that the problem is there just isn’t enough to do. Whats there is solid, but there needs to be more of it. More weapon options, more armor options, more variety in events and lost sectors.
It shouldn’t be hard to do that, then expand and add a few new things. Mini raids into the underused areas of zones, or even just PQ’s in them. New ones though. In the tunnels of Red Dawn ship of EDZ for example, or the arcology on Titan.
Yes! I want more reason to go into the Arcology. It’s such a gorgeous area, but so incredibly underused…
Isnt it just? It’s so under used, and that large central area just screams PQ for me. Especially given Titan effectively only has 2 PQ’s. Popping a new one in there would work, and give people reasons to go in there.
There are so many areas like that though that it seems a ready made solution to the complaints. Every planet has areas people just don’t go to, before you consider how lost sectors have played out.
Yep! I’d totally love more randomness to the Public Events too. I’m kinda over stopping the Vex from integrating, or preventing the Cabal from mining. Give us some more variants!
There are some nice changes there, and the return of heroic strikes is a step toward that goal of “providing you with reasons to log in and play”… but they still haven’t shown anything that solves the lack of a proper endgame.
What? You don’t need end-game! Crucible is your end-game. /s
Penis stiffens
Bought the game during black friday/cyber monday sales after friends were going on about it. Only hit level …8 i think, but the game feels like a boring generic sci fi shooter to me.
Binary Domain and Vanquish, I enjoyed greatly, but this..may as well be playing Halo: Combat Evolved. I know some people love it, but just not my thing.
Heroic strikes are the main mode I played in D1, but a big part of that was being able to stay in a team afterwards. Found a few new friends from just smashing out 5 or 6 strikes in a row with randoms. Hoping they implement this in D2 at some point, would go a long way to getting me playing regularly.