As per usual, Destiny continued to be my default game through Q1 2021. S12 was, as is typically the case with the first one of a new year, a pretty light one from a season-pass perspective. Hunts being pretty boring and repetitive, and the only really big non-beyond-light thing was Hawkmoon, which was fine, but not something I ran a jillion times.

Season 13 was a whole lot better! S13 brought us two new permanent mechanical changes: Recaster is back permanently, and Ritual Weeklies have been remade as Seasonal Challenges.

Seasonal Challenges have been really really good for me. For 10 or 11 or so weeks of a season, you get a new weekly chunk of specific tasks to chase. You can skip a week with no problems! You can plow through it all on reset day! You can do the challenges however you want, in whatever order once they unlock, solo, in a group, whatever. You can wait and knock out multiple things simultaneously.

The exotic quest was pretty good too! For the first time with an exotic quest I did all the things! Normal, Secrets, Master, Solo, Solo Flawless!

But really, the best part of the season was the bugs. Early in the season it was determined that with pretty minimal effort you could cram 12 people into a PVE event. 12 man raid. 12 man exotic quest. 12 man master nightfalls. And Bungie DIDN’T rush to fix it, they let it ride, because it was ridiculous. The double-stuf raids were hands down some of the best experiences I’ve had to date in Destiny. Up there with first clears of raids, challenge modes, etc. It was good enough that I wouldn’t be surprised if they have a team figuring out how to make 12-player-activities a real thing.

S13 also marked the announcement of the end of sunsetting, Bungie’s attempt to reel in past power creep. I was fine with it for weapons because something had to be done, and sunsetting seemed like a less garbo solution than sweeping permanent nerfs. But that isn’t what ended up happening. Nerfs still happened. New guns weren’t reissued at a rate that replaced old archetypes. Had they rolled it out better it probably could have worked. . . but they didn’t.

Well now it’s gone, and we’re back to sweeping nerfs forever. Worse, we’re now seeing Bungie retroactively modify rolls / dramatically rework perks. Like, next season they’re going to be completely blowing up Quickdraw on shotguns, replacing it with other perks.

I don’t know if this is going to be good in the long-run, but . . whatever. At least it means I can focus my armor grind, since armor no longer ages out.

S14 might be another light one. We don’t know of anything coming apart from a new slate of challenges and Vault of Glass on the 22nd. As usual, we’ll see how it goes.