Frontiers redesigns the whole game

To mark its 10th anniversary, Destiny 2 announced the biggest change to the franchise in its entire ten-year history.

Bungie has published roughly 15,000 words of blogs detailing what will change in Destiny 2: Frontiers, the new content “saga” that begins in about nine months. And there's been a lot of beating around the bush about the fact that it's actually a downgrade from the game's current level of content.

There is a lot to summarize, but I will do my best to summarize the main points. I will divide it into several sections:

EXTENSIONS

• There will be two expansions per year that will be smaller, but we don't know exactly how small. The first is Apollo in summer 2025, the next is Behemoth in winter 2025.
• Apollo in particular will have a non-linear story where you can hit beats in any order, with the story progressing the more you hit. There's a strong emphasis on “exploration.” Future expansions will take this format into other forms.
• Expansions focus on story content that now spans the year, rather than story arcs in specific seasons or episodes (more on that later).
• Expansions will include new “locations,” but it's unclear if a location is necessarily a “destination,” like a full planetary zone, or an expansion added to an existing area. If it's a new planet, we don't know what scale it will be compared to the reach from Mercury to Nessus.
• There will be new “raids and dungeons,” plural, yes, but I don't think we can say for sure that means 2 raids and 2 dungeons per year, as that only applies to the general concept of expansions. Bungie currently does a new raid every 1.5 years, so it seems unlikely that one will come every six months unless they're much smaller or existing raids are taken out of the vault.
• No reports of further vaulting, but also no confirmation of unpacking these raids or past objectives or campaigns. Presumably they're sticking with their “no vaulting of expansion content” policy.
• No mention of a new subclass. New enemy “factions,” but it's unclear if this means entire races or factions within existing races.

IMPORTANT UPDATES

• These are free, but they aren't seasons. There are four per year, and they don't appear to have a specific story component. They will offer new and “repeatable” activities as part of a new portal system, along with new loot and balance patches. Major resets will be saved for expansions, though. The portal now replaces the objective screen.
• There's still a paid Battle Pass for each major update, so four per year, but you don't have to buy it to play the season. It's possible there's an exclusive Exotic and Legendary in there, but whether those are available elsewhere is unclear.
• When moving to the Major Update, there will be a number of featured activity categories that reward a pool of new loot specific to this update. Crucible, which will be featured in the portal, would have a number of existing game types. A node would branch into Vanguard Ops, Onslaught, and The Coil. Pinnacle Ops would be dungeons or 50-wave Onslaught. Some activities like Raids and Gambit are not currently included in this rotation. However, you can still play these as normal with their own rewards, just not the featured loot pools.
• There's a new challenge system with more levels. The higher the levels, the more modifiers you can use to get better scores and better rewards. There's no plan yet for how this system will work in Crucible.
• Loot from these portal activities will now drop in tiers 1-5, with 1 being the base legendary and 5 being more like adept weapons with extremely enhanced perks. Armor also has tiers, but nothing is listed that is fundamentally different from what it is now.
• Old loot is not being eliminated and can be upgraded to the same “power level” as new gear, but how it will work in the new tier system is unclear, whether it will be automatically assigned or simply missing. Crafting still exists, but its role may be reduced somewhat, no details on that yet.

It's a lot, but it's… less stuff, a lot of reused stuff, and a smaller scope than the stuff we're getting now. There are a lot of unanswered questions and I have my doubts about whether this will appeal to new or returning players when we know more, but we'll see.

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