Destiny 2.0, the latest update to Bungie's multiplayer shooter dropped yesterday, and this one changes a lot! Destiny was originally released last year on the 9th of September to great excitement for players on Xbox One, Xbox 360, PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 3 and was Bungie's first console game after parting with the Halo franchise after Halo: Reach's release in 2010. This update brings plenty of change—some positive, some negative and others just very different from the way guardians are used to.
Starting off the changes, let's take a look at how the player characters themselves will be different with the 2.0 update. The first big character change is one that has been met with some question as Bungie is completely removing the idea of light levels being your character's main level; instead, Guardians will become the level of all of their best light gear and leveling now will be done through EXP gain. This means if your best light level was 33, then your character will now be level 33 regardless of what you wear. This is also being changed in anticipation of the level cap increase to 40 next week when The Taken King drops—that is assuming you will purchase the new DLC.
So what now becomes of your light level? Your character's ability damage, health, and weapon damage are now directly affected by the combined light scores of all of your gear. Weapons, Ghosts, Class Items, and Artifacts that you get throughout the world will also now contribute to your light level.
In preparation of the new DLC, all weapons have been rebalanced and year 1 attack and defense values for weapons and gear have been re-normalized from 365, the end of year 1 max, back down to 170 attack. Additionally, the defense value now works on the same scale as the attack value.
Moving away from general player changes, the classes are also being mixed up with big changes like orb generation being capped to a max of 8, pulse grenades getting an AOE of 8 across all effects, as well as a variety of difference balancing changes between the Titan, Hunter, and Warlock classes. All of the different weapon variants are getting re-balanced as well. There's far too much of this to mention, but with this update Bungie has also released a Weapon Change Philosophy highlighting not only what changes they've made, but why they chose to make them, so if you're into competitive game play then this might be the kind of thing that you want to see.
Now onto the world and what changes you can expect as you participate in free roam or player activities. Some of the bigger changes are that the Fallen Wolf Patrols will no longer spawn in the world and that Ghost is now voiced by Nolan North instead of by Peter Dinklage. Players now are required to participate in boss fights at the end of strikes in order to be eligible for end-of-activity loot; there is no further explanation about what you will need to do for it to count as participation.
Bounties have also been moved to a new quest screen and the max number you can undertake at each time has been increased to 16. Sadly, if you had incomplete bounties before the update, they've been abandoned, but if you get them back again, you can save yourself a trip to the tower and turn them in via the quest menu as well. For anyone working on Eris' bounties, sadly they've been retired for now, but your reputation with Crota's Bane can continue to be earned when TTK releases on the 15th of September.
Some final changes that have been made are the increase in vault space, so you can store 72 weapons, 72 armor pieces and 36 general supplies, and a variety of new ghosts are now able to be purchased via the speaker.
That's most of the big updates, but if you want to see all of the changes that have been made for Destiny 2.0, then be sure to check out the full Bungie news post via their blog. Guardians who enjoy the crucible should also know that from the 8th of September up until the release of The Taken King, all TTK maps are available to play for free. The Rift game mode will also be available during this time period and the Mayhem Clash will be available during the shorter time frame between the 11th and the 15th.
What do you think of the changes being made for Destiny 2.0 in anticipation for The Taken King? Is there anything from year one that you will miss? Is there anything you're happy that Bungie has gotten rid of?
