Destiny 2's armor 2.0 system, coming in the Shadowkeep expansion, will make some dramatic changes to the game. Players will have far more customization options than they currently do, and they won't be required to sacrifice looks in order to put together an ideal build thanks to the use of 'universal ornaments'. It's a major overhaul that promises to shake up the game in some positive ways.
Given how eager players are for armor 2.0 to go live, it would be fair to wonder if Bungie is also quietly working away on a comparable weapons 2.0 update. Today we were told it is not. Game director Luke Smith said on the Kinda Funny Games show earlier that it's not happening, and the reason is because the guns are already pretty good.
"We're looking at weapons overall right now. There's a long, long, probably 2000 words, deleted scene from the director's cut [the mega-update trilogy Smith posted last month] that's really looking at things like infusion in weapons and the relationships we want players to think of [with] their weapons in Destiny. We're not working on weapons 2.0 right now," Smith says around the 2:51:00 mark.
"It's the type of thing where we could bet on that right now, but what we really are looking at is how are going to continue to grow buildcrafting. And that's the frontier we're exploring right now. I can imagine at some point taking a look at weapons down the road, but I think that's pretty fair down the road.
I think there's some stuff that we're going to continue to improve about weapons, like I've been seeing a bunch of chatter and sentiment around, like, 'We want certain weapons from certain activities to feel more special.' I think there's good feedback that I've been seeing there. But there's not an active, 'Let's overhaul weapons!' Nope, those are good. Let's figure out what the behavior we want players to have, like the emotion we want them to feel with their items, and figure out what the right hing to do with weapons is once we have that answer."
Smith also reflected on the part of Destiny he's most proud of, although he was reluctant to use that term, which was unsurprisingly the reaction to the Vault of Glass raid game from the first game. He joked about sobbing as he heard players on a stream describe it as "like WoW raiding but in a shooter". Less happily, he was also asked about his "lowest period", which came after the "six-week honeymoon" following Destiny 2's release was over.
"That period for me lasted about a year, I think, of looking at the game and what was happening with it. Mark [Noseworthy] and I were working on some different stuff at that point, and.... feeling like your work is unfinished is a really bad feeling. And so I would say that period after the game came out and we really felt like our work was unfinished was a low point, and I think if there's anything people have taken away from that period and the way that we turned things around in Forsaken and the way that we've gathered ourselves up this year going forward, it's to finish what we started—like the metaphorical 'Never Again' tattoo Mark and I and a bunch of folks from the team have on us to not set the game adrift like that again."
Destiny 2: Shadowkeep comes out on October 1. Smith's segment starts at about 1:29:00.
