Destiny 2 will revamp its main missions throughout Lightfall. Bungie will touch on the Vanguard Ops, Nightfall, and Crucible playlists as part of its effort to revamp the game's core activities, according to a blog post today. Starting in season 22, players will also get a new featured mission node that revives missions from previous seasons, including Presage and Operation: Seraph's Shield.
Bungie will modify the power level for these activities in order to make them more enjoyable and provide a Battlegrounds playlist for players. The Battlegrounds playlist will feel similar to the level encountered in Season of the Seraph, while regular Vanguard Operations will have a smaller bump.
Bungie is also tweaking old Strikes, such as Lake of Shadows and The Arms Dealer, which are considered to be among the easiest and shortest missions in the playlist. According to Bungie, their goals and encounters will be closer to more recent (and more challenging) entries, such as Proving Grounds and The Inverted Spire.
Battlegrounds will be included in the Nightfall rotations starting with Heist Battlegrounds: Mars being included as a Nightfall during Season of the Defiance (season 20), according to a blog post. This would make for a different experience for players who have already gilded their Conqueror titles.
Bungie will also add a new, weekly rotating Exotic mission from previous seasons. Players may expect Presage (Season of the Chosen) and Vox Obscura (Season of the Risen) to return to the game through their own specific node. This may allow guardians (re)experience those missions and provide a different drop source for those Exotics.
Beginning with Season of the Defiance, Bungie is hoping to bring Countdown back to PvP, as well as a respawn-friendly version called Countdown Rush. Players may even see additional versions of Crucible Labs as part of limited-scope testing for future features and tuning. According to the blog post, season 22 will bring a "new Vex Network map."
Bungie has promised some future tweaks to the Crucible, including matchmaking and reward structures. “We still don’t believe we have mastered the trade-off between fair matches and good connections,” wrote game director Joe Blackburn in a blog post. The team will “continue to adjust algorithms to improve connection qualities” and lobby balancing to ensure a “more consistent skill spread.”
Trials of Osiris is expected to undergo some modifications in the future, as well. The team intends to touch on the "rewards and matchmaking structures of Trials of Osiris" in order to make the mode more appealing and "more consistently maintain the population at healthy levels," according to Blackburn.
Players may experience some of the new features starting with Lightfall and Season of Defiance, which launch on February 28.