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Bungie just announced today that they are going to do away with one of their most controversial ideas: Sunsetting. Starting with Season 14, all new weapons will no longer have a "limited-time use" stamp placed on them. They can be upgraded indefinitely.
This change is one of many sweeping changes the studio is making for the upcoming Seasons of content. The latest State of Destiny post on Bungie.net was penned by assistant game director Joe Blackburn. Here is some of what he had to say on the topic.
Because we won’t be capping any more of our weapons, we must consider more variables in the game balance of our upcoming seasons and releases, so expect to see tuning when it comes to our biggest outliers in PVP and PVE. Yes, I’m looking at you, Felwinter’s and Warmind Cells.
This is a big change for Destiny and one that we did not make lightly. However, we believe there’s nothing more important in Destiny than getting our rewards right.
This is a big change for Destiny and one that we did not make lightly. However, we believe there’s nothing more important in Destiny than getting our rewards right.
To counter this idea of just sticking with a specific set of weapons in a loadout, Bungie says that they will be nerfing some weapons that have been given a bit too much power. This includes Felwinter's Lie, a shotgun that essentially rules the game's PvP modes.
In addition to these changes to Sunsetting, Bungie is also making some big changes to the rest of the game. This includes a change to how progression in Destiny 2 is handled. As of late, it's become more of a tedious grind more than a fun adventure. In an effort to combat this, they will be "experimenting with a new Power level cap."
Starting in Season 14, we will only be raising the Power cap by 10 for each non-expansion season. This means if you reach the maximum Power in Season 13, when next season rolls around you will be directly in the 10-point Pinnacle band of the Power pursuit.
Season 14 will introduce the Vault of Glass raid back into Destiny. There will be Master and Grand Master difficulties added to the raid by the end of the year. Transmog is finally coming in Season 14 but will somehow be gated behind bounties. Ikora will actually have a purpose in Season 14. In Season 15, cross-play will finally be implemented allowing for those on PC and consoles to game together.
Unfortunately, there is some bad news to share with you about the upcoming Destiny 2 content. The upcoming full expansion for the game, The Witch Queen, was supposed to be released in late 2021. It will now instead be pushed to a 2022 release. One of the reasons for the delay is, of course, COVID-19 related. However there are additional challenges that the team needed to tackle before getting The Witch Queen out the door.
The Witch Queen represents an important evolution in the ongoing story of Destiny 2. Beyond Light built the foundation and allowed us to weave the world-building of Destiny and Destiny 2 together, but The Witch Queen will light the fire on a strongly interconnected narrative across Lightfall and beyond, unlike anything we’ve ever attempted before, with characters, arcs, heroes and villains that persist over multiple future releases. Even more importantly, the conclusion of these releases will also conclude the “Light and Darkness Saga,†the conflict we first introduced with the launch of Destiny many years ago. As we’ve been developing The Witch Queen, we realized that we needed this release to be the first of many moments crucial to the story of Destiny. With so much leading to and dependent on what happens in The Witch Queen, we wanted to make sure that we gave ourselves enough time to build out this journey in the right way, starting with an exceptional first chapter in The Witch Queen.
