The 'Destiny 2' loot grind is no longer a slot machine
You can't hit the jackpot anymore in Destiny 2.
The original game's loot grind delivered lottery-like thrills at a regular pace. You'd tackle some in-game challenge and then nervously peer at the gear drops and the randomized "perks" attached to it that helped set two versions of the same item apart.
That's no longer the case in the upcoming sequel, out for PlayStation 4, and Xbox One on Sept. 6, and for PC on Oct. 24.
"There aren't random rolls on weapons anymore. Better Devils is a Crucible hand cannon [in Destiny 2], and what it has on it is what it has on it. Period," Luke Smith, the sequel's director, said.
The lineup of stats and perks for every weapon and every piece of armor in Destiny 2 is now hand-crafted. That also means Bungie's sandbox team -- which generally takes the lead on weapon balance changes -- has a lot more flexibility when it's time to change things around.
"You can look at all the hand cannons now [for example] and track the data for everything," Smith said.
Bungie faced a balancing dilemma in the original Destiny: if one particular legendary -- let's just say, for example, the popular Cryptic Dragon scout rifle -- was unbalanced in some way, stat changes could only be applied across the full category of scout rifles.
The hand-crafted nature of Destiny 2's arsenal means every piece of gear is its own category, in a sense. A Bungie designer can call up a singular legendary and tweak its stats; a seemingly small thing, but one that promises to change up the notion of how gear is balanced in the coming sequel.
"It's gonna give us more flexibility to do per-item tuning," Smith said. "[That's] something we haven't had before because of the way we were building the [first] game."
This added flexibility is great, but there's just one problem. With Destiny 2's much larger arsenal, hand-crafted gear means the "lottery" vibe I mentioned at the outset also goes away. It's hard to get excited about getting another Better Devils when it's going to have the same stats and perks as your first one.
"How can my second, third, and tenth Better Devils hand cannon be interesting? That's a question we should be asking and answering as quickly as we can," Smith said.
"We have ideas. While I would like nothing more than to share those ideas with you, we're up against [a deadline]. I don't know if they'll make it for our Sept. 6 [release] date. But we have some ideas that we're pretty excited about."
UPDATED June 29, 2017 at 5:20 p.m. ET An earlier version of this story incorrectly referenced the name of the scout rifle, "Cryptic Dragon," as "Clever Dragon," which is a pulse rifle.
UPDATED June 30 at 9:20 a.m ET An earlier version of this story incorrectly noted a Sept. 6 release date for the PC version of Destiny 2. The correct date is Oct. 24.
Topics Gaming
Adam Rosenberg is a Senior Games Reporter for Mashable, where he plays all the games. Every single one. From AAA blockbusters to indie darlings to mobile favorites and browser-based oddities, he consumes as much as he can, whenever he can.Adam brings more than a decade of experience working in the space to the Mashable Games team. He previously headed up all games coverage at Digital Trends, and prior to that was a long-time, full-time freelancer, writing for a diverse lineup of outlets that includes Rolling Stone, MTV, G4, Joystiq, IGN, Official Xbox Magazine, EGM, 1UP, UGO and others.Born and raised in the beautiful suburbs of New York, Adam has spent his life in and around the city. He's a New York University graduate with a double major in Journalism and Cinema Studios. He's also a certified audio engineer. Currently, Adam resides in Crown Heights with his dog and his partner's two cats. He's a lover of fine food, adorable animals, video games, all things geeky and shiny gadgets.
