Destiny 2 Dev Explains Guided Games And New Weapon System

Destiny 2 had its big reveal event today, and we learned a lot about the game. After the livestream, GameSpot had a chance to sit down with project lead Mark Noseworthy and ask more about some of Destiny 2's changes, like Guided Games and its new weapon classification system.

Guided Games are essentially Bungie's solution to the first game's lack of matchmaking for its high-level content. Raids, Nightfall Strikes, and Trials of Osiris all require a group in the original Destiny, so it is hard for solo players to play since there's no matchmaking. But Guided Games play an additional role: they are an effort to prevent toxicity in multiplayer, according to Noseworthy.

"Toxicity is a major concern of ours, and that's why we haven't enabled matchmaking for the most competitive activities," he said, "because if you get matchmade with someone you need to communicate with or need to have some kind of shared culture and norms and ways of operating [with], it just can't work with matchmaking."

As a result, Bungie has built a system in which single players or pairs can search for established groups that need one or two extra players to play one of those modes. "What we're trying to do with clans and Guided Games is we're going to take... one or two people, and match them with an existing clan--a group of people who already have a set of practices for how they communicate, a set of standards, a shared culture--and have them guide these solos into an experience," he explained.

When Noseworthy was describing Guided Games, he made an interesting comparison: the process of finding a group to play with is almost like using a dating app. "The seeker, the solo player, has some agency--they're getting to choose, 'I don’t think that group sounds like it's for me...' And you swipe left like [in] Tinder, like, 'No, this group looks more like my kind of jam, oh these guys speak French too, oh that's awesome, because I'm French.' So you have a level of agency that just doesn’t exist with matchmaking. And so we think that alone is going to substantially curb some of the toxicity."

Bungie has also made major changes to the categorization of weapons. In the first Destiny, you equipped a primary, a secondary, and a heavy weapon. In Destiny 2, that's been overhauled: you now have a kinetic weapon (one that shoots bullets), an energy weapon (one that shoots energy), and a power weapon (sniper rifles, shotguns, fusion rifles, grenade launchers, etc.).

"The first two slots, kinetic and special, they can use the same types of weapon archetypes," Noseworthy explained. "So if you want to rock a scout rifle in your primary, your kinetic, and then a solar scout rifle in your second slot, you can totally do that. And that gives players a lot more choice."

Destiny 2 is coming to PlayStation 4 and Xbox One on September 8, and PC on a currently unspecified date. However, Bungie talked a lot about the PC version, and you can read more about it here. Bungie will hold a beta for the game this summer for consoles, and at some unknown point in the future for PC.

Check out all the rest of our Destiny 2 coverage here.