Here’s what’s coming in early 2018
Bungie took an important step in its effort to be more forthcoming with Destiny 2 players today, posting a development roadmap for the game’s next three major updates.
The schedule follows a lengthy blog post from game director Christopher Barrett earlier this month, in which he outlined Bungie’s Destiny 2 plans for 2018. That post contained a general timeline for updates, and today the studio provided more detail on what’s coming and when, over the course of the winter and spring.
“Everything you’ll find below will be delivered to every player of Destiny 2,” said Barrett, explaining that Destiny 2 owners will get the updates regardless of whether they’ve purchased Curse of Osiris or future expansions. He also noted that “there are larger projects in development,” which is perhaps a reference to systemic changes to systems like consumable shaders and the Eververse microtransaction store — neither of which is mentioned in the roadmap.
Yesterday, Bungie released its first major update of the year, bringing Destiny 2 to version 1.1.2 with new features like Masterwork armor and revised elements such as raid rewards. The next big patch, v1.1.3, is scheduled for Feb. 27. It will bring strike scoring to the Nightfall, and Bungie is also aiming to add unique rewards for Nightfall strikes — although that feature is a “stretch goal” for the February update, which means it may slip to a later patch. Other tweaks coming in v1.1.3 include the introduction of public text chat in Destiny 2 ’s Windows PC version and a reduction in the frequency of duplicate exotics.
Bungie aims to release v1.1.4 one month later, on March 27. That update will be focused on the Crucible and the game’s sandbox, and it will bring six-on-six play to Destiny 2 for the first time — albeit only in the Iron Banner playlist, apparently. It will also introduce penalties for players who quit Crucible matches, and reduce the likelihood that players will see repeats in strike playlists and the Crucible. The stretch goal for March is updates to game balance for exotics.
Destiny 2 ’s third season of content will launch in May alongside v1.2 of the game. That’s a long way off, and players may be disappointed to see that some of their most highly anticipated updates — such as private Crucible matches, a vault space increase and the ability to equip multiple emotes — aren’t scheduled to arrive until then. May is also when Bungie is planning to release the Prestige mode for Leviathan, Eater of Worlds, which would be five whole months after the raid lair’s debut in December 2017. On the plus side, the roadmap for v1.2 includes Masterwork versions of exotic items, an update that was slated for “fall 2018 (or sooner)” in Barrett’s previous schedule.
“Some of these delivery dates may change, but everything you see listed here is being worked on the by the team,” Barrett said today. “If any of these deployments change, we’ll let you know.”
Update (Feb. 1): Destiny 2 ’s unnamed second expansion will launch in May, game director Christopher Barrett announced last night on Twitter. The game’s third season of content will begin at the same time.
Expansion 2 will launch in May alongside Season 3.
That means Bungie is sticking with the same downloadable content schedule that was in place for the first Destiny. The original game’s second expansion, House of Wolves, was released in May 2015, eight months after the game’s debut in September 2014.
Update (Feb. 21): Bungie had said its roadmap was subject to change, and today the studio revised its schedule to push some elements back. “We are trying to ensure each feature we add hits a sufficiently high quality bar,” said game director Christopher Barrett. You can see the updated roadmap below.
