Yesterday was supposed to be the last stream leading up to
Curse of Osiris, however the stream was canceled due to the backlash Bungie was
receiving. Earlier this week a Redditor that goes by EnergiserX did some testing
and found out that the number displayed for how much experience was earned didn’t
match the experience bar at the bottom. We later found out, in a Bungie post that
addressed this problem – experience will scale up if playing longer or activities
like Crucible, and Leviathan Raid. Playing quick and monotonous activates like Public
Events will scale down. In the same post, Bungie has deactivated that system
due to the reaction of the community. This made a sour taste for players in the
community – as they thought Bungie hasn’t been transparent as past years.
Due to this kerfuffle Bungie announced, a day before the
stream – that it was canceled to address bigger issues in the game. This was a
great change to the schedule, though the new gears would’ve been awesome to
see, addressing the bigger issues are more important for us players. Instead of
the stream Bungie will release a blog post that will go into the goals for
Destiny 2 going forward.
Bungie posted upcoming updates on their blog called “The State of Destiny
2”. This post started with Luke Smith and Chris Barrett talking about all
the feedback from the community and how they need to be more transparent to the
community. They want this game to fit as a hobby for devoted players, a reason
for them to keep logging in.
This is where all the information comes pouring out for the
upcoming updates. They have planned updates for the 5th and 12th
of December, along with more next year.
There is a list of notable additions and changes that
excited me and the community. The first update that stood out to me was the
Masterwork Weapons. These weapons can only be obtained once your power level is
250 or above, and will have a higher chance to drop in the Raid and Trials. Masterwork
Weapons are a new tier of Legendary that will feature stat tracking, random,
re-rollable stat, unique tool tips, and item detail screens. The team wants to
deepen the rewards for hardcore players, giving them more choice in earning
rewards. There are many advantages obtaining a Masterwork weapon, for instance –
generate orbs for the team on muti-kills. If there is a Masterworks weapon that
you don’t want, dismantling them will give you materials that can upgrade an
existing Legendary Weapon into a Masterwork. The update is scheduled to release
on December 12th.
Armor Ornaments are stylized skin for vendor gear, like the
Weapon Ornaments, this is another way to keep players logging in – it will keep
me playing for a long time just to have all the Ornaments. This will feature in
the December 5th update along with Curse of Osiris. These Ornaments
will have sets for the following vendors: Vanguard, Crucible, Trials of the
Nine, Iron Banner, Dead Orbit, Future War Cult, New Monarchy, and Eater of
Worlds Raid Lair. I want them to expand on this with all the planet vendor gears,
it just gives us something to grind towards.
Along with the December 5th update is a change to
the gunsmith and the materials. Rare weapon mods can now be dismantled more
weapons parts and will have a chance to produce a Legendary mod. A long-lasting
problem with this system was it was rare to get a Legendary Kinetic mod, but
that could be all solved with this change. Banshee will have a set of mods for
sale that will rotate daily, and must be exchanged with Legendary shards and
Mod Components.
Xur, as expected, will have new items to sell in the
December 12th update. Every week Xur will provide everyone with one
Fated Engram (Exotic) which will give you a guarantee new exotic. Xur isn’t
only bring new items but is bring back Three of Coins from Destiny 1. Three of
Coin is a modifier that increases the chance of obtaining an exotic engram. Best
of all, everything is sold through Legendary Shards. These shards had no purpose
whatsoever up until now, but with these updates it finally has a place to play
in Destiny 2.
Those were the talking point of this blog post, but some of
the smaller updates are just as important. Zavala and Shaxx will sell gift consumables
for Legendary Shards that can be used during a Strike or Crucible – the affects
are to grant bonus rewards to everyone in that activity upon completion, friend,
or foe. These rewards can vary from Faction tokens to a round of Exotics for
everyone.
Bungie is also going to change Reputation Tokens and
redeeming them. Daily Challenges will have increases tokens across the board.
Cayde’s chest will still offer different rewards but tokens will now give you
an appropriate amount. Same with Strikes, doing the activity will grant a
larger amount of Vanguard Tokens. Destination resources will change also to balance
the currency, common resources will now have a 100% drop rate and have 50% more
value. Rare however will have the same drop rate but will increase its value to
250%
Due to these changes to the reputation tokens, bungie decided
to increase tokens required per Engram 37% for Factions and 50% for gunsmith.
After all the talk about new changes and new updates, Bungie
went full circle and address the XP mechanics. They mentioned the disabling of
the scaling mechanism and wanted the players to keep slower-paced activities as
rewarding as possible. Bungie then acknowledge that “the silent nature of the mechanic
betrayed the expectation of transparency.” Bungie is now actively working to figure
out a mechanic that rebalances the XP progression, and how they will be more transparent
when it comes to internal and display value.
As of this moment Bungie adjusted the experience to 160K XP
per level, even this wasn’t right as players are finding it too slow for some
activities. Expect frequent changes to this system until Bungie finds a way
they can balance the XP progression.
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Canceling the stream
yesterday was worrying for me, knowing the reaction from the community about
the state of Destiny 2 made me concerned. However, after this blog post I felt like
this is the right move on Bungies part. It gave me and the community something
to be excited for – of course new loot from the originally planned stream would
got players excited too, but addressing some of the problems was what we
wanted. I do think they fixed everything? No, but they did address most of our
concerns.
I understand the shouts
and screams, but players seem to forget that Bungie did made a bad game great
with Destiny 1. Destiny 2 is only going to get better with time, and with the track
record they had with us in the past three years, I have no doubt that Bungie
will make this a great game going forward.
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