In this expansion, the player obtained a new power called stasis, the first of their ‘darkness’ subclasses.

The stasis quest chains explored the narrative implications of expanding the player’s new powers and the background of the quest giver, Elsie Bray. Each quest chain focused around 3 things, a new stasis power, a different activity in the Destiny ecosystem, and a different location on the expansion’s new destination, Europa. The goal with this structure was to give players focused areas to practice their powers while guiding them to different parts of content that they would find engaging. 

Working with our narrative team, we explored the complicated relationship between two sisters, one with tremendous history and perspective, the other with none. We worked the narrative into the mechanics of the quests and locations of the destination, requiring consistent inter-disciplinary communication. 

Completing enough of these stasis quests would also allow the player to get playlist specific quests. These playlist quests would then give the player the opportunity to obtain stasis fragments, further ways to enhance their power and have a wider sandbox. This design allowed players to grind in the style that most appealed to them.

The reward experience for Destiny’s raids had seen little change for years of the live service. We wanted a new experience that allowed for greater player agency, allowing for more targeted farming of gear pieces, as well as opportunities to fine tune them. In addition, we wanted to identify common points in the player journey where they would likely bounce off the raid, never coming back to the activity again, and see if we could alleviate these pain areas. We also aimed to increase replayability throughout the week for the new raid, but also for older raids.

Using data provided from our analytics team we identified several key points in the player journey, and changed our gear drop chances around them. We also introduced a new raid currency, ‘spoils of conquest’, that players would deterministically get at various reward points, both in the new raid, and older ones. This currency could then be used to make additional attempts at gear pools, additional attempts at specific gear pieces they had already attained, and an exotic gear kiosk to obtain older exotics. 

The currency and end-of-raid vendor, gave players reasons to keep coming back, always feel like they were rewarded for their time, and gave them greater agency in reward pursual. It became a core currency for the game and the system was carried forward into future content.