This week Bungie revealed their plans to improve Destiny 2 across activities, rewards and make it easier to understand for new players, while providing a more challenging experience for veterans. Today I am going to get into all the details, plus give you my thoughts on Bungie’s plans to fix Destiny 2.
Without any delay, let’s dive into the details.
Core Game: Activities
The Problem
In past Destiny releases, all attention has been on a relatively small offering of newly introduced seasonal activities, most often with a narrow range of difficulty options (if any.) Rewards and objectives have focused all purposeful play into these activities to the exclusion of most others.
As a result, the ritual game quickly becomes stale and is exhausted of worthwhile rewards, and any further pursuit requires a pretty deep knowledge of Destiny or online guides to find worthwhile rewards in older activities.
The Solution
Core Game Activity Offering & The Portal
The Core Game activities are those accessed from the new Portal screen and are together a selection of several dozen new and updated activities that tie into the current Seasonal theme and gameplay meta. This selection is updated every Major Update and includes the current Expansion and any running Events.
Early mockup that is subject to change.
For more information about the Portal, please check out the deep dive.
These activities cover a wide variety of activity types, from Strikes to Dungeons to Crucible, and are organized in Categories with similar fireteam requirements.
Challenge Customization
The major change to Core Game activities is that they all support deeper personal mastery and a corresponding deep reward offering. We’ll start with PvE activities, then dive into the Crucible and PvP, which present unique challenges.
All of the PvE activities will now support robust Challenge Customization, exposed as new options alongside selecting the difficulty:
Work in progress mockups, subject to change.
Challenge Customization gives you the ability to select and activate Challenge Modifiers, which affect the activity you are launching. These Challenge Modifiers may:
Introduce new enemy combatant abilities to increase their threat.
Introduce new combat challenges that change how you play.
Provide incentives for changing up your buildcrafting.
Raise the Power target for the activity, globally increasing the difficulty.
As a player, you will first be able to select a base difficulty, such as Expert or Grandmaster. The difficulty will set some base difficulty tuning and a Power target, but more importantly will determine how many Challenge Modifiers you can add on, and in some cases which Challenge Modifiers are available. Higher difficulty means more Challenge Modifiers to slot, and a wider variety of them to choose from.
Reward Rating
Rising to the right level of challenge can make an activity not only more fun to play, but more rewarding too.
All Core Game activities will support Reward Rating, which is a combined team and personal score that determines the amount and quality of rewards obtained at the end of the activity.
Reward Rating is increased by:
Playing an activity at a higher base difficulty.
Applying Challenge Modifiers, which have individual bonuses to Reward Rating.
Having personal bonuses from sources like Power, Artifacts, or buffs.
Here’s how Reward Rating works:
As a team, you will earn a Team Rating over the activity, determined on a per activity basis. Sometimes this will resemble existing systems like Nightfall score, but new activity types can have their own way to determine Team Rating. This outcome is shared by all members of the team and will always try to mitigate competition between teammates for things like scoring kills or specific setups.
At the end of the activity, your Team Rating is multiplied by any personal bonuses you may have. This final multiplied value is your Reward Rating, and this value is used to determine the quality and quantity of rewards.
Reward Rating is used to determine things like the quality tier of the weapons and armor that drop, or the quantity of useful consumables like Enhancement Prisms or Ascendant Shards.
In this way, you can select any Core Game activity, use your skill and build to take on more and more challenging versions of it, and earn higher and higher tier rewards.
Except Crucible…
Crucible is a unique challenge, because you cannot simply add Challenge Modifiers or use the score of the match as a Team Rating.
This is a tricky problem that we’re still working out. We’re working through options like factoring in matchmaking ratings, or leveraging existing progressions, but each presents unique challenges to our end goal of ensuring that Crucible offers our PVP players a fair and complete path to high-tier weapons and armor.
We will be excited to share a solution once we have one nailed down.
FAQ
What about Expansion activities?
Expansion activities, such as story missions or Destination activities, present some unique challenges in how they relate to Power and changing seasons. Our intended outcome is that Expansion content is always a great way to start off a season and will have a path to high-tier weapons and armor, but that progress via Core Game activities will be part of that path.
Raids and Dungeons released with Expansions still represent a pinnacle challenge for players and will have their own paths to the highest tiers of weapons and armor too.
Are old activities going away?
No, except for some seasonal activities that are normally removed at the end of a year. Older activities will remain available to launch from the Destination map, just as they are today.
Over time, it is our intention to clean up and retire some older activity offerings that are well served by the Portal, such as Vanguard Ops. These have lots of ties to existing content, though, and will need to be moved over gradually.
How does matchmaking work with Challenge Customization?
For activities that support matchmaking, like those in Fireteam Ops, matchmaking will be available for some preset difficulties, but using Challenge Customization to enable different Challenge Modifiers will disable matchmaking.
While Fireteam Finder may be a good way to pick up some slack here, we also intend to feature higher challenge options on a daily rotation, in activities with active bonus rewards. These activities should have concentrated enough populations to ensure that matchmaking can do a good job setting up good matches with solid connections.
My thoughts on Activities
Here Bungie are trying to widen the net of activities we play when a major release comes out. Looking at The Final Shape, I played the Legendary Campaign, the post-campaign missions to get the Exotics, then went into the Episode Echoes activities which included Battlegrounds, Breach Executable and Enigma Protocol. I didn’t really play much of the latter activities, focusing on Battlegrounds, which personally I found more fun. I tend to replay Strikes and Nightfalls a lot, but I don’t go back to older Dungeons and Raids too much.
The goal here of the new Core Game Activities is to present more activities to play that are closely tied to the episode or seasonal content. This means core playlist (Vanguard, Cruicble) get more focus, which is a good thing. I do like the introduction of higher difficulty tiers, and this is going to help tease out more builds fgor our Guardians. Hopefully this is going to make it easier to understand for new and lapsed players too.
While it’s not a revolutionary change, it’s a good iteration and it should be a good quality of life improvement for all players. Bungie do mention new acitvities too, so hopefully they will bring in some of their innovation here (similar to Onslaught introduced with Into The Light).
Core Game: Rewards
The Problem
In past Destiny Seasons, only a narrow range of activities received updated rewards, leading to a narrow selection of activities worth playing. These reward pools tended to not be very deep either, with most chases bottoming out with weapon perk rolls (or crafting recipes), and armor not mattering much at all.
These problems have resulted in shallow, unsatisfying grinds in a tiny subset of the activities actually available to play, with their best rewards being a matter of luck rather than skill or mastery.
The Solution
Weapon and Armor Tiers
Legendary weapons and armor will be available in a deeper range of quality “tiers” that layer on properties like stat bonuses, enhanced perks, and other benefits. For weapons, this will be similar to how Adept weapons upgrade the baseline Legendary.
The baseline tier of Legendary weapons and armor will be equivalent to current day Legendaries, with higher tiers being generally equivalent to Adept weapons in terms of upgrade.
Early mockups that are subject to change.
These higher tiers of weapons and armor will be available from the full range of core game activities, as rewards for higher challenge tiers and mastery of those activities.
Reward Pools
Reward pools are complete sets of weapons and armor that are available as rewards from one or more activities. Some weapons are shared across multiple pools, but the majority of weapons and all armor are unique to a single pool.
A typical pool is a full armor set for each class, and enough weapons to provide multiple options for each weapon slot.
All of these rewards are available at all tiers, so each reward pool is deep and supports a range of challenge in the activity they are associated with.
The major core game reward pools will be updated in every Major Update, and will be:
Core PVE: Rewards shared among more accessible PVE activities, like Strikes.
Core PVP: Rewards shared among more accessible PVP activities, like Crucible playlists.
Pinnacle PVE: Rewards shared among more intrinsically challenging PVE activities, like Dungeons.
Pinnacle PVP: Rewards shared among more intrinsically challenging PVP activities, like Trials of Osiris.
Every expansion also contains two full reward pools:
Expansion Story: Rewards shared among missions, exploration, or other activities in the Expansion content.
Expansion Raid/Dungeon: Rewards for Expansion Raid or Dungeon activities.
In addition to the above pools, some activities like Events may have additions exclusive to that activity, such as individual weapons or armor sets.
New Gear
“New Gear” will be a blanket category for all of the weapons and armor newly introduced in the current Season, regardless of source.
New Gear will receive a special visual treatment to help players identify which weapons or Armor Sets are new, and which may therefore benefit from things like Artifact bonuses.
Some Artifact bonuses which previously applied to specific perks, such as weapon Origin Traits, will now be pointed towards the wider category of New Gear instead. This should provide more and clearer buildcraft options and make for some shorter tooltips in the Artifact.
New Gear may be required in specific, optional activities where players are looking for a level playing field. For example:
A Crucible playlist option for players who want to play with and against the newly introduced gear.
Seasonal Events centered on posting high scores in specific activities.
FAQ
Does New Gear mean old gear is being sunset?
No, not at all. Existing gear remains unchanged and ready for use in any activity except those set aside for experimenting with new gear. It can be infused to achieve the same Power as any newly introduced gear.
The only specific advantage to using New Gear will be some Artifact synergies, comparable to Origin Trait upgrades found on existing Artifacts.
Can I still obtain old gear?
Absolutely. Exclusive gear will remain available from older activities, such as Raids, Dungeons, or Destinations.
What’s happening with weapon crafting?
Weapon crafting is not going away and will continue to be a way to craft a specific roll of a weapon. Our intent is for crafting going forward to provide a catch-up mechanism for rolls you weren’t able to nab from the original sources. This may be because that source is no longer available or was gated by lockouts when it was. But ultimately, we want crafting to support the weapon chase, and not replace it. We’ll follow up with more details in a future article.
My thoughts on Rewards
New loot was added to a small range of activities, and now that’s going to be added across a broader range, providing incentives to play a wider range of activities. New gear is an interesting concept, and the mention of sunsetting certainly raised eyebrows among the community. I think what Bungie are saying here is more gear is going to be introduced across a larger range of activities, which can only be a good thing, and provide reasons to play them. I’m interested in this “new gear” concept, but I’m going to have to reserve judgement for when they put this stuff into practice. It sounds like new gear is going to be required for some activities, which could be interesting. At the end of the day it’s all about the quality of the gear. Indebted Kindness was a recently introduced weapon, and all rocket sidearms have had a massive impact on the game.
Developer Insight – The Portal
The Problem
The Destination map, also called the Director, is Destiny’s venerable activity browsing and selection screen. Over the years it has grown to be very unwieldy, making it harder to find specifically what’s current and worthwhile to play, and requiring ever more expert knowledge to navigate to find what you are looking for.
Even current players can have difficulty finding a new activity, while new or returning players have even greater trouble.
The Solution
Portal Screen
The Portal screen will be the new default activity selection screen, replacing the current Destination map.
Early mockup that is subject to change.
The emphasis of this redesign is quick and clean access to a wider offering of activities with updated rewards, as well as quick access to the current Expansion or Event content. Activities will be grouped into Categories (more on these below) that expand to present up to a few dozen activities each.
Every activity available to launch from the Portal will feature updated rewards every Season and will present a viable path to the highest tiers of weapons and armor available. Our intent is for most activity launching in a season to occur from the Portal, and any choice you make will be a path to worthwhile rewards.
Portal Categories
The individual Categories available in the Portal are:
Solo Ops: 1-3 player activities requiring very low time or social commitments. These activities are designed for solo players, yet are still fun with a fireteam, and are easy to pick up and play for a quick session. Solo Ops will also feature a new activity type which will get a deep dive soon.
Fireteam Ops: Three-player activities for matchmade or premade groups. Designed for fireteams with more cooperation and coordination, these will feature activities like Strikes, Onslaught, The Coil, and new types in the future.
Flashpoint Ops: Six-player activities for matchmade or premade groups. Planned for a future Season, this category will be introduced later next year. It will feature more chaotic six-player combat like Offensives.
Pinnacle Ops: Three-player activities featuring some more challenging content, including Dungeons, Exotic missions, and full-length Onslaughts. Pinnacle Ops have an exclusive reward pool to claim, but success is not guaranteed.
Crucible: A selection of core Crucible playlists for solo players and fireteams, providing an opportunity to test your mettle against other Guardians. An exclusive reward pool is available to claim, with the same depth of tier as other Categories.
In addition to the above Categories, the Portal also provides direct access to the current Expansion activities, as well as any currently running Events like Iron Banner or Festival of the Lost.
Objective Streamlining
The Portal screen will also host consolidated and streamlined side objectives, like bounties or Seasonal Challenges. That aspect of the redesign is still a work in progress, but the primary goal is to greatly reduce the “chores” that need to be done before diving into an activity. We will be sharing more about this change later in the year.
Bonus Rewards
Every day, several activities in each Category will have bonus rewards added to their standard offering. These bonus rewards will include things like:
Specific weapons
Specific armor Slots
Currencies, like Enhancement Materials or Strange Coins
The bonus reward is guaranteed from the first daily clear, and available at a high drop rate on future clears.
Activities with bonus rewards will be sorted to the top and easy to find, so that you can quickly scan what’s available and decide if any are worth chasing. For matchmade activities they will also offer matchmaking at a wider range of difficulty options.
For more information on changes to rewards, please check out the Deep Dive on Core Game Rewards.
FAQ
Are old activities going away?
No, except for some seasonal activities that are normally removed at the end of a year. Older activities will remain available to launch from the Destination map, just as they are today.
Over time, it is our intention to clean up and retire some older activity offerings that are well served by the Portal, such as Vanguard Ops. These have lots of ties to existing content, though, and will need to be moved over gradually.
What about Gambit?
Gambit will remain available from the Destination map but will not be rolled into the Portal Categories at the start of next year. We are still figuring out our plan for this beloved game mode, and we have some ideas ranging from closer integration into the Crucible category to standalone Events that feature it.
Will Raids and Dungeons be in the Portal?
Dungeon content will be featured in the Pinnacle Ops Category, with some alterations to support Challenge Customization and Reward Rating.
Raid content will not initially be present in Portal Categories. The long clear times combined with the wide variation in experiences present some unique challenges that we are still working through. However, we are excited to get this content into the Portal offering in the future.
My thoughts Portal
This is all about reducing the complexity of Destiny 2. The Portal screen aims to provide quick access to relevant activities. How often do you hear from new players that they don’t know what to do after the intorduction quest, or new light process? I see a lot of reddit posts about this, and this is going to be one way to solve this.
It’s an interesting move regarding Gambit. Ever since Beyond Light Bungie have been toning down investment in Gambit. It had a great introduction in Forsaken, but since the last rework Bungie have been reducing the investment in the game mode. I think this makes sense, reducing investment and turn of what’s not working, and focus on what is working. That’s the major theme about these updates, reduce complexity, streamline the user experience and make it easier to understand for all players.
One point I am very interested in is this one “Every day, several activities in each Category will have bonus rewards added to their standard offering.” That’s going to provide an incentive to jump into a range of activities.
The categories are intersting Solo Ops, Fireteam Ops, Flashpoint Ops, Pinnacle Ops – but I think it’s a matter of wait and see with this. Personally, I don’t find the menus confusing, but I have 10 years experience in the game and these improvements probably aren’t for me, and more focused on new players and improving the flow of players around the different game modes. Destiny 2 is like an iceberg, we only really interact with what’s above the water, and there’s a whole lot more down below.
Final thoughts
Overall, while these are important changes for Destiny 2 in a) helping new players and b) providing a challenge to long term players, what I am reading here isn’t blowing me away. The things I am interested in are new activities, new game modes, and different ways to play. In the previous article Tyson Green talked about innovation, bringing the wonder back to Destiny 2 and talked about Metroidvanias and Roguelikes – taking inspiration from other genres. I know what Destiny 2 is all about, I’ve been playing it for years, and I want to experience new things.
I still think Destiny 3 is the main answer to this, but if Bungie are going to go down that path, then they’re going to have to create space and time, because that’s going to take a lot of effort. The Final Shape proved Bungie still have what it takes, but now their team is diminished and they have to switch things up, maintain the game and do more with less, which is always challenging. I am always hopeful for the future, and I look forward to these changes coming into the game. I only hope Sony gives the team enough time to implement them and get player sentiment back on track.
Let me know in the comments what you think.