Bungie addresses Destiny 2’s content lockout, may add new difficulty

Why players without Curse of Osiris are blocked from playing parts of the game—and what Bungie's doing to fix it.

While Destiny 2 players have been happy to have more content to play through with the recent arrival of Curse of Osiris, not all of its changes have been beneficial. Apart from a new planet and campaign to complete, Bungie made several changes to the game’s overall level requirements by raising the Power level cap, and with that, the minimum requirements to participate in activities initially available at the game’s launch. In turn, players without the DLC were locked out of content they previously had access to, including Prestige versions of the raid, Nightfall, and Trials of the Nine. Thankfully, Bungie has decided this wasn’t the best decision.

In a blog post, the developer addressed the lockout, beginning with an overall apology to players affected most by the launch of Curse of Osiris. “With Curse of Osiris now live, it’s clear we’ve made some mistakes with how we have handled content access,” stated Bungie. “We would like to talk through the reasoning behind our decisions so far and what we are committed to changing moving forward.” What follows are a series of explanations for why the team decided to launch the DLC with the changes that they did, but more importantly, how they plan to remedy the issues moving forward.

A majority of the excuses for locking out players without DLC access comes down to how the team handled expansions in the first Destiny. According to the blog, Bungie wanted all of Destiny 2‘s endgame material to “stay relevant as each expansion causes your Guardian to grow more and more powerful.” In the first game, extra content, like Vault of Glass, was only played for a limited time by the community due to its lack of difficulty, which Bungie saw as a downside. So, the plan this time around was to raise the Power level cap and requirements with each expansion, offering an incentive for dedicated players to buy the expansion and continually grow their Guardians’ Power. However, with that choice came an overall lockout from activities that were meant to be available to all players, including Trials of the Nine, which Bungie now acknowledges as a problem.

In turn, the development team’s main fix for this issue was to lower the level requirement on several activities, as well as only lockout players from maps featured in Curse of Osiris. In addition to renewed access, players without the DLC will also get back the ability to earn specific trophies or achievements.

The Prestige Leviathan raid will be brought back down to Power 300, and its rewards will drop down to match the new Power level. All players will regain access to the Prestige raid.

• This will allow access to “The Prestige” Achievement/Trophy for all players.
• This will also allow all players ability to complete the final step for the Legend of Acrius Exotic shotgun.

Trials of the Nine will only require Curse of Osiris when it features a Curse of Osiris map. For all other weeks, it will be available to all players.

• This will allow access to “Lest Ye Be Judged” Achievement/Trophy for all players.
• Trials of the Nine rewards that launched with Destiny 2 will still be accessible to all players.
• New Seasonal rewards that launched with Curse of Osiris, such as the new Seasons armor Ornaments, will require ownership of Curse of Osiris to acquire.

While a majority of the changes bring stability back to the game, Bungie wasn’t going to give every piece of content back to players without Curse of Osiris. For example, the team believes Prestige versions of certain activities, like the Nightfall, are meant for dedicated players, who in their eyes are those who purchase expansions. However, another workaround to keep the community from getting upset over the Nightfall lock is to create a third difficulty setting for Prestige activities, “so that we can provide both a challenge that stays relevant with each new expansion and a Prestige version that is available to all players.”

The Prestige Nightfall will remain a pinnacle activity, at the new 330 Power cap.

• This means Prestige Nightfall will require ownership of Curse of Osiris.
• Because of this, we will update “The Prestige” Achievement/Trophy to only reference the Prestige raid.

If this new difficulty tier does get made, the other Prestige events will likely be locked behind DLC, too, making the new “hard” tier available to all instead. As for other events, like Iron Banner, Faction Rally, and The Dawning, the limited-time events will still be accessible to all players. Earning the Seasonal rewards and Ornaments found in Curse of Osiris activities will only be available to owners of the DLC, though.

Bungie states the changes listed will be implemented into the game when update 1.1.1 launches on December 12th from 7 a.m. PT to 2 p.m. PT. With the hotfix will also come the previously announced new content, including Masterworks weapons and more vendors taking Legendary shards as payment. Bungie also recently had to address a broken Exotic weapon that was making PvP matches unbearable for players without the weapon. After offering it for sale to all players as a joke, the team announced the 1.1.1 update will drastically nerf the Exotic, with a full update to the gun in January.

Destiny 2 is available for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC.

Source: Bungie's Blog