About every year, one of Destiny 2’s senior developers will write a comprehensive blog post inspecting the MMOFPS’s problems and proposing solutions. “That might be good,” I always think, “depending on how they implement it.” But the plans are always vague and often disappointing in practice. I am therefore quite pleased that the latest blogblast contains some very specific changes that are certainly welcome. It also sounds like they can carry on with Destiny for many, many years to come.
First, the longest news of associate game director Joe Blackburn’s 3,600-word post: This fall’s annual expansion, The Witch Queen, is being delayed to early 2022. Partly because the pandemic got in the way, and partly because they it’s really good if Destiny’s story approaches some sort of conclusion. Players expected that to come to an end in that Lightfall, the 2022 expansion, but apparently not – in two ways.
Blackburn said Bungie realized “we needed to add an additional unannounced chapter after Lightfall to fully complete our first saga of Destiny.” 1) Oh, so Lightfall won’t be the end. 2) Oh! Even the ending after Lightfall will only be the end of the “first saga”! Ooh! The current booth is called their “Light and Darkness Saga,” he said, with no idea what might follow. I’d be happy with more Destiny expansions until Bungie releases their mysterious brand new thing in 2025 and then I’d take more Destiny too.
The Witch Queen slowdown could be worrying as the Beyond Light slowdown last year caused the last pre-expansion season to get very thin. At least they have a lot of time to plan on that, and the plans for this year’s seasons sound promising.
The biggest news for next season, season 14, is that Bungie is putting an end to the sunset. Non-exotic weapons and armor no longer have a high limit, you can control their power level. This has set a timer for how long gear can be used in endgame activities, has caused many much-loved weapons to be discarded, and has led to a ton of replacements for old favorites. While Bungie doesn’t outright undo the sunset (which would make me mourn so much stuff that I needlessly disassembled), they end it. If equipment can currently be infused to this season’s maximum Power level of 1310, congratulations, it will be good next season and forever after.
“With Season 11, we’ve introduced infusion caps, an iteration on infusion designed to keep Destiny’s gear game fresh from release to release and to create a healthy ecosystem for our ambitious content,” said Blackburn. “While we still believe in these goals, it is clear that our execution was wrong.”
In theory, I was in for a cautious sunset, if Bungie could show interesting consequences. They don’t have. It’s so annoying to grind for new armor, and especially for new reels of sunset weapons being reissued. Sunsetting has also left the current meta with a severe shortage of kinetic weapons with special ammunition. Goodbye, bad system.
Looking forward to more changes with the as-yet-unnamed season 14 …
- The Power grind is reduced, with future caps only increasing by 10 each season. Good. But why even keep it at this point?
- The first Destiny’s Vault Of Glass attack stems from the Destiny Content Vault. It will also have another World First race, with a ton of challenging Triumphs on top because people already know how to complete the heist.
- Ikora stops moping around the tower in silence and is part of the story again.
- The transmogrification will finally arrive. Armor Synthesis, as it is called, will allow players to turn armor into universal ornaments for hitting other gear (and no, you don’t have to hoard in preparation – it will run off your collections). The Black Armory’s Ada-1 will return to do this, with the materials needed for transmog materials obtained by making bounties or by paying Silver (the real money microtransaction). I have so many fashion plans.
- Shaders will also no longer be inventory items, only unlocks we can easily apply through similar ornaments in the new Appearance Customization screen. Hoera.
Bungie also plans to tweak Stasis in PvP this season and the next two. Stasis Hunters and Titans will be fed, Warlocks will have bug fixes and being frozen will give extra damage reduction. I still think Stasis is irreparably bad for PvP as getting slowed down or frozen is always no fun in a first person game, but I think this is something?
Other promising future plans …
- The end of “3-peeping” in Trials and Competitive PvP, the strategy to bring out a sword out of ammo to get the third-person camera and look around corners. You can only equip them if they have ammunition. Good.
- Fight cheats by doubling the size of the security team.
- Buffering underused light subclasses, which I think at this point are … the most?
- Try not to make Trials so endlessly boring that players would rather jump off cliffs than actually play.
- Actually right Stasis weapons for your energy and power slots, not just this one new rubber ice launcher we currently have.
- Cross-platform play arrives in Season 15. PC and console players will not be matched in PvP, mind you, unless consoleers are specifically participating in a PC party.
- Continue to tweak Crucible by rebalancing weapons, introducing new weapon perks, and perhaps giving weapons a bit more focus than they are currently compared to skills.
- And yes, the Crucible-dominating Felwinter’s Lie shotgun gets a grain. Though bad news for PvE beeps: Warmind Cells are likely to take quite a hit too.
Ah, many good things. Yes, some of these plans are the vague declarations of intent we’ve heard before, but there are plenty of big plans out there that are concrete to make us very satisfied. Swallowing their pride and ending the sunset is such a relief. Reducing the effort is a long time ago. Destiny’s violence and reconnaissance and raids are so damn good that I would have moved on without these changes, but now I will grumble a lot less. Even if I’m incredibly skeptical of even more vague talk about fixing Crucible, which has been broken and neglected for so long.
I have not summarized everything, because ha ha ha, so read the blog post yourself. How do you feel about it all?