Bungie released a state of the game for August 2023 instead of their usual weekly This Week at Bungie in Destiny. They will be holding a Destiny 2 showcase on August 22nd of this year, stay tuned for coverage of the event. With today’s state of the game, Bungie utterly makes Gambit useless in the game going forward. Earlier this year, we wrote about is it time for Gambit to go away, you can check that here. Let’s take a look at what Bungie said today and provide some thoughts.
Bungie does acknowledge that they have been quiet on Gambit since the release of The Witch Queen. They note that with the Witch Queen revamp, they made significant changes in core activity fundamentals, Primeval tuning, invasion, ammo economy and rewards. These changes did not move the needle at all for player engagement and while players would like new or returning maps Bungie states “this is an area of the game with lower engagement that would take resources away from more popular parts of the game to shore up.” They do not have plans to dedicate more resources to transform Gambit outside of a few updates planned for the year of the Final Shape. These plans are to port the Cathedral of Scars map and add Shadow Legion and Lucent Hive enemies to the mode.
A further kick in the bag to Gambit is that they are now making it completely optional. Gambit will continue to provide a weekly Exotic engram via weekly challenges, but starting in Season 22 all weekly challenges can be completed in any ritual you like so you can stick to Vanguard or Crucible challenges and not have to touch Gambit. Also, Bungie is reducing the number of Gambit specific Seasonal Challenges. Next season they will be adding Fireteam Matchmaking to Gambit which will replace Freelance mode to result in faster, better matchmaking by combining both playlists. They will be watching reception and player engagement and “hope” you visit Drifter next season for his new Void Machine Gun.
Thoughts on this news…. It seems like Gambit is going to go the way of the dodo bird, without additional resources to put into the mode and it basically not changing I don’t foresee that player engagement will change enough to warrant them moving more to Gambit.
What do you think about the announcement from Bungie that Gambit is not getting any major changes? Do you think that Bungie makes Gambit useless now? Let us know your thoughts on this in the comments below or hit us up on our Twitter account by clicking here. As always stay tuned to Culture Splat for more content coming at you!
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