Those playing Destiny 2 and hated that FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) feeling whenever you can’t complete everything in a given time, Bungie is looking to reduce that by introducing Destiny 2 Seasonal Challenges. This is a new system set to launch soon for Destiny 2 which aims to remove FOMO, but also to give fresh ways for guardians to earn XP and alternate rewards.
The dev team at Bungie explains how Destiny 2 Seasonal Challenges work, and what their goal is for it.
Dev team: During production of Beyond Light, we started looking at the problems of bounty fatigue and FOMO, as well as Seasonal legibility (i.e., “What is in a Season?” and “How to I engage with it when I log in?”). We created a few goals which we believe will improve the experience:
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- Provide a guide to new, returning, and veteran players for what to do today/this week.
- Guide the player through the Seasonal content, week-over-week.
- Encourage players to engage with complexities and nuances of the Seasonal activity and rituals.
- Reduce the penalties on XP and Bright Dust for missing a given week.
To solve these goals, we are introducing a new pursuit type for players – Seasonal Challenges. The Seasonal Challenges live on their own page, are accessed through the Quest Log or Season Pass, and are separated by week.
Here’s a quick breakdown of how this feature works:
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- Every week, for the first 10 weeks of a Season, between 3 and 10 new Challenges appear automatically for players.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- Other rewards could be Bright Dust, Seasonal currency, or other interesting items!
In moving away from weekly bounties, which were restricted to broad objectives tied to ritual activities, we have taken more leeway with creating some interesting or more difficult Challenges. These may be things you are already doing, or things that test your ability. Some examples include:
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- 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
Per Bungie, roughly 60% of the Seasonal Challenges will not require the Season Pass. Also, the studio is moving away from weekly bounties the ritual vendors, though these vendors will still have daily bounties which reward XP, and will still feature repeatable bounties for those who want to farm XP and Bright Dust. Regarding Challenges rotating and being take out, here’s what Bungie had to say:
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.
Bungie has also talked about Bright Dust as well, and these wll be tied into Seasonal Challenges too!
Let’s Talk Bright Dust
Back before Beyond Light launched, we discussed some of the goals around the changes to Bright Dust. As a refresher, we wanted to change the way you earn Bright Dust and move more towards account-specific paths to give players with only one character significantly more Bright Dust than they’ve been earning over the last year. In Season 13, we’ll be continuing to move toward these goals by adding Bright Dust onto Seasonal Challenges.
Since you no longer have to purchase weekly ritual bounties, each of the strike, Crucible, and Gambit Seasonal Challenges will award between 75 and 300 Bright Dust. We are also introducing an end-of-Season Bright Dust bonus – if you complete (nearly) all of the Seasonal Challenges, we are awarding a single 4,000 Bright Dust pile.
Additionally, each ritual vendor challenge (“Complete 8 bounties”) awards 120 Bright Dust for each character who completes it each week. And because this is prompted by the removal of weekly bounties, the only Seasonal Challenges that will be awarding Bright Dust are the ones that both Season Pass owners and free players can complete. Here’s a quick breakdown of how much Bright Dust you should expect to earn over the course of Season 13.
Seasonal Challenges Bright Dust (All Players)
- Free Seasonal Activities – 6,000
- Seasonal Extra – 4,000
- Total – 10,000 Bright Dust
Season Pass Bright Dust
- Free Path – 7,500 (All Players)
- Paid Path – 3,000 (Players who own Season Pass)
- Total – 10,500 Bright Dust
Weekly Ritual Vendor Challenge Bright Dust (All Players)
- 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
Additionally, we still plan to offer weekly and repeatable Bright Dust bounties for Seasonal events, giving you a bit more Bright Dust towards desired rewards.
As a final note, please be sure to claim all Seasonal Challenges that award Bright Dust prior to the end of a Season. Once a Season ends, associated Challenges and their Bright Dust rewards will expire and can no longer be claimed.
If that’s not enough news for you, Bungie has also discussed that recoil will be changing as preparation for crossplay!
Dev team: In preparation for crossplay, coming later this year, we’re making some changes to the Recoil stat.
Currently, several weapon archetypes have their Recoil reduced by around 40% (dependent on archetype) when using mouse and keyboard. This results in an issue where players on mouse and keyboard are able to largely ignore the stability weapon stat, creating unintended discrepancies in weapon performance between controllers and mouse and keyboard.
The following weapon archetypes will have their mouse and keyboard Recoil adjusted closer to controller (reduced the difference from ~40% to ~20%).
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- Auto Rifle
- Scout Rifle
- Pulse Rifle
- Submachine Gun
- Hand Cannon
- Machine Gun
In the case of Pulse Rifle, Submachine Gun, and Machine Gun, we will also be introducing some buffs. In some cases, these weapons will have less Recoil across both Controller and mouse and keyboard input methods compared to what’s in the game today.
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- 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:
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- Reduced camera movement from firing a Submachine Gun by 24%.
- Pulse Rifles with the mouse and keyboard changes were kicking a little too much.
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- Reduced camera movement from firing a Pulse Rifle by 7%.
- Machine Guns with the mouse and keyboard changes were kicking a little too much.
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- Reduced camera movement from firing a Machine Gun by 9.5%.
We will pay close attention to how these changes play out when they go live, and plan to revisit individual archetypes in a future update as needed.
Outside of Recoil adjustments, we will also be tuning a few weapon archetypes in Season 13. Looking through backend data and community feedback, we landed on the following:
Buffs
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- Rocket Launchers have fallen behind other Heavy weapons in most measures of effectiveness, we’re pushing them more into a burst damage role.
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- 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.
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- 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
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- Breech Grenade Launcher projectiles will now detonate on impact with a character, even if holding the trigger.
Nerfs
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- Reduced Sword damage by 15%.
Exotic Changes and Bug Fixes
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- 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:
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- Ace of Spades
- Tarrabah
- Hawkmoon
- Borealis and Hard Light now have a custom (quite short) animation for switching damage type.
- Duality
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- 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.
Ah, and before we go – we are planning to take a quick tuning pass on Arbalest. This won’t be ready in time for February 9, but we are expecting to have this touched later in Season 13!
Players can expect these changes to make their way once the new season starts on February 9.
