Bungie is continuing its run of Destiny 2 bad luck, so much so that it's starting to seem like it's the victim of a witch's curse. Its latest trouble centers around the Curse of Osiris DLC that launched last week, and made major changes to the way raids worked. Basically, Prestige Raids and the latest season of Iron Banner or Trials were suddenly only available to players who had coughed up for the $20 DLC.
"With Curse of Osiris now live, it’s clear that we’ve made some mistakes with how we have handled content access," Bungie said in a blog post attributed to the development team.
"We’ve heard from the community that both of these plans aren’t working. The Prestige Raid was a novel experience that players value, even if they don’t own Curse of Osiris, and it was a mistake to move that experience out of reach. Throughout the lifetime of the Destiny Franchise, Trials has always required that players owned the latest Expansion. However, for Destiny 2, Trials of The Nine launched as part of the main game, so it’s not right for us to remove access to it."
"To make matters worse, our team overlooked the fact that both of these mistakes disabled Trophies and Achievements for Destiny 2. This was an unacceptable lapse on our part, and we can understand the frustration it has created."
Can someone call 911? My head just slammed so hard onto my desk that I'm pretty sure I have a skull fracture.
Updates will be going live tomorrow to try and fix all of the above, but they might prove confusing for players who don't haunt the Bungie news blog, desperate for any word on their next hit of space dust.
The TLDR is that the Prestige Leviathan Raid will be brought back down to Power 300, and it'll be available to all players. Trials of The Nine will only require Curse of Osiris when it features a Curse of Osiris map. This is a little trickier, as it means that sometimes it'll be available to all players, and sometimes it won't. Sure, your hardcore clan will have it in their Google calendar, but your more casual friends are going to find the whole system hard to follow.
The Prestige Nightfall will still require ownership of Curse of Osiris, with a new 330 Power cap.
"Moving forward, we are investigating adding a 3rd difficulty to all 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," says Bungie.
As for Trials of The Nine, all rewards that launched with vanilla Destiny 2 will still be accessible to all players. Some seasonal rewards will need Curse of Osiris to acquire, however.
Bungie tried to explain its original reasoning behind locking the Prestige Raid away from players who only had vanilla Destiny, explaining it was because it wanted only players at the most recent Power cap to have access to the top raid. A more cynical person might look at is as a decision driven by dollar bills, but 'tis the season for goodwill to all men. And game developers.
On top of the blog post, Bungie also had to address the crazy overpowered Prometheus Lens.
Given the short window we had to make an emergency fix, it will be adjusted to be way too weak. In January, this new Exotic will receive a proper, play-tested design pass. (2/2)December 11, 2017
Sounds like someone's bug-fixing team is already on their Christmas vacation, doesn't it? Here's hoping nothing else breaks before 2018.
