February 14, 2023

Destiny 2 Game Director Revealed a New Season and Discussed the Future of the Game

Destiny 2 game director Joe Blackburn released his biggest-ever blog yet, revealing many details regarding the game’s future and Destiny 2 Season 20. He explained a lot of the game’s incoming changes before the release of The Final Shape, including those impacting Crucible. But let’s sit down, grab a cup of tea, and take a look at all the future changes to this MMO shooter!

NEW SEASON 20 IS…

The first season of the sixth year is the Season of Defiance. And the first significant adjustment will be the complete absence of Umbral Engrams and Energy, as well as the currency of the season. You will now be able to focus certain items with the Glimmer and special seasonal engrams that certain Vendors will hold. No more junk in inventory, hooray!

Next up, the studio will rework the vendor upgrades. From now on, there will be much fewer of them, and they will give you some significant bonus. They also will replace the currency for opening chests from seasonal activities with keys. Moreover, keys will not be sprinkled in packs and will fall out during seasonal activities. Getting loot from chests will be much more rewarding and will not be another requirement in the season’s quests.

However, the Season of Defiance’s details have yet to be disclosed. The first official image shows that Mara Sov will serve as the main character, and the central location is EDZ with Dark City. But how could this city even appear there? Only time will reveal the answer.

UPDATED WEAPONS CRAFTING

With the Witch Queen’s release, the developers have introduced the long-awaited crafting system. Initially, it was confusing and required a lot of grinding, but they improved it significantly over time. However, Bungie decided not to stop there and continued moving toward the crafting system’s final shape.

The developers didn’t like that the crafted weapon versions had a big advantage over the regular ones. At the start of Season 21, you can put Enhanced perks, mementos, and other things on certain random rolled weapons. But that is not all. From now on, only weapons that Guardians can craft will drop with red borders. The studio made this decision to stop confusing regular players with twisted mechanics.

RETURNING CHALLENGE IN DESTINY 2

All Guardians have been asking for a long time to bring back Destiny’s hardcore experience from the original. Bungie also wants this and did everything they could last year with subclasses updates, but this is not all, and this year there will be more changes.

First things first, the studio will buff the enemies and nerf the players themselves. As strange as it may sound, Joe Blackburn assures that this is the right direction toward a more balanced game. For this reason, resilience gets nerfed, and mods get energy increase cost from 1 to 2 for minor mods and 3 to 4 for major ones.

The developers have noticed the dominance of abilities in PvP and PvE. Therefore with the new season, Guardian’s powers will receive a much more effective rollback. The developers want to push players to use their weapons and make them shine rather than leave them as a backup plan in dire situations.

And the last thing in the gameplay changes will be an updated Buildcrafting system. With new changes, players will get to experiment more frequently and be able to delve into their peculiarities much easier. It sounds frightening, but we assure you, Guardians will remain the same machines for exterminating mobs, but much more balanced.

In addition, Season of the Seraph introduced changes to the difficulty in Heist Battlegrounds, namely, enemies received +5 power compared to players. Developers made those adjustments so the gamers didn’t feel overpowered, which helped a lot with balancing the difficulty. With the new season’s release, Battlegrounds from Season of Defiance, Vanguard Ops playlist, and even Neomuna will have similar difficulty settings.

NEW PvP AND PvE CONTENT

Let’s move on to the most interesting changes that Joe Blackburn discussed, starting with Crucible. With Lightfall’s release, one reworked and one new mode will appear in the game. The first mode is a new version of the old Countdown, which promises to be more dynamic. The second one will be completely new and include various sandbox adjustments, like weapon damage or ability uptime. Furthermore, two old maps will return during the year, and one new map will appear to satisfy PvP players.

In Season 22, the studio will release the Exotic Mission Rotator, bringing back activities such as Presage, Vox Obscura, and Seraph’s Shield. Bungie promises to return more classic missions over time, so look forward to the return of Whisper and Zero Hour.

Of course, the developers still remember Strikes and Nightfalls. The Lake of Shadows and Arms Dealer strikes have undergone a rework and will come back with Season of Defiance. Battlegrounds will now be part of Nightfalls, with Heist Battleground: Mars coming first.

QOL CHANGES IN LIGHTFALL

And finally, let’s talk about Quality of Life Changes. We will quickly list them all point by point.

The developers want to gradually get away from the Power system, so it will receive small changes in Season of the Deep and a global rework in The Final Shape.
Bungie wants to return Exotics to ritual content instead of Lost Sectors.
By the way, the first season of Lightfall is entirely devoted to ritual activities.
Five years after Destiny 2 release, they will finally fix the in-game chat. Moderation and filter will also be released over time.
The saddest news: In-game LFG is once again delayed until Season 22, the last season of the year. Because of this, you won’t be able to find the Fireteam for the reprised Raid in the game itself. But you will have the opportunity to find a team for the second brand-new dungeon.

That’s all that the Destiny 2 Game Director has to share for now. There are a lot of changes, but let’s hope that they will all benefit the game and the community. More discoveries await with the Lightfall’s release!

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Thanks for reading. Owl is flying away!