Bungie is making a number of changes to Destiny 2 starting in its upcoming season, adjusting how content will be dished out and how you’ll earn rewards when you log in. Starting in the next content season, Bungie is doing away with its weekly bounty system that requires players to sign in and complete certain objectives within a week in order to gain certain rewards, including premium currency.
The latest This Week At Bungie blog runs down how Destiny 2 will change starting with the next content season, which kicks off on February 9. Currently, players can log in each week and pick up weekly bounties from various in-game vendors, which reward experience points and Bright Dust, one of Destiny 2’s premium currencies, upon completion. You only have a week to knock out those bounties once you have them, and if you want to maximize both your XP gains (which controls your climb to rewards on Destiny 2’s season pass) and your Bright Dust gains, you need to play every week.
Bungie is changing out that system for a new one called Seasonal Challenges. New challenges unlock each week through the first 10 weeks of a new season, giving players objectives to chase across a variety of activities. Instead of expiring each week, however, the challenges pile up and last until the end of the season, so you can skip a week or two (or more) and still come back to the game and earn your rewards.
We previously heard about how Bungie is changing its seasonal activities this year to reduce “FOMO,” or fear of missing out, among players who might leave the game and come back after long stretches. In the last two years, Destiny 2’s seasonal model added new activities to the game every few months, but those activities would only persist in the game until the next season started. That ends this year, when new events will kick off with every new season, but they won’t be removed from the game when a new season ends–at least, not until the next expansion is released in November.
The reward changes for seasons are also aimed at combatting FOMO and making it easier for players who aren’t able to log in each week. Bungie also said the seasonal challenge model is meant to give players who only have one character in Destiny 2 equal footing as those who have three. Seasonal challenges cover all characters on an account, so you won’t need to log in with each of three characters every week to complete the same bounties to earn full rewards.
While seasonal challenges will persist throughout a season and some will continue to be available as long as their corresponding seasonal activities are still in the game, you’ll still have to claim your challenges before the end of a given content season. So you won’t be able to get experience or Bright Dust from challenges from the previous season once a new one starts.
While seasonal activities will hang around long-term, there’s at least one thing that won’t be back this year; that’s Crimson Days, Destiny 2’s Valentine’s Day holiday event. The event usually features a special Doubles Crucible mode, in which teams made up of two players take each other on, as well as some Valentine’s-themed rewards. Bungie wrote that the quality of Crimson Days hasn’t been up to its standards in recent years, and so the holiday event is going into its “Content Vault” for the time being.
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