Destiny 2: Bungie details December 2017 updates, Talks future updates, addresses XP concerns and more

Some of these updates will be introduced on December 5 and December 12. Others will land in the New Year.

• New systems and rewards to give our most engaged players additional, optional pursuits, including:
  • A new Weapon Tier: Masterworks, which will feature stat trackers, random, re-rollable stat bonuses, unique item tooltips, and item details screens (see the December Update Details section below for more info)
  • Improved vendor rewards, adding ways for people to purchase items directly with their Legendary Shards and Tokens (see the December Update Details section below for more info)
  • Adding Armor Ornaments that grant visual permutations of armor as players complete specific Challenges (see the December Update Details section below for more info)
     
• Better incentives for players who complete challenging Prestige activities
  • We’re targeting a January update to provide better incentives to complete Prestige activities
     
• Better rewards and replay value for Strikes, Adventures, and Lost Sectors
  • In December, we will be introducing a Heroic Strikes playlist and more generous Strike rewards
  • Rewards for Adventures and Lost Sectors are still on our radar, but will not be delivered for our December updates
     
• Private matches for the Crucible
  • Still targeting early 2018 and expect to have better insight into exact timing in the New Year
  • We are also moving Ranked PVP to the top of our priority list for next year to support the competitive community
     
• Crucible tuning like adjusted Supremacy scoring and better spawning rules
  • In December, we will introduce additional updates and bug-fixes intended to improve these areas of the Crucible
     
• Better incentives for completing Crucible matches (and penalties for quitting competitive games)
  • A "Quitter Penalty" system is currently in development, and you can expect an update on the deployment of this system in the New Year
     
• Continued improvements to Iron Banner and Faction Rallies, including uniqueness of rewards
  • The next Iron Banner and Faction Rally will introduce improvements in both these areas (see the December Update Details section below for more info)
     
• Changes to make the mod economy more interesting and impactful
  • The Gunsmith will have some updates to how Mods are acquired (see the December Update Details section below for more info)
  • We are exploring more updates to this system in the New Year
     
• Ongoing improvements to Exotics, including adjustments to reduce instances of duplication
  • We plan to tune under-performing Exotics and will continue to make targeted updates and improvements
  • Duplication protection will be added for Exotics in the New Year
     
• New ways to spend surplus currency and materials (looking at you Legendary Shards)
  • Players will be able to spend Tokens and Legendary Shards on Vendor inventory (see the December Update Details section below for more info)
  • Xur will have new items, as well (see the December Update Details section below for more info)
     
• An emote interface that allows players to equip Salty, Spicy Ramen, Six Shooter, and Flip Out all at the same time
  • Emote interface improvements are still on the list, and you can expect an update on the development of this system in the New Year

There has been plenty of drama surrounding Destiny 2 over the last week. The community discovered that the game would throttle XP and Bungie responded by saying that this was not the case, but an effect of disabling a scaling mechanism without announcing it. 

The XP issue has not yet been fully resolved, as it will require some rebalancing, but Bungie is working to provide a timeline and specifics. They have already made some adjustments, but will continue to adjust XP display, gains and more.

Bungie has recognized that the development team has not been too open on what they are up to and Bungie is claiming that they will be resolving this, as well as addressing the issues that players find and bringing a new list of improvements.

Bungie took their blog to talk about these items, writing "Our team has been reading feedback and working on updates to improve the game. We’ve also been reading some tough criticism about our lack of communication, and we agree we need to be more open."

To continue their theme of openness, Bungie detailed their upcoming updates, starting with next months (below) and ending with a few that will come in 2018 (following page).

In the months to come, Bungie will be focusing "providing reasons to log in and play." This goal will start in December in two updates, one on December 5th and the other on December 12th. This update will look to achieve the following goals: 

• Deepen Rewards for advanced players
• Provide More Player Control over obtaining rewards
• Make Shards Useful by adding things to use them for
• Provide General Quality fixes wherever possible

The updates will contain the following:

DECEMBER 5

• Armor Ornaments will be added to some existing Armor sets for more visual customization without losing your Shaders or Mods
  • These ornaments will be unlocked by completing objectives specific to each set, and are permanently unlocked account-wide, just like Exotic Weapon ornaments
  • They will be applied to the base pieces that you may already have collected, and can now unlock on Vendors if not
  • In Season 2, the following sets have ornaments unlocked in their respective activities:
    • Vanguard Faction Armor
    • Crucible Faction Armor
    • Trials of the Nine Armor
    • Iron Banner Armor
    • Dead Orbit Armor
    • Future War Cult Armor
    • New Monarchy Armor
    • Eater of Worlds Raid Lair Armor

• Changes affecting Reputation Tokens:
  • Daily Challenges will have Reputation Token awards increased across the board
  • Cayde’s Treasure Chests still offer variable rewards, but now guarantee (at minimum) a payout of destination appropriate Reputation Tokens
  • Strikes will drop a larger number of Vanguard Reputation Tokens
  • Common quality Destination Resource Tokens will have their drop rates increased to 100%, and values per Token increased as well (by 50% for common quality Tokens and 250% for rare quality Tokens)
  • On the balance, Reputation required per Reward Engram will increase for Destination Factions (+37%) and Gunsmith (+50%)
  • Leviathan Raid Tokens will be redeemed at Benedict immediately upon obtaining a Token, instead of requiring a full clear before unlocking

DECEMBER 12

• Legendary Weapons will drop as or be upgraded to become Masterworks versions
  • Masterworks will have a few advantages over the baseline Legendary weapon:
    • Track and display the number of kills with that weapon (with choice between total count or Crucible-only count)
    • Generate orbs for you and your allies on multi-kills
    • Add weapon stat bonuses that are selected randomly from a small pool and are re-rollable
  • Masterworks drop from any source of Legendary weapons for characters above 250 Power
    • Unwanted Masterworks can be dismantled into materials that can upgrade an existing Legendary Weapon into a Masterwork
    • Raid and Trials of the Nine Weapons will have a very high chance to be Masterworks
  • We have future plans to extend Masterworks to other gear and expose your kill counts in more places (e.g. Crucible kill screen)