Destiny 2 Seasonal Challenges Announced, Recoil Changes Due to Upcoming Crossplay Revealed

• • Every week, for the first 10 weeks of a Season, between 3 and 10 new Challenges appear automatically for players.
    • • Some of the Challenges deal with the Seasonal content.
      • Others push players to complete strikes, Gambit, and the Crucible, or to focus on non-activity focused Destiny rituals, like gaining Power, unlocking Seasonal Artifact mods, or improving guns and armor.
  • These Challenges can only be completed once per account, but once they become available, these Challenges can be completed at any time before the end of the Season, and do not need to be started or picked up from a vendor.
    • • As an example, if a player doesn’t play for weeks 2 through 4, they can return on week 5 and have all of those Challenges waiting for them!
  • Completing each Challenge awards XP, contributing to your Season Pass ranks.
    • • Other rewards could be Bright Dust, Seasonal currency, or other interesting items!

• • Defeating Primeval Envoys in Gambit
  • Defeating enemies in Nightfall: The Ordeal with Seasonal weapons
  • Gaining Infamy or Valor ranks
  • Acquiring the ritual weapon and its cosmetic ornaments
  • Winning rounds in Trials of Osiris
  • Completing a Grandmaster Nightfall

Lastly – most of the Challenges disappear after the Season they were introduced, and anything that isn’t claimed will be lost. We don’t add any new Challenges after Week 10 – which should give everyone a few weeks to clean up any Challenges they didn’t finish. Any Challenge that rewards unique or Seasonal items (currencies, lore books, Seasonal weapons, etc.) – can be completed as long as the Seasonal activity is in the game, but XP awarded for completing the challenge will only be available during the season it was introduced.

• Free Seasonal Activities – 6,000
• Seasonal Extra – 4,000
• Total – 10,000 Bright Dust

• Free Path – 7,500 (All Players)
• Paid Path – 3,000 (Players who own Season Pass)
• Total – 10,500 Bright Dust

• 120 Bright Dust per ritual vendor, per character, per week
  • 14,040 total if completing all required weekly Challenges over the course of Season 13

• • Auto Rifle
  • Scout Rifle
  • Pulse Rifle
  • Submachine Gun
  • Hand Cannon
  • Machine Gun

• • Submachine Guns are largely outclassed by Auto Rifles at medium range, and by Sidearms at short range, with player feedback often mentioning how hard they are to control. To address this feedback, we’re introducing the following change:
    • • Reduced camera movement from firing a Submachine Gun by 24%.
  • Pulse Rifles with the mouse and keyboard changes were kicking a little too much.
    • • Reduced camera movement from firing a Pulse Rifle by 7%.
  • Machine Guns with the mouse and keyboard changes were kicking a little too much.
    • • Reduced camera movement from firing a Machine Gun by 9.5%.

• • Rocket Launchers have fallen behind other Heavy weapons in most measures of effectiveness, we’re pushing them more into a burst damage role.
    • • Increased Rocket Launcher damage by 30%.
      • Exotic Rocket Launchers have been adjusted individually and are affected by this change to different degrees.
      • Paired with the buffs to reserves from last Season, we’re hoping you’ll explode many more things in Season 13!
  • Fusion Rifle usage is very low, and they feel like an unreliable choice in Crucible compared to Shotguns.
    • • Increased Fusion Rifle damage falloff start distance based on Range stat. (6% with 0 Range, 16% with 100 Range)
      • Reduced camera movement from firing a Fusion Rifle by 9.5%.
  • Breech Grenade Launcher usage is very low (outside of Mountaintop). We believe part of the reason is that the loop of “hold the trigger to arm, then release to detonate” is challenging to execute, particularly since projectiles can bounce off targets if the trigger is held
    • • Breech Grenade Launcher projectiles will now detonate on impact with a character, even if holding the trigger.

• • While Sniper Rifle usage has dropped in Crucible, we’ve observed that it’s hard to challenge someone with a Sniper Rifle – even if you get the first shot on an enemy, they can often respond and win the fight.
    • • Increased ADS flinch to Snipers when taking damage from other players
  • Swords are extremely dominant in PvE. At this time, 65% of players are using Swords for the majority of gameplay encounters in Destiny 2. While we are introducing a buff to Rocket Launchers to make them a bit more enticing, we feel that Swords do too much damage compared to other options.
    • • Reduced Sword damage by 15%.

• • Some Exotic weapons lose their buffs when you switch weapons, which is intended. They would also lose their buffs when pulling out your Ghost Shell, which is not intended. Fixed that issue on these weapons:
    • • Ace of Spades
      • Tarrabah
      • Hawkmoon
  • Borealis and Hard Light now have a custom (quite short) animation for switching damage type.
  • Duality
    • • Increased damage falloff distance by 1.25m (while both firing from the hip and aiming down sights).
      • Reduced maximum buff stacks from 7 to 5, each stack now grants more of a damage bonus, extended buff duration slightly.
  • Sturm will once again reload any equipped Special slot weapon on kill provided the Special weapon’s clip isn’t full already and there’s available reserve ammo.
  • Fixed an issue that was preventing Merciless from increasing its charge rate on non-lethal hits.