Destiny 2 – The problem with bounties and ways to fix them

Guardian Games was introduced into last week, with the core mechanics focused on Bounties and Medals. This was met with an audible sigh in the community, with many feeling tired of bounties right now. The following is a look at the problem with bounties and ways to fix them in Destiny 2.

Guardian Games could maybe be the tipping point for the community as the bounty grind comes into focus for another seasonal event. Doubling up the bounties with the medals and making them the main focus of the event to get the Heir Apparent has brought the focus back onto bounties in recent weeks.

This follows on from the seasonal model being focused on bounties in Season of the Worthy including levelling up Bunkers for Warmind bits through bounties. The community is feeling bounty fatigue. Bungie has said they’re going to update the community over the coming weeks. Last week in the TWAB on April 23rd Justin Truman said “Next week we’ll be diving deep on our Seasonal model, and how we plan to improve it in the future as well as some info on bounties and our plans involving their evolution.” – so we’ll wait and see what they say next week.

Let’s check out some of the feedback from the community regarding bounties.

“Bounties are the main focus of the game, they should be something on the side rather than the main focus. They’re boring, repetitive, easy and not engaging.”

With bounties being the most efficient way to level up the season pass, and they are tied to the main mechanics of the seasonal activities, including this seasons Bunkers levelling and Warmind Bits generation. Bounties tend to give more XP rewards than strikes, crucible and gambit – other core activities in the game, so players wanting to level up the season pass to get the rewards there are having to do these smaller, repeatable activities than get boring over time.

“There’s no synergy between the bounties and context that we’re doing them”

The main reason we’re doing the Seraph Tower events is to create and launch satellites is to take out The Almighty that’s falling towards the Last City at the moment. However, we have Warmind bounties that take us into the crucible, which seemingly isn’t connected to the current narrative.

“Often we’re put into direct competition without teammates”

Bounties can put fireteams at odds with each other. For example, when completing Guardian Games medals for Forges (which aren’t strictly bounties, true…) and someone on your team wants to complete a Forge run to forge a weapon from the Black Armoury but the rest of the team are running around getting ability kills, that can lead to not completing the event and causing tension between teammates.

“The requirements for bounties are too specific”

Going to X location to shoot Y thing with Z weapon feels very specific and takes you out of the mode of playing the way you want to play. If you have to go into the crucible and kill 20 guardians while airborne, that can be frustrating for players who don’t like sidearms and crucible.

There’s also a couple of feedback points related to the UI:

“More time spent managing inventory than actually playing the game”

The specific bounties are causing headaches for some players who have to constantly manage their inventory, switching in and out of menus rather than playing the game.

“Allow us to pick them up from the menu”

Currently, we have to go to the Tower or destinations to pick up bounties, as that’s plenty of time going in and out of locations to pick up these bounties.

That’s just some of the feedback I’ve seen about bounties, let me know down in the comments what you think of bounties and the issues you have with them.

Introduction of bounties into Destiny 2

Bounties were introduced into Destiny 2 on July 2018, nearly a year after the sequel launched. This was the latest effort to roll back some the changes in Destiny 2 and came with Crucible and Vanguard bounties. Five crucible and vanguard bounties were added, with repeatable added at a later date.

Bounties have been iterated on over the seasons with the most recent changes coming in Season of Dawn update 2.7.0.

• Added repeatable bounties to the Gunsmith
• Added new mode-specific daily Crucible bounties
• Reduced the completion requirements of several daily and repeatable Crucible bounties
• Removed grenade and melee bounties from the Crucible bounty repeatable pool

Since the introduction of bounties, Bungie has attempted to improve the player experience, and we should hear more from Bungie this Thursday’s TWAB regarding the next steps.

The benefits of bounties

There are some pros when it comes to bounties:

• Bounties do force you to get out of your comfort zone and use weapons that you may not normally use. You may use a subclass or super or weapon you haven’t used before and realise you like it.
• Some are easy to do, so you don’t really have to think too much to do them. For example, pick up a bunch of crucible bounties at the start of a session and you tend not to pay too much attention to the requirements unless they are very specific, leading to additional rewards for completing activities.
• Imagine how little there would be to do if there were no bounties

But there’s plenty of cons too, which were outlined previously.

How bounties could be better in Destiny 2

There are a few ideas going around the community as to what could make bounties better and they include:

Make them less of a focus for the gameplay loop as a whole. Currently, the main gameplay loop for the season, in particular, Guardian Games, is very bounty focused which is already on top of the season PVE focus of levelling up Warmind Bunkers. That’s probably too much and bounties should have less emphasis on the levelling of the season pass. One way you could do this would be to add more XP gains to other activities like strikes, crucible and gambit or even older raids. Add more value into the other content, this would reduce the focus on bounties and open up the rest of the game.

Bounties need to be rewarding, engaging and meaningful. Bright dust, cores, upgrade materials are popular rewards we want for bounties and less trash loot we simply bin immediately. There should be a synergy between the bounties and the game you’re interacting with. One of the best examples in the game right now of meaningful bounties are probably Spider’s Bounties, where you go and hunt down specific enemies around the world. The Gun Smith bounties too make sense, using specific guns in specific places to test the weapons – totally makes sense. It’d be good to get your thoughts on what you think we should do with Vanguard, Crucible and Gambit bounties though and how might we change seasonal Rasputin bounties to be more engaging.

The UI improvements to make them easier to access and turn in from anywhere in the solar system feels doable with some nice UX design. There’s been some feedback that if we can easily access Eververse from anywhere at any moment, why can’t we pick up and turn in bounties from anywhere too.

It’s OK for them to be specific to an area, but when it’s too specific that can get frustrating. For example, getting 25 precision kills with a solar scout rifle on Titan is probably too specific, but saying get 25 precision kills is better. If bounties are too prescriptive that can force players into situations they may not want, or enjoy, to be in.

Finally, add requirements so you can complete bounties as part of a team, have activities that complement the team activities rather than actively work against them.

I’m sure you have plenty of ideas on how to make bounties better, let me know down in the comments this week and we can have a look again once This Week At Bungie comes out on Thursday and we can see how close we are compared to what they’re actually going to do to improve things.

That’s it for this guide for the problem with bounties and ways to fix them in Destiny 2. For more Destiny 2 content like this check out the Shadowkeep Guide or check out the YouTube Channel.