Destiny 2 has made the gameplay of a seasonal activity harder. In reddit, players praise this change. It is even suspected that there are further tests to completely eliminate the power level. MeinMMO tells you what has specifically changed and what idea might be behind it.
Which change from Season 19 is currently exciting the players? So far, most activities in Destiny 2 can be divided into two categories.
- Either you are to some extent “over-leveled”, meaning significantly stronger compared to your opponents, so that especially seasonal activities become increasingly easier and more boring.
- On the other hand, there is the difficulty level “Top-tier”, where you are constantly under-leveled as a player, no matter how high your own power level is. Here, Destiny 2 automatically sets your own power level 25 below the activity requirement and forces players to level up to the activity requirement in order to even start it.
But Season 19 has brought a significant change to this system. Anyone currently playing the seasonal activity “Heist Battlegrounds” is now also automatically below the activity requirement by exactly 5 power levels. On Legendary even 10 power levels with locked equipment. Both are well received in the community, however.
Instead of nerfing builds or weapons, Destiny 2 has simply raised the difficulty of the seasonal challenge overall this time. Minus 5 power levels may not sound like much, but it seems to be sufficient to keep activities challenging in the long term. In combination with champions and the variety of enemies, the seasonal activity always feels challenging.
How was it before? In Season 18, it did not matter whether you had blue standard gear or a painstakingly unlocked and then crafted endgame weapon and a perfect gear build. It simply wasn’t important, and many players therefore did not bother with the effort.
Meanwhile, the player Lankygit in the Destiny 2 subreddit reports, however, that it feels weak since this Season 19 to engage the enemies with a random pulse rifle. However, his painstakingly crafted pulse rifle “Pain of Merain” from the Kingsfall raid does the job excellently and noticeably better.
“It feels great to now have the feeling that my best weapons are worth using, and not just a shiny decoration that you can look at on light.gg.
finds Lankygit in the Destiny 2 subreddit
Now it is much more of a challenge that also forces players to actively engage with build crafting and strategic gameplay.
And not only that: This small change could also be another hint at what Bungie might be planning in Lightfall. Power levels have been increasingly irrelevant in Destiny 2 for some time now, as it is being removed from more and more activities.
What does the future bring? In August MeinMMO reported after a leak that the annoying power level grind might soon no longer be necessary. At that time, Liz from the Twitter channel Destiny Leaks shared that Bungie is allegedly already working on it.
Now, this small power level change of the seasonal activity from Season 19 could further support this claim. Allegedly, Bungie plans to replace the old power level system of the loot shooter with something more universal:
- The power level is to be removed and everything will switch to a large artifact level. Leveling up will then be achieved by completing activities and no longer by quests.
If this is true, it could change the entire structure of progression in Destiny 2 with the release of the new Lightfall DLC.
The loot shooter has already reached a “sweet spot” where the gameplay is hard but not brutally restrictive. On reddit, some players have even suggested implementing this small power level adjustment in the strike playlist as noted by the player Gandarii.
I hope that Bungie listens to the positive feedback on the “Season of the Seraph” playlist and not only makes the -5 power levels a fixed part of the seasonal playlists, but also experiments with -10 and perhaps -20 in various activities. -10 could be a good option for a more challenging strike playlist, while -20 could be something to consider for exotic missions or mastering lost sectors.
Ultimately, we could reach a point where power levels could be completely removed from the game and we would only have 6 different difficulty levels (0, 5, 10, 15, 20, 25).
writes the guardian Gandarii via reddit
Have you noticed this change yet? Would you welcome it if it comes with the new Lightfall DLC? Feel free to let us know in the comments what you think about it.
Or are you one of the players who are done with Destiny 2, as a YouTuber recently predicted:
