Bungie announces sweeping changes to Eververse and the reward system

It is no secret that the Eververse store and its constant ability to suck meaningful rewards away from activities has been a stain on Destiny 2’s loot system for some time now.

Players have voiced their displeasure with the store for many years but after so long with no direct answers from Bungie the community has somewhat resigned itself to simply having to deal with it.

Fortunately for us, Bungie has seen the error of their ways with the implementation of this microtransaction store and have announced some significant changes to the Eververse system, as well as how loot is earned in other activities.

Luke Smith himself, the Lead Director for Destiny 2, chimed in during the ‘This Week at Bungie’ blog post to give a solid rundown on the changes coming to the game within the next Season to within the year.

The biggest changes come in regards to cosmetics items such as ornaments, Ships, Sparrows and Ghost Shells. Here are the changes mixed with our thoughts on each change:

“We will be adding a Transmogrification feature to Destiny 2.

• This will allow players to turn their Armor into Universal Ornaments.
• We plan to allow players to do this with in-game effort OR Silver.
• This feature is in early development and is expected sometime during Year 4.”

Those of you who have played other MMORPGs, such as World of Warcraft, will be very familiar with this system.

In essence this is a system that will allow Guardians to take the look of whatever armour they have discovered, and not be locked into wearing the armour with the best stats even though it’s appearance is less than desirable. The community has been rallying for this feature since the first week of the original Destiny so it is great to finally see this feature being added to the game.

The only worry about this feature is how the earning of these universal ornaments will be implemented. It would be fairly disappointing to have to do something mundane like completing 10 different bounties while wearing the armour piece to unlock the ornament.

“Each Season we will deliver an aspirational pursuit for armor. We haven’t done this consistently in Destiny 2.

• This armor will come from activities, not the Season Pass nor Eververse.
• As an example: We removed the Eververse Armor from Season 11 and itemized it into an aspirational activity, because this is the right thing to do for the game.”

During the previous Seasons it was quite disappointing to see that all of the new armour that could be obtained was either through the Eververse store or the Season Pass.

Even the armour obtained through the Seasonal activity was the exact same as the armour from the Season Pass and since the version obtained later in the Season Pass could roll with very high stat values this made the Seasonal activity version extremely obsolete.

Removing the Eververse armour set and putting it in various activities as an aspirational reward will go a long way  to creating more worthwhile reasons to replay and grind out different pieces of content.

“We are improving the rewards for Aspirational Activities (Raids, Trials, Dungeons)

• Going forward, Aspirational Activities will reward players with power, items, and vanity.
• When we build an Aspirational Activity it will have at least one accessory to pursue.
• The team is working on Adept Weapons for Trials of Osiris.
• Trials will get new Armor (aka not reprisal), accessories, and weapons in Season 13.
• Trials will get new Armor every year.
• Destiny’s next Raid will have brand new Armor, Weapons, and Exotic Accessories to pursue (no spoilers).

Beginning in Season 12, we will no longer be selling ships, ghost shells, sparrows, or armor ornaments in Eververse that are visually based on themes from Aspirational Activities.

• We are not planning on changing existing items as that is time we could be spending on itemizing the future. “

It was always a major source of frustration to load into the Tower upon the Weekly Reset and head over to the Eververse store to see that Tess was selling a unique Sparrow and Ghost that was modeled after the Scarlet Keep aesthetic.

This frustration came from the fact that the Scarlet Keep Nightfall had no exclusive rewards like the many other Nightfalls present within the game, it was almost as if the cosmetic items were developed as a Nightfall reward and then shifted into the Eververse store to generate more revenue for the studio. Starting in Season 12, not next Season but the one following, this thankfully no longer be the case.

Although this does not necessarily mean more cosmetics will be added to various activities, simply that the Eververse cosmetics will not be modeled after in game activities.

At face value, this means that using the above example of the Scarlet Keep the strike would still lack the exclusive rewards, it just means the Eververse Ghost and Sparrow that had the same aesthetic will simply look different.

Luke Smith then continued with some significant changes to the Core playlists and their rewards:

“We are adding a new set of Armor for the core playlists (Strikes, Gambit, and Crucible).

• This armor shares a set of new geometry, with decals and shaders specific to the activity.
• We will create new sets like this each Year (e.g., Year 4, Year 5, Year 6, etc.)
• This set will arrive alongside the next Expansion.”

The rewards for all the core activities have been stagnant for over a year now with no new armours being added to the loot pool since Forsaken launched in late 2018.

It was a huge letdown to load up Shadowkeep and to see that no new armour had been added to the Strike, Crucible and Gambit loot pools.

Seeing these new armours added each major expansion, although each new Season would be better but maybe that is too much to ask for, will simply add to the amount of content to the game that is worth chasing as an extra set of armor to grind for will keep people playing.

The wording of the above notes from Smith in the use of the line “eg., Year 4, Year 5, Year 6, etc.” could give us a hint at the future of Destiny 2.

This may well be just a throwaway example but it seems odd to include specific mentions of Destiny 2 up to Year 6 if they planned on releasing Destiny 3 soon.

It seems logical to assume that we won't see Destiny 3 for some time and that Bungie plans to simply add on to Destiny 2 for some years to come.

“Starting in Season 12, we are adding a new Pursuit Weapon each Season.

• This weapon can be earned by playing your preferred Core playlist.
• This weapon will have activity-specific Legendary Skins that can be unlocked in each playlist.”

Bungie always struggled with the balancing of the previous Pinnacle weapons as they needed to be difficult to earn and a powerful reward but not be too powerful as to be unbalanced. The Mountaintop, Recluse, and Luna’s Howl have all wrecked their way through the Crucible for many months before having to be toned down.

It was at this point that Bungie decided to rebrand these Pinnacle weapons to Ritual Weapons and make them easier to obtain while lowering their overall power. Even this seemed too time consuming for Bungie as in the latest Season there were no Ritual weapons at all, only a single Ritual weapon for Iron Banner.

The use of the wording ‘a new Pursuit Weapon’ means that there will likely only be one per Season but this weapon will fortunately be able to be earned through whatever activity the player enjoys participating the most.

This is a great addition as it gives a player agency over the time involved in obtaining this weapon and also simply the amount of fun they will be having.

The second bullet point of the Legendary Skins being unlocked in ‘each playlist’ seems to suggest that there will be multiple skins that can be acquired for the Pursuit Weapons through Crucible, Gambit or Strikes.

Lastly, Luke Smith decided to give the community some notes on Bungie’s plans for Bright Dust generation as well as the contents of Bright Engrams:

“We are making it easier for you to earn Bright Dust.

• We will be moving away from character-specific ways to earn Bright Dust and more toward Account-specific paths.
• This change is geared toward giving one-character players significantly more Bright Dust than they earn today."

As a Warlock main, but with a decently leveled Hunter and Titan, it was always hard to only be playing my Warlock for the week and missing out on the almost 500 Bright Dust that could be obtained through my other characters.

Having Bright Dust generation being tied to the account and not the characters is great in 2 ways:

1. It will allow people with only one character to earn the same amount as people with 3 characters
2. It will allow people who prefer to play a certain character of theirs to still earn the max amount of Bright Dust in a week.

“We’re updating the Bright Engram to be more relevant than it is today.

• The earned Bright Engram in the Season Pass will be updated to include various Year 3 Eververse items previously sold for Silver and Bright Dust. And going forward, that Bright Engram will update each Season to include Eververse items from 3+ seasons prior.”

The rewards within the Bright Engrams have always felt like throwaway rewards for some time now. Making the rewards granted from these Engrams being from more recent Seasons will go a long way to making the player excited about opening each and every Bright Engram.

That's all the information we got from Luke Smith this TWAB but like the last few weekly updates this one was filled to the brim with changes that the community has been asking for for many months if not years.

As stated before, it's important to note that all of these additions outlined above are subject to change at Bungie’s discretion and many of these changes won't be seen for some time. All in all a lot of these changes can only be seen as net positives that will increase the player base and increase player retention.