Where to start? There is a lot to cover, and I will do my best to cover everything as quickly as possible. Luke Smith has written a 20 page behemoth talking about his general thoughts on Destiny 2’s past, present, and future (not too much on the future stuff, unfortunately).
Part I Summary
Smith first discussed his thoughts on the last six months. He talked about the issues with power engrams and how getting powerful drops from so many sources became a checklist and chore instead of fun and exciting reasons to come back to Destiny 2 weekly and daily. They will be changing up how often power drops and how potent they will be, but not exact numbers on any of that.
He then talked about Season of the Drifter. Smith said that as much as they love Gambit and Gambit Prime, one of the two will have to go and a true version of Gambit will eventually emerge. He then talked about Reckoning, how the team wanted to give the community a reason to come back often to farm armor and weapons, but the design of the activity itself as flawed, especially the way that certain supers like Well of Radiance were necessary in order to have a chance of beating it. They know they designed it wrong and want to move in a different direction, not requiring certain optimal weapons, subclasses or exotics in order to finish any activity. They know that the community will always find the best path of execution, but Smith wanted the road to that execution to be broader.
Smith then moved right into Season of Opulence. The pursuits tab as we know if is just a placeholder/testing ground for the way things will be in Shadowkeep, then he shared a much better organized new UI for quests and bounties. His next topic was the Eververse. He mentioned how they want the store to be a place where people can go and spend what they want on things that look cool and appreciate the game as a whole. The Eververse ornament for Whisper of the Worm paid for the entire Zero Hour mission/rewards (that is huge!). He then moved into the Menagerie and the Chalice. Luke Smith loves Menagerie, and the team was happy with the player's reaction of how the community went nuts going after perfect rolls and working hard for specific rewards.
Part II Summary
On day two of his Director’s Cut, Luke Smith dove deep into armor 2.0. He more or less said that the Bungie team wanted players to create their personal monster killing machine. This means that armor progresses, grows and will give players options like they never had before. Smith also said that all of our old gear won’t be obsolete. Our best rolls and favorite gear will still be viable and probably better than Armor 2.0 at first, but as we unlock mods and specify what we want to do as a player, we will probably then lean into the Armor 2.0 for certain things.
Smith then explains a lot more about power creep and what is going to happen about things not just ballooning for no reason at all. On the start of New Light and Shadowkeep, there will be a global jump to 750 for all players on all gear. This means that power will have a new meaning, and that people will be focusing on leveling up their artifact and that bonuses will be added to players as they climb the power ladder. The artifact and growing in power level on armor will unlock new mods and additional perks or bonuses.
These two sections of Armor 2.0 and the Seasonal artifact will be discussed a lot more in future posts, come back soon.
Part III Summary
Next, he brings out the big guns of talking buffs, debuffs, stacking and damage numbers. There will be a squishing of numbers and different numbers will be displayed on everything, so if your sniper shots all the sudden do way less damage next season, it isn’t because you’ve been nerfed, it is to better scale how damage works internally and quality of life change for Destiny 2 as a whole.
Here’s the deal with buffs/debuffs/stacks, whatever is most potent in healing, damage boosting or anything will be the only thing applied. Exotics and things like Rampage will still stack normally, but a Well of Radiance and Weapons of Light (returning Titan Void subclass feature) won’t stack damage, but the healing of Well of Radiance would continue to heal. He next talked about supers in general and that there will basically be a throttling overall, making them more significant and a bigger strategy based part of combat, not just a cycle of supers though a fire team indefinitely.
The last thing he brought up was about PVP. Smith says Crucible has not received the love it’s been deserving. Trials of the Nine will be on hiatus until further notice, but there may be other things on the way. Quickplay and Competitive will be dissolved into new things. A number of modes will be in a Classic playlist, there will be a 3v3 Survival mode which will more or less replace the current competitive, it will be the only mode which will award Glory. There will be other modes and it looks like Crucible labs will be around a lot more too. Bungie wants Crucible to be great and they will be working a lot more on it and its lifespan and quality.
My Thoughts
Instead of giving my personal thoughts on each of these sections, I am honestly just very happy to see Luke Smith live and breathe Destiny. I can see the passion to make Destiny an ever-evolving universe for all players on all platforms. I am happy to see them recognize their flaws and efforts to fix the Destiny world to be a place where the community will be amazed and the team satisfied with their hard work. I am so excited for this new chapter of Destiny 2, and I think it will only get better.
