*AND HIS TEAM
So everyone remember Chris? That emo dude with nice shoes from House of Wolves and then Rise of Iron. Well, basically, in my opinion, he was one of the developers that started to make D1 a better game. House of Wolves was (again in my opinion) the start of the turning point for the fundamental changes D1 would go through, for the better. Sir Barrett blesses us once again. All hail the king.
New systems and rewards to give our most engaged players additional, optional pursuits.
Better incentives for players who complete challenging Prestige activities.
Better rewards and replay value for strikes, adventures, and Lost Sectors.
Private matches for the competitive community (we are targeting early 2018).
Crucible tuning like adjusted Supremacy scoring and better spawning rules.
Better incentives for completing Crucible matches (and penalties for quitting competitive games).
Continued improvements to Iron Banner and Faction Rallies, including uniqueness of rewards.
Changes to make the mod economy more interesting and impactful.
Ongoing improvements to Exotics, including adjustments to reduce instances of duplication.
New ways to spend surplus currency and materials (looking at you Legendary Shards).
An emote interface that allows players to equip Salty, Spicy Ramen, Six Shooter, and Flip Out all at the same time.
There's more we're working on. We'll talk again soon.
-Barrett
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The first step to fixing a problem is to acknowledge it. The community has been very vocal about the issues and I am sure that the guys playing this knowing anyway so it is a step in the right direction that they are talking about the key issues. Given the game is not very old and PC is only just out, I would have been surprised if they had come out any quicker on this give some of the issues were clearly design choices that fell flat. On the flip side, those people that say 'D2 was already in development when TTK came out' seem to forget that D2 was delayed for a year and was directed by the same dude that did TTK. Some if the improvements that were made with TTK should definitely have been in this game from release, not added in later on when a massive chunk of the player base has moved on after a second disappointing release. Those people may never come back now. There are some fundamental issues with this game and there aren't many more than those mentioned by Chris in the TWAB. A lot of those should come with free game updates (replayability improvements, private matches, going back to choosing of game modes etc) and some should come with paid DLC (story content, new modes of play, new guns etc). I have paid for the expansion passes so I will play that when it is out, however right now the content is largely done and I have no reason to replay it. If I hadn't already paid then there is a good chance I wouldn't bother to pick up the new stuff. That, to me, is the biggest challenge Bungie have. And no... random rolls isn't the way to fix it.