Destiny 2: Beyond Light, the looter shooter's latest major expansion, is now available to play?across all supported platforms. And with the expansion's launch, Destiny 2 fans have been able to datamine Beyond Light to see some of its inner workings. One detail in particular popped out to Destiny 2 fans. According to scraped data, Beyond Light features significantly fewer weapons than Destiny 2's previous major expansion, Forsaken, adding just a third of the total number.
The specific numbers, based on weapon profiles scraped by the light.gg website, are 98 new Legendary and Exotic weapons in Forsaken and 31 in Beyond Light. Redditor Cayde_Is_Alive further breaks down Beyond Light's weapons as 6 from Adept Trials rewards, 2 "reissued" Iron Banner weapons, and 5 Season Pass weapons. That leaves 18 new weapons specific to the Beyond Light expansion itself.
Destiny 2 fans' immediate reaction is understandably negative. Fewer weapons overall conveys the idea that there is less content, so with Forsaken and Beyond Light being similarly priced, less content conveys the idea that players are getting less value out of their purchase. Players want lots of rewards, generally. Since weapons are such a valuable commodity in Destiny 2, wanting a large pool of earnable weapons is easy to understand. Even without the comparison, Forsaken delivered on that idea tremendously.
However, there are also a significant amount of Destiny 2 players who are not particularly bothered by the lesser amount of weapons included in Beyond Light. Their point of view is that so long as Beyond Light provides an adequate number of meaningful rewards for its activities, the total amount of weapons doesn't matter. If anything, the huge number of weapons in earlier expansions were overdoing it, as there are really only ever so many useful weapons in any given meta.
One other thing that's changed since the release of Forsaken is worth acknowledging. Bungie seems to prioritize rolling out content via seasonal updates more since it has become independent. That might mean that more weapons will come in further updates, rather than frontloading that content. This allows the team some flexibility to evaluate whether more weapons would be appropriate, or even whether it's something fans really want versus just think they want.
There's much more to Destiny 2: Beyond Light than just the total number of weapons, of course. There's story missions, equipment, and endgame aplenty. The smaller overall amount of weapons is something to consider, and may be more relevant as players get a deeper familiarity with the size and scope of Beyond Light. But, for now, it's just an interesting number.
Destiny 2: Beyond Light is available now on PC, PS4, Stadia, and Xbox One, with PS5 and Xbox Series X versions also in development.
Source: Reddit
