Destiny 2 Nightfall Strike to receive a major overhaul

Bungie has had its hands full in recent weeks attempting to paper over the cracks in Destiny 2’s slightly dented body work, although things are starting to look up thanks to a dedicated roadmap of fresh content and a brand new expansion coming later this year.

Before that however, the former Halo developer is focused on tweaking the Nightfall Strike, Destiny 2’s lengthy, tough-as-nails missions that are best known for coughing up some seriously valuable loot. However, fans haven’t been particularly taken with the timer feature, and as such Bungie’s decided to address this by shaking things up a bit following user feedback.

Writing in its latest blog update, Game Director Christopher Barrett said that Guardians should be able to ‘determine their own challenge level’ with the Nightfall, whether that be blasting through as quickly as possible or tackling the mission at a more methodical pace. 

‘Conquering Nightfall should be a badge of honor, with the best players able to show off their achievements with new dynamic emblems and exclusive auras,’ commented Barrett. These changes will be implemented in the next patch on February 27, with more updates to follow.

So what happens now? Well, the timer hasn’t gone, but your score will now instead ‘bleed’ over time, which Bungie feel is better overall as the team that completes the Nightfall quicker should bag a higher score. 

After 15 minutes of playtime, any points earned will decrease in value by 50 percent, and you won’t earn anything once 18 minutes has rolled past. At this point, the Nightfall becomes a ‘race to finish the run and post your score.’

As previously reported, Nightfall Scoring will also be added to the mix of new Destiny 2 updates, alongside three new modifiers: Void/Solar/Arc Singe, Extinguish, and Power modifier. 

There’s a bunch more technical mumbo-jumbo on Bungie’s plans to improve upon Destiny 2 in the developer’s blog post, so head over there for more info. Destiny 2 was released on PS4 and Xbox One back in September last year, and regardless of any issues it now may have, Alice thought it was actually pretty decent at launch.

Finally, regular players will want to tune in next week to the shared-world shooter, as Bungie’s kicking off Crimson Days after a two-year hiatus.