In a blog post from Destiny 2’s franchise director Luke Smith looking back at the lessons learned by Bungie over the past six months, Smith detailed why the nerf to Whisper of the Worm was necessary. He actually started by saying that, in hindsight, the developer probably should never have designed Whisper of the Worm with its infinite ammo ability. But when the weapon released during a time where players were feeling less powerful than ever in the franchise, giving them a surge of power in the form of Whisper of the Worm was the choice that Bungie went with.
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But as time went on, Smith says it became clear that the exotic was an “outlier” that let players circumvent many of the mechanics of the game, most notably having to move around an environment to collect more ammo and completely avoiding reload animations:
To account for the presence of weapons like Whisper of the Worm, Smith explains that Bungie made encounters like the Reckoning, which he said broke multiple design rules for Destiny 2. Specifically, the high health pool of the bridge bosses was a direct result of Bungie knowing the damage players with Whisper of the Worm would be able to dish out. The Reckoning often felt frustrating for players, with the activity becoming extremely hard if they did not have some of the extremely powered exotic weapons and armor that the activity was specifically designed to counter.
To avoid a continuation of Bungie feeling the need to design overly difficult and frustrating activities as the game moves forward into the Shadowkeep expansion and Year 3, Smith explains that balance needed to be regained. And Whisper of the Worm was one of those exotics that had to be lowered in its effectiveness.
Destiny 2 is available now for PC, PS4, and Xbox One.
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Source: Bungie
