Bungie Outlines ‘Destiny 2’ Planned Improvements: Eververse, Nightfall Strike Scoring, And More

Bungie’s much anticipated first blog post of 2018 arrived Thursday to outline the developer’s planned improvements to Destiny 2. Guardians will be happy to hear that the role of Eververse in the end-game is being reduced, but the studio has many more community-requested improvements planned for Raids, Crucible, and more starting at the end of this month through September.

Eververse Fixes

Destiny 2 players should start seeing changes to Eververse starting with the Crimson Days event coming February 13. Players will have more opportunities to earn Crimson Engrams, the event’s special engram. This includes receiving a Crimson Engram along with an Illuminated Engram each time a character is leveled up, the chance to receive a Crimson Engram at the end of a Crimson Doubles match, and by completing Crimson Days milestones.

Guardians will have a stronger chance of receiving new rewards from the Crimson Engram when decrypted. Additionally, an exclusive Legendary Emote, Weapon Skin, and Exotic Sparrow can be earned by completing Nightfall, Raid, and Crimson Days milestones.

This is already a strong step forward for Eververse and event rewards in Destiny 2 over the disappointing Dawning event. However, that is not the extent of the Eververse changes planned. More improvements will come with the start of Season 3 in March to move rewards like Ghosts, Sparrows, and Ships to activity rewards instead of through Bright Engrams. Bungie also plans to make more direct purchase options available instead of depending on the random roll of the Bright Engram.

"The team has been hard at work and we’re ready to share where we are headed." – @cgbarrett https://t.co/t6QDsCtsop pic.twitter.com/GG6Cdm0zJp

— Bungie (@Bungie) January 12, 2018

January 30 Update

Masterwork Weapons has been a successful twist on Legendary weapons in Destiny 2 and Bungie plans to add Masterwork Armor with an update scheduled for January 30 on all platforms. These will come with an innate perk that decreases damage received while using a Super ability and they will allow owners to re-roll the armor stat by spending Masterwork Cores and Legendary Shards.

Raid rewards are receiving some attention with the end-of-the-month update too. Mods with Raid-specific perks are being added, while rewards are being adjusted to “ensure a Raid item drops from each major encounter.” The Raid vendor will also begin selling Leviathan and Eater of Worlds armor and weapons directly, similar to how Tower vendors were updated. Finally, a Raid Ghost with a specific perk is being added that will only be available from the final raid encounters.

February Update

The February update is where Bungie will start addressing some quality of life improvements and making the Nightfall more interesting than a race against the clock.

Destiny 2 Nightfall Strikes will receive Strike Scoring plus High Score tracking in place of the current time limit mechanic. The scoring will be similar to what was added to the original Destiny, but with tweaks to support execution of Strike objectives and player selectable score modifiers.

Bungie is completely reworking armor and weapon mods to make them more unique and impactful. Be aware that this could slip to later in the spring due to the amount of work involved.

Other planned improvements include increasing the pace of gameplay and power ammo acquisition in the Crucible Quickplay playlist. Receiving the same duplicate Exotic over and over will be a thing of the past plus Fireteam members will finally be able to see each other on the Destination map.

Bungie is also dipping its toes further into text chat on the PC. The PC version of the game will support text chat in the Tower.

Spring 2018

The second Destiny 2 expansion is coming sometime in the spring, but Bungie has even more impactful improvements planned for the game then. There is a big focus on the Crucible and here is a breakdown of everything.

Crucible

• Season Crucible Ranks with a Valor rank based on a cumulative score and match completion plus Glory rank that goes up when you win and down when you lose.
• Private Matches.
• 6v6 Playlist in addition to existing 4v4 game modes.
• Limited time Mayhem Events.
• Additional fixes to address quitting and “behind-the-scenes” security improvements.

Other Updates

• Weapon and ability balance updates.
• Exotic weapon and armor balance updates.
• Seasonal Reputation with vendors to unlock unique Seasonal rewards.
• Improved Iron Banner and Faction Rallies.
• Playlist Repetition Reduction for Strikes and Crucible.
• Moving rewards from Bright Engrams to end game content.
• Support for multiple emotes.
• An additional 50 slots in player vaults plus other changes to reduce the impact on vault space. For example, an Exotic accessory tab is being added to Vault collections for Exotic Ships, Sparrows, and Ghosts.
• PC Clan Chat
• Heroic Strike modifers.

Fall 2018

The first large Destiny 2 expansion should be arriving in the fall and Bungie has more improvements planned then. The following is a small sample of what is planned.

• 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