Destiny 2 players have known for quite some time that the release of Curse of Osiris would bring new content, a new season, and some huge quality of life and sandbox updates to the game. Bungie’s relative silence about the feedback from players has been concerning as many who want to play the game fall away due to systems that don’t reward long term or repeated play. The studio has finally detailed many of the Destiny 2 changes that we’ll see in December, along with providing a smattering of what we can expect moving into 2018.
While a lot of these changes are ready to go for Tuesday’s release of Curse of Osiris, there are some things that are taking a bit longer to work on. Bungie will be releasing a follow up patch a week later on December 12 with parts of the update that they were not able to have ready by next week. Their goal with these updates has four main areas of focus:
- Deepen Rewards for advanced players
- Provide More Player Control over obtaining rewards
- Make Shards Useful by adding things to use them for
- Provide General Quality fixes wherever possible
For the sake of easy organization, I’ll be breaking the key changes down into the December 5 release, the later December 12 update, and what Bungie has said won’t be coming until next year.
Destiny 2 December 5 Update
- Heroic Strike Playlist – More difficult strikes that will challenge players.
- Armor Ornaments – Armor ornaments will be rewarded for completing various challenges associated with individual activities. They add additional customization on top of shaders and mods. Ornaments are permanently unlocked once earned, even if you delete and re-obtain pieces of armor. There will be ornaments in Season 2 for Iron Banner, Crucible, Vanguard, Faction, and more.
- Mod Updates – Rare mods will dismantle into Gunsmith Materials, with a chance to produce legendary Mod Components. Banshee will now offering a rotating selection of specific mods that can be purchased using Mod Components and Legendary Shards.
- Legendary Engrams From Rahool – Rahool will now sell legendary engrams that can decrypt to Masterworks world weapons and other world legendaries (see December 12 update).
- Reputation Token Updates – Tokens gained from daily challenges have increased. Cayde’s chests will offer destination tokens as a reward, in addition to everything else they can reward. Strikes will drop more Vanguard tokens. Location resources have increased in value and drop rate. Leviathan Raid Tokens will be redeemed at Benedict immediately instead of requiring a full clear.
Destiny 2 December 12 Update
- Masterwork Weapons – Legendary weapons can drop as Masterwork tier versions, or can be upgraded into this tier. They will generate orbs on multi-kills for you and your allies. They have a re-rollable stat bonus that will make each Masterwork weapon unique. These can drop from any legendary engram source as long as a player is over 250 Power level. If you dismantle a Masterwork, it will drop materials that can be used to upgrade non-Masterwork legendaries.
- Vendor Gear Purchase – Armor will be made available to purchase from the different factions using Legendary Shards and the appropriate Tokens. Weapons will be available, but will rotate. Purchasable armor slots are unlocked by gaining reward engrams, with the game recognizing previous engrams claimed.
- Xur Changes – Xur will begin selling a fated Exotic Engram for Legendary Shards that will decrypt to an Exotic item that you don’t have yet. He will also start selling a Three-of-Coins that boosts Exotic drop rates for four hours.
- Gift Consumables – Zavala and Shaxx will sell these for Strikes and Curcible respectively. When activated, they grant increased rewards to everyone in an activity, friend and foe alike. They can award anything from Faction Tokens to a a full round of Exotics for everyone in a match.
- Planetary Chest Lockout – Exploit safeguards are being eased, so players should see less chests rewarding nothing. Safeguard is now 30% instead of the previous 0%.
- Vendor Notification – Vendors will now only notify once you have enough tokens to claim an engram.
Destiny 2 2018 Updates
- Masterworks Extension – They have plans to expand Masterworks to more gear beyond just legendary weapons in the December 12 update.
- Exploit Safeguard Visual Indicator – They are working to add a visual indicator when exploit safeguards have been activated so that it is communicated to the player.
- Ranked PVP Focus and Private Matches
- Increased Incentives for Prestige Activities (Targeting January)
- Adventure and Lost Sector Rewards
- Quitter Penalty System for Crucible
- Mod Updates
- Tuning Under-performing Exotics (some changes may come on December 5)
- Duplication Protection for Exotics
- Emote Interface Improvements
This is just the start of Bungie’s commitment to make Destiny 2 a game that players really want to play on repeat. There will be additional details as we get closer to the release of Curse of Osiris that will include gameplay and sandbox tuning changes included in the patch notes. What do you think of the immediate Destiny 2 changes? Are there any additional things you would like to see them work on?
[Source: Bungie]
