Previously Bungie laid out changes that will be implemented soon as part of the mid-season update. This article is a continuation of, Reflecting On Lighfall: Launch and Beyond (Current Changes), where we are discussing future changes that will be seen in the next Season of Destiny 2.
Coming in Season 21
These are changes that will be going live come season 21; A lot of these QoL features are from direct feedback from the community, but Bungie needed more time to produce them in order to commit to creating impactful tunings.
Buildcrafting
- Powerful Attraction — When using your class ability, you collect all Orbs of Power within a radius determined by the number of copies of the mod you have equipped.
- Design note: The requests for a “Seeking Orbs” mod that would allow Orbs to track to you did not fall on deaf ears. However, adding such functionality to an object that is spawned as frequently, in such numbers, and for all fireteam members (not just the creator) could create memory, performance, and latency issues.
- Elemental Charges — Collecting the subclass collectible associated with your damage type (firesprites, ionic traces, Stasis shards, Void breaches) has an escalating chance to grant you a stack of Armor Charge. On Strand, this is granted by destroying tangles.
- Design note: The frequency of gaining a stack of Armor Charge is tuned differently for each collectible to account for the differences in frequency and volume of creating these collectibles.
- Feedback was common on expanding the number of ways to acquire an armor charge, the firesprite collection mod in the seasonal artifact was so popular Bungie decided to iterate upon that
- Shoot to Loot — Can be used to ‘loot’ Orbs of Power in addition to ammo boxes
- A continued investment in improving this mod and looking towards allowing the perk to activate with Elemental Charges
The buildcrafting changes have been some of the best QoL enhancements we have received in Destiny, though I don’t like the cost we paid by losing a lot of build options. Putting more resources into perpetually improving this system is something I am all for, it lies at the core of the gameplay experience and is foundational to end-game content.
Artifact Perk Refunds
- Add the ability to refund individual perks rather than having to reset the entire artifact
Not much to say here other than it is a nice accommodational change that will save us a few minutes.
Seasonal Ritual Schedule
- In Week 1 of Season 21, we’re planning to run Trials of Osiris
- In Week 4 of Season 21, we’re aiming to make Grandmaster Nightfalls available
- With no pinnacle cap increase, Bungie wants to put out these activities as early as possible each season
Nice addition that will be appreciated by some, overall it isn’t that impactful.
Exotic Armor Focusing (the big one)
- Adding Exotic Armor focusing to Rahool in Season 21
- Two different focusing tiers will be added
- Advanced Decryption: Focus an Exotic engram to a specific entitled release
- Precision Encryption: Directly focus the Exotic armor you want!
- Note: We plan to raise the Exotic Cipher stack limit from one to five
Hell yeah! The sandbox has been begging for the introduction of a system like this, we have been able to focus legendary engrams for a long time now. Having the ability to finally focus on the exotic armor you want is an incredibly positive addition. My only complaint is the cost seems very steep, I understand these are exotics, the ultimate pieces of gear you can acquire, nonetheless the materials needed are ridiculous to farm for currently.
More to Come
- We’re upgrading more than 15 of our lower-performing Exotic armors and rolling out balance changes to several others
- We’ll have some exciting news for players who enjoy improving their raid and dungeon Exotic drop chances through Triumphs
- We’re taking a pass at team-unfriendly Vanguard bounties requiring specific weapon or ability kills, and more
That wraps up all the changes coming soon and in the somewhat distant future. I walk away from this slightly less impressed than I would have hoped for going in. In the end it was some decent QoL changes and one big feature being rolled out with Exotic Armor Focusing.
I still get the impression Bungie commit to ideas too much that don’t work out and are never as in sync with their community as they should be. This likely stems from a Project Management perspective that is misguided, but it is hard to determine what the root cause is. Regardless, some really good info here with enhancements to look forward to. Hopefully future seasons will prove to provide more sustainable content for Guardians to look forward to.
This Article is intended to be Informational
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