Destiny 2 updates suffer slight schedule slip

Bungie has warned Destiny 2 players of a schedule slip which will see various planned content releases shifted back for, the game's director claims, quality assurance reasons.

Released last year to critical acclaim, following a poor start for the first entry in the planned multi-game franchise with which developer Bungie is hoping to recapture its Halo glory days, Destiny 2 - like its predecessor - is scheduled to receive a range of content updates to keep players in its multiplayer universe connected and enthused. Unfortunately, players eager to get their hands on said new content are going to have to wait a little longer following a schedule slip announced this week.

Mere weeks after releasing its first public roadmap for content releases, Bungie has issued an update that sees dates shifted backwards for extended development times. 'With today’s update we’ve moved a few items out to later releases,' Destiny 2 director Christopher Barrett told fans in the announcement. 'This is because we are trying to ensure each feature we add hits a sufficiently high quality bar. So while we really wanted to get Nightfall Strike Unique Weapons into your hands next week to coincide with Nightfall Scoring, it's more important that each of those rewards live up to the difficulty it will take to earn them. They have to be super cool, so we're giving the artists extra time to make sure they are... super cool. Mod System Improvements are also still planned, but will not be available when 1.2.0 is released. We’ll give more details on when to expect these changes at a future date.'

Under the new schedule, update 1.1.3 will be released on February 27th with tweaks to the repetition of exotic items, the Nightfall Strike unique rewards, and companion vendor viewing features missing. These will instead form part of the 1.1.4 update scheduled for March 27th, which in turn loses its planned changes to the exotic weapon and armour sandbox system which is pushed all the way to the launch of Season 3 and the 1.2.0 update some time in May.

The schedule slip affects only portions of the planned content updates, with each update still retaining the majority of its planned content - in the case of 1.1.3, launching next week, the Nightfall Scoring feature and high-score tracking, Destination, Crucible, and Nightfall emblem variants, the appearance of fireteam members on the destination map, an opt-in public text chat system for Windows gamers, and companion mod/shader interaction functionality.