In an interview with Kotaku – which you can listen to exclusively here for all sorts of interesting Destiny background information – Destiny: The Taken King creative director Luke Smith spoke about what it’s been like in Destiny’s first year. The shooter had specific issues regarding the leveling system, which Smith says the Destiny team acknowledged as far back as the game’s initial launch in September 2014.
Smith says that the team had in fact been working on a new leveling system, those of you who play will know this as Light 2.0, back in September/October following Destiny’s release.
‘The original Light system, when that went out the door, we were not thrilled with it,’ Smith said. ‘We had already started to work on a new proposal, the proposal that would become the Light 2.0 that’s in the game now. We were working on that as early as last fall.’
The new system was worked on by Smith and his team, which was due to be delivered with the Taken King expansion. There was no way of implementing it any sooner, much to many players chagrin, because of compatibility with the other two expansions for Destiny: first of all The Dark Below (Dec 2014) and then more recently House of Wolves (May 2015).
‘We had to look at DLC 1 and DLC 2 and say, ‘OK, well, how can we set those two DLCs up to allowing for this pivot?’ So in DLC 2, that’s why you see the introduction of the Etheric Light mechanic, because we were trying to get players to converge quickly at a single, common level because we knew where we were going to take them next.’
A lot of people have already defeated Oryx and are at the next level cap having completed The Taken King DLC (it’s been out for just under 2 weeks now), but Bungie have assured that this is not the end for Destiny. There’s been hints at more DLC and secrets to come yet.