Destiny Update Promises Iron Banner Improvements

The latest Bungie Weekly Update takes a look at the future of Destiny, promising some returning special events with a lot of improvements. Starting off, it looks like The Queen’s Wrath will be making a return, but at a future, unannounced date. Bungie says they have responded to feedback, but need more time to implement all of the changes. More immediately, it looks like The Iron Banner will be coming back in a big way. Given the fact that the original version of Destiny’s Iron Banner didn’t go exactly as planned, you might not be too excited, but it looks like Bungie has responded to fan feedback and might have a better event this time around.

The biggest complaint with The Iron Banner last time was that the promised level advantages weren’t playing the way many wanted. This time around Bungie hopes to have improved that. “In the next Iron Banner, we will debut a much more dramatic difference between players of wide variation in Level. We will detail the changes in an article of its own to come as soon as we settle on some of the numbers. Because of this, the next Iron Banner will also require a Fireteam leader to be Level 20 to enter. While lower Level players may join in with their Level 20+ chaperone, they will find it very challenging.”

Another major issue was that players were only given rewards for winning, so if a loss seemed to be on the way most players simply quit with little to no negative consequences. Bungie is trying to fix this by making it so a loss will give you a “Medallion of Iron”. Then, on your next win, the Medallions that you carry will be converted to reputation gains that are almost the same as if you had won. This should fix the problem, since players will now be fine with a loss as soon as they win a later game.

Some other fixes coming in Destiny’s next Iron Banner are:

• Weapons
  • New exclusive reward Armor will be bumped to Level 30, but will still only be available in two slots. For advanced players, this will make them viable functional or visual sidegrades.
  • The weapon types available will go from two to four, divided between drops on match victory, and purchase from Lord Saladin in the Tower.
• Bounties
  • Several Bounties have been tuned down quite a bit, and overall the value of Bounties has been bumped up. Also, they have been moved onto Lord Saladin, who was getting a little lonely back there with only his gong and dinosaur drawings.
• Reforging (New Feature)
  • Lord Saladin will offer players the option of Reforging any Iron Banner weapon (including those from the last event.) This will re-roll all of the upgrades, but will also reset any progression. The cost for each Reforge will be a small number of Motes of Light, so set some aside next time Xur arrives in the Tower.
• Tempered (New Feature)
  • In the next Iron Banner, you will still have the Rank achieved in the last. But we still want players to come together for at least a few nights of team PVP, including veterans of the last event, so the Iron Banner ranks have been increased to 5.
  • In future Iron Banners, we will change over from Reputation to an Event Standing model where ranks are reset, but only after we better tune the effort required to reach the higher ranks.

While plans aren’t totally set, Bungie says they hope to have the next Iron Banner event live in Destiny by the end of the year.