While the latest weekly update on Destiny 2 from Bungie opens with a vaguely threatening promise—”Whenever you engage your fellow players in the Destiny arena, like you did in the Destiny 2 console Beta, our designers are studying you.”—some of the promised fixes and tweaks coming to the PC beta sound a bit more comforting.
When it launches on August 28 (if you pre-ordered, otherwise it's open to everyone from August 29-31), we’ll see a host of balance changes, many of which directly address criticisms we had of the console beta.
If you're planning on playing the beta yourself, expect to see a longer Mercy rule timer for Crucible matches, improvements to competitive matchmaking, reduced Super charge times, increased Power Ammo drops in PvE, and more. The changes from the blog are listed below, and most of them are fairly welcome.
We’d still like to see the grenade recharge timer shortened, but more damage will do—for now.
PvP changes
Quickplay
Matchmaking times will be shorter, with less emphasis on Skill. This is the fastest route to a game, but you may face opponents outside of your comfort zone. The winning score in Control has been extended from 75 to 100 to allow for more time to play and use your abilities. Because too many matches were shorter than we expected (some Guardians weren’t even able charge their Super) we’ve extended the trigger for the Mercy rule so it will come into play less often.
Competitive
Matchmaking takes more time to introduce you to players that are closer to you in skill with a good connection. These matchmaking settings may take longer, but we feel that the quality of the gameplay experience will be worth the wait. We have also made improvements to the way we calculate your skill in Countdown to better reflect how you’ll perform against your opponents.
PvE changes
FIXED: Infinite Super Glitch
Infinite Supers are all well and good until someone loses an eye.
FIXED: Warlock Glide Glitch
This bug was awesome… So awesome it hurt us a little bit to kill it. Thanks to those in the console Beta who helped us track this down.
FIXED: Infinite Grenades Glitch
Another issue found with the help of our friends in the console Beta. (Thank you!)
FIXED: Warlocks now have the same Melee Range as all other classes
With the exception of where perks directly increase their range, Warlocks will punch like the rest of us. Our PC friends will get a chance to experience a world with consistent base melee ranges. So will the rest of you, when the game launches.
TWEAKED: Globally reduced the time it takes to charge your Super
This was a big change that came directly from your feedback during the console beta. We agree it was taking a bit too long to cook up a Super.
TWEAKED: Increased Grenade Damage in PvE
Increased damage helps Grenades feel as powerful as they should facing hordes of alien combatants and, more specifically, makes the longer cooldowns more palatable. We want abilities to be slightly more rare, but worth it. In the console Beta, the “worth it” part wasn’t quite there yet.
TWEAKED: Increased Power Ammo drops in PvE
This is something we had felt internally and have been slowly tuning up over the last several weeks. The PC beta has been updated with our new values and will provide much more heavy ammo in PvE than what was found before. Heavy ammo can also be directly farmed from all Yellow Bar Combatants. Go big, Guardians!
