If you’ve been paying attention to our article updates on the Destiny 2.0 Patch changes, you might have already heard about the changes that were coming to the bounty system. However, now that we can finally see and experience it for ourselves as players, it’s significantly more noticeable how much the changes are a major overhaul to the entire bounty system.
During the Twitch livestreams, it was mentioned that the objectives of the bounties themselves would be re-designed in a way that would be more considerate of players’ time. While we could imagine how this might work at the time, we didn’t have any actual examples to validate our mental projections. But when the 2.0 Patch hit yesterday, we were able to catch our first glimpse of what it means to have bounties that are more considerate of players’ time.
2.0 Patch PvE and PvP Bounty Content
The first day of PvE bounties could all be completed on Mars. They included,
- Defeat 10 Cabal Majors or Ultras
- Defeat 50 Cabal
- Collect resource nodes, open chests and kill enemies on Mars
All of which are all specifically oriented to Mars. The rest of the PvE bounties were non-specific to a mission or planet and could also be completed on the same Mars run including:
- Earn 10,000 XP without dying
- Generate 20 Orbs of Light
- Get 30 Arc weapon kills
The first day of PvP bounties could all be completed in any game mode. Similar to the way that forcing players to go to different missions and planets was a big complaint about PvE bounties, a big complaint about PvP bounties was forcing players to complete different crucible mode playlists. This seems to be fixed with the new bounties including:
- Defeat 3 opposing Guardians with precision shots
- Defeat 7 opposing Guardians with Primary Weapons
- Complete 3 matches in any playlist(s) while in a Fireteam of 2 or more players
- In a team game mode, defeat 3 opposing Guardians while your team has the lead
- Win a match in any team playlist while in a Fireteam of 2 or more players
- Rapidly defeat 3 Guardians.
While these results bounty changes are only examples from the first day of the 2.0 Patch changes, they are in line with the outspoken intentions of Bungie from the Twitch live stream and despite the fact that nothing is definite or locked in place, especially with Destiny, this is probably a good foreshadowing of how the bounty changes will affect players in the future.
Acquiring, Tracking, and Completing
In addition to the new bounty content, there were also major changes to the way that bounties are acquired, tracked and completed. Previously, players were forced to select which bounties they wanted to take and complete as the limited amount of slots did not let players just grab all of them and go.
Now, if you are loading up on Crucible and Vanguard bounties, there is more than enough space for your guardian to equip all of them before leaving the tower. Partially, this is made possible with the increase of bounty slots to 16. However, one other change that makes this possible is quantification. Bounties that would have previously been part of The Dark Below or House of Wolves DLC sets seem to have become quests instead of bounties. This means that they no longer take up any bounty slots which means that players have less forced decisions when making their selections.
Once the bounties have been equipped, there is now a new tracking feature that comes along with them. Guardians can now track up to four of their equipped bounties at one time. When completing a bounty either in PvP or PvE, it can be tempting to go to the menu screen to see how far along you are. The only problem with this is that in Destiny, going to the menu screen does not pause the game, leaving you wide open to attack when you are checking your progress.
Tracking doesn’t pause the game. But it does make it so that instead of going all the way back to the menu screen, players will now be able to check the progress of up to 4 selected tracked bounties in the Nav Mode screen that displays info without obscuring your sights of what’s happening in the games. To track the bounties, a player simply finds them in their quests tab of the menu screen and selects the track option.
The final big change that came to Destiny along with the 2.0 Patch is that players no longer need to return to the Tower to complete bounties. For many players, traveling back and forth between load screens to the Tower is one of the most frustrating and time-wasting experiences in the game. Those players can finally rejoice. At any time, bounties can now be completed and turned in from the quest tab of the menu screen with just the press of a button.
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