Destiny 2’s top-level Nightfall activity will change next week to become more similar to Destiny 1’s – and that’s a good thing.
As previously confirmed, Bungie is removing the Nightfall’s time limit and adding a scoring structure based largely around how many enemies you and your fireteam kill and how many Super orbs you spawn.
This week’s Bungie blog goes into a lot more detail about how the scoring will work, and how players will be further challenged with the introduction of tough optional modifiers.
“At 15 minutes, new points earned are reduced by 50 per cent,” Bungie noted – so speedily completing a Nightfall will still provide reward. “At 18 minutes, you stop earning new points and it’s a race to finish the run and post your score.”
Complete a Nightfall run and you’ll get a challenge card drop which will then add a specific modifier to your next Nightfall run. These modifiers can make the strike tougher through damage burns or reduce your overall power in exchange for more points.
Players will then be able to show off their top scores via new player emblems which track your personal best totals. Bungie will also maintain a par score line, above which players will be able to boast of their accomplishments via the fan-favourite blue aura effect for your character, and an increased chance of Vanguard tokens dropping.
Auras will no longer occupy a specific slot on your character UI – another change similar to Destiny 1. Instead, you’ll activate them by displaying one of the Nightfall stat-tracking emblems.
Finally, Bungie briefly detailed a new fixed loadout mode coming to the game’s raid activities, currently pencilled for launch around May. This will become the new standard Prestige experience for raids, and give a curated Nightfall-like modifier and specific set of weapon types for each of the game’s three gun slots.
Bungie has already detailed other changes to bring back some of the Destiny 1 feel to Destiny 2. The ability to pick specific loot from vendors and from Iron Banner has already returned. In the future, six-versus-six play will again be available in Crucible. It’s great to see fan-favourite things from Destiny 1 being brought back – but it’s still something of a mystery why they ever went away.