WhileDestiny 2developer Bungie has done well so far detailing all of the new features and changes that are coming to its game withSeptember’s Forsaken expansion, there is one change that many players hoped would be included and even some saw flashes of during trailers. Today, though, Bungie has officially confirmed thatDestiny 2will feature a lower time to kill in PvP starting with the launch of Forsaken.
The developer confirmed the detail while promoting an upcoming livestream focused onDestiny 2: Forsaken’s combat. During the stream players will get to see how the new weapon slot changes will affect the game, but ahead of that Bungie Senior Sandbox Designer Jon Weisnewski wanted to highlight something that players had already started noticing and speculating about.
Hello friends! If you’re a sharp-eyed PvP enthusiast, you may have noticed from some Forsaken coverage that the weapons are doing a bit more damage than they do in the current version ofDestiny 2. If you’re a seasoned Destiny 2 player, you may then extrapolate the possibility of a global lethality pass on weapons and abilities that may or may not be in the pipe to go live whenForsakenis released. I’m here to quickly confirm that, along with weapon slots and ammo availability, we have globally adjusted the “time to kill” in the Crucible. If you’d like more details, join us on stream and we’ll get into it! See you then!
Lowering the time to kill will hopefully giveDestiny 2a little more of its speed back. As it stands now, combat is focused more on which combatant fires first or whichever player has a teammate nearby. Whereas inDestiny 1it was possible to outgun an opponent that had the drop on you, inDestiny 2those situations are few and far between. The best course of action now is simply to run to a teammate when weakened.
Whether or not this lowering of time to kill will be enough to change the pace of play inDestiny 2is yet to be determined, but what players are seeing is promising. Precision damage appears to be buffed while body shots are still the same forcertain weapon classes. In other words, if a player is more accurate they have better odds of “beating” an opponent in a gunfight.
Practically since launch, there has been a general feeling amongst a portion of the PvP community thatDestiny 2lacked the personality that madeDestiny 1special. Lowering the skill ceiling, favoring “hand holding", whatever you want to call it, there is an unmistakable sense that this PvP is different.
On August 7th, Bungie should have more to say aboutchanges to time to killand how that will impact PvP as a whole. But just the fact that they are adjusting it says a lot about where things are headed with Forsaken.
Destiny 2: Forsakenreleases on June 11, 2025 for PC, PS4, and Xbox One.
