When Bungie added the Stasis subclass to Destiny in the Beyond Light expansion, one of the chief pieces of negative feedback was that it was too grindy to unlock on your alts. Having acquired the new power on your main character by finishing the Beyond Light campaign, you also had to repeat the entire process on your other toons, including a lengthy time-gated questline.
I recently asked Bungie if the process would be less painful when it comes to Strand, the new subclass being added in Lightfall, and this was the answer from design lead Kevin Yanes: "The friction [in Beyond Light] was way too high, especially for newer players who were coming in and just wanted to see the new stuff." Yanes also said that although players will still need to complete the Lightfall campaign on each character to unlock Strand, the subclass would be much more complete at that point than Stasis was.
Today, it turns out that Bungie is going to offer an even lower friction way to unlock Strand on your alts: With money! Slipped in towards the end of the This Week At Bungie blog post is a section dedicated to a new kind of 'booster' which Bungie will be selling once Lightfall launches on February 28. It comes in two forms:
Lightfall Character Boost
- Appears when you hit soft cap with one character but have not completed Lightfall
- This boost provides the selected character with a set of high Power level gear
- This boost does not skip the campaign
Lightfall Campaign Skip Boost
- Appears when you complete Lightfall
- Skips the Lightfall campaign for your selected character and unlocks Strand
- This only includes a set of high Power level gear if your main character has hit the Soft Cap
Bungie notes that in order to even see these boosts you'll need to complete the campaign on one character and reach the soft power cap first. So, assuming I'm understanding it correctly, these are paid shortcuts to instantly bring your alts up to the soft power cap and unlock Strand. Which I guess is okay to have as an option, but I also think that when people were asking for the unlock process to be less onerous, they did not say "and we'd love to pay real money for the privilege" for very good reason.
Personally, I don't mind playing the campaign more than once, particularly as the missions in The Witch Queen were so good last time around, but I do appreciate that most people aren't willing to subjugate the majority of their free time for one videogame in the way I am.
I've asked Bungie for clarification on how much these boosters are going to cost, as obviously that's important context when trying to assess the value. I will also note that this isn't totally new: Bungie has offered players the opportunity to buy levels on the current season pass for those who don't want to unlock everything with XP for a while, and that has always struck me as particularly pointless. If you don't want to play the new content, this probably isn't the game for you.
In more positive news, we also learned today that Season of Defiance's ritual weapon is a void glaive called Ecliptic Distaff that features two new perks called Replenishing Aegis and Destabilizing Rounds. We also published an article on the new loadout system, which Bungie revealed will be able to swap all your gear whilst in the middle on an activity and in about the same time as it takes to change one item manually at the moment. I'm crying buildcrafter tears here folks.
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