Category: Bungie News

Game Director Christopher Barrett:

A few weeks ago, we shared a Destiny 2 Development Roadmap to preview some changes we’re working on for Destiny 2. As we’ve mentioned before, the roadmap is our current best estimate, and we’ll do our best to update you as our plans unfold.

With today’s update we’ve moved a few items out to later releases – this is because we are trying to ensure each feature we add hits a sufficiently high quality bar. So while we really wanted to get Nightfall Strike Unique Weapons into your hands next week to coincide with Nightfall Scoring, it’s more important that each of those rewards live up to the difficulty it will take to earn them. They have to be super cool, so we’re giving the artists extra time to make sure they are… super cool. Mod System Improvements are also still planned, but will not be available when 1.2.0 is released. We’ll give more details on when to expect these changes at a future date.

We also have a big addition we’re eager share – Rumble will be joining 6v6 Iron Banner and Mayhem in our new rotating weekly Crucible playlist in 1.1.4. We want to make sure players have a more diverse set of game modes available in both Crucible and Private Matches. Doubles is also planned to return, but we do not have an exact release date just yet. Keep an eye out for next week’s TWAB where we’ll go into more depth with our future Crucible plans.  

There’s lots more we’re eager to talk about in the coming weeks. We promise to be as transparent as possible and keep you updated as we go. We hope you’re along for the ride.

<3 Chris

If you follow the conversation about Bungie closely, you might have heard the one about the new Community Manager we were looking to hire. Whenever Bungie seeks a player to lead the community they call home, it sparks obvious curiosity. Conspiracy theories immediately pointed to my imminent departure, but the rumors of my pending death have been greatly exaggerated. This was a bid for reinforcement, not replacement.

After an extensive search and many conversations, we realized that what we were looking for was right under our noses the whole time – and he was already kicking ass. It is my pleasure to introduce Dylan Gafner as the newest addition to the community team. This may be confusing, since he has been doing the job for months. Today, we’re making it official. This is no longer a temporary title. He’s partners with Cozmo, now.

The idea of a “Community Manager” means many things to many people. They can be equal parts court jester, combat correspondent, best friend, first responder, security guard, detective, nation builder, case worker, and air traffic controller. Each person who accepts the mission weaves those strands together to create their own unique specialty. In Dylan, we see a problem solver who tackles player reports and works with his peers to drive toward solutions. He’s been a tireless translator on the border between players and developers.

Here are some words from the man himself about what this new gig means to him.

Dylan: Hey, all. This isn’t the first time I’ve introduced myself, but I’d like to say hello again.

Since joining Bungie.net in 2004, this has been a career that I’ve dreamed about. It’s fun to think that my path here began with a simple desire to earn a cool emblem in a Bungie game by creating an account on the website. From there, I joined my first Clan (The WorkPLace) and attended my first of many PAX events in 2011. Eventually, I threw all of my stuff into a ’97 Ford Explorer to drive from San Diego to Seattle to start a job on the Destiny Player Support team in 2015. Since then, I’ve kept my nose to the grindstone in communicating known issues, preparing support documentation for Destiny releases, and volunteering my thumbs for various Twitch reveals.

I’m extremely grateful that this new opportunity as Community Manager is a chance for me to give back to a community that I’ve known through fourteen years of gameplay, friendship, laughter, and ridiculous fun. We’ve recently promised an increase in communication surrounding Destiny 2, our future plans, and even issues that we’re tracking. My goal in joining the community team is to give a pulse to the status of development, investigations in process, or setting expectations for upcoming features. We have a roadmap to follow, and I’m excited to keep you informed along the way.

With that said, let’s get down to business. You can find me responding to threads on the Bungie.net forums, jumping into conversations as @a_dmg04 on Twitter, and providing content for the Bungie Blog. I will continue to work with the Destiny Player Support team in communicating about known issues or upcoming maintenance windows, which can be found on Help.bungie.net, and @BungieHelp on Twitter.

Thanks for playing, and thank you for your passion. It’s truly an inspiration each day.

Cheers,

-dmg04

This week at Bungie, we invited you to celebrate Crimson Days with us.

When one celebration ends, another begins.

Rally Caps

New Monarchy

Dead Orbit

Future War Cult

If this is your first Faction Rallies, here is what you need to know. First, visit the Tower and pledge your loyalty to one of the factions. Then, it’s time to set out into the wild to complete various activities. Once you’ve earned enough tokens to qualify for a reward, exchange them for packages full of loot. 

There will be some new weapons added to the packages for this event. Here is what we are adding to the reward pool:

That’s not all that is at stake. At the end of the event, the faction with the most packages redeemed will offer their prized weapon as a reward. Those who were loyal to the winner get a big discount and can pick it up for 1,000 Glimmer. Everyone else can still get it at 50,000 Glimmer. Here is what the factions have to offer in the event they are victorious:

New Monarchy Pulse Rifle

Dead Orbit Pulse Rifle

Future War Cult Scout rifle

Fine Tuning

Senior Designer Jon Weisnewski is visiting us from the kitchen with an update on the Exotic Tuning Pass our team is working on diligently to make Exotics more “Exotic-er.”

Jon: Hello players! I’m here to talk to you about the work going into the Exotic Tuning Pass on the D2 road map.

When Destiny first launched, we built, play-tested, and shipped a batch of Exotic weapons that we hoped would be worthy of your time and hype. Shortly after release, we were happily inundated with a mountain of player feedback. This allowed us to check our assumptions, do some tuning, and push out one of the first Destiny sandbox updates which were solely focused on Exotic weapons. We’re doing this again with Destiny 2 and this time we’re including Exotic weapons and armor. 

Gameplay goals for this pass:

• Tuning pass on Exotic gear focused on adding and/or increasing player Power spikes. 
• Focus on low-usage items, but all items are being considered. 
• Lean into an item’s established gameplay and push it harder. Avoid catch-all improvements that dilute item identity. 

So how does this play out? We can look at Graviton Lance as an example. The functional concept is a weapon that fires two Cosmic Void rounds that create a zero-air-resistance tunnel for a high-caliber precision shot to fire through. The first two rounds have almost no recoil and prime the air, and the third round does high damage with no falloff. A kill knocks the body back with considerable force, it tumbles, and then explodes.

Resounding player feedback has been along the lines of “looks great, sounds great, neat explosion! I can’t get kills in PVP because all the damage is at the end of the burst, kicks too hard for the follow up, and I can’t reliably damage targets with the death explosion in any activity because the body goes flying too far backwards.” 

All spectacle, not enough utility. 

To target the first pain point we reduced the recoil of the burst, added some aim assist, and changed it from three rounds to two. This still plays into the fantasy of a low-damage gravity-neutralizing round forming a projectile tunnel for the last bullet. It also allows us to ensure the damage per burst is at a competitive level for PVP engagements. In fact, it gives Graviton a slight mathematical edge against other pulse rifles.

On the second feedback item, we did some tuning to the ragdoll body. We made it so that rather than violently flying backwards and likely out of range of a potential splash damage opportunity, the defeated opponent floats back and up. Then we made the explosion bigger, increased the damage, and added some void field projectiles that seek out any remaining targets.

This is one of the more exaggerated examples to help describe how we’re looking at our goals and applying them to the gear. At the time of this writing, the weapons that ARE NOT getting an update are Merciless , Telesto, Wardcliff Coil, MIDA Multi Tool, Colony, Legend of Acrius, and Vigilance Wing. Some of the above perform well without needing changes, while others, like the Vigilance Wing Pulse Rifle, are already benefitting from the tuning changes planned for Update 1.1.4. Everything else has had some degree of power or utility increase, whether it’s simply bumping a stat or some deeper plumbing as described above.

We’ll be touching a lot of powerful gear with this update and to truly understand the impact for players requires a lot of design iteration and test time. It isn’t enough to crank up the damage and run one strike or Crucible match with a gun and helmet and move on. Dialing in the right amount of power, testing in all activities with all types of load outs, finding the bugs, fixing the bugs, updating the perk description text to reflect new behavior, and then handing that off to localization for translation—it’s a ton of work, but we’re up to it. We sincerely appreciate your patience. I believe it will be worth the wait.

We’ll be back soon to talk about Exotic Masterworks as well! Until then, continue being excellent to each other.

Crimson Clarity

This is their report.

Crimson Days Clarifications

Crimson Days is live in Destiny 2, and lasts until the weekly reset on February 20. Upon monitoring chatter from players, we’d like to take the opportunity to clarify the following:

• The Burnout Crucible map, introduced to Destiny 2 for Crimson Days, is exclusive to the Crimson Days Crucible playlist only until Crimson Days ends on February 20. From then on, it will be joining existing maps in the Crucible rotation.
• The Undeterred Exotic Sparrow, earned by participating in the Crimson Days Crucible playlist, does not come from the Crimson Engram and does not contribute to the Crimson Engram knock-out mechanic. The Undefeated Exotic Sparrow does contribute to the Crimson Engram knock-out list when obtained, and is only available through Crimson Engrams or Eververse Trading Co.

Hotfix 1.1.2.1

Earlier this week we deployed Destiny 2 Hotfix 1.1.2.1. This hotfix removed timers on Lost Sector rewards, and adjusted Lost Sector chest behavior to only open once per boss defeated. 

Cells

Straight from the Creations page to your device of choice. The movies are here.

Movie of the Week: Drop the Mic

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Honorable Mention: Monster

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I think I might pledge to Future War Cult next week. Starting to feel sorry for them. Who’s with me?

<3 Cozmo

This week at Bungie, we’re decorating the world for the big dance. 

Yesterday, we revealed that Crimson Days is coming to Destiny 2. If you haven’t had a chance to read the details about the new 2v2 playlist and the rewards you can earn in any activity, please check it out now. We’d be honored to have you join us for the celebration.

Earlier this week, Lord Saladin packed up his wares and left the Tower. We heard some good things about Iron Banner in Season 2. If you are still holding tokens, you can use them the next time the ritual returns. If you still need to punch some Guardians to get that chest ornament, you can also continue your progress when Lord Saladin returns.

Settle the Score

“Do you see the stars flutter? Now listen. They scream from the lacerations of our enemies. The balance has been threatened. Nightfall is upon us. This burden of Light has never been heavier. We can sleep no more.” — Ulan-Tan

Before we get to the details, Game Director Christopher Barrett has some context to frame up the essential fantasy that we’d like for the Nightfall to serve.

Barrett: Nightfall should be a challenging test that only the bravest Guardians dare face. Fireteams of any size should be able to participate, from organized clan groups to skilled solo players. Players should be able to determine their own challenge level, by going slow and steady or fast and wild, with elective modifiers to test the most hardcore veterans. Your final score will separate the best from the rest, and with high risk comes high reward. Each terrible villain that players face should have a very rare and powerful unique item, themed to them, that tumbles to the ground as they collapse into a pile of bones. Conquering Nightfall should be a badge of honor, with the best players able to show off their achievements with new dynamic emblems and exclusive auras.

That’s the vision of where we want to take Nightfall, you’ll be seeing the first of this direction in the next patch, with more being added over time.

With those goals in mind, we asked Designer John Favaro and Senior Design Lead Tyson Green to share some facts on how they plan to enhance Nightfall strikes. 

Tyson: As we are working on new sandbox improvements, we recognized the need for a venue in which those improvements matter more. The weekly Nightfall, especially on the Prestige difficulty, was intended to be such a venue, but the controversial time limit mechanic is a simple pass-fail mechanism. It only acknowledges success as being a clear, with no degrees of success past that, so no competition exists in that space. It turns a lot of people off of Nightfall too, since it is both difficult and indexes performance solely on speed.

Nightfall Scoring

We are repositioning strike scoring in Destiny 2 to enable you to achieve something prestigious in the weekly Nightfall and as a way to amplify difficulty. The new scoring rules are intended to be better at a few specific things:

• Reward you for engaging and defeating enemies instead of running past them.
• Avoid over-emphasizing specific mechanics like precision kills that highlight certain areas of the sandbox (and/or punish other areas), so that players are the ones who determine the most effective Meta.
• Reward you for taking on greater challenges up to the limits of your own capabilities.
• Reward you for doing the above quickly and over the course of a short run versus long slogs over several hours.

The updated mechanics look like this:

• Scoring is team-based and the sum of individual performances. A team should be able to focus on what works best, not feeling put out by who stole whose kill.
• Scoring is primarily driven by kills and secondarily by orb generation. We want you to find what works best for clearing strikes instead of telling you which weapons to use, but we want coordinated use of Supers and other team support mechanics to contribute to high scores. We’re interested in restoring special point awards based on medals, but we want your input to understand the basic meta first.
• Score bleeds over time. We are watching this closely — score decay can feel bad, but all else being equal, a team that clears faster than another team should score higher. Score decay achieves this in the most transparent fashion.
• Scoring cuts off after time thresholds. At 15 minutes, new points earned are reduced by 50%. At 18 minutes, you stop earning new points and it’s a race to finish the run and post your score. We want time to matter (see above), but we also want to avoid some of the problems we saw with Prison of Elders, where a “high score” might involve punishing respawning combatants (and yourself) for a few hours until the novelty wore off. A good Nightfall clear shouldn’t feel like a slog.

Challenge

On top of the above mechanics are Challenge Cards, items that offer ways to boost the challenge in exchange for score multipliers. In 1.1.3 there will be a challenge card that drops from completing a Nightfall run. It has some customization options to help tune the challenge level to what you and your fireteam are capable of. 

Rewards

Players will be able to see their (and your) scores on new Nightfall Emblems available as drops in each Nightfall strike. These emblems (and others like them) are now the source of auras, which are automatically enabled if your personal score is above a global threshold. At first the thresholds will be set based on what we think might be tough for players to reach, but we look forward to you showing us how much we underestimated you. Then we can raise the bar based on community scores.

Along with the aura, a personal score over the threshold will also unlock a fireteam-wide buff that boosts Vanguard Token drops in that strike by 25%. When your fireteam sees the Nightfall Aura on your head, they know who’s hooking them up. 

Lastly, some rarer variants of these Nightfall Emblems will be available as drops at higher score thresholds. Obtaining these rewards is meant to be challenging, so we don’t expect everyone to reach these scores or collect these items. 

Version 0.9

Update 1.1.3 will have a first pass on this feature. Before we can call it a competitive activity, we need your help pushing the limits and finding where it breaks. Future updates will react to your input, as well as add more rewards and recognition to posting competitive scores. We also hope to extend the Challenge Cards to support more difficulty customization and deepen the scoring options. All of the feedback you give us in this release will go into making our upcoming releases better. Thank you in advance!

Designer John Favaro has some additional info about what you can expect from the new Nightfall modifiers in the Prestige mode.

John: The current Nightfall climate encourages play that pushes players through the encounters as fast as possible, focusing on extending bonus timers, and skipping encounters unless they are required, which was more stressful than fun. With Nightfall strike scoring, we were looking to give players a little more control, allowing them to modify their experiences to provide them the challenge they want and incentivize more methodical progression through the activities. People like big numbers, and the best way to get big numbers is to kill everything. We’ve been listening to the community’s feedback, and this is our first step in making a few improvements. We’re hoping you’ll put some time in and let us know how you feel.

The modifiers will apply a multiplier to your score in the Prestige Nightfall. It isn’t all more, more, more though; there are plenty of ways to lose points. There is an ever-present score bleed to apply pressure to keep you moving, and a timer that will reduce your multiplier if you take too long. Here are the current modifiers we’re going to ship in this first iteration:

Void/Solar/Arc Singe – currently provides a +25% increase to player and enemy damage of the corresponding element.
Extinguish – fireteam wipes return the team to orbit 
Power modifier – voluntarily decrease your power to gain a score bonus.

These are just our initial modifier offerings. This release is focusing more on how the system as a whole feels, so we can get feedback on the core experience to fine-tune it before we dive in head first to creating additional modifiers.

There you have it. If you still enjoy the thrill of racing through quickly, you will be rewarded with a higher score. If you prefer to go in solo and take your time, you might lose some points, but will still finish the activity and collect a reward. You can complete the normal Nightfall and get a score, or you can take on the Prestige Nightfall and ratchet up your score with some modifiers. We’re eager to see you jump into the new Nightfall and give us feedback on these changes. 

Raid Plans

It’s a fair question. The answer is that we didn’t want to release it in its current form. Before rolling it out, we thought we could add some more flavor to this special activity that will make it worth the wait. Here to tell you more about our plans for raid activities is Senior Designer Joe Blackburn. 

Joe: Hey, Guardians. For Destiny 2, we wanted to release raid content on a more regular cadence than we did during the first years of Destiny. In our original estimation of this work, we knew we would have to focus on normal modes, forgoing Lair challenge modes, and having their Prestige Modes rely on enemies that are more lethal and harder to kill.

As we got closer to releasing Prestige Eater of Worlds, we knew we wanted to do something more. Over the past few months, we have been prototyping a new way of adding difficulty and replayability to raid activities. Today, I’m happy to announce that we have decided to push this feature forward and release it for all the Leviathan Raid Content with the release of Expansion 2.

Going forward, all raids will all have a normal mode active at all times, and each week one raid or Raid Lair will have a curated loadout mode. 

This new version of Prestige requires players to complete raids filled with deadly enemies using a curated loadout of weapons and a special modifier that enhances the way you play. The Raid Team never likes to let you know exactly what to expect, but let’s look at some hypothetical examples. These are not the plan of record, but they give you a basic idea of what you might find.

Week 1

Raid Activity: Eater of Worlds

Modifier: Marksman. Precision damage is increased. Landing a precision shot grants one ammo directly to the magazine.

Required Loadout:

Kinetic: Hand Cannon

Energy: Scout Rifle

Power: Linear Fusion

Week 2

Raid Activity: Expansion 2 Raid Lair

Modifier: Gladiator. Your melee damage is increased and melee kills grant bonus Super.

Required Loadout:

Kinetic: Sidearm

Energy: Submachine gun

Power: Shotgun

Week 3

Raid Activity: Eater of Worlds

Modifier: Conduit. Each kill you get before reloading or swapping weapons gives you increasingly more ability energy.

Required Loadout:

Kinetic: Auto Rifle 

Energy: Riskrunner

Power: Grenade Launcher

We should also note that, while Eater of Worlds is not getting any specific encounter changes, all the previous Prestige changes in Leviathan will be active when players engage in its new loadout difficulty.

The goal of the new Prestige mode is simple: provide new ways to engage with raid content each week, new ways to engage with different weapons in your vault, and new rewards to chase. 

This is currently slotted on the roadmap for May, but this is a major overhaul and could be pushed out further. We’ll keep you updated.

We can’t wait for you to play it, talk about it, and help us make it better for years to come.

Thanks,

Joe

Get it Off Your Chest

Alex: In the 1.1.2.1 Hot Fix, we’ve fixed the underlying issue that caused the Lost Sector chest exploit. Players can now only open the boss chest once after killing a Lost Sector boss, as was originally intended. The chest may still respawn if you leave and return rapidly (due to a larger issue with our activity tech that would require significant changes to fix) but you won’t be able to open it again. You’ll get the ‘code required’ prompt unless the boss also respawns and you defeat them again. We’ve also completely removed the reward throttle from Lost Sectors as it is no longer necessary and we agree it was a poor player experience.

We want to acknowledge all of the interest we’ve seen from players in us expanding the Lost Sectors system. We agree and are currently looking into ways to do that. We’re not yet sure what form it will take and we don’t have anything specific to talk about yet, but it’s something we’re working towards. Look out for someone to talk about that in a future TWAB when we have more solid plans to share.

The next download arrives on Tuesday. Destiny Player Support will be on station to monitor your progress in installing the bits. Which is the perfect segue into…

Check Your Vitals

Destiny Player Support is dedicated to keeping you in the game. The best place to find them is the Help forum. Once a week, they make an appearance here to keep you informed. 

This is their report.

Destiny 2 Maintenance and Downtime

On Tuesday February 13, Destiny 2 Hotfix 1.1.2.1 will be deployed to address timeouts on Lost Sector chests. There will be a period of maintenance before this hotfix becomes available. For times, please see below:

• 8 AM Pacific – 1600 UTC
• • Destiny server maintenance is scheduled to begin
  • Players may no longer sign in to Destiny services
• 9 AM Pacific – 1700 UTC
• • Players still in Destiny 2 activities will be returned to the title screen
• 12 PM Pacific – 2000 UTC
• • Destiny server maintenance is scheduled to conclude
  • Destiny 2 Hotfix 1.1.2.1 will be available to download and install
  • Crimson Days will begin as soon as maintenance concludes

Crimson Days Vital Information

Immediately after maintenance completion, Crimson Days will become available to all Destiny 2 players. The following items are potential points of confusion that players may experience during this event, and we’d like to give a heads up.

Welcome to Crimson Days Waypoint: Under some circumstances, players may not receive a waypoint leading them to Tower vendors for the “Welcome to Crimson Days” Milestone. Players may still complete these steps by simply speaking with the Tower vendor listed in the milestone.

Crucible Tokens in Loot Stream: Upon completion of a Crimson Days Crucible match, post-game rewards may push Crucible Tokens out of view in the player’s loot stream. Players should always receive Crucible Tokens upon Crimson Days match completion and may find them in their Consumables inventory.

Romantic Comedies About Time Travel

Grab your popcorn and pour some of the gooey butter simulation sauce on it. It’s movie time!

Movie of the Week: Pleasure Gardens with two Guardians (Warning: Language)

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Honorable Mention: Happy Crimson Days

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We shared more of our plans with you this week. As always, we‘ll be reading your thoughts and feedback on what we laid out. Tell us what you think. We’ll continue to keep you updated.  

Crimson Days is only 5 sleeps away. I plan on teaming up with dmg04. Hopefully, he can keep up so we can stick together. Keep an eye out; maybe you can best us. 

<3 Cozmo

Crimson Days begins in Destiny 2 on Tuesday, February 13. At the heart of the weeklong event is a 2v2 Crucible playlist intended to get your blood pumping as you and a friend test your bonds to the breaking point. This celebration of teamwork will last one week!

The combat scenario is 2v2 Clash with a round-based twist. We will also be debuting The Burnout, a new take on The Burning Shrine set in a future timeline where the Vex have succeeded in altering our reality. 

The sun is darkened and the only Light to be found comes from you and your partner fighting as one. Stay in close proximity to your partner and your abilities recharge at a faster rate. Stray too far, and your enemies will be given a waypoint leading to your location. If you can’t find a partner, don’t worry. We’ll play matchmaker and find one for you.

The Rewards

The best way to earn rewards during Crimson Days is to compete in the Crimson Days Crucible playlist, and we’ve tuned the experience to focus on rewarding single-character play. Most rewards are found within a new Crimson Engram, with all contents on a “knock-out” list, preventing you from receiving duplicate items until you’ve earned all of the new gear.

No matter which activity you play in Destiny 2 during Crimson Days, every player will receive both an Illuminated Engram and a Crimson Engram when they level up. Crimson Engrams are only earnable through gameplay, and are not capped or limited during the event. To qualify, you need only to reach the level cap for your Guardian (that’s 25 if you’ve acquired Expansion 1; 20 if you haven’t).

There are also five new rewards found exclusively for players who complete the following:

Tirastrella Ghost Shell

Undeterred Exotic Sparrow

Dieselpunk Exotic Ornament

Flaunting Dance Emote

Crimson Engrams will only be earnable through gameplay, but if you’re looking to directly purchase a specific item, Tess will also offer a selection of the Crimson Engram contents in exchange for the Bright Dust you are holding. Gear purchased with Bright Dust will also count towards the “knock-out” list mechanic described above, preventing duplicate items unless you have already earned all the rewards. 

Every reward item obtained from a Crimson Engram can also be dismantled for Bright Dust, including event-specific shaders.

Crimson Days will begin next Tuesday, February 13, and conclude on the weekly reset at 9 AM PST on Tuesday, February 20. If you’ve yet to find a dance partner, now is the time. We’ll see you in the arena.

This week at Bungie, we deployed an update to Destiny 2.

With all that has been said and shipped this week, we have many new questions to tackle. When’s the next Sandbox update? Have you heard our feedback about movement in Destiny 2? What about Shoulder Charge?

Sandbox Developer Commentary

Hamrick: Hello again!  We’ve been promising more details about our work on the Destiny 2 Sandbox, so here we are. 

Before we get started I want to lend some context. The Sandbox Team is currently working on lots of updates for Destiny 2. Over the next several months, as those various delivery dates approach, there will be many visits from me or one of my teammates. Know that we’ll be chatting with you again and again to share more details with you as we acquire them. This meal will span many courses. Here’s the first…

We’ve begun playtesting a series of changes that you will have in your hands in the next few months. Sandbox is lovingly begun to refer to this series of changes as the “Go Fast Update.” These are the changes we are currently playtesting. They’re not guaranteed to ship, but the outlook is good at this point.

Our goals for this round are to provide individual players with more hero moments by increasing overall speed and mobility, increasing the amount of supers you charge to demolish your enemies, and increasing the frequency and impact of our most montage worthy power weapons, especially in the Crucible.

Here’s what we’re doing:

• All three glides plus Catapult and Strafe Lift have been retuned and buffed to make them more unique and faster.
• The mobility stat has had its range expanded and been completely retuned as well.  In short, everyone gets faster and the high end is higher.
• The players’ ground speed cap has been increased, allowing for faster total movement speed, regardless of how you may get there.
• Arcstrider, Sentinel, and Striker all move faster, and at the same speed as one another, while in their Supers.
• Arcstrider, as a whole, is performing well in PvP but mostly due to its neutral game perks. We’ve made the following changes in an effort to get the Super to be a more competitive option:
• • Faster Attack Animations.
  • Faster Dodge Animations.
  • Increased range of all attacks.
• Supers recharge faster for everyone!
• We’ve buffed several weapon archetypes (including, but not limited to, Hand Cannons, Pulse Rifles, Sniper Rifles, and Shotguns) and a few specific perks, as well.
• • A key goal here is to make Shotguns, Snipers, and Fusion rifles more prevalent in the game.
• We’ve also been working side-by-side with our friends on PvP to increase the pace of PvP combat and the frequency of power play. Here’s a sneak peek at their hard work:
• • Player respawn times for all Quickplay modes have been decreased.
  • Power Ammo respawn timers for all Quickplay modes have been reduced ~30%.
  • Power Ammo respawn timers in Survival have been reduced ~40%.
  • Power Ammo respawn timers in Countdown have been reduced ~25%.
  • Ammo counts have been adjusted in relation to these timers, and in relation to weapon type.
  • Enemy players now drop their power ammo on death. 
  • • The dropped brick is available to anyone until picked up or 30 seconds have passed.

Finally, the Shoulder Charge changes that went in a couple of months ago have been fully reverted. Shoulder Charge’s movement utility was perceived as more valuable than its damage utility, which made it feel bad to actually hit someone with Shoulder Charge. The movement was effectively a “free” dodge.

The goal of the untargeted distance nerf was to discourage using the ability as a movement mode by making it only effective when using it against enemies. In retrospect, we think this change was a mistake and we’ve heard you all say the same. We believe there are a number of gameplay atoms like this that perform or are used differently than we expected but are thoroughly enjoyed nonetheless. In the future, we want to embrace the state of gameplay atoms like that and balance around it, not against it.

One final note that will be important to all the snipers out there. Many of you have rightfully complained that Snipers flinch too hard when you’re taking hits, especially as they are now power weapons. We have dug into this and found that somewhere along the way towards shipping D2, we acquired a bug that is preventing us from being able to successfully tune this to the values that we would all like. While the current batch of changes we are playtesting go a long way to bringing snipers back to where they should be, this bug will still prevent them from feeling perfect. That bug, which we are actively working on fixing, requires some deep changes to the art of each of the individual snipers in the game. That will take us a while to stomp out. We’ll get it fixed and pushed out to you as soon as we possibly can.

Like I mentioned, this is the first part in a series of Sandbox Updates that we hope you come to enjoy. As these changes continue to solidify, we’ll have more to say. The next items on our agenda after these changes include the mod system rework (which we plan to use to buff ability cooldowns) and the Exotic balance pass. We’re also continuing to evaluate Destiny 2’s weapon slot system and how all the different types of weapons in Destiny fit into the game, how they are being played, and what we can do to improve that experience.  Expect to hear more from us about that in a future update.

Until next time,

-Hamrick

Iron Support

When downloading and installing updates, Destiny Player Support is on tap to keep you on course. From the moment we open the floodgates after a maintenance period, associates on the team begin monitoring the forums for rising issues.

This is their report. 

XP Issues (Resolved)

With Destiny update 1.1.2, the amount of XP required to earn a rank up was changed from 160k XP to 120k XP. Shortly after deployment, an issue was discovered where the Bungie.net API was displaying incorrect XP gains and totals.

After communicating our findings, players continued to report odd XP earn rates in-game. Through quick investigation, an errant server flag was discovered in the live environment, which was throttling XP rewards. While our test teams had verified the incoming XP changes in a test environment, this did not properly reflect the player experience due to the missing flag.

The errant flag was immediately removed, and the issue was resolved. We would like to thank all players who reported the issue and provided screenshots/videos. If you experience any other oddities in XP gains, please post a report to the #Help forum detailing your experience.

Destiny Update 1.1.2 Vital Information and Known Issues

Focus 

Cozmo has been out a few days this week due to illness. That leaves it up to me this week to check out the Creations page in search for some inspiration. Some of the plays you’ll find below have me questioning which Exotics should be equipped for Iron Banner. Sit back, relax, and enjoy the show.

Movie of the Week: The Legend of Acrius

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Honorable Mention: Telesto’d

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Cheers,

-dmg04

Game Director Christopher Barrett:

Everything you’ll find below will be delivered to every player of Destiny 2. Some of these delivery dates may change, but everything you see listed here is being worked on the by the team. While there are larger projects in development, these are the game enhancements you’ll find in your immediate future. If any of these deployments change, we’ll let you know.

Beginning tomorrow, and in the coming weeks, we’ll dive into details on the features outlined above, featuring screenshots or developer commentary. If this forecast changes, we’ll share out a new version of it, with new dates and expectations. We know you have new questions about everything you’ve just read, and we look forward to answering them.

Thank you again for your feedback about the game.

Destiny Update 1.1.2 – The one about Armor Masterworks

Armor Masterworks

Raid

Sandbox

Activities

UI

Rewards

Misc

This week at Bungie, we’ve got details on the next update to Destiny 2. 

On Tuesday, Faction Rallies came to a close, and New Monarchy defended their title. They are now two-time champions and they aren’t shy about rubbing it in the other factions’ faces. You can pick up their prize in the Tower. Servants loyal to the New Monarchy will get a discount. Everyone else can still get it, but it’s going to cost more Glimmer.

Perhaps Future War Cult will finally get a “W” the next time Factions Rallies returns. Until then, we have a new event to look forward to. 

Salad Bar

It’s time. A battle of Guardian versus Guardian returns. 

Begins:  Tuesday, January 30

Ends:  Tuesday, February 6

The game is Control!

This will be the first time Lord Saladin returns to the Tower in Season 2. There have been some changes to how you’ll go about decorating your Guardian with relics of the Iron Lords. 

First, we are adding new items to the engrams you will find waiting for you when you visit Lord Saladin. There will definitely be Season 2 weapons in the Iron Banner Engram and we will be adding more in the next event. Here is a look at what rewards you can expect to earn next week.

Hand Cannon

Scout Rifle

Shotgun

The only thing not pictured is the Iron Banner ship. We’ll save that for when you discover it yourself.

If you are missing items from last season, they will still drop as possible rewards from the engram. There is also a new emblem that tracks how many lifetime rank ups for Iron Banner you have earned in Destiny 2. You can earn it by completing the Iron Banner Milestone. 

We’ve received a lot of feedback from previous Iron Banner events that players preferred a way to directly acquire items. We have added the ability to obtain armor and three different weapons from Lord Saladin during each event. Here is what he has to offer next week. 

The final way to earn rewards is by completing challenges. Ornaments are available for all your Iron Banner gear and you can unlock them by completing various objectives for Lord Saladin.

Season 2 Ornaments

There are no limits to how many engrams you can acquire or how many tokens you can earn. Get as much playtime as you can during the week. It will always move you a little closer to opening another engram, earning an ornament, or purchasing a piece of gear from Lord Saladin. Go nuts!

Masters of the Armor

Many of you have already been discovering Masterwork weapons and adding them to your collection. Next week, we are adding Armor Masterworks to the mix. All Legendary armor now has a chance to drop as a Masterwork. The same rules apply as with the weapons, you will have a higher chance of getting Armor Masterwork from Trials of the Nine and Raid activities. But you might get lucky with an engram from Lord Shaxx or any other vendor who offers engrams.

The Benefits

You can now rework stats on your armor. The results will still be stat packages that are found on other pieces. There is a UI bug right now where if you try to quickly rework Armor sets it will appear to rework to the same stats. It doesn’t actually perform the rework function or use your materials, but can be quite scary, so we wanted to give you a heads up. 

This is just the first version of Armor Masterworks. We are planning to continue updating this system and adding additional benefits. As always, if you have any feedback, please let us know.

Happy hunting. 

Raid Reward Renewal

Raiding is one of Destiny 2’s ultimate endgame experiences. So far, you have explored the mysteries of the Leviathan and dove even deeper into its first Lair, the Eater of Worlds. We’ve received feedback that, while the experiences were epic, the rewards could use some more love. We invited Senior Designer Daniel Auchenpaugh to tell you more about what we’re changing with rewards starting with next week’s Raids. 

Daniel Auchenpaugh: With the upcoming January patch, we’re making a number of changes to the way Raid rewards work. We’ve been hearing that the current system doesn’t feel exciting when you kill bosses, that tokens aren’t interesting enough, and that you want more deep-chase items to hunt down. This is our first swing at tackling some of those, and we hope you’ll jump in and play with these changes a bit and then let us know how you feel. For now, let’s dive in to the changes and talk a bit about our goals and thinking with them.

Raid Armor: Now With Raid Perks!

Raid armor now drops with perks that function on the Leviathan; these appear on mods that are selectable on both new drops and existing Raid armor pieces you may alread have in your inventory. Additionally, these mods are reusable: if you swap to another one these will always be in the list to swap back to on your Raid armor for the low, low price of 1 Calus Token. Since no one wants to take a -5 Power penalty if they remove their Legendary mods while in the Raid, all the Raid mods are Legendary by default. This should also be extra icing on the cake for players who can’t seem to get that last mod they need to max their gear out.

The goal for these perks was to elevate the power of Guardians in the Raid, and we aimed to build things that were useful in every encounter. As a result, we avoided things that relied on specific mechanics to be useful and moved to broadly useful perks like “Recharge your grenade when you activate your Super” and “Deal 20% extra damage after getting a melee kill” as opposed to things tied to specific mechanics. 

Double Drops

Clearing Prestige now gives you Prestige and normal drops. If you have the prowess to clear Prestige, then you’ve proven yourself enough that we don’t need to force you to go back and do Normal as well.

Raid Encounters Always Drop a Raid Piece

We didn’t want players to have that “dead encounter” feeling anymore, where they had already received all the rewards for that encounter and were just waiting on a later encounter. Or, even worse, the disappointed feeling where no one in your raid group gets something, which could happen under rare circumstances in the old system. So we’ve unified the drop tables for the encounters so that raid gear isn’t tied to a specific encounter anymore (with an exception I’ll get in to down below…) so no matter what encounter you clear, you can get raid loot. Oh, and every encounter has a chance to drop an exotic. Not an engram that you have to take back to Rahool for decryption, but an item you could equip and start using immediately if you want. This list of possible exotic drops is comprised of all non-quest exotics, with armor and weapons weighted equally, and is restricted to things your class can equip.

Raid Vendor Sells a Rotating Selection of Raid Gear

If you just can’t get that last piece to drop for you, we want to give you some agency with your tokens. For a cost of Legendary Shards and some Calus Tokens, you can purchase these pieces if you have completed that raid for the week. For instance, if you want to buy the Prestige Chest armor, you need to complete Prestige mode that week before you can do so. This is so people can’t save up tokens by sticking to normal mode and still wear the Prestige gear; we wanted to give people agency to fill in those few slots they’re missing, not negate the need to progress further in the raid. Ole Benedict will change up what pieces they have available for purchase each week.

New Item: Exotic Raid Ghost “Contender’s Shell”

While not quite at the grind level of the legendary Nanophoenix, we felt like we needed to add a chase item to the Raid pool to make coming back still have reward potential each week. Enter the Contender’s Shell. This Ghost can drop from the final encounter in either Leviathan or Eater of Worlds. We also included some bad luck protection to avoid the previously mentioned “Nanophoenix Problem” so that dedicated raiders can rest assured they’ll get their hands on it eventually, even if it takes several weeks. 

The Contender’s Shell comes with some brand new perks that we’re hoping helps reward players that keep clearing the Raid even after they’ve gotten their Ghost. Both active only on the Leviathan, and its lair, they aim to make Leviathan encounter rewards stay awesome. First, Seeker of Brilliance enables the chance for encounters to drop Bright Engrams from their loot pools. Every time one doesn’t drop a Bright Engram, we increase the chance for the next. Remember those Exotics that can drop from encounters I was talking about earlier? Well, Seeker of Opulence means those exotics have a 50% chance to pull from a list of Exotics you haven’t collected yet instead of the standard list. Lastly, to top off this already pretty rad Ghost, we threw on Seeker of Glory, which provides a tracker for the number of encounters you have defeated on the Leviathan.

I realize this is a bit of an avalanche of text more than a wall, but I wanted to talk about both what we were working on and why we did it. I know we still aren’t going to address every concern here, but hopefully this is a start in good faith. If we missed the mark on something, please let us know. Additionally, if you think we really nailed it with one of these changes, please give us that feedback as well so we can keep doing more of that. We’re hard at work on the next month’s update now, but I hope next week you jump back in to the Leviathan (both Raid and the Lair) and let us know how it feels.

Patch Note Preview

Armor Masterworks and changes to Raid rewards aren’t the only changes coming in the upcoming 1.1.2 update on January 30. Here is a look at a few of the other fixes you can expect to see in the full notes next week. 

Shader Sit-down 

Since the launch of Destiny 2, we’ve gathered a lot of feedback on the new shader system. As time went on, and the shaders began to pile up, players lamented the cumbersome process of trying to delete each shader one by one.

You’ve been asking us why we can’t just allow you to dismantle entire stacks of shaders. I mean, there are other consumables that can be dismantled in mass. It’s a totally reasonable question and we wanted to let you know the facts. We’re not making excuses or claiming this problem is too hard to solve. We just want to be transparent about what the problem is, and how we are going to go about solving it. Here is Senior Design Lead Tyson Green to shed some light on shaders. 

Tyson Green: Shaders are individual items, and individual items trigger individual reward bundles when dismantled, even when those rewards are simple. That creates a challenge for us that we haven’t yet addressed, which is triggering dozens (or hundreds) of reward bundles simultaneously when an entire stack of shaders is dismantled. This is challenging not simply because an arbitrary number of rewards need to be run and delivered simultaneously, but because we also have to safeguard against scenarios where this produced items that couldn’t fit in your inventory, which could be instantly lost (ex: shaders that produce Glimmer could easily evaporate into nothing if you were at or near the cap.)

It would be relatively easy to find another button on the controller (L2 + X?) and let players actually delete a full stack, but that isn’t the spirit of what players are asking for, so we’re looking at a stronger solve. In addition, we’re also looking at how to address other shader feedback:

• It should be easier to get rid of a stack of shaders. We are looking at mass exchange solutions.
• We know you miss D1 Armor Shader mechanics. Looking at ways to re-integrate that capability without losing the ability to shade weapons, Ghosts, ships, Sparrows, or customize specific pieces of armor.
• We also understand you want shaders to be more freely usable and not limited by availability. We’re looking at re-introducing shader collections or a way to get copies of a shader in your possession.

This work is ongoing, and we’ll go on record as to when the solution will land as we get closer to a fix that we test and certify. For now, it was important to us that you know it’s on our workbench.

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Turning the Page

Recently, we unveiled our very first webcomic. To call it the first implies that it would not be the last. Coming soon, we’ll be delivering the next episode. 

Keep your eyes trained on Bungie.net next week for the continuation of the story.

Update Schedule

If you ever need help with Destiny 2, the Player Support team is standing by on our #Help forum to assist you. 

This is their report.

Upcoming Maintenance

Next week, Destiny Services will undergo a series of maintenance windows. Some are related to Destiny 2 Update 1.1.2, while others are for general housekeeping. If you experience any issues connecting to Destiny services upon maintenance completion, please post a report to the #Help forum.

Monday, January 29, 2018

Destiny services will undergo backend maintenance. No downtime is expected. Maintenance will begin at 10 AM PST (1800 UTC) and is expected to conclude at 12  PM PST (2000 UTC).

Tuesday, January 30, 2018

Destiny services will be brought offline for maintenance. Destiny Update 1.1.2 will also become available upon maintenance completion. Please see below for the timeline of the maintenance window.

• 8 AM Pacific – 1600 UTC
• • Destiny server maintenance is schedules to begin
  • Players may no longer sign in to Destiny services
• 9 AM Pacific – 1700 UTC
• • Players still in Destiny 2 activities will be returned to the title screen
• 12 PM Pacific – 2000 UTC
• • Destiny server maintenance is scheduled to conclude
  • Destiny 2 Update 1.1.2 will be available to download and install
  • Iron Banner will begin as soon as maintenance concludes

Wednesday, January 31, 2018

Destiny services will undergo backend maintenance. No downtime is expected. Maintenance will begin at 12 PM PST (2000 UTC) and is expected to conclude at 2 PM PST (2200 UTC).

Armor Masterworks: Reworking Perks

Late in development, an issue was discovered impacting the ability to rework Masterwork Armor pieces quickly in succession.

If a player attempts to rework a Masterwork Armor piece immediately after reworking the item, a progress bar will fill, but no action is completed in game. The armor piece will retain the previously held perk, and no Masterwork Cores are lost due to this issue. Players will be required to attempt this action again when experiencing this issue.

The issue is currently being investigated by appropriate teams, and we will provide updates via @BungieHelp when more information is available.

The Dundies

Movie of the Week: Argos Quick Burn

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With Armor Masterworks and the new Raid rewards, next week is a prime opportunity to revisit the Leviathan. If raiding isn’t your jam, Iron Banner is calling your name. I plan on partaking in both. Maybe I’ll see you out in the wild.