Bungie Outlines Additions, Improvements Coming To 'Destiny 2'

Bungie was supposed to show off a stream today that highlighted the new weapons and gear in the upcoming “Curse of Osiris” expansion for Destiny 2. However, the studio ditched that plan in favor of a post on its website meant to address “higher priority information” about the game. Specifically, Bungie discussed new features coming next month and in 2018, some of which were the result of player feedback.

The December update will come in two waves and contains mechanic and cosmetic changes. The first portion arrives in tandem with the launch of the “Curse of Osiris” expansion. The update includes an overall increase in tokens rewarded in activities, changes to the Mod system, and the return of armor ornaments. Rahool, the main engram vendor, will also start selling Legendary Engrams to those seeking more powerful weapons.

The second batch of updates arrives one week later on December 12, and it's headlined by the addition of Masterworks firearms. These are Legendary weapons that include new bonuses and random stats. Because of the increase in acquired tokens from the first wave of updates, Bungie will let you use them to purchase specific weapons and armor from the game’s many factions. Xur, the source of weekly Exotic engrams, will also offer new Fated Engrams to decrease the amount of duplicate ultra-rare loot acquired. There are also new consumable items that grant better rewards in Strikes or Crucible matches, and the safeguards for farming tokens and Glimmer (another in-game currency) will be relaxed.

Next year, Bungie will focus and tweak other existing mechanics to the game, including adding more incentives to play the harder Prestige activities and better rewards for Adventure quests and Lost Sector areas. Player-versus-player fans should also expect the addition of ranked and private matches as well as the introduction of a penalty for those who leave a round before it ends. Also included are more planned changes to Mods and an enhanced emote system.

These changes were partially due to the growing frustrations from the community, which was frustrated on two major issues: experience points and rewards. The frustration on experience points was due to the result of a Reddit user’s investigation last week, who found that some activities didn’t provide the correct amount of experience points. Bungie revealed that this was intentional due to a system which scaled the amount of points depending on the activity. Playing Crucible matches or the Leviathan raid yielded more experience points, while the amount was scaled down for those who participated in a series of Public Events. The studio has since removed the scaling feature from the game.

The idea of tokens also did not float well with the community. The idea was that you would complete activities and missions and in return, you’d get tokens, which you could redeem from different vendors in exchange for random weapons or gear. In the early to middle progression stages, this was the main method of increasing your Power Level, but it was completely useless in the endgame. Turning in enough tokens only to find that the item in question didn't make you more powerful is quite a disappointment. Other loot in the form of the more traditional engrams was still available as a random reward in activities, but it’s not as common as tokens.

Players wanted their Hunters, Titans, and Warlocks to feel like powerful characters when they reached the Power Level cap, and the current build of Destiny 2 doesn’t seem to meet their standards. Bungie’s long list of changes and additions should address the experience and token issues in addition to the overall endgame experience. Thankfully we don’t have to wait long to see how the new and improved features will change the game. “Curse of Osiris” and the first set of updates will be available next week.