What is up, everyone? It’s Librarian Husky, and today marks a monumental day for Destiny 2. First, it’s the 10th anniversary of Destiny 1‘s release. Bungie has also shared four or five articles outlining how they plan to change, improve, and add to Destiny 2 through 2025 and beyond. They’ve revealed two new expansions, a new content roadmap, and more.

New Expansions and Content Roadmap

If you’re curious about the broad changes coming, be sure to check out the major announcements on expansions and updates. However, this article will focus more on the rewards and weapons. Two of the articles Bungie released highlight changes in activities designed to accommodate rewards, along with updates to the weaponry you can obtain through these activities.

Iconic Weapons Return: The Icebreaker

Speaking of rewards, something monumental has been revealed. In the 10th-anniversary promotional image, you can see the Titan in the middle holding a peculiar weapon—the Icebreaker exotic sniper rifle from Destiny 1. This is one of the most iconic and powerful weapons from the original game. While it may seem like simple imagery from the past, Bungie confirms in one of their articles that this weapon will resurface in an upcoming dungeon. More details will follow, but this certainly helps “break the ice.”

The Return of the Iconic Icebreaker

It couldn’t be more obvious—the Icebreaker exotic sniper rifle is finally being added to Destiny 2 in the next dungeon. The upcoming dungeon is launching with the Revenant Episode 2, which is set to release on October 8th. The dungeon will likely launch a few days after that. If you’re not familiar with the Icebreaker, it’s famous for its infinite ammo mechanic.

The Legacy of the Icebreaker

The Icebreaker had only one magazine and didn’t require reloading; instead, players had to wait for ammo to recharge over time. This weapon was a favorite for exploiting “cheese” spots where players could safely pick off raid bosses with their infinite ammo. In Destiny 1, this was groundbreaking, as primary weapons didn’t have infinite ammo.

How Will Icebreaker Fit Into Destiny 2?

Now, with primary weapons in Destiny 2 already having infinite ammo, how the Icebreaker will fit into the current meta remains to be seen. Nonetheless, this is a massive deal for fans of Destiny 1, where the Icebreaker is considered an iconic weapon. Many players are thrilled to see it return.

Changes to Activities: Looking Beyond 2025

Moving on from the Icebreaker, Bungie is also addressing the issue of activities. In past Destiny releases, most of the focus has been on a small selection of newly introduced seasonal activities, often with limited difficulty options. Looking ahead to 2025 and beyond, more attention will be given to expanding the activity offerings.

The Staleness of Ritual Activities

When rewards and objectives are concentrated in a few activities, it forces players into repetitive gameplay, leading to a stale experience. As a result, the ritual game becomes quickly exhausted of meaningful rewards. To find worthwhile rewards in older activities, players often need a deep knowledge of Destiny or rely on online guides.

The Solution: The Portal

Bungie‘s solution begins with the introduction of “The Portal.” This feature will act as a new, streamlined destinations map. While the original destinations map will remain, The Portal will make it significantly easier to choose which activities you want to engage in.

Challenge Customization

Bungie has also introduced challenge customization as a major change to core activities. This allows for deeper personal mastery and more substantial rewards. Starting with PvE activities and then expanding into Crucible and PvP, each activity will now support more robust customization options, exposed as new settings alongside difficulty selection.

Increased Difficulty Options

For example, in the Glassway strike, players can now choose from a variety of power levels. While this mockup currently shows a cap of 400, it’s possible that power resets or other adjustments will come with the release of new <spanstyle=”color: #94bd7b;”>expansions. The key takeaway is the increased range of difficulty options for players.

Challenge Customization in Destiny 2

You now have an overview with rules, gameplay options, and enemy power settings, which seem like slots for modifiers. On the right side, there are various rewards, and it appears you can apply modifiers for even greater rewards. Bungie has showcased two screenshots: one from Expert 1 and the other from Expert 3, demonstrating the increase in modifiers and rewards.

Expanded Modifiers and Rewards

In Expert 3, there are more gameplay modifiers, including an enemy power modifier. The rewards increase accordingly, with power levels rising from 305 in the first screenshot to 380 in the second. The more challenging the mode, the greater the potential rewards and modifiers.

How Challenge Modifiers Work

Bungie explains that challenge customization allows players to select and activate challenge modifiers that affect the activity. These modifiers may introduce new enemy abilities, increase threats, or challenge your playstyle. Modifiers can also globally raise the activity’s difficulty, providing incentives for adjusting your build and crafting strategies.

Selecting Difficulty and Modifiers

As a player, you’ll start by choosing a base difficulty, such as Expert or Grandmaster. This selection will establish a power target and baseline difficulty. More importantly, it determines how many challenge modifiers you can apply. Higher difficulties allow for more modifiers and a broader selection of them, increasing both the challenge and the rewards.

Increasing Difficulty for Greater Rewards

Do you want to make the activity more challenging and earn better rewards? Bungie introduces the concept of reward rating, where rising to the right level of challenge makes the game not only more enjoyable but also more rewarding. All core game activities will now support reward rating, which combines team and personal scores to determine the amount and quality of rewards at the end of an activity.

How Reward Rating Works

The reward rating is increased by playing at a higher base difficulty, applying challenge modifiers, and gaining personal bonuses from sources like power artifacts or buffs. As a team, you will earn a collective team rating, which varies depending on the activity. This system is designed to avoid competition between teammates for kills or setups, promoting a cooperative experience.

Team and Personal Bonuses

At the end of the activity, your team rating is multiplied by any personal bonuses, and this final value becomes your reward rating. This determines both the quality and quantity of rewards. Reward rating influences drops like the quality tier of weapons and armor, as well as valuable consumables such as enhancement prisms or ascendant shards.

Impact on Rewards

The higher your reward rating, the better your chances of receiving high-quality rewards. Whether you’re hunting for rare weapons or important consumables, the reward system ensures that players who take on more difficult challenges will be duly compensated for their efforts. This system encourages strategic gameplay and team coordination for maximum rewards.

Challenging Core Activities for Higher Rewards

You can select any core game activity and use your skill and build to tackle more challenging versions of it, earning increasingly higher-tier rewards. However, The Crucible presents a unique challenge, as adding challenge modifiers or using match scores for team ratings isn’t feasible. Bungie is still working on a solution for this, exploring options like factoring matchmaking ratings or leveraging existing progressions.

The Crucible’s Unique Challenges

Since The Crucible cannot implement challenge modifiers like other activities, Bungie is working on alternatives. These options include matchmaking ratings or other progression systems to ensure that PvP players have a fair and rewarding path to high-tier rewards and armor. Once they’ve nailed down a solution, they will share it with the community.

FAQ and Upcoming Changes

Bungie acknowledges the complexity of adding these options to every core activity, which may seem overwhelming. They will release more details in a developer insight article focusing on rewards. The problem with past Destiny seasons has been the narrow range of activities that received updated rewards, leading to limited options worth playing.

Limited Reward Pools in Past Seasons

In previous seasons, reward pools were shallow, often ending with weapon perk rolls or crafting recipes. Armor was typically less significant. Bungie plans to address this issue by expanding the range and depth of reward pools in future seasons, ensuring players have more meaningful pursuits.

Bungie’s Solution to Shallow Grinds

These issues have led to shallow and unsatisfying grinds, with only a small subset of activities offering meaningful rewards, often based on luck rather than skill or mastery. To address this, Bungie introduces weapon and armor tiers. Legendary weapons and armor will now be available in a wider range of quality tiers, each offering benefits like stat bonuses, enhanced perks, and more.

Weapon and Armor Tiers

For weapons, the system will function similarly to how Adept weapons currently upgrade baseline legendaries. The baseline tier of legendary weapons and armor will match current-day legendaries, while higher tiers will provide upgrades equivalent to Adept weapons. This system allows for more significant improvements as players advance through the tiers.

Higher Tier Rewards

In a screenshot, a tier-five weapon, the “Sordi,” is shown. It’s labeled as a Scout rifle but appears to resemble an auto rifle. The placeholder suggests Bungie is still developing the system. However, the key takeaway is that higher-tier weapons will offer notable stat boosts, such as increased impact, range, and stability, possibly leading to more powerful gear in the game.

Impact of Tiered Weapons

With the potential for higher-tier weapons to do more damage, the introduction of tiered weapons could become a game-changer. Players will likely prioritize obtaining these items, as their increased stats will provide a significant advantage in gameplay. This shift underscores the importance of acquiring top-tier rewards to stay competitive in Destiny 2.

Enhanced Perks and Traits

The improvements extend beyond existing enhanced perks, as now we can see enhanced barrels, enhanced magazine traits, and even enhanced origin traits. For example, Hammer-Forged Rifling usually gives +10 range, but an enhanced version might offer +12 or +13 range. This makes higher-tier weapons more desirable by providing a noticeable advantage over base-tier legendaries.

Potential Issues with Tiered Weapons

While the benefits of these enhancements are exciting, there are concerns about the complexity. Having multiple versions of legendary weapons could overwhelm players, especially with limited vault space. Bungie acknowledges that these are early mockups and aims to ensure higher-tier weapons and armor will be meaningful rewards for mastering challenging activities.

Reward Pools Explained

Reward pools are complete sets of weapons and armor available from one or more activities. While some weapons are shared across multiple pools, most weapons and all armor are unique to a specific pool. A typical pool includes a full armor set for each class and multiple weapon options for each slot. All rewards are available at various tiers, providing depth and support for the range of challenges within each associated activity.

Core Game Reward Pools

The major core game reward pools will feature a wide variety of weapons and armor sets, ensuring that players have numerous options across all tiers of rewards. This system is designed to offer depth, challenge, and replayability for those aiming to earn the highest rewards through Destiny 2’s core activities.

Core Rewards and Major Updates

Every major update will refresh rewards, and according to the roadmap, there will be four major updates each year. Core PvE rewards will be shared among accessible activities like strikes, while core PvP rewards will be shared across PvP activities like Crucible playlists. For more challenging content, Pinnacle PvE rewards will be tied to activities like dungeons, and Pinnacle PvP rewards will come from Trials of Osiris.

Expansion-Specific Reward Pools

Each expansion will include two full reward pools: one for story missions, exploration, and other activities, and another for expansion raids and dungeon activities. Additionally, events may have their own exclusive rewards, such as unique weapons or armor sets. It’s unclear whether raid and dungeon rewards will be pooled together or remain unique to each activity.

Introduction of New Gear

New gear will be a blanket category for all weapons and armor introduced in the current season, regardless of their source. New gear will receive a special visual treatment to help players quickly identify the newest items, which may benefit from artifact bonuses. Artifact bonuses that previously applied to specific perks, such as origin traits, will now be targeted towards new gear.

Visuals and Bonuses for New Gear

This new approach ensures that players can easily spot new weapons and armor, helping them focus on obtaining gear that benefits from seasonal bonuses. This system aims to streamline gear acquisition, making it easier for players to engage with new content and take advantage of perks tied to specific seasons or artifacts.

New Gear and Build Crafting Options

A broader category of New Gear will offer clearer build crafting options and lead to shorter tooltips in the artifact. Some activities may require New Gear for a level playing field, such as a Crucible playlist option for players using only the newly introduced gear or seasonal events focused on high scores in specific activities. This system enhances build crafting by limiting players to the new gear set, making gameplay more dynamic and rewarding if the challenges are worthwhile.

Playlists for New Gear

In these new playlists, players can only use gear from the current season or episode. For instance, you may face challenges where only gear from “Episode Echo” is allowed, making the activity more interesting and forcing players to try new builds. If the rewards justify the effort, this could add a fresh layer to the gameplay, moving away from long-used weapons and gear.

FAQs: Is Old Gear Being Sunset?

Bungie clarifies that old gear will not be sunset. Existing gear remains unchanged and can be used in any activity except those designated for experimenting with New Gear. Old gear can still be infused to match the power levels of newly introduced gear. The only advantage of New Gear will be artifact synergies comparable to origin trait upgrades found in previous artifacts.

Artifact Synergies with New Gear

New Gear will gain artifact synergies, offering an advantage in specific activities. However, these bonuses are not overwhelming, meaning that players won’t feel forced to abandon their old favorites. Instead, it provides an option for those who wish to experiment with new builds or maximize synergy with the latest artifact perks.

Impact of New Gear on Weapons and Modifiers

Bungie is emphasizing that while you may still get standout weapons like auto rifles this season, New Gear will now apply to a broader range of weapons. Instead of focusing on specific origin traits, modifiers will affect New Gear as a whole. This system allows players to increase the difficulty of activities, apply modifiers, and pursue tier-five gear with upgraded perks, including barrels, magazines, and other features.

Pros and Cons of the New System

On one hand, this approach is very exciting, offering players the chance to customize their experience and target top-tier gear with enhanced perks. On the other hand, there are concerns about how overwhelming this might be for new players. The complexity of the new system, combined with the vast range of options, could make the game more inaccessible for beginners.

Challenges for New Players

Destiny has always had a steep learning curve, and adding more customization options might complicate the experience even further. Players may remember when we could customize Nightfall difficulty using a Nightfall card—something that didn’t receive much positive feedback. The new system could bring back similar concerns, despite improvements like the standard Grandmaster difficulty, which offers a shared challenge for all players.

Development and Future Adjustments

Since this system is still in development, changes are expected. Bungie will likely tweak the complexity to make it more accessible over time. Until then, it remains to be seen how this balance between rewarding experienced players and maintaining accessibility for new ones will play out. Nonetheless, the system promises a deeper, more customizable gameplay experience for those willing to engage with it.

Innovation in Destiny 2’s Loot System

It’s hard to say whether these changes will be good or bad, but one thing is clear—Bungie is innovating. If the new system works, it should stick around. If it doesn’t, there’s hope that it can be adjusted. It’s refreshing to see them trying to make meaningful changes to the loot grind, which has definitely become stale over time.

The Need for Meaningful Change

Regardless of the outcome, the fact that Bungie is attempting to improve the loot grind is a positive sign. The current system has grown repetitive, and the game’s community has been eager for updates that offer more engaging and rewarding gameplay. These changes could potentially reinvigorate the experience for players.

Final Thoughts

While it remains to be seen how successful these innovations will be, it’s encouraging to see Bungie take steps toward evolving Destiny 2. If these new systems are well-received, they’ll likely stay; if not, adjustments can be made in future updates. Destiny 2 players can look forward to fresh dynamics in the loot grind as the game continues to evolve.

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