Something is wrong about Destiny 2 “ Beyond Light ” progress changes

This week, we learned more about what’s changing with Destiny 2’s progression and power systems, and it’s not exactly the sweeping overhaul many were envisioning.

I took the day to go through different points, but there is something wrong with the changes where I don’t really think that was what most people were looking for, outside of certain instances.

Let me talk about the different alternations to come, or not, when Beyond Light hits.

Cap and grinding power

Almost nothing has changed on the in-game power cap system. As we now have the following for Beyond Light:

• Soft cap: 1200
• Hard cap: 1250
• Pinnacle Cap: 1260

So, effectively, nothing is different from this actual power system, including the fact that the pinnacle grind hasn’t been redesigned, which I was hoping to see. But the change from the actual grind is as follows:

“We have an upcoming change that will allow you a chance to earn powerful rewards from Strikes, Gambit, Crucible.”

This is somewhat confusing to me because don’t we already have a system that gives you a chance to earn powerful rewards from these activities when played multiple times? First engrams? This section explains how some people just don’t feel strong enough to get powerful rewards from things like the ordeal, but they are absolute rewards, not just powerful ones, usually. So, are these new playlist rewards just more powerful or a real path to the pinnacles? I guess the first one, but this whole section is a little confusing, and yes it seems a little strange to me that you can go all the way through the hard cap while only playing Vanguard Strikes or Gambit.

Tokens and collections

This change eliminates the ability for you to level up using gear math, which means dropping a bunch of tokens or removing coins from your collections is able to fill in the gaps and get more drops faster. high. It’s always been an inconvenient system and overall I think it’s a good change. It is a bit odd, however, that for non-motorized grinding and simple gearing purposes all of the vendor’s equipment drops 20 horsepower below you and will need to be infused each time to be relevant in terms of power, devaluing it a bit.

Shiny dust

This is a part that bothers players, as the Bright Dust allocation per season now looks like this:

• Season Pass free course will now offer 7,500 Bright Dust
• The path belonging to the Season Pass will now offer 3000 Bright Dust
• Weekly Bounties will now award 100 Shiny Dust

This halves the Weekly Bounty Dust, which Bungie says will be offset by the Season’s Bright Dust for most players, but doing the math, this new system offers a lot less Total Total Dust, the moving away from weekly bonuses and putting it in the season pass. It seems to be around 15,000 Bright Dust less per season, so I understand why many see this as bad development even though a request has been met putting a bunch of Bright Dust into the season pass. The stated goal is to get more people to earn more Bright Dust on average without feeling like they have to grind out all the weekly bonuses, but that seems to result in less dust overall.

Premiums

Well, nothing is changing about the bonuses this season. Bungie says they’re happy with the way they made the bonuses smaller in arrivals, given that they felt more optional than anything and you could earn seasonal money without them. But in general, their blueprint to have more non-expiring goals in the future and further reduce the game’s reliance on bounties for progress doesn’t happen with Beyond Light, and instead is saved until the season. 13, at the earliest.

Spider

I actually like the changes to Spider selling Prisms and Hearts, as the game has needed better Legendary Shard wells for a while now, and the old rising cost system was bad.

Overall I’m a little disappointed with the changes here. They seem rather minor or relatively nonexistent, if not downright bad like the Bright Dust plan. I think a lot of players are looking for a fundamental overhaul of power and grind in Destiny 2, but that’s just not it. We’ll have to see how these tweaks work in Beyond Light and what next year has in store more generally.

Follow me on Twitter, Youtube and Instagram. Pick up my sci-fi novels Herokiller and Herokiller 2, and read my first series, The Earthborn Trilogy, which is also on audio book.