Bungie Releases Blog Post Addressing Destiny 2 Problems
It has been somewhat of a tough week for Bungie with news of XP throttling hitting the mainstream and cancellation of the DLC stream being announced. Now after some silence by the studio, fans of the looter shooter are starting to get some answers. Earlier today Bungie released a blog post addressing Destiny 2 problems. The post itself can be found in its entirety on Bungie’s blog, and I will also highlight some interesting points below.
Destiny 2 Problems and Potential Solutions
Before the post even really begins, a portion of it is dedicated to an address by Luke Smith & Chris Barrett. In this address Bungie acknowledges the lack of communication and criticism being levelled against the studio. Bungie agrees with community sentiment that the studio could be doing better and will attempt to make changes for the better. Before diving into the the meat of the potential solutions, Bungie had this to say about their vision of Destiny 2 going forward:
Going forward, Destiny 2’s post-launch game systems, features, and updates are being designed specifically to focus on and support players who want Destiny to be their hobby – the game they return to, and a game where friendships are made. We want Destiny to be a game that fits into your life, providing you with reasons to log in and play with your friends, clans, and families. We want Destiny to be a world you want to be a part of.
Masterwork Items
Weapons and the lack of variety in weapon abilities has been a point of friction between Destiny 2 players and Bungie. Players wanted a bit of variety in items they collected while Bungie had different ideas as to how weapons should work. Masterwork items (currently only weapons) appears to be an attempt to bridge the gap between player expectations and studio intent. To get a good idea of what these new class of weapons are, let’s take a look at how Bungie explains them:
Legendary Weapons will drop as or be upgraded to become Masterworks versions. Masterworks will have a few advantages over the baseline Legendary weapon:
- Track and display the number of kills with that weapon (with choice between total count or Crucible-only count)
- Generate orbs for you and your allies on multi-kills
- Add weapon stat bonuses that are selected randomly from a small pool and are re-rollable
- Masterworks drop from any source of Legendary weapons for characters above 250 Power
- Unwanted Masterworks can be dismantled into materials that can upgrade an existing Legendary Weapon into a Masterwork
- Raid and Trials of the Nine Weapons will have a very high chance to be Masterworks
- We have future plans to extend Masterworks to other gear and expose your kill counts in more places (e.g. Crucible kill screen)
Armor Ornaments
If you’ve had the chance to play Destiny 2, you will know that the game lacks in distinct visual flair. The game itself looks good, but armor sets are pretty bland and only elicit any sort of visual flair through the application of Shaders. This lack visual flair will (hopefully) change in the December 5th update through the introduction of Armor Ornaments. As Bungie lays out:
Armor Ornaments will be added to some existing Armor sets for more visual customization without losing your Shaders or Mods
- These ornaments will be unlocked by completing objectives specific to each set, and are permanently unlocked account-wide, just like Exotic Weapon ornaments
- They will be applied to the base pieces that you may already have collected, and can now unlock on Vendors if not (sic)
- In Season 2, the following sets have ornaments unlocked in their respective activities:
- 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 Worlds Raid Lair Armor
Other Changes
The Bungie post also lays out a number of general changes they hope to make in the coming months including how things like the general economy, Xur, and Experience will work moving forward. I won’t be going into details on these changes so I highly recommend visiting the original post if any of these areas peak your interest.
