After a lot of negative feedback and tumbling player counts, Bungie have acknowledged that they made some poor decisions with Destiny 2. Here is their statement from this week’s TWAB.

“With Edge of Fate, we presented a different vision for the future of Destiny 2’s core game. One intended to refocus our releases and player call-to-action on a familiar but deeper pursuit of Power and ascending to higher Tiers of gear across a wider range of activities supporting customizable challenge and commensurate rewards.

Very quickly, the feedback made it clear that this was the wrong path for Destiny.

Even if our execution had been perfect, and we see plainly that it was not, it is clear that grinding Power will never be a substitute for earning a trophy. Climbing through throwaway tiers en-route to the gear you want to build around isn’t aspirational. And the Portal itself surrenders too much of Destiny’s feeling of place and exploration. These lessons, and many others besides them, have been taken to heart by our team over the last three months.

From 9.0.0 on through 9.1.5, our focus across the entire team has been response to player feedback, starting with the fastest changes and working through the more challenging ones. Our focus was on faster, better Rewards, more player agency in activity choice, and removing barriers to playing with friends.

Since Destiny launched over ten years ago, it has always been a living, reactive world. Through our successes and failures, we are grateful for the opportunities to explore different paths, learn from them, and with that clarity, build an inspiring new vision with, and for, our players. As we work on our plans and communications to address your feedback, thank you for being on this journey with us as we reshape our strategy for the long-term future of the Destiny franchise. “

The Portal and the associated power grind had come under heavy criticism as it required players to play the same few activities over and over again just to raise their power levels up before they could start getting decent weapon drops. This meant playing other activities, such as Dares of Eternity was completely pointless, and if you did, the matchmaking was unlikely to find any other players.

Updates 9.5.0 (December 2) and 9.5.0.1 (December 9) will begin to make changes to how the game works.

Wider access to Power progression, especially in Expansion content.
- Players will be able to reach the Power cap directly through Renegades activities if they wish.
Seasonal Power and Featured Gear carrying across Seasons.
- All Exotic weapons and armor are now featured.
- Additionally, we’re moving Power catch-up from a chest needing manual pickup to organic drops: sign in, play Renegades, catapult to 300 Power, and play with your friends.
Vault capacity and upgrades to ease collection pressure.
- We have increased Vault capacity by an additional 300 slots to 1000, and we’re working on more.
- In addition, the Vault now has a revamped filtering system to help find what you’re looking for faster.