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Destiny 2 is changing drastically come Shadowkeep

This week, Bungie has been sharing information about the future of Destiny 2.

There’s a lot to get through so lets start with what is being called Armour 2.0.

Come 1st October armour is changing significantly. In addition to Resilience, Recovery and Mobility, Guardians will now have access to Discipline, Intellect and Strength. These stats will affect your Grenade, Super ability and Melee ability’s recharge rate respectively.

Each piece of armour can drop with an affinity tuned to one of Destiny’s elements (Solar, Arc or Void) and each piece of armour can then be equipped with mods specifically for that element. For example, if you are running gauntlets with Arc affinity you can add Shotgun Loader perks to those gauntlets provided that you have that mod.

Exotic armour can now be Masterworked as well.

In addition to mods tuned to affinity, there are also mods that tweak the six stats so you could drop an Intellect mod in every piece of armour if you wanted to so that your Super recharges faster. These mods are seemingly universal and don’t require a particular affinity.

Mods are not consumed when being equipped so you could essentially mix and match mods as you like.

To equip mods you will need to have enough energy in a piece of armour to equip it. To upgrade or Masterwork armour you will need to spend crafting materials. These materials include things like Enhancement cores and other materials not yet seen in Destiny 2 such as Ascendant Shards.

Bungie was careful to admit that your current armour is not being blown up or phased out just yet. You will still be able to use it but it will not be upgraded to Armour 2.0.

On that, Bungie also stated that all Legendary armour drops from 1st October onwards would be Armour 2.0 compatible. That means that if you loved the look of the Escalation Protocol armour (and who didn’t) you can go back to farm that set again for new perks.

As for Exotic armour, this will be given the same treatment as regular armour but the intrinsic perks will remain. Players will need to grind for specific drops they want (as regards stats) but Bungie said that you will also be able to pull armour from your collection that has a static roll.

Other quality of life improvements include:

  • Glimmer cap raised to 250 000
  • Tooltips now tell you exactly what a stat does and how it affects an ability
  • Sparrow and Ghost visible in main inventory screen
  • Vanity options have a separate screen within the gear screen
  • The level of a character has been replaced with a class icon

In terms of vanity Bungie said that all Eververse items will be equippable as Universal Ornaments so long as you’ve earned them. What is less clear is what else you will be able to equip. Bungie has said that Vanguard and Crucible armour from Year One will be available to earn from Shaxx and Zavala come Shadowkeep.

We’re jumping ahead slightly here but Luke Smith has said that all gear in your vault will be automatically raised to 750 come Shadowkeep so as to put all players on equal footing. That means that you should stop investing resources into upgrading this gear right now.

Luke Smith’s Thoughts

While Bungie’s dev team has been showing us what we’ll be able to do, Destiny 2 game director Luke Smith has been reflecting on the game through his Director’s Cut walls of text blogs.

In these pieces Smith looks back at the Annual Pass and shares what he feels worked and what didn’t.

The director says that the push to have content out at the pace the Annual Pass laid it out was often too much for the team.

“The scope of what we delivered, the pace that we delivered it, and the overall throughput for Annual Pass takes a toll on the Bungie team. I – and many others – had conversations throughout the year with team members – who had jumped from release to release – about the grind of working on Destiny. Working on the game was starting to wear people down,” wrote Smith.

Moving forward this problem is going to be addressed, which we commend Bungie for. As much as I love always having something to do in Destiny, I value the lives of the developers and team that make the game possible more than a new Exotic. Their lives, mental and physical health should always be of the highest priority.

Smith made a number of points about power creep, game design and more which we highly recommend you read in your own time. Addressing everything he does will take much longer than this has already. You can find his thoughts so far here and here.

The key thing to note is that Destiny is about to become the ever-evolving world we’ve always wanted it to be. Bungie is listening to the community and building the game according to what makes sense and what players want.

Armour 2.0 is very much a step in the right direction and we’re excited to see what the future holds.

One last thing.

In closing off part two of his blog, Smith planted this oddity right at the end of the post: “Stay tuned to bungie.net for the third installment of Director’s Cut. It focuses on the action part of MMO-action game (think: combat and PvP, with a bonus section on the evolving world) coming to Destiny this Fall.”

That italicised Destiny has us wondering whether Destiny 3 will ever become a reality or if Bungie plans on making Destiny 2 the base atop which it will continue to build and improve the game. That’s just us suggesting a wild theory but with the firm now being independent we think that would be a better and more financially feasible idea than building out an entirely new game.

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