Bungie is drastically changing the way Prestige raids work in Destiny 2 and it sounds like a downgrade

Prestige raids are going to force fixed loadouts with only one location per week

Bungie is rapidly losing their audience with questionable decisions for Destiny 2 and its lukewarm post-launch content drops, but an upcoming Prestige raid “improvement” sounds like one of the worst changes yet for dedicated raiders. In short, the original Prestige mode is going away, and will be limited to one location per week with specific loadout restrictions. What?

Let’s break this down. Right now if you want to run a Prestige version of any given raid (currently one location in Destiny 2 and several in Destiny 1, which are labeled as “hard”), you can just run it. Think of Prestige as a new difficulty setting, where enemies are enhanced and new mechanics come into play. It’s a fun incremental weekly routine that players have been enjoying since the first game, but this system actually removes content from the cycle and restricts Prestige to one event per week with limited guns that Bungie is forcing you to use.

A (non-final) example involves players being forced to use a sidearm, submachine gun and shotgun loadout (the least fun combo I can think of), with “increased melee damage and bonus super upon melee kills.” So let me get this straight — I just spent months earning my own custom weapons, including my favorite Masterworks and Exotics to use to tackle the game’s top challenges, and now…I can’t use them? After listening to hype campaigns about how you’ll “earn guns you remember and cherish” for years this change feels so bizarre. According to a community rep from Bungie who added more clarification, just in case you thought this was optional, “The loud out [sic] mode will take the place of Prestige mode.”

Welp. For the first time in years since the original Destiny launched, I may not be running Prestige on a regular basis. They have three months to reverse their decision and sensibly add this Frankensteined experiment (which could be cool as an extra) as an additional third mode — because that’s when the Prestige version of the Osiris raid lair is set to drop.

This week at Bungie [Bungie.net]