Bungie Addresses Destiny 2: Starter Pack and Other Season of the Wish Concerns

Yesterday, Destiny 2: Season of the Wish added the latest set of content to hold us over until The Final Shape releases on June 4, 2024. This is normally a great time filled with excitement, though this time was a bit different due to questionable choices, nerfs, and more.

Bungie started by addressing the extremely disliked Destiny 2: Starter Pack DLC. This is something we talked about in length, but the basic gist is players could buy three exotics, some materials, and cosmetics for $15. Complaints ranged from the name being confusing, to the content selected being insulting. Regardless of where you fall on the issue, it was officially removed with the following statement.

Hey everyone, we launched Season of the Wish yesterday and have been monitoring the conversation around what you’ve been enjoying and what you haven’t.

We’ll start things off with the Starter Pack, which is not something bringing joy. Which is why we’ve pulled it from stores.

We’ve heard your concerns and agreed that there are other parts of Destiny 2 that new players should want to dive into first before chasing these Exotic weapons, cosmetics, and upgrade materials.

X

Shortly after a series of similar X posts the Destiny 2 Team wrote a longer version on reddit touching on various complaints.

We’ve heard your concerns and agreed that there are other parts of Destiny 2 that new players should want to dive into first before chasing these Exotic weapons, cosmetics, and upgrade materials. 

Blind Well

We’ve heard you that asking players to go back to the Blind Well as part of the first week’s story is a sore spot. One of our goals here was to make sure players knew from the start that there’s increased difficulty and new loot to earn in this activity. 

You won’t need to go back every week. Players will only be asked to return to the Blind Well once in Week 6, and it will be an opt-in activity after that for the rest of the Season. 

For the completionists out there, we’ll have one Seasonal Challenge tied to the Blind Well later in the Season, and one Heroic Blind Well completion requirement for the Seal. 

Riven’s Lair and The Coil

We’re happy to see the love for The Coil and Riven’s Lair from the community so far. We wanted to make sure loot was front and center, especially for those who go for Platinum. 

Remember, this is Week 1! Different paths through The Coil will be rotating as the season unfolds. 

However, the shard economy is a bit too unforgiving based on our early observations. The team is looking into improving this so the path to Platinum is still possible even if you don’t collect every shard from every pot. 

Speaking of loot, the team has already fixed an issue that prevented all players from getting loot from the chest at the end of a Riven’s Lair run. 

PVP

Our PvP Strike team has been delivering a lot of updates on changes coming to the game and we just launched several this week. Some early feedback we are seeing and would like to address: 

Control will be available as a selectable mode while Checkmate Control is active. More details to come in this week’s TWID tomorrow. 

We see a lot of speculation about Checkmate and what that means for core Crucible. We have no plans to turn Checkmate on across all of Crucible, instead we’re aiming for a midway point for ability cooldowns, and weapon tuning that doesn’t result in specific weapons dominating. 

We’re also aware of some issues with Checkmate’s special ammo implementation and will be trying various new approaches to improve this system. 

Regarding Checkmate TTK (time-to-kill) changes: we will be regularly tuning TTK. Our target going forward is to keep optimal TTK consistent with the current Crucible sandbox; i.e. the fastest you can defeat an opponent will remain unchanged. Meanwhile, we will be looking to reduce body shot damage. The end result is an increase in the skill gap, where consistent head shots are rewarded with faster TTK. 

We are aware that there are spawn issues in Countdown Rush on The Citadel and Multiplex. We will be temporarily disabling these two maps in Competitive. 

There seems to be some instances in which Belisarius-D (Competitive Pulse Rifle) is not being rewarded for completing the placement series challenge. We are actively investigating this. 

Iron Banner kicks off next Tuesday with the new Tribute mode, and we’ve got good news: Lord Saladin will start selling Iron Banner armor ornaments from Years 1 and 2, and the elusive Iron Symmachy set will return as the base set at last. Put those IB Engrams to work! 

New Rocket Sidearm

Regarding Anti-Barrier Sidearms this Season: we’re super excited about the new Rocket Sidearm weapon sub-type launching this Friday in the new Warlord’s Ruin Dungeon! 

This Sidearm archetype should give folks more opportunity to counteract Barrier Champions with this Season’s Artifact even if they aren’t leaning into the Solar Radiant Artifact Perks or existing intrinsic Anti-Barrier Exotics. 

As a reminder, Fireteam Finder launches this season (you can see it grayed out right now!), and our Raid Stress Test starts tomorrow. 

Details here: https://www.bungie.net/7/en/News/article/fireteam_finder_beta_preview

We’re excited to see how the Fireteam Finder Beta rolls out as we head toward a full feature launch currently planned for late January. 

And finally, we can’t wait for everyone to discover what the team has in store in Warlord’s Ruin this Friday! Here’s a sneak peek:

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Finally, the Destiny 2 Team replied to a post about the recent nerfs asking for feedback on their changes.

HellChicken949: Can we revert some of the mod changes? I get that ability usage was high but it feels like mods just don’t even have any effect on builds anymore.

Destiny 2 Team: Appreciate the feedback, we will share with the rest of the team and keep an eye on how ability cooldowns feel after all of the recent changes. Let us know what specific abilities and builds you believe are feeling most impacted.

Reddit