Everyone with my friendly neighbourhood bookmark, I am locking in attention for a hot take. Bungie, the folks behind Destiny 2, are making good headway to revise the power grind and Raid rewards for good. Honestly, who would’ve ever thought that good change would ever come to Destiny 2. They will be sharing some more details and also player feedback through Destiny 2 This Week In Destiny, which also means they want feedback on the changes that are to come. I didn’t speak with the why I’m closing this, but I haven’t heard anyone mention reasonable feedback in the Destiny community.
The issue kicked off with the tweet from community member @MacticsG1. They said they were gearing up with an update for TWID, or This Week In Destiny, which in itself was good news. What made it even better was that the update was going to be about power progression and rewards from raids. Not too long ago, they started mentioning changing rewards for raids, and heckling, or at least player engagement, over time has turned into what players want. Oh, and for no reason, more changes, but for raids, seems to be the theme.
This is really good news for the Destiny 2 community. Destiny 2 Raids have always been the best PvE content within the game, but the constructive criticism and feedback towards the reward structure has been very loud. For a long time, the community has been complaining about the power grind through the raids and I think for the first time Bunch is listening to the screaming. And they’re finally acting upon it, for a change.
What they are requesting along with the raid rewards is an overhaul of the endgame content reward systems, which makes me wonder if there will be better drop rates for exotic weapons—or more targeted farming options for those god roll weapons. I find it odd because we’re in between seasons, which is the usual time for Bungie to do system changes and tweaks.
Most impressive is the fact that Bungie is requesting direct feedback. This feels entirely different; it’s not the old “make some changes and cross your fingers” approach—this is active collaboration. It is quite refreshing to see Bungie, or at least anyone, speak to a community and inquire about their desires. I hope no one has informed me wrongly, but game developers these days seem to have no clue, and in spirit of goodwill, continue to adapt changes purely based on internal data, no matter how misguided it is.
There has been a lot of talk about the power grind through raids for a while now. Some players are happy with the current system while others want the entire system overhauled. Since there are players that want the entire system overhauled, it doesn’t surprise me that Bungie wants to look into fixing the system because those players complained about the system. Tweaking the system before more permanent and sweeping fixes is certainly the best course of action, so I do commend Bungie for that.
Over the years, attempts to strikes the right balance have been a long, hard road: rewards must justify the time and effort required to complete the challenging activities, while not being so overpowered as to break the game’s balance. Bungie has been attempting to keep things balanced for years, but now it seems they want to alter it.
Following this tweet, the community’s response has been… well, there is nothing to see here. How likely is it though that the Destiny community is busy chiming in with suggestions. Exotic drop rates on raids, weapon farming, and cosmetic rewards have been hot topics. So maybe now the tide is changing.
Listening to the community is something of a new step in the right direction for Bungie. Quality of life improvements in the past have certainly and noticeably improved with community input, and this looks like another one of those moments. For the future of the game, it is promising considering the level of transparency regarding changes.
What I’m mostly wondering about is: What would these changes look like? Bad luck protection for raid exotics or a deterministic way to get specific gear might be in the feedback, but I also wonder if some new kind of rewards might be in the feedback. One thing I think is a given and is a safe assumption that the supposed grind through raids would be reworked to be less boring and require much less time to be more rewarding versus the current rewards system.
This also comes close to the time of Bungie’s next major expansion for Destiny 2, which is yet to be released. Bungie may be trying out new rewards systems ahead of the content drop. This might be Bungie’s way of tweaking the endgame before the addition of a new raid and a new destination.
Nothing new really comes as a surprise when it comes to the Destiny 2 community, especially when it comes to paying out their opinions concerning raid rewards. The discussions are endless regarding weapon perks, drop rates, and even cosmetical items. Since Bungie is officially asking for feedback, the detailed responses expected would be from the hardcore raid community.
Games with live services like these thrive when the developers and players work closely. With the community delivering in-depth feedback at the start of the process, it’s much easier for the developers to keep the game in a better shape. This method leads to improvements in the gaming environment. This approach, although inconsistent, seems to leave the players more satisfied than not because the hits seem to outnumber the misses.
Destiny’s weekly updates, This Week in Destiny (TWID), have a consistent release schedule which means we could be getting the news as soon as Thursday. The information blackout would likely cause an explosive surge of baseless speculation on Twitter, Reddit and even Destiny forums. Bungie has yet to provide this information, which is what we have for now.
We are only able to wait for what Bungie has planned. The way they are dealing with the power progression is especially heartening from the endgame perspective. Hopefully, they are listening to the community, and the changes that are coming to raiding will be towards improving it rather than making it worse.
