We’ve been keeping a close eye on Bungie’s weekly address to Destiny players recently in the hopes that the developer will finally unveil its final content plans for the shooter leading into this year’s Destiny 2. Sadly, no such announcement was made this week, but something perhaps just as important was revealed. With a tentative release date of February, the post outlines several changes Bungie plans to make to Destiny‘s player vs. player Crucible mode in order to make the experience far less frustrating.
For the unaware, ever since the launch of last year’s Rise of Iron expansion (which was preceded by various weapon tweaks), competitive multiplayer has been suffering under the oppressive might of shotguns and their seemingly unconquerable performance, an issue only further compounded by the poor damage output of Primary weapons. While Bungie has seemingly been aware of the issue for quite while, it’s only now that the developer has decided to directly address the issue. Outlining the main aims of the upcoming patch in a brief list, senior designer Josh Hamrick says the following are of the highest priority.
- Promote alternatives and counters to Shotguns
- Align potency of Primary Weapons with surgical changes
- File down a couple of issues from each class
- Fix some issues with a sampler platter of Exotics
- Supporting adjustments to Special Ammunition
It remains to be seen exactly how Bungie plans to address these issues, but an overall lowering of range and damage output on shotguns surely must be a given. Of course, this may all sound like rather inconsequential babble in the grander scheme of Destiny‘s overall content platter, but with single-player content having all but dried up at this point, competitive features are arguably the only thing left keeping players occupied until something new comes along. Bungie is cooking something up for the spring, however, but let’s just hope it’s not too little, too late.
