Destiny 2’s assistant game director admits that Bungie pushed too many changes too fast during Edge of Fate, leading to one of the buggiest years the game has seen recently.
Destiny 2 has been in surgery all year. The Edge of Fate expansion in July did not just kick off the new saga; it rewired almost everything in terms of how the game functions. The Portal became the main progression hub, and Armor 3.0 changes how the stats worked. Bungie also added a gear tiering system, where players could unlock different tiers of the same weapon, with each tier enhancing the weapon’s perks and stats.
Now, Bungie is about to layer even more systems on top of that with Renegades, the Star Wars-themed expansion launching next week on December 2. Renegades brings a new campaign and Lawless Frontier activity, the Praxic Blade exotic, blasters, a new Orders system for rewards, the Equilibrium dungeon, and new weekly grind like Vanguard Alerts.
The problem is that the game has been struggling under the weight of all this. Since Edge of Fate launched, Destiny 2 has been hit with one bug after another. Bungie had to apologize for the Armor 3.0 ability stats not matching its own preview. Movement was bugged and worse than before, with base mobility values being wrong.
On top of that, Ash and Iron update “unintentionally altered” grenade and melee cooldowns so 100 stat builds felt weaker than pre-Edge of Fate. Then came the “Craftening 2.0” sword glitch that let players delete raid bosses almost instantly with zero heavy ammo. Bungie has been responding and apologizing as each issue pops up, but players have clearly felt the impact.
Now Destiny 2 director Robbie Stevens is speaking about what’s been going on behind the scenes.
Bungie says Destiny 2 Edge of Fate “changed too much too quickly”
Speaking to Rogue in a Renegades preview interview at Bungie HQ, assistant game director Robbie Stevens was asked directly about the current instability, the bug walls, and what all these rapid changes have done to the live game.
Stevens said Edge of Fate, the Year of Prophecy updates, and Renegades were all built as a response to players asking for bigger changes, more ways to play, and more loot to chase. He admits that scale of change came with a price. In his words, “change is messy … there are probably parts of the game where we went too far, and we changed too much too quickly.”
He calls that cost a “tax” the team now has to pay, in the form of emergency fixes and reworks when parts of the new structure simply do not work. At the same time, he points to things Bungie still believes were good calls, like the new armor stat curves, set bonuses, and tier 5 weapons, while admitting those also sped up progression so much that the team had to invent new long-term chases to keep players engaged.
“I mean, I think Edge of Fate, Year of Prophecy, and Renegades, the entire year here, a big part of this was people wanting change, asking us to make changes to the game, asking for new things to do, new things to explore, new loot, different ways of even playing the game too,” said Stevens. “And so change is messy.
“And the thing that I think we will own and acknowledge is there’s probably parts of the game where we went too far, and we changed too much too quickly. And with that comes a tax, and that tax is how much we need to then react to those things that aren’t working for how much we changed. Now there are things that have I think gone pretty well, right?
“There’s the armor stat changes, the set bonuses that come from them. Tier Five weapons themselves feel hot even though we’ve created a new problem because we’ve sped up so much of the progression that we need to find new exciting chases.”
A lot of what Renegades is doing sounds like a direct reaction to that. The Orders system is meant to give you clearer, more focused reward tracks across Common, Legendary, and Exotic tiers. Vanguard Alerts adds a weekly ritual layer that makes it obvious where to start when you log in.
“And we are clearly trying to do that. You’re seeing it with the blasters and the Praxic blade having a ton of customization, gameplay, and cosmetic depth there. Having more just cosmetic pursuits inside of Renegades, all up with each of the syndicates, which is not something we had in the Edge of Fate at all. And also, y’all seen it yet because we want everyone to experience it and see it for the first time, but we actually are going to have these alternate delighter perks on blasters as well.
“So even if you earned a Tier Five blaster, they’re still going to be a pretty deep chase to earn the alternate origin perk versions that are going to be a new perk, super hot for them as well. And I’m only hiding this as there’s some stuff coming very, very soon because a lot of that is in direct reaction to changes we had to make because of how fast we had to move in order to start to right the ship on the speed of progression and how it feels.
“And so I think the reality though, still remains in order for the game to continue to evolve. And we’re trying our best in order to make it feel different in the right ways and change in ways that are somewhat sustainable for us developers. But also frankly, our main goal is just excitement and fun for players.
“There are going to be bumps in the road. It’s going to happen. There are more bumps than we wanted. And like I said, a big part of that is we acknowledge we probably changed too much. We probably should have tried to innovate a little less and focused a little bit more on smaller bites at the apple. So definitely acknowledge that,” Stevens concluded.
There is a lot coming in this next expansion. New exotics, a long list of legendary weapons, and returning favorites, which you can check out in full, perk pools and all, in our separate Renegades weapons roundup.
How are you feeling about all of this? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below!
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