Destiny 2 Renegades
Bungie
As December approaches, so does the second expansion of Destiny 2 in its new “Prophecy” era, an unsteady period that has sapped a significant number of players away from the game. Now, Bungie is making big changes in order to curb that exodus.
For months now, Bungie has made it clear there will be a big “reset” when the second expansion, Renegades, rolls around. It will knock everyone back down to 200 power and delete all temporary infusion material. That never seemed like a good idea, and now that the expansion is nigh, it’s backtracking on that.
Monday afternoon, Bungie announced the following:
- Seasonal power will not be reset in Renegades. You will stay where you are, and no one will be knocked down to 200.
- Unstable Cores, the prime infusion material for gear in seasons now, will not be deleted.
- Next week, there will be a catch-up boost to raise everyone to 300 at baseline.
Not to brag, but I predicted the power thing months ago, as I knew how mad the community would be about it, and as the grind progressed, it seemed wild to think everyone was going to want to do that all over again. Bungie would bend, and so they have.
This does raise questions, however. Getting past certain power thresholds right now means you are automatically getting Tier 3, 4 or 5 gear. When Renegades launches, if there’s no power cap raise, is everyone just going to be getting those high rank seasonal weapons and armor from moment one? Even if people aren’t being reset to 200, if you change the 550 cap to 700 or whatever, that’s doing the same thing if you’re trying to avoid this situation.
I think a core problem here was that none of this was going to work in the first place, and after 11 years of this, it feels like Bungie is back to square one with how to handle power and rewards after previously settling into a pattern that was not very controversial at all, even through the post-Final Shape episodes. Now it’s created a bunch of problems with the way this system works, namely that the ridiculous power grind is simply not fun, and it has to solve them within the new framework of the game that was not designed to support such a radical change.
Destiny 2 Renegades
Bungie
If this does do anything at the moment, it may encourage people to grind for the next two months since they know the levels will still “count.” That’s still a tall order, however. I have not played since day two of Ash and Iron, and I do not especially feel the need to jump back in the Portal after three months of grinding it after Edge of Fate, even with this news. I am very, very much struggling with my desire to go back to the game (even for today’s exotic quest), although I know I will at least with the launch of Renegades.
The persistent issue is that almost all Destiny’s changes or announced changes over the last few months are solving problems this new system has created, but the entire system is not solved, because I’m not sure it can be solved. My new prediction is that the Portal has gotten so hated that Bungie may find a way to get rid of it within a year or so, but we’ll have to wait and see on that. For all these imminent changes, there’s more information coming Thursday.
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