‘Destiny’ Weapon Balance, Other Fixes Not Coming Before ‘The Taken King’

Destiny players hoping for an update to the PlayStation and Xbox shooter before the release of The Taken King in September may be out of luck. A pair of comments from Bungie during its latest Weekly Update suggests that the wait for weapon balancing and other issue fixes will have to wait.

“The 2.0 update includes a number of improvements for all Destiny players and in the coming weeks DeeJ and members of the Bungie team will continue to share them with you,” The Taken King Creative Director Luke Smith said.

“Count on it, Guardians. Guns, Balance, Progression, Destinations, Enemies… We’ll unpack everything a hardcore player like you would want to know before launch,” Community Manager David “Deej” Dague added.

Late in the week, but early in the day, it’s the Weekly Update. https://t.co/sZn6Mr672X pic.twitter.com/Ng6yDgGYhE

— Bungie (@Bungie) July 10, 2015

The Taken King will be released on September 15, leaving approximately two months until the release of the Destiny 2.0 update. It’s understandable that Bungie would choose to update lingering issues with the 2.0 update instead of a smaller update during that time. The studio is all in on getting the “Comet” expansion released on time and likely does not have the resources to divert.

At the same time, weapon balance in Destiny has not been addressed since the 1.1.1 update released in February of this year. We’ve since seen a dominant meta of game of players equipped with Thorn or The Last Word hand cannons as their primary and shotguns with perks that make them one-shot kills at long ranges. The grumblings from the community over these weapon balance issues have grown louder over the past few weeks with the most recent Iron Banner and the weekly Trials of Osiris.

Additionally, the weapon changes made in the 1.1.1 update made Auto Rifles and Fusion Rifles fall almost completely out of favor in both PVP and PVE. Players are hoping for at least part of the nerf that Auto Rifles received will be undone while hoping that a fix to shotguns so that they are better balanced compared to Fusion Rifles.

We’ll have to wait and see if Bungie addresses the on-going network issues with the game. The number of players cheating through the use of lag switches to gain an advantage over others in PVP matches has gotten more obvious lately. This is a byproduct of the peer-to-peer networking the game uses and is especially frustrating to see in Trials of Osiris, which is supposed to be Destiny‘s premiere competitive game mode.

Destiny owners that do encounter opponents that are seemingly invincible due to lag should use the game’s player report function to report possible cheating to Bungie. They have issued temporary bans in the past.

Based on the releases of The Dark Below and House of Wolves, the Destiny 2.0 update should be released a week to two weeks prior to the release of The Taken King expansion. Will you be able to hold out that long?

[Images via Bungie]