As the launch of Destiny 2 Shadowkeep draws ever nearer, Bungie has posted one last blog detailing some of the changes that players will see across the various systems of the game.

　　A major one is that no pinnacle weapons will be made going forward as these had simply become too powerful, dominating all game modes in Destiny 2. Ritual weapons will be introduced instead and, given they'll be less powerful, the quests to obtain them will be accordingly simpler.

　　The decision to stop creating extremely powerful pinnacle weapons was made for a variety of reasons. The first was that the band in which “pinnacle” perk can exist is actually quite small, and most of them far exceeded the efficacy they should have been at. Another issue is that they cause problems in the player ecosystem, particularly in the case of the Crucible pinnacle weapons. Due to the nature of PvP and PvE, anything that works well in PvP is likely going be extremely effective in PvE as well. This forces players into the Crucible if they want the “best” loadouts. Even the title of “pinnacle” set a variety of unrealistic expectations. Rather than being the absolute height of Legendary power, they were supposed to be interesting novelties to chase.

　　These problems became more pronounced the more of them we produced. In the end, we decided to move away from pinnacle weapons. If you managed to collect them all, we hope you enjoy them!

　　Bungie is also tuning PvE difficulty and PvE damage number display in the UI.

PVE DIFFICULTY TUNING

　　Combatants that are 10–40 levels higher take less time to kill and deal less damageHigher-level combatants continue to increase in difficulty up to 100 Power levels above the playerWhen enemies are 100 Power levels or higher above the player, they are immune to damageNameplate icons on higher-level combatants have been updated to reflect these changesThese changes affect only higher-level combatants; the at-level or over-level experience remains unchanged

PVE DAMAGE NUMBERS DISPLAY

　　Displayed damage numbers for damage dealt to non-Guardian enemy combatants are crunchedDamage dealt is displayed using fewer digits to enhance readability of damage outputOccurrences of displayed damage getting capped at 999,999 should be significantly reduced or eliminatedThe exponential curve used to calculate damage numbers for display is replaced with a new linear curve that is built to last for many yearsAs players grow in Power, displayed damage numbers increase at a much more measured pace than previouslyThis is a UI update only; player damage output, whether measured as hits to kill, time to kill, or DPS, remains unchanged by this update

　　The developers also reminded everyone that Destiny 2 will go offline for about 24 hours on September 30th at 10 AM PDT, leading up to the launch of Shadowkeep on October 1st. Below you can find the release trailer.