‘Destiny’: Upcoming Updates And Six Changes That Need To Come

The arrival of the Destiny 1.02 patch went a long way towards solving a major complaint with the game by PlayStation and Xbox owners. The loot system has improved, but there’s obviously much more to do. Bungie has already hinted at some of the fixes that are coming, but I have six that top my list of must-have changes for the sci-fi shooter.

Here’s a look at what is coming in future updates, according to recent developer notes published by Bungie.

Weapon balancing

The Auto Rifle will receive a nerf because it is currently too effective at longer ranges. Similarly, the shotgun’s effective range is longer than intended as well. Meanwhile, Scout Rifle will receive a damage boost and so will some of the underperforming Exotic weapons like Thorn and Bad Juju.

Voice communication

The inability to communicate with anyone outside of a Fire Team was something I complained and wrote about during the beta. Bungie says it will eventually allow players to opt-in to communicate with others during matchmaking activities like Strikes and Crucible multiplayer without creating a Fire Team.

Strike bosses nerfed

Bungie says that Strike bosses currently deal too much damage while players don’t deal enough to them. This will eventually be fixed to be “less grindy.”

That’s all a good start, but there’s so much more that needs to be fixed with Destiny. The following six items currently sit at the top of my wish list for what needs to be added or fixed in the game.

Matchmaking for Heroic and Nightfall events

Bungie hinted at matchmaking coming to more parts of Destiny, but this needs to become a reality, and soon. The grind between level 20 and 26 is pretty significant, which is made worse by the lack of matchmaking. This is a puzzling design decision considering that all of the other Strikes in the game use matchmaking.

More unique content

When I say unique content, I mean something other than run somewhere, maybe make Ghost (aka Dinklebot) do something, and then shoot all the bad guys until they’re dead. That’s pretty much what 99 percent of Destiny is outside of the Raid, unfortunately.

The Sword of Crota story mission is the one and only exception because it lets players wield a sword to deal with waves of Hive enemies and three powerful princes. That kind of change up in gameplay is sadly missing from the rest of the Story and Strike missions.

Bungie appears to have saved the majority of the unique gameplay and boss mechanics for the Raid. Unfortunately, that locks out the majority of players who either can’t deal with the grind to reach level 26 or can’t get together with a group of friends.

It’s highly unlikely we’ll see this fixed for the already released portions of the game, and there doesn’t appear to be any movement to provide free content by Bungie and Activision. That leaves the two upcoming DLC as our only hope for unique gameplay elements.

Increase the loot drop rate

The reason players were willing to waste hours shooting at caves is because the Destiny developers did an abysmal job at rewarding players with loot during Story, Strike, and Patrol missions. The 1.02 patch has helped by offering additional reward for Daily and Weekly missions, plus the Strike playlist. However, the overall rate of loot drops does not appear to have been changed.

Right now, my son is clearly getting frustrated trying to get the armor he needs to reach level 26 because of the loot drops system and the limited time he gets to play the game. I’m right there with him in the frustration department.

Blizzard went through the same thing with Diablo III before it was finally patched with the Loot 2.0 system nearly two years later. Hopefully, Bungie won’t take that long with Destiny.

Addendum: Even if Bungie doesn’t increase the loot drop, I would like to see Vanguard Mark rewards for the Strike playlist raised along with the level cap on the Marks. That would help take some of the grind out of obtaining Legendary gear in Destiny. As sephx22 on N4G and Ben Driver in the comments below reminded me, the maximum amount of Marks you receive for completing a Strike is the same as completing a VIP Patrol mission. The latter takes significantly less time and is a breeze to complete.

More varied bounties

The bounties for Destiny share a similar problem that the rest of the game suffers, and that’s a lack of variety. Most of the bounties simply involve shooting aliens because there’s not enough of that already.

Many of the bounties, such as headshot bounties, only encourage the kind of spawn farming that Bungie doesn’t want players to engage in.

One of the more fun Bounties I’ve done in the game is killing 2 enemies at the same time with a Fusion Rifle. It was a nice skill challenge to line up enemies and didn’t require a huge amount to complete. I’d like to see more of these type of skill challenges versus mindless killing sprees.

It would also help if the bounties lined up with what is available for that day. Too often the vendor has offered up bounties for events, like Crucible’s Salvage gametype, that is not available.

Put the Grimoire Cards in the game

I could tell you of games that put the lore and background of the universe in the actual game. Bungie won’t though. Making Grimoire cards available only through Bungie.net and the Destiny companion app is one of many strange design decisions with the game.

Ideally, Grimoire cards would be treated like Achievements and Trophies so that when they are earned, players can press a button to see what it is. The current implementation guarantees that most Destiny players will not bother to read any of the lore and are unaware of that bonuses that come with ranking up some cards.

Free the Crucible gametypes

Salvage is one of the more fun Crucible multiplayer gametypes that is available in Destiny. Bungie must have decided that we players can’t handle this level of fun, and only makes it available during certain time periods. The same holds true for the Combined Arms playlist.

What changes do you think needs to come to Destiny? Share your opinion in the comments below.

[Images via Bungie]