Destiny's shotguns are getting nerfed in a drastic way

Destiny's upcoming 2.0.1 update will further reduce the effectiveness in the Crucible of some of the game's most desirable shotguns, developer Bungie announced today.

When Bungie updated Destiny to version 2.0 a month ago, prior to launching Destiny: The Taken King, the studio made a massive amount of weapon balance changes that included attempts to make shotguns weaker at long range. Bungie primarily tackled this issue by nerfing two shotgun perks, Rangefinder (aiming increases range) and Shot Package (aiming reduces the spread of weapon projectiles). As you can imagine, a shotgun with both of those perks would be very deadly, indeed.

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Destiny players have since provided "unanimous" feedback saying that those changes didn't go far enough, according to Jon Weisnewski, senior designer at Bungie.

"The prevalence of Shot Package on almost every long-range Shotgun has effectively redefined the close-quarters combat experience," Weisnewski continued. "Going forward, we'll continue to dial in Shotgun range."

Bungie is essentially admitting that the Shot Package perk is so powerful that it's broken, and in update 2.0.1, the studio will be taking an extreme step: removing the perk from every shotgun in Destiny. Depending on the weapon, Shot Package will be replaced with Close and/or Personal, Crowd Control, or Knee Pads. Weisnewski noted that in Bungie's playtesting so far, this change hasn't caused any problems in Destiny's player-versus-environment component.

This isn't a permanent change; Weisnewski referred to the decision as putting Shot Package on a "time-out." The studio plans to "recalibrate the effective range and research a way to hopefully reintroduce the perk after some time at the work bench."

Bungie has yet to provide a timetable for the release of update 2.0.1. For more on Destiny: The Taken King, read our review.