‘Destiny 2’ delays the queen of witches, kills the sunset and announces new expansion

Well, we heard that this would happen sometime during the Season of the Chosen, and today, the day after Anthem’s death and the debut of the Outriders demo, Destiny 2 released a huge post on the state of the game with an information overload.

There is some bad news to start with, but mostly good news after that. This is a tonne to go through, but I’ll try to give you the highlights of Joe Blackburn’s extensive play here:

• The Witch Queen was postponed until 2022. This is due to a large combination of factors, namely, the fact that COVID’s delays in the beginning of the pandemic inevitably affect future content, and they intend to be released in early 2022. Overall, it looks like they can start moving the big expansion release into the new year, rather than fall / holiday going forward.
• In the same breath, Blackburn says that they realized that to complete the “first saga” of Light and Darkness that started with Destiny 1, they will make another expansion of Destiny 2 after Lightfall, although it does not yet have a name. And the “first saga” certainly indicates a pending “second saga” in the future, although whether this is Destiny 3 or otherwise positioned is not clear here.
• Sunsetting is dead. Totally dead. Without mistakes. From now on, everything you have that is not yet limited will never be limited (RIP Breachlight), they are totally destroying the concept. They realized that this was a detriment to the feeling of winning rewards, and sunsetting didn’t even survive the year, while looking for other ways to keep the game in balance, which include nerfs next to things like Felwinter and Warmind cells, suggests section. I have to applaud the relatively quick action here and the total dismantling of the system. Fantastic.

• People worn out by the power grind will welcome the return of the small gap gap of 10 between seasons instead of the 50-60 we have now. This means that the pinnacle of the power grind is essentially the entire grind now, similar to how things worked in Season of Dawn. I have some doubts about how it will work (Artifact power?), But for now, it seems that most people wanted some version of it.
• There is an entire giant PvP section that includes its own sequence of highlights. Bungie is killing three peaking in competitive modes by deactivating emotes and taking out “third-person weapons” (hmmm) without ammo. They are doubling the size of their player security team to avoid cheating. They will nerf a lot of effects and damage from the stasis subclass for PvP. We won’t know how it goes until it’s done, but it’s a lot of what people have been asking for.
• Trials and later the Iron Banner are getting bigger reworks to encourage more people to play them, and Trials in particular are trying to get people to stop rebooting after a single defeat and make more people win 3 and 5 rewards. Few details are provided and test changes will come before the IB.
• Vault of Glass will be released next season, and will feature a raid race competition mode that is somewhat controversial, since it is a replayed raid. In future seasons, he will eventually obtain a Master mode, which implies that Bungie can start making raids more difficult with a new difficulty setting in the future.

• Ada-1 will be the supplier of cosmetic transmog when you return to the Tower. She will give you missions to earn money to turn any piece of equipment into an ornament. It’s not shiny dust. She will also sell that coin for silver if you want to skip the line. Since it is cosmetic, there is no problem, I think.
• I don’t know how I forgot this in my first draft, but now shaders are permanent, non-consumable unlocks, which may well be the best news of all.

Quick access:

• Ikora has more to do next season and a big role in the Witch Queen.
• Stasis is being further developed as a type of damage and soon we will have stasis energy and power weapons (and enemy stasis shields, I imagine?).
• More gold titles are coming, and they will show how many times they have been gold, representing works from previous seasons.

So, am I going to trade a delay in the Witch Queen for all those other positive aspects? Yes, yes, I would. Almost everything listed here looks great in theory, and although I suppose we can see how it works in practice, I’m encouraged by the direction here, both in terms of quick action like instant sunset and long-term plans like new “sagas ”From the Destiny franchise.

Okay, my brain is on fire trying to process all of this. Back to the Outriders for now.

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