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Unlike many plans for the future of Destiny 2, Bungie’s new one sounds solidFingers crossed!
Fingers crossed!
Every year or so, one ofDestiny 2’s high-ranking developers will write a vast 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 have often turned out disappointing in reality. I’m quite pleased, then, that the latest blogblast lays out some very specific changes that definitely are welcome. Also, it sounds like they might continue Destiny for many, many years yet.
First, the longest-term news from associate game director Joe Blackburn’s3600-word post: this autumn’s annual expansion, The Witch Queen, is delayed into early 2022. Partially it’s because the pandemic got in the way, and partially because they want to make it proper good as Destiny’s story approaches some sort of conclusion. Players had expected that end to come in that Lightfall, the 2022 expansion, but apparently not - in two ways.
Concept art for a most curious armour set coming with The Witch Queen, daubed with alchemical and elemental symbols. Looks like someone let Eris Morn loose in a laboratory wardrobe with her gel pens.
Blackburn said Bungie realised “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 end after Lightfall will only be the end of the “first saga”! Ooh! The current stand is called their “Light and Darkness Saga”, he said, with no hint as to what could follow. I’d be happy with more Destiny expansions until Bungie releasetheir mysterious brand-new thing in 2025and hell, I’d take more Destiny after that too.
Witch Queen’s delay might be concerning, seeing as the delay of Beyond Light last year left the final pre-expansion season stretched real thin. They have lots of time to plan around that, at least, and plans for this year’s seasons do sound promising.
The biggest news for the next, season 14, is that Bungie are ending sunsetting. No longer will non-Exotic weapons and armour have a limit on high you can infuse their Power level. This has put a timer on how long gear can be usable in end-game activities, caused a lot of beloved weapons to be binned, and led to a whole lot of grinding out replacements for old favourites. While Bungie aren’t outright undoing sunsetting (which would make me mourn so much gear I needlessly dismantled) they are ending it. If gear can currently be infused up to this season’s maximum Power level of 1310, congrats, it’ll be good next season too and forever after.
“With Season 11, we 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 aspirational content,” Blackburn said. “While we still believe in these goals, it’s clear our execution was off the mark.”
Destiny 2: Beyond Light - Season of the Chosen Trailer [UK]Watch on YouTube
Destiny 2: Beyond Light - Season of the Chosen Trailer [UK]
Looking ahead to more changes with the yet-unnamed season 14…
Oh the looks I’ll show you…
Bungie also plan to tweak Stasis in PvP across this season and the next two. Stasis Hunters and Titans will be nerfed, Warlocks will have bugs fixed, and being frozen will give extra damage reduction. I still think Stasis is unfixably bad for PvP because being slowed or frozen is always unfun in a first-person game, but I guess this is something?
Other promising future plans…
Ah, lots of good stuff. Yeah, some of these plans are the vague statements of intent we’ve heard before, but enough great plans are are concrete for me to be very pleased. Swallowing their pride and ending sunsetting is such a relief. Reducing the power grind is long overdue. Destiny’s violence and exploration and raids are so damn good that I would have continued without these changes, but now I’ll be grumbling a lot less. Even if I am incredibly sceptical about yet more vague talk about fixing Crucible, which has been busted and neglected for so long.
I didn’t recap everything because ha ha ha so doread the blog postyourself. How do you feel about it all?
