It’s been a rough few months for Destiny 2, a video game in which players travel through space, shooting aliens and then posting complaints on Reddit. This afternoon, for the first time in 2018, Bungie put up a lengthy blog post addressing player issues and outlining what’s coming next.
In the post, Bungie says it plans on “shifting the balance” for items like Ghosts, Sparrows, and ships away from Eververse, the real-money store, in favor of activities that require you to actually play the game. “We recognize that the scales are tipped too far towards Tess at the moment, and Eververse was never intended to be a substitute for end game content and rewards,” the studio said.
The studio plans to add more tangible rewards to endgame activities. And, in the near future, Bungie plans to bring back private matches and 6v6 to Crucible.
“At the end of last year, I made a promise that I would update you on our plans for Destiny 2,” wrote Chris Barrett, director of the game’s current team. “The team has been hard at work and we’re ready to share where we are headed. We used to wait to talk about game updates until we were certain we could meet our deadlines to avoid letting players down if we changed our plans. No longer. We’re not just listening, we are doing.”
You can see all of the planned changes and features over at the Bungie blog, but here are some more highlights:
- Starting January 30, you’ll be able to get Masterwork armor in addition to weapons.
- In February, Bungie will add a Strike scoring system and revamp the Mods system to make gear enhancements more valuable and less repetitive. (The Mods revamp might take a little longer, the studio notes.)
- The Tower will get text chat on PC.
- “You will finally be able to see the other members of your fireteam on the destination map. No more having to ask your fireteam where they went when they fast travel to another landing zone.” - About time, huh?
- Multi-emotes, extra vault space, and lots of other features that fans have been clamoring for, including better Iron Banner and more rewarding endgame activities.
Bungie also says that later in 2018 we’ll see:
- Item Collections and Records
- Weapon Slot and Archetype Improvements
- Additional Crucible Playlists (e.g. Rumble)
- Better Clan Rewards
- Masterwork Exotics
- Pinnacle Weapon and Gear Improvements
- Trials of the Nine improvements
- Shaders and dismantling
- The Future of Guided Games
- Address Solo Vs Fireteam matching
Bungie did not detail what will be in the second expansion, but said it plans to tweak the new DLC after reading fan feedback to the disappointing Curse of Osiris. “We’re taking the time we need in development of Expansion 2 that will allow us to react to player feedback from Curse of Osiris. In the coming months, we’ll talk to you more about what you can expect to find in Destiny 2’s next story. The team is eager to show you what they’ve been working on.”
This blog post comes in the wake of a rocky few months for Destiny 2, as fans have complained about the reward balance, the lack of endgame, and the increasing gravitational pull of the Eververse microtransaction store. In recent days, hardcore Destiny 2 players have seemed ready to revolt. I imagine this outline will help placate them, although the game still has one fundamental problem that won’t be fixed very easily: There just isn’t enough to do.