“Shipped in an inconsistent state”
While Destiny has notably improved over time as a whole, one thing you can count on when it comes to Bungie is releasing something — then adjusting due to negative or tepid feedback. It’s the Destiny way, and the baseline for how Bungie has developed the game since the launch of the original. A new blog has provided some insight into the recent Destiny 2 update that involves the solar reworks, and how they’re intending to improve upon the foundation they built.
In short, the solar rework is not going as explosively as Bungie intended, by their own admission. The Ember of Benevolence “shipped in an inconsistent state,” which disappointed fans as they disabled the concept entirely (a classic Bungie move). Warlock healing was also underwhelming with the launch of the rework, and Titans “lacked ways to keep their engine running.” Hunters, it seems, are still using their real-life battle-hardened skills to make due!
Here’s a statement from sandbox lead Kevin Yanes on how the Destiny 2 update ended up:
“As we’ve said in the past through TWABs, socials, and other dev updates, we’d much rather ship something a little too spicy than something bland that makes a bad first impression. I think with Solar 3.0, we landed somewhere in the middle, and the team feels very passionately that this is the wrong place to be.”
And here is how they’re solving it with a hotfix “next week”:
“To that end, the team has pulled some heroics and shifted resources to make some buffs to Heat Rises, Icarus Dash, Celestial Fire, Burning Maul, Roaring Flames and Consecration, as well as bug fixes for Ember of Benevolence and a few of our damage-over-time linger grenades. These changes will go live next week with Hotfix 4.1.0.2.”
Kudos to Bungie for providing some form of weekly communication. But by the same token, I’m used to waiting to try out updates until a later date, once the feedback and quality of life features actually flood in. Arc 3.0 is next, and hopefully they can use the lessons learned here to ship that out correctly the first time.
At this point, Bungie could benefit from a PTS-like offering/server to allow eagle-eyed fans to catch a lot of these problems before they get pushed to the live version.
