With Destiny 2’s upcoming Forsaken expansion, one of Bungie’s main goals is to give players more (and more consistent) reasons to stick around over the long term, and a big part of that goal lies in how the expansion will be changing up the existing milestones and mods systems.
During a recent interview with Game Informer, Destiny 2 game director Steve Cotton discussed how milestones and mods will be adjusted when Forsaken arrives. With the changes it has outlined, Bungie plans to address two of the game’s biggest flaws: weekly milestones being the only worthwhile activities to pursue each week, and legendary mods feeling less like a fun augment and more like a mandatory power boost.
Milestones
- Milestones will be changed into challenges, and the more minor tasks that are now referred to as challenges will be rolled into Forsaken’s recently detailed Bounties system.
- There will be weekly challenges for existing Milestone activities (Crucible, Flashpoint, Nightfall, etc.) that will refresh at a more frequent rate.
- New activity types such as bounties, Heroic story missions, and the Gambit game mode will get their own challenges as well.
- There will also be daily challenges that award the same powerful gear rewards as weekly challenges and rotate between various activities (strikes, Crucible, Gambit, etc.) for each new day.
- If there are a few days where you can’t log in and play, the game will automatically “stockpile” up to four daily challenges so you’ll always have daily objectives to chase when you log in.
- Along with the listed challenges, there will also be hidden challenges whose criteria isn’t explicitly laid out, encouraging more adventurous players to keep a close eye out while pursuing their usual daily and weekly challenges.
Mods
- When Forsaken launches, rare mods will be phased out in favor of a system that only utilizes legendary mods (this means no more having to stockpile stacks of rare mods just to combine them into legendary mods).
- The power advantage of legendary mods will be removed, which means they won’t be required to reach the Power Level cap.
- Instead of flat damage or stat boosts, mods will now grant unique passive perks that can enhance your given playstyle.
- Sample mod perks include Radar Tuner (your radar returns faster after you finish aiming your weapon), Icarus Grip (improved weapon accuracy while you’re airborne), and Targeting Adjuster (improved target acquisition capabilities).
- Sadly, you’ll no longer be able to use mods to change the elemental damage type of an energy or heavy weapon.
- Mod will be harder to acquire, but they’ll also have a greater impact on how they affect your character, so players won’t feel obligated to constantly swap in new mods.