Bungie Will Be Moving Away From A Focus on Microtransactions in Destiny 2

No, Eververse is not going away. But Tess Everis’s role in the MMO/FPS hybrid will be getting drastically reduced

Bungie detailed their roadmap for the next few months for Destiny 2, not necessarily in content, but in changes that the community has been demanding to make, and one of the biggest changes is a focus on making sure that Eververse is not the focus. For the uninitiated, Eververse is Destiny’s loot box and microtransaction hub, where gameplay intersects with real world money. Numerous complaints have recently found that the endgame and valuable rewards tended to be locked behind paywalls or excessive grinding rather than meaningful achievements.

With their latest development update, Bungie has said that the focus on Tess Everis has grown too much. They want to try to bring a bit more meaning back to the actual gameplay and rewarding players with cool, exclusive things for specific activities.

We recognize that the scales are tipped too far towards Tess at the moment, and Eververse was never intended to be a substitute for end game content and rewards. So, we’ll be making three changes for upcoming Seasons:

  • We’re shifting the balance of new content in favor of activity rewards over Bright Engrams. This includes adding Ghosts, Sparrows, and ships (to date found only in Bright Engrams) to achievement reward pools.
  • We’ll provide a gameplay path to earn Bright Engrams and all contained rewards (including Event Engrams).
  • We’ll give players more direct purchase options and make adjustments to Bright Engrams to allow players to get the items they want more often.

We’ve begun implementing these changes for the Crimson Days event beginning February 13 (with even more changes on the way in Season 3):

  • Completing Nightfall, Raid, and Crimson Days milestones during Crimson Days will reward you an exclusive Legendary Emote, Weapon Skin, and Exotic Sparrow, respectively.
  • Players will earn double engrams at level-up: one Crimson Engram and one Illuminated Engram for the duration of the event.
  • Crimson Engrams can also drop from completing the Crimson Days match and from completing the Crimson Days milestone on each character.
  • Each Crimson Engram is very strongly weighted to new rewards when decrypted until all new event items have been obtained.

There’s a lot of promise in this update, but we’ll have to wait until Crimson Days launches on February 13 to see how big of an effect they actually have on the in game economy. Bungie will likely have additional details as the next Destiny 2 live event gets closer.

What do you think of the announced changes? Is Bungie starting to move Destiny 2 microtransactions in the right direction?

[Source: Bungie]

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