‘Destiny 2’ Gameplay Already Being Tweaked Based On Beta Feedback

Gamers who have access to the Destiny 2 beta on the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One have already come up with a laundry list of gameplay tweaks and changes they would like to see made. Bungie acknowledged those complaints in a weekly update post on Thursday, along with promising that there were tweaks already being put in place based on player feedback.

The general consensus among the Destiny 2 community on Reddit, the official forums, and elsewhere, is that certain abilities and movements in Destiny 2 are too slow, while ammo is scarce in PvE activities. Power ammo in particular is thought to be in short supply during the “Inverted Spire” strike, in addition to complaints about the slow regeneration of grenade and super energy.

Other common complaints include some weapons feeling underpowered while the movement and jump speed of Guardians has been deemed slow. The former may be partially caused by the characters being at slightly lower light level than the activity asks. Meanwhile, movement speed can be tweaked by changing the perks on the character’s armor.

Still, the feedback from the Destiny 2 beta is flooding in and Design Lead Rob Engeln took some time to discuss what changes to the game are being made.

“The PvE game tuning has changed pretty significantly since the Beta build was deployed. The nature of a Beta of this scale requires that it’s based off a build of the game that is now View post months old. So, in many cases, your feedback is helping us validate changes that were previously made based on internal feedback and playtesting. For example, we too felt that ammo (especially power ammo) was too scarce in PvE. In addition to retuning the drop rates, we built a system that guarantees power ammo drops for you and your Fireteam from certain enemies, giving power weapons a more reliable and predictable role in your arsenal. Other areas where we’ve made significant tuning changes include grenade effectiveness in PvE, Boss vitality, and weapon damage against non-player combatants.”

Bungie is tracking every activity in Destiny 2 in addition to reading player feedback in forums and on social media. For example, Game Director Luke Smith made a mild salute via Twitter to one player who tried to log in over 500 times before the beta was even available. The data gathering goes even much deeper than that and extends to the Crucible multiplayer activities in the beta as well, per Crucible Design Lead Lars Bakken.

“While the new Quickplay and Competitive modes are designed to serve different moods, they are using the same MM settings in the Beta. We’ll be able to tune these separately post-Beta, and your playtesting will help us going forward. For those of you who are wondering, we bucket you separately depending on the playlist, so your Quickplay skill is tracked separately from your Competitive skill.”

Bungie has released a solid, if not sparse, beta for Destiny 2. It is not anywhere close to as expansive as the original Destiny beta, as the developers are trying to keep as much content as possible a surprise for the game’s September 6 release. Still, there have been no glaring issues or errors during the early access period and most of the complaints are centered on gameplay elements the developers can tweak prior to launch.

The Destiny 2 beta will open to all PlayStation 4 and Xbox One owners at 1 p.m. ET / 10 a.m. PT on Friday, July 21. It will end at midnight ET on Sunday. A PC beta is planned for some time in August.

[Featured Image by Bungie]