The Weekly Update is live, and it's a big one this week.

The combat reveal stream is posted first thing.

Weapon mods will be locked with the August 28th update, so get your weapons sorted by then. As we've discussed, make your weapons the elements you want them to be. A short list of current elemental weapons will be moved to Kinetic, so their elements will be removed--don't waste your time with them:

• Baligant
  
• Shepherd’s Watch
  
• Hawthorne’s Field-Forged Shotgun
  
• Alone as a God
  
• Perfect Paradox
  
• The Frigid Jackal
  
• Silicon Neuroma

The new trailer for the Dreaming City is next.

The investment team lays out some goals:

• We want to bring back the days when you are impressed when you see someone at max Power in the Tower.
  
• The experience of leveling and then powering up should be meaningful.
  
• Players should have a sense of discovery when earning rewards from different activities.
  
• When players accomplish something difficult, the rewards should be special or unique.
  
• Not all of the sources of Power in a week should be apparent on the Director.

Sounds promising!

Some more cool changes are outlined. Rewards will be tied to difficulty. If you complete something while underleveled, you'll get even better rewards. Exotics will now always be higher power than your current Power Level again. There are now more activities that operate on a different cadence than the weekly reset, giving people more opportunity for rewards.

There's also this paragraph, which I don't actually understand:

When players earn powerful rewards, these items should never scale down to where they do not give an increase in Power. Even if your Power is 100 over an activity’s recommended level, it should still grant a reward at least one Power level above your current average. This means that players should still benefit when grouping with teammates who haven’t accomplished as much as they have.

Is this different from how it is now? If you do an activity that gives Powerful Engrams, they're always Powerful Engrams, it doesn't matter what the Power Level of the activity is. Are they implying that "Powerful Engrams" are no longer a thing?

Milestones are changing pretty drastically. Milestones now seem to be more focused on quests and "non-repeatable" activities. The old weekly milestones are moving to something called activity challenges, and will not appear the Milestones tray. Activity challenges will appear in the tool tips in the Director when you highlight an activity.

Lots of other big changes:

Strikes have three power level pools: 300, 400, and 500. Once you're 40 power above the next threshold, the previous one will no longer be on your Director, to keep matchmaking healthy. So, once you hit 440, the 300 power option will be gone.

Nightfalls are also changing. Prestige is going away, but base Nightfalls will be more difficult. Players can also select between three different Nightfall strikes. This is to help players seeking specific Nightfall loot, so we don't have to wait so long for the Nightfall to come back up.

Meditations are gone, to be replaced by the Heroic Story Playlist, at 500 power. No mention of any Redux-style reworks. With that, Ikora's tokens are also leaving, as is the armor she offers (so get it, or complete your Solstice set, if you want it).

Heroic adventures are coming to all destinations. Flashpoint weeks will see one Heroic adventure selected per day.

Heroic modifiers will be shared between strikes, story missions, and adventures.

I hope you all want to farm that spinmetal some more!

Destination materials will become the primary source of destination reputation, and destination materials will be a cost to infuse weapons and gear. (Seriously, fucking why?) Tokens will no longer be rewarded, but you will still be able to turn them in if you have them.

Gunsmith reputation engrams will increase in cost from 40 gunsmith materials to 100.

Iron Banner is back next week. Starting with Forsaken, Power Level will matter again.

Trials of the Nine is going away for Season 4 while it gets a total rework. I'll never be a Trials player, but that makes me happy. Trials felt awesome in D1, with tons of people here playing it weekly and making Lighthouse runs, and now no one cares about it in D2. I hope to see it brought back to relevance.

Faction Rallies will be on "hiatus" when Season 4 starts. They want to make adjustments, it sounds like, and "focus on some other areas of the game that need attention and reevaluate some of the fundamental aspects of the event."

There's a big section on Eververse changes. I won't copy/paste it here--go look if you care. The big one is that Tess is going to have bounties that reward Bright Dust. Picking up bounties requires a "bounty note," but they don't elaborate on what that is. Seems like a potentially good move. They've also committed to sharing Bright Engram probabilities (though on Bungie.net, rather than in the game interface). They're adding Legendary Weapon skins and Ghost projections (whatever that is).

They're adding a few more boosted Valor XP weekends before Forsaken:

Double Valor Week
Start: 10 AM PDT on August 10, 2018
End: 10 AM PDT on August 17, 2018

Triple Valor Weekend
Start: 10 AM PDT on August 17, 2018
End: 10 AM PDT on August 21, 2018

Final Double Valor Weekend
Start: 10 AM PDT on August 24, 2018
End: 10 AM PDT on August 28, 2018

Player Support Report, Movie of the Week, and Nightfall scores end the update as always.

In Year 1, an activity such as the raid would have an absolute range of Power that it could generate. Rewards would grant only a small difference in Power level, even if you were overcoming the challenge while under-leveled. In Forsaken, we are scaling the Power production of all content by the difficulty of that content. If you manage to beat the raid while 40 Power under the recommended level, you should expect to receive more potent rewards.

I like it! This sounds promising.

Speaking of promising... take a gander at the new Director menu. Bye Bye Leviathan (as in the raid!) & Hello Dreaming City!

That said... here is an interesting tidbit:

The Brawler and Grenadier modifiers will have their recharge times adjusted to ensure they’re noticeable. Adjusting your equipment for either also has a rather significant impact. We’ve seen some pretty crazy plays by the new Solar Hunter in our playtest. Some experienced players out there may be reminded of the feelings found when they equipped Nothing Manacles in the past.

Nothing Manacles were Warlock gloves that would enable tracking for Scatter Grenades. They also allowed an extra Scatter Grenade charge. So in other words, if I understand this right...knives. Knives everywhere.

The investment team lays out some goals:

• We want to bring back the days when you are impressed when you see someone at max Power in the Tower.
  
• The experience of leveling and then powering up should be meaningful.
  
• Players should have a sense of discovery when earning rewards from different activities.
  
• When players accomplish something difficult, the rewards should be special or unique.
  
• Not all of the sources of Power in a week should be apparent on the Director.

There's also this paragraph, which I don't actually understand:

When players earn powerful rewards, these items should never scale down to where they do not give an increase in Power. Even if your Power is 100 over an activity’s recommended level, it should still grant a reward at least one Power level above your current average. This means that players should still benefit when grouping with teammates who haven’t accomplished as much as they have.

Is this different from how it is now? . . .

I have experienced cases where I'm getting a +0 increase to my overall power (i.e., I get drops for two gear slots, both are the exact same as my currently equipped gear) and I'm pretty sure what they're saying is now you'll always get at least a +1 over your current gear.

Meditations are gone, to be replaced by the Heroic Story Playlist, at 500 power. No mention of any Redux-style reworks . . . Ikora's tokens are also leaving . . .

I am super tentative about getting excited. It makes me wonder if there is going to be any specific changes or dedicated loot pools to this activity, or if it's just gonna be that one-a-day sort of thing.

Heroic modifiers will be shared between strikes, story missions, and adventures.

This, I like this.

I hope you all want to farm that spinmetal some more!

Destination materials will become the primary source of destination reputation, and destination materials will be a cost to infuse weapons and gear. (Seriously, fucking why?)

So, I have mixed feelings about this. I like streamlining the reputation currencies, and having something to use them for given that thus far the destination loot tables aren't changing (or at least not that I have heard?) so I'll continue to not have much use for those materials.

Gunsmith reputation engrams will increase in cost from 40 gunsmith materials to 100.

Gunsmith better have bounties that pay out reasonable volumes of parts, because the dev build from Tuesday was still outputting 3 parts per legendary.

The big one is that Tess is going to have bounties that reward Bright Dust.

Up to 150 Bright Dust for 6 notes, so it looks to be something to round out for when people are close already.

Picking up bounties requires a "bounty note," but they don't elaborate on what that is.

They replace mods dropping in Brightgrams.

Seems like a potentially good move.

I think it will definitely help the feel of interacting along with the changes to Prismatic Matrix stuff.

They're adding Legendary Weapon skins and Ghost projections (whatever that is).

Legendary skins is exciting. Ghost Projection are like the Jade Rabbit icon they show that Titan with in the update.

Speaking of promising... take a gander at the new Director menu. Bye Bye Leviathan (as in the raid!) & Hello Dreaming City!

I get the feeling that they aren't going to retire the Leviathan, they've talked about getting gear from it in Y2 from what I remember. I wonder if that means it is becoming a node on Nessus?

Nothing Manacles . . .

Nothing Manacles with Bloom in PvP were mob clearing beasts. I don't dare to dream that I'm getting Nothing Manacles back, though. I want to Fox Mulder it, but I don't dare.

I get the feeling that they aren't going to retire the Leviathan, they've talked about getting gear from it in Y2 from what I remember. I wonder if that means it is becoming a node on Nessus?

Cozmo confirmed somewhere (twitter or reddit, I don't recall where I saw it) that Leviathan and the Lairs are selectable from Nessus.

I hope you all want to farm that spinmetal some more!

Destination materials will become the primary source of destination reputation, and destination materials will be a cost to infuse weapons and gear. (Seriously, fucking why?)

So, I have mixed feelings about this. I like streamlining the reputation currencies, and having something to use them for given that thus far the destination loot tables aren't changing (or at least not that I have heard?) so I'll continue to not have much use for those materials.

I'm not a fan of stuff like this generally, but it makes sense, I think. It will be needed for infusion, which is sort of an endgame thing to be concerned with. As I've said before, I think Destiny is at its best with lots of people out in the patrol zones doing activities, and making those world materials necessary will help keep those areas populated in the late game. The fact that those materials drop from chests and patrols and other Destination activities makes it bearable, too, rather than just literally having to run around the map to pick them up.

Gunsmith reputation engrams will increase in cost from 40 gunsmith materials to 100.

Gunsmith better have bounties that pay out reasonable volumes of parts, because the dev build from Tuesday was still outputting 3 parts per legendary.

I'm honestly hoping this hints that maybe Legendary drop rates will be at least slightly higher? I think it's to prevent the folks out there that undoubtedly have 10,000+ Legendary shards from just mass dumping them for tons and tons of engrams, at least to such a significant degree. But I also think with the reintroduction of random rolls, a higher drop rate from activities wouldn't be a bad thing, so we don't have to rely on the Gunsmith to get stuff.

The big one is that Tess is going to have bounties that reward Bright Dust.

Up to 150 Bright Dust for 6 notes, so it looks to be something to round out for when people are close already.

Picking up bounties requires a "bounty note," but they don't elaborate on what that is.

They replace mods dropping in Brightgrams.

Did they say that in the update and I just completely missed it like an idiot, or did they mention it somewhere else?

I would be golden with higher legendary drop rates. I suppose with them being a primary source for mods and having random rolls would mean that them coming more often is worthwhile. I mean, I'm sitting on something like 1.3k Weapon parts, so it isn't as crazy as some people, but 40 to 100 seemed like a high spike.

And re: Notes; per the update:

Weapon and armor mods will no longer be dropping from the Bright Engram. In their place, players will now receive bounty notes.

I get the feeling that they aren't going to retire the Leviathan, they've talked about getting gear from it in Y2 from what I remember. I wonder if that means it is becoming a node on Nessus?

Cozmo confirmed somewhere (twitter or reddit, I don't recall where I saw it) that Leviathan and the Lairs are selectable from Nessus.

Ah. They must have nested it, like was done with the farm in the EDZ menu.

Nothing Manacles were Warlock gloves that would enable tracking for Scatter Grenades. They also allowed an extra Scatter Grenade charge. So in other words, if I understand this right...knives. Knives everywhere.

More than that... From Game Informer

Knife Trick (the name of the new Gunslinger charged melee) flings out a fan of burning blades. In turn, killing burning enemies recharges your Knife Trick...

Knives. Everywhere.

Between now and the preload on August 28, use your Year 1 mods to lock in the elemental damage type you want for your Year 1 weapons. They will retain that damage type after the mod deprecation. On August 28, the old mod slot will go away, and you will no longer be able to insert any mods into Year 1 gear or change the elemental damage type.

So since we won't be able to do modifications or change elements, does that mean we're switching back to Destiny 1 RNG? Does that also mean that the damage level for weapons will also decrease for everything Legendary modded?

Speaking of...why? To all of it.

Some weapons will be moving to the Kinetic Slot and will not retain elemental damage regardless of what mod you had applied. The IKELOS Sniper Rifle and Shotgun will be locked to Solar. Here are the Legendary weapons that will be moving to Kinetic:

Baligant
Shepherd’s Watch
Hawthorne’s Field-Forged Shotgun
Alone as a God
Perfect Paradox
The Frigid Jackal
Silicon Neuroma

So unless we delete those weapons, we'll have two Kinetics equipped instead of one, in a world of strikes filled with elemental...well, whatever their version of 'Burns' is?

(Just for all you Picardies. ;-)

We want to bring back the days when you are impressed when you see someone at max Power in the Tower.

This instantly confused me. What days? You mean max level, right? Because the only way you can see people's power at all is if you followed every single one around the Tower and spam Back to inspect them one by one(or used the roster).

The experience of leveling and then powering up should be meaningful.

I want to believe this Bungie, I really do...but even in Destiny 1, when I was leveling up in Strikes and Raids, a good 80% of my rewards were—in terms of power level—not very rewarding.

When players accomplish something difficult, the rewards should be special or unique.

This raises my negativity/skepticism red flags off the charts. This exact same promise has been given to us time and time again since 2014, and from past experiences in Destiny 1 the only time I ever felt the rewards I got from difficult activities being "special or unique" are as follows:

• Opening Skeleton Chests(not the Strike boss rewards, but physically using a Key.)
  
• When Three of Coins procs
  
• Raids(they'd better!)
  
• Challenge of Elders rewards/Prison of Elders(now that was an excitable experience!)
  
• Occasionally Nightfall--entirely RNG, but there have been fruitful bounties.
  
• Faction Rank-Ups(technically doesn't count since that isn't a difficult activity)

In Destiny 2, Heroic Strikes usually meant a handful of blues(and maybe a legendary), typically only a small amount higher than your current light, and a whole bunch of rep tokens that got you the same four weapons forever. And the legendary engrams just gave you infinite Heiro Camo, or other class equivalent. That's why I quit playing those—no sense in busting my ass all kinds of ways for weaker rewards than what I get just for killing a major in Patrol.

Now I haven't had a chance to do Raids, and Nighfall is still too challenging at my light level, but unless "difficult activities" means something very specific that they're going to list out specifically, I'm still very doubtful.

In Year 1, an activity such as the raid would have an absolute range of Power that it could generate. Rewards would grant only a small difference in Power level, even if you were overcoming the challenge while under-leveled. In Forsaken, we are scaling the Power production of all content by the difficulty of that content. If you manage to beat the raid while 40 Power under the recommended level, you should expect to receive more potent rewards.

This sounds like a contract, or fine print at the bottom of a commercial. Stuff like this is very worrying. If you beat a raid while under-leveled...there's not supposed to be a "you should expect". There is supposed to be a "will". If you and your fireteam pull off something as difficult as that, you shouldn't be flying to the Tower hoping you get something much better. You should be overjoyed that you and your friends managed to do it together, and exclaim to your friends and Tower denizens, "Holy shit! Look at this kickass reward I got! It's SO much higher than the stuff I have now! Hey party leader, can we go to Patrol/Crucible/Strikes so I can test this bad boy out?" That is meaningful leveling/powering up. That is impressing people at the Tower. That is getting something special and unique.

The Milestone tray has been revamped in Forsaken, and will now specifically show the most important, nonrepeatable quests for every player of Destiny 2. The campaign quests are a good example of this. Meanwhile, our world quests for destinations will now live in the Pursuits section of your character inventory. Many Milestones from Year 1 have been converted to activity challenges. These will continue to grant powerful rewards, but they will no longer be displayed in the Milestone tray. When you access the Director, you’ll see activity challenges in the tooltip of the associated activity.

I'm actually pretty happy about this:While I like seeing what I need to do next, Nightfall, Crucible and Heroic Strikes do not need to stay at the forefront of my objectives. Good call.

Once you’re 40 Power over a given playlist, it will no longer appear as an option for you to select.

I also like this idea; hopefully it won't put too much pressure on repeated matchups.

Meditations are being retired and replaced with a Heroic story playlist. New campaign missions will be featured at 500 Power, while old campaign missions will be set to a Power level relative to their release. This ensures legacy players can still enjoy story activities at their leisure.

I thought our new max Light was going to be 400, but I guess not. This is better than going to the Tower 3 times in a row, but still no freedom to select missions?

Activity modifiers will be shared across Heroic adventures, Heroic story missions, and strikes. This ensures that each day you know what to expect from the PvE content that you play as a ritual, and that when we balance and tune modifiers it’s happening across the game. This will include one weekly singe, one daily buff, and one daily debuff.

So does that mean the modifiers are all going to be the same in every PvE activity?

The Brawler and Grenadier modifiers will have their recharge times adjusted to ensure they’re noticeable. Adjusting your equipment for either also has a rather significant impact. We’ve seen some pretty crazy plays by the new Solar Hunter in our playtest. Some experienced players out there may be reminded of the feelings found when they equipped Nothing Manacles in the past.

But....but you....nerfed Nothing Manacles. Heavily. So...we'll feel like we have an extra grenade?

Destination materials will be a part of the cost to infuse different weapons and armor across your arsenal.

So...you are switching back to Destiny 1.

Destination materials will become your main source of reputation on their respective destinations.
Destination tokens and Rare destination materials are no longer awarded, but you can still redeem them for reputation if you have them in your inventory.
Anything that previously granted destination tokens or Rare materials will reward Common destination materials moving forward.

So, all the rewards we'll get for opening chests, doing public events, target drops, completing missions and (Heroic) Adventures...will be flowers. And in the case of Nessus, Vex poop.

Before anyone complains that this is trivial, it's about the principle of at least getting multiple types of rewards. They might all mean the same, but the fact that you can get rare materials worth more from searching, normal materials from picking up resources, and tokens from completing missions and events--at least makes me feel like I'm doing more than one thing on a planet.

The Gunsmith will also be updated in Season 4. In Year 1, this vendor required 40 Gunsmith Materials for one reputation package. This will increase to 100 Gunsmith Materials.

Reminds me of that classic Deathless bounty on D1--You used to earn a large amount of points and rep for earning 9,000 XP without dying. Then Bungie decided to change it to earning 10,000 XP and the rewards dropped to less than half.

There is also a new Power Play rule where capturing all three zones will lock them down for 20 seconds. At the end of the Power Play, all the zones are reset to neutral and must be recaptured.

That. Will. Work. Out. SO. Well. XD

Starting in Season 4, Iron Banner will be updated to enable Power level advantages, like in the days of old.

It hasn't been in the first place??

Each Bright Engram grants one bounty note in Season 4
These Notes can be exchanged for a three different tiers of weekly Eververse bounties
Tier 3:Costs 6 Eververse Bounty Notes, Rewards 150 Bright Dust

Everything that isn't an Emote or a Ghost Shell is thousands of Bright Dust.

Leading up to the beginning of Year 2, you’ll see multiple opportunities to earn Valor points at an accelerated rate including a special triple Valor Iron Banner weekend.

Since I don't know anything Crucible, does this Valor stuff apply to Crucible as a whole, or just in (shudder) Iron Banner?

All these crazy changes are making it really hard to decide on whether or not I want to get Forsaken. It really seems like it might not be worth the money...

Some weapons will be moving to the Kinetic Slot and will not retain elemental damage regardless of what mod you had applied. The IKELOS Sniper Rifle and Shotgun will be locked to Solar. Here are the Legendary weapons that will be moving to Kinetic: Baligant, Shepherd’s Watch, Hawthorne’s Field-Forged Shotgun, Alone as a God, Perfect Paradox, The Frigid Jackal, Silicon Neuroma

So unless we delete those weapons, we'll have two Kinetics equipped instead of one, in a world of strikes filled with elemental...well, whatever their version of 'Burns' is?

I'm confused by this statement. Can you explain?

If Bungie is removing the elements from those weapons, then it sounds like your kinetic weapon and your power weapon won’t have elemental damage. That sounds especially hobbling considering each strike will have an elemental burn. Focusing all that power on only one weapon is highly pressing.

If Bungie is removing the elements from those weapons, then it sounds like your kinetic weapon and your power weapon won’t have elemental damage. That sounds especially hobbling considering each strike will have an elemental burn. Focusing all that power on only one weapon is highly pressing.

They aren't completely removing the element from specials. They are removing the elemental mod. So they are permanently changing the weapon element to what the mod is on the 28th. After that you have to pray to RNGesus to get the correct element for a gun.

If Bungie is removing the elements from those weapons, then it sounds like your kinetic weapon and your power weapon won’t have elemental damage. That sounds especially hobbling considering each strike will have an elemental burn. Focusing all that power on only one weapon is highly pressing.

The way I understand it is that those weapons will physically move to the kinetic weapon slot. Not stay in the Power. I think any weapon in the elemental or power slots will still have elemental damage attached to it.

• Baligant
  
• Shepherd’s Watch
  
• Hawthorne’s Field-Forged Shotgun
  
• Alone as a God
  
• Perfect Paradox
  
• The Frigid Jackal
  
• Silicon Neuroma

Seriously? WHY? There goes my carefully selected set of elemental shotguns. Guess I have to find a new void shotgun/Minotaur killer now.

The rest of it mostly sounds ok, with the exception of needing planetary materials for infusion. I mean, honestly, Bungie. What the hell? Does no one remember running around looking for fucking helium coils in D1? Why are we going back to that? That one thing alone is, and I am not just saying this, seriously making me reconsider participating.

Yeah, it's hard to imagine they'd just take the whole raid out. It's in there somewhere.

Knife Trick (the name of the new Gunslinger charged melee) flings out a fan of burning blades. In turn, killing burning enemies recharges your Knife Trick...

So it's Fighting Lion in knife form?

• Baligant
  
• Shepherd’s Watch
  
• Hawthorne’s Field-Forged Shotgun
  
• Alone as a God
  
• Perfect Paradox
  
• The Frigid Jackal
  
• Silicon Neuroma

Seriously? WHY? There goes my carefully selected set of elemental shotguns. Guess I have to find a new void shotgun/Minotaur killer now.

The rest of it mostly sounds ok, with the exception of needing planetary materials for infusion. I mean, honestly, Bungie. What the hell? Does no one remember running around looking for fucking helium coils in D1? Why are we going back to that? That one thing alone is, and I am not just saying this, seriously making me reconsider participating.

I do believe it was mentioned (maybe on Twitter) that planetary materials now come from other sources since tokens are being retired (think chests, patrols and maybe high valued targets).

The rest of it mostly sounds ok, with the exception of needing planetary materials for infusion. I mean, honestly, Bungie. What the hell? Does no one remember running around looking for fucking helium coils in D1? Why are we going back to that? That one thing alone is, and I am not just saying this, seriously making me reconsider participating.

I’m very discouraged about this.

I’ve been compiling thoughts for a post about how I feel Destiny 2 is becoming more difficult for casual players like me to fully enjoy. I’ll probably never get around to writing that post, but this change would be more evidence to that end.

If Bungie is removing the elements from those weapons, then it sounds like your kinetic weapon and your power weapon won’t have elemental damage. That sounds especially hobbling considering each strike will have an elemental burn. Focusing all that power on only one weapon is highly pressing.

The way I understand it is that those weapons will physically move to the kinetic weapon slot. Not stay in the Power. I think any weapon in the elemental or power slots will still have elemental damage attached to it.

You are correct (I believe). Your special and power weapons will always have an elemental damage type. Anything that’s being switched to Kinetic will be moving to the top slot, but it won’t necessarily take white ammo (which is now determined by weapon type rather than slot). So Hawthorne’s Shotgun will be in the top slot but needs green ammo.

It sounds confusing, but I suspect it will actually be pretty intuitive (or at least be easier to understand), once we get our hands on it.

Yes. Tokens are going away—everything that previously gave you tokens will now give you planetary materials instead.

If Bungie is removing the elements from those weapons, then it sounds like your kinetic weapon and your power weapon won’t have elemental damage. That sounds especially hobbling considering each strike will have an elemental burn. Focusing all that power on only one weapon is highly pressing.

The way I understand it is that those weapons will physically move to the kinetic weapon slot. Not stay in the Power. I think any weapon in the elemental or power slots will still have elemental damage attached to it.

They've been talking about moving Hawthorn's to the kinetic slot for awhile now. The news here is what else is moving there. I think it's interesting, as what they're doing is taking popular powerful shotguns and removing their elements giving an opportunity for other shotguns to shine in the power slot.

There's also this paragraph, which I don't actually understand:

When players earn powerful rewards, these items should never scale down to where they do not give an increase in Power. Even if your Power is 100 over an activity’s recommended level, it should still grant a reward at least one Power level above your current average. This means that players should still benefit when grouping with teammates who haven’t accomplished as much as they have.

So, no more soft cap?

There's also this paragraph, which I don't actually understand:

When players earn powerful rewards, these items should never scale down to where they do not give an increase in Power. Even if your Power is 100 over an activity’s recommended level, it should still grant a reward at least one Power level above your current average. This means that players should still benefit when grouping with teammates who haven’t accomplished as much as they have.

So, no more soft cap?

More or less I think that's what they're saying. Although I believe the actual climb will be slower overall.

Yeah, it's hard to imagine they'd just take the whole raid out. It's in there somewhere.

When you click on Nessus apparently it's now on the map (like the farm on earth).

- No text -

Yes. Tokens are going away—everything that previously gave you tokens will now give you planetary materials instead.

And seeing as I have a fat stack of tokens just sitting in my inventory or all planets... I'm okay with this.

At the very least, no soft cap implementation like in Warmind. We'll probably see what is a relative soft cap around 500-ish where you'll slow down, but still be getting a point here and a point there regardless of what activity you play - but more than a point in higher level activities.

Yes. Tokens are going away—everything that previously gave you tokens will now give you planetary materials instead.

And seeing as I have a fat stack of tokens just sitting in my inventory or all planets... I'm okay with this.

I don’t think those Tokens are going to do you any good. It’s explicitly planetary materials needed for infusion. The only thing you can do with those Tokens is turn them into the vendor for rewards packages.

Each Bright Engram grants one bounty note in Season 4
These Notes can be exchanged for a three different tiers of weekly Eververse bounties
Tier 3:Costs 6 Eververse Bounty Notes, Rewards 150 Bright Dust

Everything that isn't an Emote or a Ghost Shell is thousands of Bright Dust.

If we are going based on current breakdown rates and relative Bright Dust costs:
- Breaking down a Shader or Transmat Effect will be: 10BD
- Breaking down a L!Ghost/L!Vehicle/L!Armor will be: 100BD
- Breaking down an E!Ghost or E!Vehicle will be: 500BD

So, in a week you need to get 6 Bounty Notes to do the 150BD Bounty you need 6 Bright Engrams. That means you're looking at a minimum of about 240BD (1 Transmat, 3 Shaders x 6 drops) if you aren't trying to use any of those for other things. In addition to that, you could obviously only pull Emotes and Ornaments and not get any BD. You could also pull 50, 250, or 500 Bright Dust assuming those "gifts" are still part of the pool.

So you can pull, more-or-less, 390-1890BD/wk if you are breaking everything down (now going into your collection - so if you aren't going to actively use those items). Some exotic ornaments are as low as 800BD and I think the highest BD cost (someone correct me if I'm wrong) item I've seen was ~2500BD.

You're also getting a bounty for 250 Glimmer to get a weekly "free pull" on the Prismatic Matrix outside of having to earn Brightgrams. And while I don't think my experience is necessarily common (I get a lot of duplicate Exotic Sparrows out of EV) even with only breaking down duplicates I have more Bright Dust in Season 3 than I know what to do with.

So, it definitely does feel kind of weak that you only get 150BD for the bounty, but it's just another booster not intended to replace the core Brightgram mechanic.

- No text -

I think Mac is just glad he won't have to collect anymore. ;)

Yes. Tokens are going away—everything that previously gave you tokens will now give you planetary materials instead.

And seeing as I have a fat stack of tokens just sitting in my inventory or all planets... I'm okay with this.

I don’t think those Tokens are going to do you any good. It’s explicitly planetary materials needed for infusion. The only thing you can do with those Tokens is turn them into the vendor for rewards packages.

They aren't, they are just a testament as to how little I'm going to have to work for the new currency.

The rest of it mostly sounds ok, with the exception of needing planetary materials for infusion. I mean, honestly, Bungie. What the hell? Does no one remember running around looking for fucking helium coils in D1? Why are we going back to that? That one thing alone is, and I am not just saying this, seriously making me reconsider participating.

The most reasonable and logical way to implement this system would be to integrate planetary materials into the game's systems.
Por ejemplo, let's use Dusklight crystals:

• EDZ Enemies should all have a chance to drop one or two (they're out here grinding too!).
  
• Roaming Yellow bar enemies are guaranteed sources.
  
• Public Events always drop a couple, Heroic can drop up to five.
  
• Planetary challenges are guaranteed drops (Destiny 1 bounties had this).
  
• Strikes can drop up to seven. Higher difficulty has higher drop chance (higher chance if you don't quit strikes).
  
• Earth-based Crucible maps can drop a handful, with more dropping if you win (higher chance if you don't quit games).
  
• Completing a Guided Game Nightfall drops up to 20 resources for everyone, with a guaranteed bonus 10 for the hosts if they get a recommendation.

Bam, now you're rewarding players just for playing the game with existing resources, while also helping them focus on a variety of specific activities (while also rewarding them in Crucible). You're also encouraging use of the Guided Games feature, and removing the tedium of running laps around a map looking for mats (but having that option available for those running Patrols).

Here’s hoping at least some of them prove to be implemented!

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If that's true, then that will be infinitely worse. I don't recognize the other weapons, but I see at least one Sniper and two shotguns. If they're moved to the Kinetic weapons slot, then that means people will spawn and respawn in Crucible with them as their main weapon, with infinite ammo to boot.

If that's true, then that will be infinitely worse. I don't recognize the other weapons, but I see at least one Sniper and two shotguns. If they're moved to the Kinetic weapons slot, then that means people will spawn and respawn in Crucible with them as their main weapon, with infinite ammo to boot.

No. Shotguns use green ammo, even in the Kinetic slot. You only spawn with a single shot in the shotgun (and I assume probably the same for snipers). Players will drop green ammo on death, if they have it, though. This is all in the combat reveal stream they just did on Tuesday.

EDIT: I just went back and checked. You get one per gun if you run a loadout with two weapons that require Special Ammo. You get two shots if you only have a single gun that needs green, and one that needs white. So it's still very limited, and you'll have to rely on actually getting kills on folks that also currently have green ammo to drop.

Minor correction per what they said on stream: You spawn with "2 shots" for Special Weapons. So if you have a Special in your Kinetic and a Primary in your Energy, you will have 2 shots for your Kinetic Shotgun/Sniper. If you have both a Kinetic and Energy Special you will get 1 each. Fusion Rifles also have 2 bursts. Trace Rifles may or may not have equivalent to 2 kills worth of ammo.

So in Forsaken you will need planetary materials to upgrade guns via infusion. Planetary mats for gun upgrades was the absolute worst in Destiny.

Someone explain how we are not moving backwards.

Someone explain how we are not moving backwards.

Bungie tried to move forward, and the entire internet bitched about it. This is what people want.

It’s the same with bounties. People bitched and bitched about having to go to the Tower in D1 and pick up bounties, or bitched that it was annoying to forget to pick up bounties and then go do whatever activities. So Bungie was smart and gave us D2’s challenges, but people bitched about that too, so now we’re back to going to the Tower to pick up bounties.

It’s no wonder Bungie is “bad” at communicating. Their fan base is fucking bipolar and doesn’t have a clue what the fuck it wants. It hates grind, no, it wants grind back, no not THAT kind of grind.

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