This Week At Bungie Gives Insight Into Season Of Opulence

In their most recent This Week At Bungie blog post the Destiny 2 developer gave Guardians an insight into some of the changes coming to the game with the next season, Season of Opulence.

The bulk of the changes shown so far relate to two weapons specifically, Luna’s Howl and Not Forgotten. Both of these Hand Cannons are Pinnacle weapons that launched with Destiny 2 Forsaken, standing out above the crowd in Sandbox mode.

The developer team at Bungie has decided that after taking on board all of the feedback about these weapons, and playtesting them extensively, they’re going to adjust them in Season of Opulence. However, they understand that each of these weapons requires a significant time investment, and they don’t want to nerf them so much that the time Guardians have put in to get them seems wasted all of a sudden.

In order to get Luna’s Howl a Guardian needs to kill 450 opponents in the Crucible Competitive playlist, get 100 headshots, and reach the rank of Fabled. Not Forgotten requires Guardians to first earn Luna’s Howl, then use it to get 500 more kills in Competitive Crucible. That’s a total of almost, or over depending on how often you get headshots, 1000 kills in the toughest PVP mode.

The adjustment relates to the perk on both of these weapons, Magnificent Howl. This perk works in a neutral setting and rewards players for doing something they would do naturally, getting precision shots. The developer team say that the majority of the feedback they have received tells them that no one feels they can compete with these weapons because of the way they shift the balance of the game in their favour.

The current plan for Season of Opulence is to make both Luna’s Howl and Not Forgotten the only 150 RPM precision Hand Cannons in Destiny 2. While they’ll maintain some of their current behaviour and aspects, they’ll take on the damage and firing speed of 150 precision Hand Cannons. the perk, Magnificent Howl, will also be adjusted so tat it only boosts body shot damage, giving them a two body shot or one headshot kill. The perk will still provide an advantage because precision shots will take less time to kill an enemy, but they won’t feel quite so unbalanced.

Bungie have started talking about these changes early because they want to know what the community think of them. In their mind there’s no point implementing a change that the community hates, only to reverse it or tweak it soon after it’s been deployed. I think this is a sensible decision on their part, and the community has already begun feeding back as a result.

The general consensus is that these changes are good for PVP as a whole, in fact the Crucible has been the source of the bulk of complains on the Destiny 2 forums for some time. However, the Guardians with the best weapons have put in the time and effort to earn them, so they should be able to use them and have that advantage over others.

It’s easy to see why Bungie want to re-establish some balance in the Crucible, but at the same time they are definitely going to hurt those players who have done the grind to get one or both of these Hand Cannons. The fallout when Season of Opulence hits will be interesting to see.

Let us know what you think of these weapon nerfs in the comments.

Image Source: PCGamer