Bungie‘s Baby Steps
A review of the changes Bungie has announced for Destiny 2
As promised, Bungie finally opened a dialogue by talking about updates that will be coming to Destiny 2 the in the weeks and months ahead. While it was certainly a nice start, it was simply that: a start. None of the information that they provided in this blog post really did anything to quell concerns about the longevity of the game. It shows that at least they’re willing to make changes, however, and maybe, just maybe, they can right the ship eventually. There were some interesting tidbits that deserve breaking down, though.
Of everything they talked about Wednesday, there’s two categories we can put everything into: December updates and “New Year” updates. Let’s start with the changes that are a bit farther out.
“New Year” Updates
- Ranked PvP — praise Jesus! While they said that it’s on “the top of our priority list for next year,” meaning that it may not be here for awhile, the fact that it’s on the radar at all and being mentioned is huge. I’m not sure if Destiny will ever be an esport or anything, but this will certainly give me a reason to grind out games in the Crucible, whereas right now there’s no reason whatsoever to do so outside of Iron Banner.
- Making the mod system more interesting and impactful — this needs to happen sooner rather than later. They made some small updates to how mods are acquired that will come in the December update, but this system is still lackluster and boring currently. This should be near the top of the list along with ranked PvP.
- Better rewards for Adventures and Lost Sectors — this would go a long way to give us more to do with the game. These activities are fun enough, but they rewards for them are bland. Making these more rewarding would make players want to actually repeat these more than they do currently.
- Duplication protection for Exotics — this is more of an annoyance than anything. At the same time, it could cause players to acquire Exotics even quicker if no duplicates come into play. Especially when you factor in the Xur changes that we’ll talk about below.
December Updates
The first major change coming in a couple weeks are Masterworks. These will basically be the weapons we know and love with some tweaks. Any place where you can find Legendary Weapons, you can find Masterwork versions of said weapons. These weapons have some distinct advantages such as generating more orbs on multi-kills, tracking the number of kills with said weapon, and, most importantly, adding a re-rollable stat bonus. Since it looks like we won’t be getting out fully random weapon weapons rolls similar to what we had in Destiny, this is the next best thing.
Speaking of those random rolls, though, Masterworks feel like a pretty weak version of those. Sure, the stat boosts sound cool enough, but if they’re anything like the bonuses we get from mods, they may not be impactful at all. We’l have to see how this one plays out.
This is one that we already knew was coming based on Bungie’s panel at TwitchCon this past October. It’s a good change, but one that will follow a harrowing pattern of simply playing catchup to the original Destiny. Ornaments can be applied to Legendary gear this time around, but they seem to function much like they did in the last game. Still, it will give players more to do once this hits with Curse of Osiris. The following armor sets will have ornaments that can be obtained:
- 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 World Raid Lair Armor
Here’s where we continue in the tradition of playing catchup. First, Faction Vendors will now have Armor and Weapons available for sale, which is something Destiny had from day-freaking-one. Not being able to purchase Faction gear was another one of the weird omissions in Destiny 2 that didn’t make any sense. It’s coming back, though, so I guess that’s good. You won’t just be able to outright purchase these from the start, however. Or, will you? See, there is a ranking system there that requires you to pick up a certain number of faction packages to gain ranks with the Vendor before purchase. The issue is that Bungie decided to make this retroactive. If you’ve picked up packages already, you will credit for them, which means most of us will manage to buy the gear outright, thus not creating any more incentives to play/grind out reputation with the Vendors.
Now we have our good old friend Xur. The addition of Fated Engrams as a way to get a guaranteed Exotic that you don’t already own is admittedly cool, but that’s not the only change. Three of Coins has reared its ugly head here in Destiny 2. While Bungie calls this a “simpler” version, it seems like a buffed version to me. Originally, you had to pop one for each boss you fought or crucible match you played. This time around, it simply provides boosts to Exotic drop rates from any source for four hours.
With both the retroactive Vendor reputation and Three of Coins, Bungie is failing to give players more to do and instead giving shortcuts to obtaining more loot. Not exactly what anyone wanted.
Annnnnd that’s about it. There were some smaller changes such as relaxing the “exploit safeguards” (i.e. don’t gain experience too quickly!) on World chests and Gift consumables from Zavala and Shaxx to give even more easy rewards, but nothing else substantial.
These are certainly nice changes, but they won’t bring the level of depth and replayability that we had in the original Destiny. If Bungie can keep bringing these kind of updates, as well as delivering on the New Year updates, the game could change for the better before long. The question is will people stick around long enough for that to happen.
I sure hope that the changes come and people stick around because I love the game. I want Destiny 2 to be as good as the later years of Destiny were. I know that Bungie has it in them to fix this. It’s now time to get it done.
This article was written by Super Jump Editor at Large, Wyatt Donigan. Please check out his work and follow him on Medium.
