Destiny 2 Game Director Promises PVP Map Pack, New Armor Sets, and More

Earlier this month, Bungie put out a State of the Game blog post for Destiny 2 that left a large portion of the community feeling ignored or otherwise brushed off. It seemed to give Bungie the space they needed to give the community excuses for why Destiny 2 is seeing less of the content that the studio had been making for some time and to set expectations for what was coming in the future. While the blog post did leave some disappointed and others feeling indifferent, it was just as much about setting expectations as it was about clearing the way for the Destiny 2 Showcase next week to be full of exciting announcements. 

Today, Destiny 2 Game Director Joe Blackburn sat down in a nearly 17-minute-long video recorded from his home office to address some of the community's feedback surrounding the State of the Game, the future of Destiny 2, and some of their biggest promises of the year. 

Starting off, Joe has addressed that the upcoming Showcase for The Final Shape will be a fairly high-level reveal event similar to previous events. He mentions that this won't be the place where they take a deep dive into the updated UI, but that they will talk about the Story, Destination, and important details for The Final Shape, as well as how the Live Service of the game is going to evolve following its release. 

Next, he talks about how Bungie is putting together a Strike Team for the Crucible in Destiny 2.This team is going to be completely dedicated to improving the overall PVP experience, bringing new modes and core changes to the way PVP works in Destiny 2. He also mentions that instead of slowly trickling out PVPs throughout the year, Destiny 2 will be getting a free Map Pack at some point in year 8 of Destiny 2. This will be a contained and dedicated Map Pack that will drop all of the year's PVP maps at once, rather than one per season as we've seen the last two years with a couple of revamped PVP maps and one brand-new map. He said that this is a new approach for the team on how they're building this content so it may take some time before they have more details. 

After PVP, Joe confirmed that The Final Shape will be getting a new set of Ritual Armor for the core modes, Strikes, Crucible, and Gambit. He also addressed the community response to no new Ritual Armor each season moving forward and announced that Bungie will instead take an Armor set that was built for Eververse and convert it into a Ritual Armor set that can be earned by playing Strikes, Crucible, and Gambit in Season 22. 

Finally, he brings up the team's communication and how he and the rest of the team have felt they've fallen behind in recent times. Previously, Bungie was known for their excellent community interactions but following threats to employees of all disciplines at the studio, Bungie quietly pulled back on allowing the team to individually speak out on popular sites like Twitter/X and Reddit. Now, Joe has guaranteed that the team will work to be more direct and personal via their branded accounts set up earlier this year to gather feedback and interact with fans.

Joe has also committed to streaming the game a few times a season to touch base with the community and answer their questions while asking for feedback directly. This will open up new channels of communication and hopefully rebuild some of that goodwill that Bungie has spent years trying to build. 

That's everything that Joe had to say about the future of Destiny 2 as we approach the Destiny 2 Showcase on August 22nd. We now have a better idea of what to expect from the Showcase itself and beyond.

Make sure to keep an eye out at the Destiny 2 Hub following the live stream for breakdowns on what you can expect in The Final Shape!