Destiny 2 had a livestream yesterday showcasing what will be coming with the rest of Episode Heresy before the Frontiers era of the game begins (at some unspecified future date). There were a few things of note, namely the new Court of Blades activity in Act 2, but the most interesting thing was something called the Rites of the Nine.
Rite of the Nine will be a new, limited-time dungeon-focused event, the first of its kind, and one that at least somewhat echoes the popular Pantheon raid event idea from a while back (which will return).
The idea here is that this is not just some huge challenge just for ultra-skilled players, but it also goes the other way as well, serving as a teaching point for three dungeons, Prophecy, Spire of the Watcher and (sigh) Ghost of the Deep. This includes things like no-fail encounters, waypoints and tooltips in terms of instructing non-dungeon players how to figure out encounters. After that, there will be a more normal mode and then a much more challenging mode more closely resembling Contest like we get for raids and going forward, new dungeons.
It’s not just the modes that are interesting, it’s what Bungie is doing with loot. They are implementing not just a “shiny” Adept system for dungeon loot for the first time, which is something I believe should be in almost every activity at this point, but more pressingly a focusing system for specific reprised, limited time weapons for the event, similar to Into the Light.
Destiny has made many, many changes in loot progression in the game, ranging from full-on crafting to dumping lots of randomized loot on people in new activities like Nether. Both have their place, but what does not have a place is the worst loot farm in the game by a mile, dungeons.
Current dungeons only reward loot on encounter completion in the form of a single chest drop, which can be either a weapon or armor. But the odds are horrible. Often you are seeing six potential drops from an encounter, half of which are armor which becomes almost instantly useless once you have one decent or transmorgable piece. Even getting a gun at all is a 50% chance, then getting the one you want is another 33% chance, and getting even the two main perks you want on that? The math spirals from there.
While I am not the biggest fan of crafting, which is now in raids, dungeons need massive changes in order for them to avoid being the worst farm in the game by wide margin. At the very start, the bare minimum is that an encounter chest should always drop a weapon in addition to armor, which at least eliminates that 50% coin flip at the start.
Focusing is the next logical step, something almost every new activity has started to implement, even within seasonal content now that crafting hasn’t been used there for two episodes now. It’s not clear precisely how focusing will work in Rite of the Nine, as weapons usually only are available in 2 out of 3 encounters, but I wonder if focusing may not just herd players toward the weapon in those encounters, but maybe in all three. Again, three weapon drops in an entire dungeon is hardly overly-generous, especially now that players are going to be looking for shinies on top of that.
It’s a start. It may not be a total fix, but if this practice makes its way to new dungeons (we’re getting just one a year going forward) that will at least be something.
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