Category: Bungie News

Alongside the launch of Warmind, a new season of gameplay updates begins for all players of Destiny 2, including powerful upgrades to Exotic weapons, the introduction of Ranked Crucible play, new Crucible maps, Private Matches, Heroic Strike Modifiers, Multi-Emote, additional Vault Space, and much more.

These Season 3 updates will be available to all players of Destiny 2, regardless of Warmind ownership. Full Patch Notes will be published on May 8.

Exotic Weapon Tuning will enhance some of the most unique items in your personal arsenal. 

Seasonal Crucible Rankings will deliver new ways to earn bragging rights and some coveted weapons in the competitive arena.

New Crucible Maps will give every player new spaces to fight in the Crucible. All matchmade playlists will feature Meltdown and Solitude.  

Private Matches will give you full control over your competitive experience. Set your own match and invite willing combatants to play.

[Note: You’ll need to purchase the Expansion to use the new maps in Private Matches.]

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On May 8, Warmind launches and Season 3 begins.

Golden Age satellites slam into the surface of the Hellas Basin on Mars. Icy glaciers thaw, revealing the core of the Warmind Rasputin – and an ancient Hive army, bent on its destruction. 

Destiny 2 Expansion II: Warmind introduces new activities, new weapons and gear, more endgame content, and an all-new story. 

New Story

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Ana Bray, a Guardian long thought lost, searches for a connection to her past…one that could be hidden forever beneath the polar ice cap of Mars.

(Developer Insights video coming soon)

New Cooperative Endgame Activity

Escalation Protocol is a public, player-triggered event where players fight escalating waves of enemies and slay challenging bosses alongside their Fireteam and other brave Guardians on Mars. Locate and activate Escalation Protocol, and then survive seven waves of increasingly difficult combat waves to earn exclusive new armor and weapons.

(Developer Insights video coming soon)

New Raid Lair

Return to the Leviathan with a Fireteam of six to conquer the Spire of Stars, launching on Friday, May 11 at 10:00AM PT.

Season 3 Begins

Alongside the launch of Warmind, a new season of gameplay updates begins for all players of Destiny 2, including powerful upgrades to Exotic weapons, the introduction of Ranked Crucible play, new Crucible maps, Private Matches, Heroic Strike Modifiers, Multi-Emote, additional Vault Space, and much more.

These Season 3 updates will be available to all players of Destiny 2, regardless of Warmind ownership. Full Patch Notes will be published on May 8.

Exotic Weapon Tuning will enhance some of the most unique items in your personal arsenal. 

Seasonal Crucible Rankings will deliver new ways to earn bragging rights and some coveted weapons in the competitive arena.

New Crucible Maps will give every player new spaces to fight in the Crucible. All matchmade playlists will feature Meltdown and Solitude.  

Private Matches will give you full control over your competitive experience. Set your own match and invite willing combatants to play.

[Note: You’ll need to purchase the Expansion to use the new maps in Private Matches.]

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Destiny 2 – Expansion 2: Warmind launches on May 8 on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC via Blizzard’s Battle.net app.

Game Director Christopher Barrett:

As you know, we’ve been engaging with the Destiny community to pivot and improve every part of our Destiny 2 experience. This includes a commitment to the tone, story, and lore of Destiny both in and out of the game.

This week, I wanted to give a shout out to Destiny’s hard-working Narrative group, who has been collaborating with myself and the rest of the dev team on a whole bunch of new lore content that will be coming your way in the near (and in some cases, very near) future. While I can’t tell you everything we’ve been working on together, I’m happy to reveal that another (free) Destiny digital comic – Warmind – is headed your way this week, written by Mark Waid (Dr. Strange) and David Rodriguez (Warmind) and inked by Kris Anka (Runaways). I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I did.  

And if the week seems like a long wait, I’ve got more good news; you can join us in celebrating the upcoming launch of Destiny 2: Warmind with a few pieces of new and original Warmind Weblore, now available here.

<3 Chris

[Editor’s note: Revised copy to accurately reflect the release date of the comic.] 

Tyra

“Ghost, open a new file. Research Notes TK-48725.8, Category: Clovis Bray.”

“I don’t like it when you call me that.”

“What, ‘Ghost’? Oh, come now. We’ve been having this discussion for more than three centuries. Ghost is what you are, my friend. If you want a name so badly, choose one for yourself.”

“Maybe I will. Now that everyone’s gone back to the Tower and we’re still out here, I have plenty of time to consider what my name should be.”

“Can you open my file while you ponder the possibilities?”

“If you insist.”

“Thank you. Research Notes TK-48725.8. Data recovered from Freehold—Bray Landing. Kirren found an entire cache of intact data cores there. Brought them back just before the attack on the City.”

“It’s these little miracles that intrigue me so much… Fragments of memories, frozen in silicon and quartz, trapped in a moment that survives the end of a civilization, centuries of decay, and the predations of invading armies, only to be recovered and end up as flotsam of a second war. That this cache even managed to survive the Collapse is a wonder, and then the Red War? The probabilities of such an occurrence are…”

“Tyra?”

“Yes, Ghost?”

“Ahem. You’re rambling. Again. You said I should remind you.”

“Thank you. As I was saying, this data was recovered more than six months ago but is just now being decrypted—2.6 exabytes of documents and schematics have been decoded so far. At first glance, most of this was just the detritus of Bray’s work: review notes, payment records, memos. I did find some very interesting notes on a propulsion system design that I’ve already sent to Amanda, and there are some messages between the sisters that will illuminate Master Melivander’s work on the history of Clovis Bray.”

“But then I found something extraordinary. The records were fragmented—some files had been partially deleted—but there’s enough there to indicate that the Bray facility at Hellas Basin was larger than we previously thought.”

“Hellas Basin? The tourist spot?”

“The same. And while we know there was a BrayTech Futurescape there for promotional purposes— Bray even had an AI-led tour—all indications had been that if any research was done there, it was mostly for show: low-level projects creating improved cold-weather gear and the like.”

“But if these records are correct, the facility operated on a far larger scale. It could have been the site of the initial Warmind development. Perhaps even a core site for Rasputin itself. This could have been where the Warmind was born.” 

“You got all that from some fragmented files? Is this going to be like the time you thought you’d identified a second Warmind? We spent a decade searching for Charlemagne’s vault.”

“I was correct about Charlemagne existing, just not about what it was. If we hadn’t done that research, we wouldn’t know anything about subminds.”

“Rahool still disagrees.”

“Rahool needs to get his head out of his engrams. This is why Guardians look for fragments of the Golden Age! We are the descendants of a lost civilization. Only by understanding what was can we understand what we are now. How the world we know came to be. And each artifact we find helps us interpret what we already know. Adds layers. New identities. We are experimenting in the laboratory of time, testing each observation through a crucible of evidence.”

“Sometimes our conclusions change. And with each shift, we learn more of where we came from. The next shift in our perceptions? It may be on Mars.”

Apocrypha

In the beginning, there were five.

Yul, the Honest Worm. Akka, the Worm of Secrets. Eir, the Keeper of Order. Ur, the Ever-Hunger. Xol, Will of the Thousands. And they were Virtuous.

In time, Yul spoke truth and bargained well. Its children escaped the Fundament and spread throughout the worlds. They followed the words of the Deep and brought low many agents of the Sky. They took, and a portion of all they took was returned to the Virtuous.

They grew strong.

In time, Auryx learned Akka’s secret. That he was stronger than the gods. That they had given their power, and in giving, it was diminished. Auryx rose up and slew Akka. He took, and he grew strong with Akka’s power.

After the five became four, Yul spoke.

Behold my majesty. Behold my crushing might, my staggering size, my scales that shine with an oppressive gleam. 

Behold my wings, which create winds that sweep through the stars.

Together, we have called life to Fundament, and made that life thrive. Protected it from extinction. They are our hosts, and we are their strength.

But we do not give. We take. For this is the struggle to exist. We are not immune. The weakest of us must give way to the stronger.

And Xol felt [fear|cunning], for it knew that Yul would in time turn its teeth to Xol.

But Akka was not the only one with a secret. Xol had a pact with a forgotten child, abandoned by its father.

The cursed one took a fraction of Xol’s power, and in return, Xol took the heart from the child, whose name had been struck from the World’s Grave. The orphan called life out of death, and fed that power to Xol.

Together, they would find a new world to rule.

And the five became three.

I, the child become [herald|death], record these words. They are not of the Sorrow. They are mine.

Cryptarch

From “Collapse and Post-Collapse Incidents on Mars: An Examination of Ecological Changes in the Polar Regions,” by Master Reinhart, Cryptarch 

We have detailed records of the expedition sent to the Moon to battle the alien race known as the Hive, the calamitous results of that assault, and the subsequent Lunar Interdiction that was lifted only after definitive evidence was found that the Interdiction had not restricted the Hive’s movements (Rahool et al., “The Great Disaster: From Burning Lake to the Hellmouth”).

However, there are indications that while that event may have been the Vanguard’s first engagement with the Hive, Earth’s Moon was not the first place the Hive made contact with Human settlements.

Golden Age records detail an extensive network of Clovis Bray structures on Mars. The vast city of Freehold served as the Bray headquarters, but ancient mass-transit lines that lead from the remains of Freehold across the planet reveal multiple other sites, including the Clovis Bray Health Center in Skyline and an extensive Futurescape near Core Terminus, in the Hellas Basin region.

It is the Futurescape facility that is of interest when considering the effects of ecological changes in the Collapse and post-Collapse eras. Although there are records that show that, just after the Traveler’s departure, the region had a mesothermal climate with an average temperature of 20°C, the region’s ecological zones today range from boreal to ice cap near the planetary pole, with harsh winds and a thick layer of ice that has made exploration in the region difficult.

What caused such a drastic change in the climate? If it were related to the cessation of Traveler energy during the Collapse, then we would have seen similar effects on other planets in the solar system, which we have not.

If we cannot look to the Traveler for causation, then we must contemplate other external factors. Recovered satellite data reveals that the climate change in the Hellas Basin region was too rapid to have resulted from long-term ecological damage, as it had on Earth in the pre-Traveler era. In fact, data from Warsat J54987F122S, which crashed and was recovered near Freehold, indicates that the climate change on Mars may have happened over a matter of mere days. However, this Warsat was heavily damaged during reentry, and the data may be suspect. Until we have a secondary source for corroboration, this is mere supposition.

Nonetheless, if we accept the data from J54987F122S, then we are looking at an external endothermic event, caused by artificial means, on a scale so massive that it altered the entire climate of the region.

Why would this have happened? Our only source is J54987F122S, and if it is to be believed, an invasion of unknown biological entities, including one of massive size, was detected in the region immediately before the event. Could this have been a Collapse-era attack with a weapon of unknown origin?

As of yet, Guardians have not reached Hellas Basin, and we have not had the resources for remote exploration. But if we did dig into the ice, what would we find?

Ana,

Told you I remembered an article from the Mars research we were doing at Owl Sector. This could be what you’re looking for—if you can dig it out. 

Reinhart goes on for a few hundred pages from here—I’ll send the whole thing to Jinju if you’re interested— but his conclusions are all wrong. Because he never mentions the ONE THING that could have done this.

There’s something in Hellas Basin. And you’re going to be the one to find it.

—Camrin

Zavala

Ikora has confirmed my fears. The ice on Mars is melting.

She says it’s the Traveler’s Light—that when it awoke, it sent out a wave of Light that altered everything it touched.

I don’t know what to believe. I look at the Traveler now, shining and alive, and I remember all the times I begged it to respond. To help its chosen through our trials.

I remember its silence. Even now, it does not speak… or if it does, there is no one to hear and understand its words.

Ikora says that we cannot understand the Traveler, or its desires. They are too far removed from our own. But can we rely on something that doesn’t understand us to protect us? Or must we protect ourselves?

I think we must. I have been searching the databanks—records that even the Cryptarchs cannot access—and sifting through data that the Speaker thought too dangerous to be disseminated.

I know what is on Mars.

What is buried beneath that ice is too dangerous to allow back into our world. It doesn’t think like we do. It weighs and judges our existence in its ruthless calculations, and we don’t even know what the goal is. Once, long ago, it might have been created as a tool to save Humanity. It is far more than a mere machine now.

And it is broken. 

When Saladin sealed all the records relating to SIVA, he also put a lock on certain data concerning what lies hidden on Mars. We were stumbling around blindly in those days, in the wrong place and at the wrong time, calling out to something that could not respond or understand us. And Saladin let it happen, because our failures were safer than the alternative. 

But the locks are open now. I’ve studied the monsters in our past to prepare for the battles in our future. I know how to reach this particular monster before anyone else does.

Ikora is too intrigued by the knowledge it holds to heed the dangers. Cayde is wasting his time filling the Prison of Elders. It’s up to me to keep this secret buried.

To keep us safe. 

Rasputin

218CBI800JRS101

AI-COM/RSPN: ASSETS//POLARIS//IMPERATIVE

IMMEDIATE EVALUATION DIRECTIVE

This is a POLARIS ASSETS IMPERATIVE (secured/UNDISCLOSED)

This is an INTERNAL ALERT. 

Multiple distributed Polaris axons report increased sterile neutrino patterning correlating to increase in AVGPOLARISTEMP. Reactivated areoseismic analysis detects high quantities of nonnative organic chitin.

Axon 5-Sierra’s event footprint includes evidence of vermiform parasites (UNCONFIRMED/RED).

One hypothesis on event mechanism (FLAG ACAUSAL). Possibility of HARD CIVILIZATION KILL EVENT is NONZERO. 

Check variable AVGPOLARISTEMP

>AVGPOLARISTEMP greater than or equal to MELTINGPOINT

I am assessing available VOLUSPA and CHARLEMAGNE resources.

I am assuming control of atmospheric defenses (Warsat COMPREHENSIVE) and invoking AURORA PALISADE.

Several waves of developers talked about what you’ll find in the game on May 8. Creative Director Brent Gibson from Vicarious Visions joined Design Lead Evan Nikolich from Bungie on our Twitch stream to talk about Destiny 2: Warmind. It was our first conversation about a new story created by two studios working as partners. After a quick tour of Hellas Basin and an introduction to Ana Bray, we dove into a bit of gameplay. Design Lead Jacob Benton and Design Lead Ben Wommack walked us through Escalation Protocol, a new cooperative endgame activity with some intense challenges and exclusive rewards. For the final act, Senior Crucible Designer Kevin Yanes gave us a preview of Seasonal Crucible Rankings and Private Matches, with Cozmo riding “shotgun,” while Senior Sandbox Designer Jon Weisnewski and Sandbox Design Lead Josh Hamrick spiced the live fire exercise with some commentary about how Exotic weapons are evolving for all players in Season 3.

Oh, and DeeJ hosted, but no one cares what he has to say. If you missed the stream, here’s footage in full:

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There’s a lot more we have to tell you today about Season 3. Read on for more!

Exotic Investments

How do you make an Exotic feel more Exotic? It’s a two part question, including how it feels to acquire and upgrade the weapon and how it feels to use the weapon. To answer the first question, Senior Investment Designer Mark Uyeda is here to walk us through the process.

Mark: Our goals in extending Masterwork perks and mechanics to Exotic weapons are primarily to create new in-game goals for hobbyist players and reinforce specific activities with these long tail pursuits.

There were a few “problem spaces” that we wanted to address when creating the Exotic Masterwork pursuit. First up, Exotics in Destiny 2 are very easy to acquire. Many players have most, if not all, of the non-quest Exotics. As we don’t want to make players re-earn every Exotic weapon, Exotic Masterwork acquisition and progression needed to take place after acquisition. Additionally, we needed to figure out a player-friendly way of representing the process of obtaining and applying an Exotic Masterwork. The milestone tray doesn’t provide a good flow for every Exotic Masterwork, and bounties are planned for summer (as noted on our recently updated Development Roadmap).

With these goals and restrictions, we landed on the following player experience:

There will be one Exotic Masterwork per Exotic weapon that exists so far in Destiny 2. In order to begin the Masterwork process, players will have to find an Exotic Masterwork Catalyst. When inspecting the Exotic, there will be a hint at what activities can grant the catalyst for that weapon. Not all Exotic Masterworks have the same drop rates. Some Exotic Masterwork weapons are guaranteed after a certain amount of engagement, while others are earned at random.

Once acquired, the catalyst can be applied to immediately enable orb generation on double kills for the weapon. Exotic weapons with a catalyst applied will also start tracking enemies defeated, like their Legendary Masterwork weapon counterparts.

After applying the catalyst, there will be bounty-like objectives available that need to be completed in order to upgrade to the final Masterwork state, which will apply stat/perk bonuses to the weapon.

A few Masterworks will require you to do a single thing, where others will have multiple steps. These objectives will vary in difficulty and length, but will not be determined by RNG. The goal for these objectives is to push the player to engage with the weapon that they wish to make into a full Masterwork.

When it comes to difficulty, there are a few Exotic Masterworks paired with difficult activities or accomplishments in-game. We’re expecting that there may be one or two Exotic Masterwork weapons that give players the opportunity to set goals in mastering specific activities in order to earn their most desired Masterwork. 

To get ahead of a few questions we’re expecting, here’s a quick roundup of more specific notes:

The Exotic Gunsmiths

Over the last few weeks, Senior Sandbox Designer Jon Weisnewski has been giving previews on how some Exotic weapons are evolving at base level to feel more powerful in Season 3. We’re keeping the streak up. This week, Tractor Cannon, Hard Light, and Borealis are up for conversation!

Jon: Quick thanks and recognition to the video capture team that has been working hard to play, record, and publish this stuff on a tight deadline.

The Tractor Cannon has delivered a high amount of spectacle and has a huge fun factor, but was lacking utility for many players. To address this, in addition to the expected damage and physics impulse, any target hit by Tractor Cannon now has a debuff applied that adds suppression and makes the target vulnerable to Void damage for 10 seconds. Suppression will function as you expect, so in the Crucible, this will shut down active supers and prevent players from using their abilities. In PvE, this will put most enemies in the suppression state where they cower and grovel. The Void vulnerability adds a significant weakness to any source of incoming Void damage. So if you’re a solo player, run it with your favorite Void weapons and/or subclass for optimal effect. If you’re running with a coordinated fireteam… we’re both excited and terrified to see how fast you can melt some of our harder bosses with strategic Void attacks. The Void vulnerability does not stack with itself, but it does stack with other damage debuffs. Get to work!

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Hard Light is inheriting the Borealis damage type reload swap: Holding reload will cycle elemental damage types in combat. The teaser clip shows this off pretty well, but what it doesn’t show very clearly is the other interesting change we made to lean in to this weapon’s gameplay. The bounce projectiles have always been a dazzling laser light show, but actually using them to do real work on your enemies around corners or off of walls has been difficult. It’s more of a suppression tactic than reliable offense. One option we considered was preserving aim assist for the lifetime of the projectile, but we couldn’t commit due to the sheer amount of pressure this would put on our runtime engine. (Imagine 12 players on a console in 6v6 all using this weapon, each player firing a round every three frames, and our aim assist code trying to predict the trajectory of each bullet for up to three bounces and then attempt to correct it to hit a target.) So, rather than make it easier for you to land a bounce shot, we made the payoff better for when it does happen. Bounced bullets now do double damage. We’re looking forward to seeing some montages from the geometry nerds out there.

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So a natural question that may come from this is: doesn’t this change make Hard Light a better choice than Borealis? While Hard Light will definitely have more uptime due to living in your Energy slot, Borealis is also getting an update that will make it a tempting choice. 

For Borealis, the utility of having a weapon that can match any damage shield on the fly is good, but in order to make the weapon great we wanted to double down on the reward for successfully pulling this off. After breaking an enemy shield with a matching damage type, Borealis now deals double damage until the next reload or damage type swap. For PvE activities it gives the weapon a more reliable benefit than Hard Light, in both casual modes and high pressure activities. However, it’s not a perk that was meant just for PvE. This behavior also applies to enemy Guardians in the Crucible while their supers are active. Simply put: If you use a Void round to break shield and/or kill an enemy Sentinel Titan who is actively using their super, you have double damage sniper rounds (yes, that’s a one hit kill to the body) until you die or reload. It’s pretty rare to pull off and requires a fair amount of predictive awareness, but we’ve had it happen organically a few times during internal playtests and I’m highly confident that skilled players will be able to make some amazing plays with this weapon.

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That’s all for this week! I’m sure we’ll be chatting again soon.

Glory, Valor, and Combat

Since their original announcement, Seasonal Crucible Rankings have been a hot topic. The Crucible team has been hard at work to implement the system. Starting with Season 3, Crucible Ranks will be available to all players of Destiny 2. Senior Crucible Designer Kevin Yanes gave a quick overview on stream of what to expect. We’re diving deeper into the weeds to answer some of your burning questions.

Kevin: Hey everyone. During the Warmind reveal stream, we showcased Seasonal Crucible Ranks for the first time. We’ve been seeing a lot of questions from the community, so let’s get into the hot topics you’ve been asking about:

“What are Seasonal Crucible Ranks?”

Seasonal Crucible Ranks are comprised of two key mechanics: a level and rank points. As players earn points in each rank, they will level up and unlock new rewards for Shaxx to dole out in the Tower. Leveling up gives players an assortment of Crucible Tokens, Crucible Engrams, and Masterwork Cores depending on how far up they have leveled. There are six specific Crucible Ranks that players can reach, starting with the rank of “Guardian” and ending with players becoming “Legend.” Here is the full break down of what levels each Crucible Rank will feature:

Worthy Opponents

Playing the role of matchmaker isn’t an easy feat. In Destiny 2 Update 1.2.0, the Crucible team will be addressing player feedback about pre-made Fireteams being matched against solo players. PvP Design Lead Derek Carroll has a quick breakdown of the changes that are going in, and what players can expect starting May 8.

Derek: From reading your feedback and looking at data, it’s clear that solo players are facing an uphill battle in the Crucible when they encounter well-coordinated opponents. Players in Fireteams have a substantial advantage, particularly as average skill increases. In the current Crucible, solo players at virtually all skill levels win fewer than half of their games. 

We’re making some under-the-hood adjustments to try to ensure that even when solo players do end up fighting against Fireteams, they’ll be doing it on a more-even battlefield.

Instead of using your normal skill value when in a Fireteam, we will use a modified value that takes your Fireteam size into account. The larger your Fireteam, the larger the potential modification. We don’t want to try to completely nullify the benefit of team-play, so our initial values are conservative and can (and will) be tuned as we see the system working in the wild.  All of these settings can be configured on our servers without waiting for a new update, so we’ll be able to make additional tweaks based on what we see.

We always encourage you to bring your friends with you into the Crucible, but we think this change will improve your experience during those times you have to fly solo. As always, we’ll be keeping an eye on how well these changes are working once they’re live, and look forward to hearing your thoughts!

#FTMM

(Editors note: For those like me who didn’t understand this hashtag immediately, this means Fireteam Matchmaking.)

Season 2 Finale

 

Lord Saladin returns for the final bout of Iron Banner in Season 2.

Begins: Tuesday, May 1

Ends: Tuesday, May 8

The game is Control!

As some of you may have noticed, we’re diving back into the Iron Banner playlist pretty quickly compared to previous months. Senior Designer Jeremiah Pieschl gave us a quick rundown of initial feedback we’re looking to address since 6v6 went live:

Jerpie: While we continue to evaluate the feedback and data from the last Iron Banner Control with 6v6, we’ve heard two messages very clearly. Having more opportunities to play 6v6 is highly desired and Control remains the most popular mode for 6v6. As such, you can expect Iron Banner to feature 6v6 Control exclusively moving into Season 3.

As a warning, this will be your last chance to earn Season 2 ornaments, so make sure to jump in and complete those objectives.

Safari Stripes

 

Speaking of Iron Banner, Destiny Player Support has been working behind the scenes to investigate reports of error codes encountered last week. If you’ve recently seen a pesky ZEBRA or two, read below for some important information.

ZEBRA

With the launch of 6v6 Iron Banner, we saw a large increase in ZEBRA error codes which were determined to be caused by players timing out while loading into the maps. We took steps to reduce the rate of this error code by increasing the time in which players could attempt to load into a Crucible match. If you continued to frequently encounter ZEBRA error codes during 6v6 Iron Banner, you may be experiencing issues with your connection quality or your PC hardware may be below the minimum specifications. 

To improve performance and reduce the frequency of ZEBRA error codes, you may want to try the following:

Warring Over Stones

 

With the introduction of Exotic Weapon Masterworks and Crucible Ranks, we expect to see many players challenging themselves to master activities that they may not have engaged with before. The videos you find here may be a source of inspiration or even strategy for approaching engagements in a different manner.

Winner: The Power of Math

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Runner Up: Cream of the crop

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Top Tier

Last week, The Arms Dealer was the featured Nightfall for the first time since Nightfall Strike Scoring was introduced. On May 8, we’ll be addressing the Lost Sector strategy used to boost scores to the moon and back – but we’re happy to celebrate those who are reaching for the stars. Shout out to Johny_Hopkins for appearing on two of the top scoring fireteams!

It’s good to be back in the office. We’re less than two weeks out from Warmind and the beginning of Season 3. Restoring the hobby in Destiny 2 has been a major goal throughout the development process, and what you’ve read above are a few steps in that direction. Soon, it’ll be in your hands – and we’ll be at the ready to process your feedback.

See you in the Crucible? I need to get some practice in before Crucible Ranks go live. I’m not sure my team can reach Mythic status if I’m not pulling my weight. Oh, and before we go – if you’re excited for Warmind, Associate Artist Joseph Biwald cooked up a few Twitter banners for you. Enjoy!

Cheers,

Dmg04

This week at Bungie, we unleashed teams of six into Iron Banner.

We have a lot to cover. Iron Banner 6v6 is in full swing. Exotic weapon previews have been dropping like loot. We’re following that up with some important info on Power progression and reward changes coming in Season 3. On top of all this, we’re having special guests in the building to give us valuable feedback.

Let’s get to it.

Crucible Recap

Last week, we postponed Iron Banner while we worked out an issue. In its place, we rolled out a six-player version of Rumble based on player feedback. Here is PvP Design Lead Derek Carroll with more info on the state of combat between Guardians. 

Weapon Showcase

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Those poor, poor Fallen. That wasn’t the only video we teased out this week. You also got a glimpse of what Skyburner’s Oath will be capable of in Season 3. Now that we have shown you, here is Senior Designer Jon Weisnewski to tell you more about what is changing about those weapons and another you haven’t seen yet.

Jon: Hello. For some bizarre reason Cozmo asked me to come back and waste some more space on the TWAB. So here I am bloating the internet tubes with more bits and gigawatts. What does that mean for you? Another update on the Exotic weapon tuning headed your way this May. 

Today, we’ll talk about two guns: Skyburner’s Oath and Rat King.

A while back, I talked about Graviton Lance and how one of the main areas to improve was the lack of utility within a pretty successful show of spectacle. Skyburner’s Oath almost has the opposite problem: It’s a comparatively strong weapon, effective at multiple ranges, strong in ADS and from hip, with varying fire rates. However, it lacks spectacle to give it that exotic feeling; it kind of plays just like any other gun. To address this, we started with giving the projectiles explosive rounds as their default impact response. In ADS, the weapon will perform the same. Full auto, slow firing, high impact. 

When firing from the hip, Skyburner’s Oath now lobs slower projectiles at a faster rate of fire that tracks targets and explodes. The tracking functionality tends to draw projectiles to center mass rather than to precision regions, so we reduced the precision scalar a bit and increased damage to the body (precision hits still do bonus damage; and overall DPS is increased). The end result is a dual utility weapon that fires hit-scan, high-damage projectiles while aiming down sights and rapid-fire, lobbed, exploding, tracking projectiles from the hip. It almost feels like a rapid-fire grenade launcher that can transition to a precision death dealer with the press of a button. Here it is in action.

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Next up is Rat King, which already has something of a fan base, but definitely has room to improve. Of the stats that improve with more fireteam members running Rat King, the strongest is probably the increased rate of fire. Unfortunately, the DPS potential is hard to realize because some people just can’t physically pull the trigger fast enough to cash in on this benefit (or don’t know to try). To make sure this is both felt and used, we made Rat King full auto to ensure the rate of fire increase can make a difference when running in a pack. 

Another pain point was that the restriction of having Rat Pack only activate when allies have Rat Kings equipped in-hand felt a bit too situational. Rat Pack perk now triggers when fireteam members have Rat King slotted as their kinetic weapon, stowed or in hand. We also front-loaded the stat benefits of Rat Pack so they increase a bit more drastically with one or two fireteam members—and upped the base invisibility timer of Vermin to seven seconds. Last but not least, and not to overly tease, but why not, I’m gonna tease: the Masterwork upgrade for Rat King is going to put a tasty garnish on this meal you won’t want to miss out on. 

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It’s never a waste of space to have Newsk stop by to share what weapon changes he’s currently working on. Maybe we can convince him to come back next week to tell us about some more Exotics we are buffing up for Season 3. 

Power Climb

We have received a lot of feedback on rewards, Power, and how you want your actions to be more meaningful in determining how your character performs in the world of Destiny 2. We’re planning some adjustments based on this feedback, and Senior Designer Daniel Auchenpaugh is here to give you the details. 

Daniel: Last time I was here, I talked about our adjustments to the Raid rewards. This time, I want to talk about some more broad changes we’re making to the reward structure of Destiny 2. One of the things we did when Destiny 2 launched was make the climb to the power cap fast and easy for everyone. It didn’t matter who you were or what your play style was; the road to the cap was quick and accessible for everyone. The result was that achieving the cap felt less satisfying: It was easy, and there weren’t any activities that dared to require it.

So, with the release of Destiny 2 Expansion II: Warmind, we’re making some changes to the size and frequency of upgrades. These changes will apply to all of Destiny 2—not just the Warmind endgame content. Our goals with this change are to bring back meaning and accomplishment to achieving the Power cap, to give players a sense of progression when they come back to play each week, and to reward players who engage in a broader scope of the Destiny 2 endgame content. We’ve made an effort to de-emphasize grinding public events for Exotics and to reduce the impact of clan engrams on endgame progression.

Before we get into specifics, I want to define a couple terms so we’re on common ground. Soft cap is the point you can climb to easily via drops from any source. The hard cap is the power level you can obtain from weekly reward sources. The soft cap for Warmind is 340, and the hard cap is 380. These numbers don’t consider any +5 mods. Remember that all drops are calculated using your Best Possible Power, regardless of if you have the gear equipped or not. It can even be in the vault or on another character!

Our target is that players who participate in all the weekly activities should take several weeks to reach the hard cap. Raids/Trials grant the largest increases, clan engrams provide very small increases, and the other weekly sources fall between those two. Players who don’t participate in any group weekly activities are unlikely to hit the hard cap before the next release; dedicated omnivore players will hit it before players that just play Raids or Trials exclusively. Additionally, the final 10 points from 370 to 380 will be significantly slower than 340 to 370; we expect it to take players roughly equal time to go from 340 to 370 as from 370 to 380. We decided to make this change because climbing to 370 allows you to tackle endgame content without suffering a severe under level penalty, but creates a significant accomplishment in achieving 380.

Clan engrams offer excellent upgrades while a player is climbing to the soft cap; they should grant awards an average of 15 Power higher than your current best possible while you’re on the way there. This will help players catch up with their clanmates who are completing weekly activities. Once you’ve achieved the soft cap, your progress is going to rely a lot more on your own achievements; clan engrams above the soft cap will grant gear only 0–2 points above your best possible. 

In an effort to combat exploits around creating new characters to take advantage of one-time quest rewards, we’ve decided to limit those rewards to the soft cap for the release they first appeared in. This means Destiny 2 launch quests cap at 260 (before mods), Curse of Osiris caps at 300, and Warmind caps at 340. To compensate for their new caps, they’ll give you a large boost (15 Power) when you earn them as long as you’re below that cap. Farming Exotics to increase your Power has been removed; if they drop from a non-weekly source, they’ll come out of the engram at the same Power as a Legendary would after you’ve gotten to the soft cap. We believe the changes to quest rewards and Exotic farming will ensure the most effective way to reach the Power cap is to play the most challenges and social weekly activities.

Thanks for hanging in there through this long explanation. Please let us know any feedback you have about this new way forward for Destiny 2 rewards. We’re going to carefully monitor feedback from this post and our early data after Warmind launches to guide any changes we might make to this in the future. So if you love it, let us know! If you hate it, let us know that too!

High Altitude

The guy who used to write these “weekly blog addresses” (those are his words—he apparently hates the term “TWAB”) wants to hog the mic for just a minute to share some final thoughts on the Community Summit that’s happening tomorrow and Friday at Bungie.

DeeJ: Thanks, Cozmo.

Thursday and Friday, we’ll be honored and humbled to host a small but insightful sampling of the community here in our studio. They’ll be here to give us their opinions on our goals and our plans. Some of them you know. Some of them we know. We want you to know that this is not the only way we’re gathering feedback about Destiny 2, and these are not the only people we’re listening to about the game. This summit will be about collaboration. Our best conversations will be about the future. This isn’t a marketing event. There will be no reveals this week. We’re not streaming while they’re here. They won’t have a wealth of news to report once our time together is over. They’ll be welcome to report on the mood from the gathering and to tell you what they told us. We’d ask you not to press them for promises on what the state of Destiny 2 will be in the months to come. That work will still fall to us, and there is still plenty of time for those things to find their final form. Next week, if they want to, they’ll share some of their own content from the next expansion. For this week, we wanted to give them a seat at our table.

Back to you, Cozmo.

Helpful Hands

Whether its plants, animals, or other oddly named error codes, the Destiny Player Support has the information you need to diagnose any issues you come across in the wild.  

This is their report.

Iron Banner Updated

This week marks the first arrival of 6v6 Iron Banner, and is the first Iron Banner post-Update 1.1.4. Listed below are changes that players can expect to see in this playlist, as outlined in the Update 1.1.4 Patch Notes:

• Now features 6v6
• Time limit is 12 minutes
• Score limit is 125 points
• Respawn time is 7 seconds
• All Control Zones start off neutral
• Additional Guardians (max of 3) in a zone increases capture speed
• Emperor’s Respite has been removed from the Iron Banner Control playlist
• Power ammo
• • Recurring side crate respawn times reduced from 90 seconds to 45 seconds
  • Initial side crate respawn times reduced from 90 seconds to 30 seconds

Additionally, all Season 2 Iron Banner weapons will be available from Lord Saladin through either Reward Packages, or direct purchase using Iron Banner Tokens. For more information regarding Iron Banner, players should visit our Iron Banner Guide.

Error Codes

We are still investigating an increase in reports of CABBAGE, COCONUT, CURRANT, LETTUCE, and RABBIT error codes.

We have implemented a fix that should resolve most instances of ZEBRA error codes. Players with a poor connection quality or below minimum spec PC hardware may continue to encounter this error code.

Players who encounter these errors should try relaunching into their activity. Players who repeatedly encounter these error codes should report them to the #Help forum.

Put the Bunny Back in the Box

Here are this week’s winners.

Movie of the Week: New World

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Honorable Mention: Yoga Flame!

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Before we go, here are last week’s Nightfall scores. 

You just read over 2,400 words of knowledge. How you feeling? We have more lined up for you next week during the stream. Join us April 24 at 10 a.m. PDT on Twitch to see Warmind and Season 3. 

In the meantime, I’ll be playing some Iron Banner 6v6 and finishing up some ornaments. I’ll see you out there. 

<3 Cozmo

The community focus is our celebration of the player. When you do great things, we put you in the spotlight. We’ve had artists, musicians, guides, badasses, and a long list of others share their stories in the past. Our goal is to introduce you to a new face. This week, we have two faces that are part of a streaming duo. They’re not just good friends that stream together. They are a father-son duo that offers up their raid expertise to help others. 

Let’s meet the gentleman of WTFGameNation.

Tell us a little bit about yourself and how you fit into the Destiny 2 Community.

P and T: Our names are Peanut and Toast, and we are a partnered Father/Son stream that focuses mainly on “raiducation,” specifically for the Prestige raid. “Raiducation” is the term we use to describe our method of teaching: We teach the raid the way it’s meant to be played with integrity (all the best positions, strats, weapons, subclasses and everything to help for a successful raid).

We have been raiding consistently since Destiny first launched, and have made it our focus to teach the raid and all of its mechanics to those who have not had the opportunity to attempt/complete it. Or for those who just need a team to play with. Our community is filled with people whose desire is to help others learn and grow as players.

We appreciate you taking the time to pass your knowledge to others. Where can we find you on the internet?

You can learn a lot about a Guardian by their preferred weapons and abilities. What is your favorite Subclass and weapon?

P and T: Sunbreaker Titans all the way! For Toast, Better Devils is by far the weapon that he has the most fun with. For Peanut, it’s The Doubt from FWC.

At least you didn’t say Warlock. What kind of content can we find on your Twitch Channel?

P and T: We play many different games, but Destiny raid help is what we spend the majority of our time streaming. You’ll find us helping people through the hardest PVE content to date on a regular basis.

How many Raid completions do you have?

P and T: At the time of writing this, we have over 600 raid clears. Over 200 of those are Prestige clears.

That’s a lot of raiding! What Destiny 2 changes or additions are you most looking forward to?

P and T: The Return of the Shoulder Charge! The potential behind mods 2.0 is something we are really looking forward to. And of course, we are extremely excited for the next raid lair. 

Anything else you would like to add before we wrap up? 

P and T: Our community is one of integrity, kindness and support. We are a family first and foremost. We welcome new members and teach all the mechanics with patience and respect. As sherpas, we take great pride in teaching how the raid works to all people of all ages. 

If you’re looking for help with the raid, or want to meet some of the best people we have had the pleasure of knowing, we invite you to check out our community. Stop by and raid with us!

This week at Bungie, we mapped more of the road ahead.

We hope this gives you a good idea of what we have on our plate for the months ahead. These delivery times are goals. Some of these features could move around as we get closer to releases.

Our next expansion, Warmind, arrives on May 8. We know you have a lot of questions about it. Your answers will arrive in our next reveal stream on April 24. Developers from Bungie will be on the hot seats along with some representatives from our new partners at Vicarious Visions to talk about this new adventure that we created together. 

In the meantime, if you want to decorate your desktop.

Ultimate Power

One thing we’re changing up at the beginning of Season 3 is how your Power level will affect the enemies you face. As you tackle a new campaign and start taking on activities above your current Power level, you may find that the villains you face put up more of a fight. Here is Combatants Design Lead Tomonori Kinoshita to give you some details on the changes we’re making. 

Tomo: Hey, folks!

I’d like to let you know of an upcoming PvE difficulty tuning pass that should be hitting your consoles and PCs along with the beginning of Season 3.

The main goals from this tuning pass are to provide a more challenging experience for players when they take on higher-leveled activities. This should make Power progression and acquisition more meaningful, reinforce and reward the energy type matching gameplay, and provide opportunities for our master PvE-ers to demonstrate their prowess at the highest levels. 

So, how are we going to tackle this?

• Change our outgoing player damage scaling vs. higher-leveled combatants to be steeper (make them more difficult), similar to Destiny. As a result, higher-leveled combatants will take longer to kill than they currently do—but if you’re at or above their level, you can still melt them (like you’ve come to love) with Update 1.1.4.
• Extend our outgoing and incoming damage scaling from capping at a 40 power level delta to a 50 power level delta. Currently, in Destiny 2, our scaling only affects the difficulty of combatants up to 40 Power levels  above the player before plateauing. Increasing this to 50 Power levels adds a little more room for players to show off how badass they really are.
• When combatants are 50 Power levels or higher above the player, they will be immune and display a “??” icon on their nameplate. OG Guardians probably remember the first time they stumbled across the Hive in the depths of Cosmodrome. We wanted to bring back that feeling of mystery and provide challenges for the player to come back to later in their journey.
• Change combatant energy shields to fulfill the following: Matching energy element damage to shields is most effective (roughly 3x damage plus the current shield detonation), followed by non-matching energy (roughly 2x damage), and Kinetic damage won’t have any bonus damage multiplier. To further incentivize the matching game, the 3x multiplier for matching damage types is not affected by the damage scaling of higher-leveled combatants until the combatants display the “??” nameplates.
• The previous change also allows us to bring back Match Game as an additional Prestige Nightfall modifier for extra points and bragging rights. When this modifier is enabled, all non-matching damage to energy shields is reduced to 10%, so make sure your fireteam is coordinating appropriately. The current plan is for Match Game to launch along with the rest of these difficulty changes.
• We look forward to watching the community show off their PvE skills after these new settings go live. Show us what you’re made of, Guardians.

Back in Plaid

We’ve seen the Destiny community do some pretty amazing things to have a positive impact on the real world. Guardians never shy away from lending a helping hand. We’re rallying the banners again for a couple of great causes. Over the next month, Bungie will go head-to-head against other local businesses to raise money for two great organizations.

To prove that men don’t have exclusive rights to kilts, Bungie Foundation Manager Christine Edwards has your call to action.

Christine: Bungie is celebrating its 7th anniversary of supporting families at the Seattle Ronald McDonald House through their annual Men in Kilts fundraiser! As you all know, 7 is a big deal for us, so we’re planning on going all out this year with a giant goal of raising $77,000. Help us achieve our goal and cast your vote for Team Bungie by donating $10 or more. Every $30 donated will pay for a family to stay at the House for one night. Head to the RMHC Donation Page to cast your votes by Friday, April 27!

Need a sweeter incentive? Check out these backer rewards for donating to Men in Kilts!

• $50—Exclusive high-resolution digital Destiny 2 teaser concept art.
• • Art will be prepped at a 3:2 aspect ratio at a high resolution for easy printing and framing.
  • Art will be delivered via email attachment to donors in early–mid June.
• $100—The prize above, plus a postcard shipped to you signed by our MiK team.
• $250—All prizes above, plus a digital print of exclusive art made by Mark Flieg.
• $500—All prizes above, plus a physical print shipped to you of Mark’s exclusive art.
• $1000—All prizes above, plus participation in a Bungie studio visit with you and a guest, dates scheduled quarterly in 2018/2019 and announced separately to donors after the event concludes.
• Note: All travel and hotel accommodations are the sole responsibility of the donor.
• $2000—All prizes above, plus your own piece of custom concept art, featuring you, created by Mark Flieg 

This year marks our 5th anniversary of the Gauntlet Tabletop Fundraiser. On Sunday, May 20, Team Bungie will compete in a tournament against 20 other local gaming studios and tabletop aficionados to raise funds for Wellspring Family Services. They’re a local organization that has been working to build emotionally healthy, self-sufficient families and a nonviolent community for over 120 years. Your donations help them reach that goal and embolden our team with Power-Ups that will help us win the tournament. Head to our team’s Donation Page to commit your support on or before May 20! 

Debating between donating to Men in Kilts or the Gauntlet? Once you see these backer rewards, you’ll want to donate to both!

• $10—Vote on a local charity where the Gauntlet Tabletop team can volunteer. 
• $50—Receive an unannounced new exclusive emblem at the beginning of Season 4.
• • Exact distribution date to be announced to all donors via email in the future.
• $100—The prize above, plus a “programmer art” caricature of you—we can’t guarantee it’ll be good, but it will be funny!
• An email containing a deadline for photo submissions will be sent to donors at the end of the event. No photos will be accepted after the deadline has passed.
• $500—All prizes above, plus a 1 ½-hour Destiny gameplay session with one of our developers. 
• $1000—All prizes above, plus participation in an exclusive virtual Pentathlon Puzzle Hunt.
• • Every year during the Bungie Pentathlon, teams at Bungie compete to solve a series of puzzles the fastest to win honor and glory. This year we are putting together an exclusive virtual puzzle-hunt for donors.
  • You and up to 12 of your friends will be invited to participate against other donors who’ve contributed over $1000. Date and time subject to Bungie and donor availability.
• Whatever clan donates the most will be featured on Bungie.net.
• • A survey will be sent to all donors at the end of the event requesting clan names. The winning clan will be contacted regarding their feature upon final determination.
• If we reach $77k as a team, we will create a video of employees performing an emote of your choice.
• • An email will be sent to all donors at the end of the event with a survey of emotes.

This is your chance to be a hero in real life—and maybe even score some sweet loot.

Rain Delay

Scan and Repair

Whatever the issue, the Destiny Player Support team is always there to make sure you have the information you need. 

This is their report.

Tower Vendor Issues

This week, Destiny 2 Hotfix 1.1.4.1 addressed issues where players were unable to spawn into the Tower. Since release, we have been closely monitoring the #Help forum for reports of issues and have found that vendors sometimes take up to 30 seconds to spawn. We have forwarded these reports to the appropriate party for investigation.

If you load into a Tower that does not have vendors present, please post a report to the #Help forum noting how long it took for the vendors to appear.

Destiny 2 PC Crash Troubleshooting

In Destiny 2 on PC, players who encounter issues with installed game files should try running the Scan and Repair tool in the Battle.net app. In some cases, players may repeatedly receive an error directing them to use the Scan and Repair tool, but the tool reports “no problems found.” For more information, players should see: Scan and Repair in the Battle.net App.

Additionally, we recommend that players delete their existing CVARS.xml file if they are experiencing issues. This file can be found in: \Users\USER_NAME\Appdata\Roaming\Bungie\DestinyPC\prefs\

PLEASE NOTE: When relaunched, Destiny 2 will generate a fresh CVARS.xml file. This will revert all custom player settings in Destiny 2 to their defaults. For more information, please see our CVARS knowledge base article.

We’ll Always Have Paris

All right, on to the winners.

Movie of the Week: Destiny 2 Sound Swap

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Honorable Mention: Darkness

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Our next update is only a month away. We’ll have more info to share with you before then. Keep an eye on this blog as well as our upcoming stream on April 24. 

See you in Iron Banner next week.

<3 Cozmo

Since the beginning of this year, we’ve been setting more specific expectations for the work we’re doing to support Destiny 2. With some Season 2 updates in our rear view mirror, it’s time to look further into the future. Before we take a look at our development priorities, Game Director Christopher Barrett has some commentary on our goals for this summer, and beyond.

Barrett: The team is very excited to extend the roadmap and share with you some of the big stakes we’re putting in the ground. Recent updates have focused on immediate issues to the live game, but in the coming months our vision for the future is converging with critical player feedback to deliver transformative changes to Destiny 2. 

We’ll be diving deeper into each one of the listed items soon, and there’s even more we can’t quite talk about yet, but for now it’s all hands on deck to make sure we deliver on our promise to restore Destiny 2 to the hobby we all love.

Here’s the new roadmap, spanning the entire summer:

The community has been talking a lot about some of the things we’re developing for Season Four. Our goals for these features are to give you more control over how you configure your loadouts in Destiny 2 and give you more reasons to play the game over time. We also want to bring back those exciting moments when you acquire the perfect weapon. To make this happen, updates like Weapon Randomization, Weapon Slot Changes, Gear Collections, and Records will be delivered to all players.

We now have a plan for Raid Prestige changes (including Raid Lairs) and will update where it will land in the next Development Roadmap. Mod Changes are being incorporated into our new plan for Weapon Randomization.

Season Three marks the beginning of a new plan for how we deliver Crucible content. For every player of Destiny 2, we’ll be releasing all of the new Crucible Maps being developed for Warmind into matchmaking. The same goes for the maps we released with Curse of Osiris. To keep the community in the Crucible unified, everyone will see new arenas in matchmade playlists like Quickplay, Competitive, Trials of the Nine, Iron Banner, as well as the new weekly rotators that include Rumble and Mayhem. That means more opponents for everyone. With the arrival of Private Matches, players will need to purchase each Expansion to have exclusive access to play those Crucible maps with other players in a private match. This plan goes into effect on May 8 with the beginning of Season Three.

The usual conversation about our creative process will continue. Expect to learn more about the new features on the roadmap as we delve deeper into developer commentary. If these plans change – and plans have a way of doing that – we’ll keep refreshing this roadmap on a monthly basis.

Thanks for coming along with us on this journey, thanks for your feedback, and thanks for playing.