This week in Destiny revealed massive changes are coming to Destiny 2, including a 10th Anniversary event, details about the next expansion, long overdue update to raid/dungeon rotators, and Choir of One changes.
As hardcore players know, Sept. 9 2024 is Destiny’s 10th anniversary, and to celebrate Bungie confirmed there will be a “small” in-game celebration all next week. Bungie teased free legendary armor, a new title, Bungie rewards, and more.
While we won’t spoil the surprise, most of these details were datamined about a month ago. These include the new armor designs, title name, and even a special collectible players can buy.
Bungie will formally reveal the event at 8 am PDT via a blog post, along with another dedicated to Frontiers. This post promises to tell players where the franchise is going, along with everything players can expect on the journey there.
Starting with Episode: Revenant, the long complained about raid/dungeon rotators will be updated. Since there will be two sets of eight activities, each week will feature two raids, and two dungeons. This will reduce the current wait from seven to eight weeks to a far more manageable four.
At the same time Bungie hopes to implement their previously revealed Choir of One ammo changes. Currently, Choir of One has a base of 250, with roughly 375 with reserves. Following the update it will be around 200 base, and 300 with reserves. A decent hit, but not so substantial to make the gun no longer viable.
The full version of everything Bungie revealed can be found below.
CHEERS TO TEN YEARS, AND BEYOND…
A special date is around the corner. Next Monday will be September 9, 2024, the 10th anniversary of Destiny as a franchise. While we could drop a 20,000-word TWID to opine about the last ten years (per community manager, honestly…), we’re planning to keep our anniversary fun and light.
We’ll have a small in-game celebration for you all next week, along with some beautiful art the team has made throughout the years. There will be some Legendary armor freebies, a fun Title to earn, some Bungie Rewards, and more. Check back next Monday at 8am PT for our blog coverage.
At the same time next week, we’re also planning to start our journey into Destiny 2 – Codename: Frontiers. At 8AM PT, we’ll be releasing a short Dev Insight blog article discussing our goals for the future of Destiny. Destiny 2 Game Director Tyson Green and Destiny 2 Narrative Director Alison Lührs will be guiding the conversation. Where have we been, where are we now, and where do we want to go? Most importantly… how are we going to get there? We want to be clear about our commitment to ongoing communication with you. This marks the beginning of regular updates from our development team about what’s next for Destiny 2, including details about its systems and future plans. While the updates may be a bit rough around the edges as they are early in the development process, we’re excited about sharing our goals and progress with you.
There are quite a few topics on our communications roadmap to tackle, so this will be the start of a conversation. Our main goal is to provide bite-sized, direct to the point articles over the next few months rather than mega-blogs where it’s too easy to get mired in the details. While we’d love to promise a weekly cadence, we’re taking the time to cook your meals appropriately. Our articles are never early, nor are they late. They’ll arrive precisely when they mean to.
Many thanks to all who’ve joined us over this ten-year journey. We’ve said a few times that we’re just getting started, and… it’s still very much true . The Light and Dark saga may have ended, but the future of Destiny is still unfolding before us. This universe is big, bright, and full of wonder. We’re looking forward to exploring it and hope to see you join us starside as we approach new frontiers.
IMPROVING RAIDS AND DUNGEONS ROTATION
Raids and dungeons are an integral part of the Destiny 2 experience. It’s where Guardians hone their skills and test their mettle. It’s also where you get some of the best rewards, from cool and unique weapons to Titles that you can show around the Tower.
We’ve heard your feedback about how frustrating it can be to earn some of those rewards when a raid or dungeon is not the one featured in the weekly rotation, and that’s the reason why we are making some changes when Episode: Revenant launches on October 8.
At that time, Warlord’s Ruin will enter the rotator queue, so there will be eight raids and eight dungeons in total. So, it’s fitting then that we double the number of featured rotator activities available every week. This way, the max time that can pass between a specific raid or dungeon will be four weeks. Let’s use an example for better understanding. On the week of October 8, these will be the activities in the rotator:
- Raids: Last Wish and Vow of the Disciple
- Dungeons: Shattered Throne and Duality
As for what order we will follow, the rotation will still be based on the Destiny 2 release order. So, after Last Wish and Vow of the Disciple, Garden of Salvation and King’s Fall will follow. And after Shattered Throne and Duality… well, you can fill the gaps yourselves and even build a calendar for the following months. We will always share reminders on our social media channels, so if you don’t already, go join us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Threads and Discord.
We hope this new system alleviates some of the pain points around consuming raid and dungeon content and that you can work towards getting those Titles more efficiently. And as always, share your feedback with us once the new rotation is available so we can keep improving on it.
ABOUT CHOIR OF ONE AMMO RESERVES
We know you are all loving how strong Choir of One, our new Special ammo Exotic Auto Rifle, is feeling. We want you all to keep using it and loving it, but we wanted to make sure to communicate early that there are currently a couple bugs that we’ve identified with the weapon.
We wanted to share more context about this issue, and we are lucky enough to have someone from the dev team to deliver it directly.
Hello! Designer of Choir of One here! So, there are a couple of issues with Choir’s inventory situation that have made things complicated.
It’s a weapon type that is normally Primary ammo but using Special ammo this time. Ammo amounts and reserves are easy to deal with when the weapon type is already using Special ammo, but it’s much more difficult when it is an ammo-swapped frame. We have to hand set every single value, and all the values that build off those values, like how much reserves add to it, how much ammo perks grant it, how much it gets from bricks, etc. It’s a lot easier to get lost in the sauce with these and miss something, especially when all the systems that feed into it are also in flux at the same time (or sometimes even after we have locked the weapon down to ship).
Now, Choir of One has two inventory bugs we’re looking to fix when Episode: Revenant launches.
- Sometimes you can bypass the actual cap of the inventory because of a rare race condition with the perk that’s supposed to cap how much ammo you have, but with reserve mods you can spawn with more than the perk capped limit and it doesn’t always catch it and remove the bonus ammo.
- It wasn’t supposed to get the inventory buff that other Special weapons got in 8.0.5, as that increase was already implemented in the weapon by design.
So, onto the actual changes. We’re not looking to make the weapon irrelevant in endgame difficulty; we’re adjusting ammo to around 200 base and 300 with reserves, down from 250 base and about 375 with reserves. The damage that weapon puts out is pretty crazy and the ammo was supposed to be a limiting factor, so if we were to keep the ammo where it’s at now, the damage would need to come down quite a bit to compensate.
We balanced the weapon around the 200-250 ammo level and felt it was already strong. Then, with triple reserves getting you to around 300, that was a treat in that you could use the hip fire mode more freely. But 400 ammo or anywhere close is just a touch too unbalanced for our PvE sandbox.
As for the extra damage with Divinity, on closer inspection it was discovered that the actual issue is with the “Point Blank” variant of the projectile. The impact damage done if the projectile has not split before it hits a target is being affected by an extraneous damage scalar and dealing approximately 250% more damage than it should be (against combatants only). So, we will also be fixing that in Episode: Revenant.
