Several months ago, Bungie overhauled Destiny 2’s Faction Rally activity, introducing changes that made a player’s faction pledge feel more meaningful but, in some ways, also more restrictive. Now, Bungie has confirmed that it is taking Faction Rallies back to the drawing board yet again, and because of this there won’t be any new Faction Rallies during Destiny 2’s upcoming fourth content season.
According to the most recent This Week at Bungie blog post, Bungie is putting the Faction Rally event on hiatus for season 4 so that it can reevaluate and retool the event based on fan feedback that was submitted during season 3. Specifically, Bungie highlighted two criticisms that were constantly mentioned throughout the season 3 series of Faction Rallies (text courtesy of Bungie):
- I don’t want to feel forced to participate in every instance of the event each season
- Make the event progression a bit less hardcore and more engaging
The first point about feeling forced to participate in every Faction Rally ties into the fact that, for the season 3 rallies, each player could only pledge their loyalty to a single faction per account for each rally. Since each faction also offered a unique Exotic weapon catalyst as its final reward, players who wanted to get their hands on all three catalysts felt obligated to grind incessantly for each rally because there were only three rallies in total throughout season 3.
For now, we don’t yet know what sorts of changes Bungie will be making for the Faction Rallies system, but it should be heartening to hear that the studio heard loud and clear that players didn’t appreciate having to grind so much if they wanted to reap the full benefits of the event. Also, those who missed out on the unique Faction Rally weapon catalysts need not worry as Bungie also previously confirmed there will be ways to earn those specific catalysts in Destiny 2’s second year of operation.
Destiny 2’s fourth season will begin on the same day as the launch of the Forsaken expansion, September 4.