Destiny: The Taken King's creative director Luke Smith has admitted that the game's original leveling system was flawed from the moment it launched in September 2014.
In an interview with Kotaku, Smith revealed Bungie began to develop The Taken King's new leveling system in September or October of last year.
"The original Light system, when that went out the door, we were not thrilled with it," Smith conceded. "We knew when that went out the door that we were going to need to revisit it. So that work basically began in earnest probably September or October [of 2014]. 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."
Smith's team first proposed the leveling system that was eventually implemented this month when The Taken King expansion launched. The developer explained that the new system could not be introduced to the game before now due to compatibility issues with The Dark Below and House of Wolves expansions, which launched in December 2014 and May 2015 respectively.
"We had to look at DLC 1 [The Dark Below] and DLC 2 [House of Wolves] and say, 'OK, well, how can we set those two DLCs up to allowing for this [leveling] 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."
You can listen to Kotaku's wide-ranging interview with Smith here.
For more on Destiny: The Taken King, find out what Xur is selling this weekend and check out our many guides for the game.
