Category: Bungie News

If you want to remain spoiler-free, you should stop reading now and not look at the internet until September 4. As many of you already know, we gave you a glimpse of beloved Hunter Vanguard Cayde-6’s final moments earlier this week.

We told you that Forsaken is taking a darker tone and has a Western revenge vibe. It looks as if many of you have taken it upon yourselves to avenge Cayde. In September, you’ll get your chance to hunt down the Barons, confront Uldren, and make him answer for his crimes. 

The away team has been on the ground at E3 giving out new information on Forsaken and letting players get their hands on our new game mode, Gambit. Speaking of Gambit, we have a new trailer showing off this competitive co-op experience.

A lot of excited players have stopped by the booth to get their hands on Gambit for the first time. Here are a few photos documenting the action.

Play Your Way

You caught your first glimpse of the weapon slot changes in our ViDoc, and there is gameplay footage of Gambit coming out of E3 showing how the new system will work. Our very own Design Lead Josh Hamrick shared his team’s goals for the new system and a little more info on how it works.

Josh: Hey everybody, I wanted to stop by for a second and provide just a bit of information regarding the new weapon slot system. We know many of you want the D1-style system back. Many of you have also asked us to keep the D2 model. We want to deliver something you all want, but we also want to surprise and delight you while moving the game forward. Ultimately, we want to give you something better than anything you’ve seen yet.

More Choice and Deeper Customization

The top two slots (quick slots) have more freedom than ever, allowing you to carry unique sets of Primary & Special Weapons. When paired with the appropriate Exotic, crazy load outs like the 3 Shotty build I mentioned in the ViDoc are possible… and freaking awesome.

Balanced with Ammo

Uptime for your weapons is balanced by how often you can get your hands on the right ammo. Tuned to be very similar to D1, uptime works out as follows: (most to least) Primary (White) then Special (Green) and then finally, Heavy (Purple). Primary Ammo is useless while running the 3 Shotty loadout, which takes a combination of Special and Heavy ammo —and finding yourself completely dry means it’s time to get your hands dirty. Godspeed, space puncher.

Perfect for Roles

Whether it be for raids, trials and comp, or the brand new, incredibly awesome, and (in my opinion) pinnacle Destiny sandbox activity, Gambit, the new weapon system shines at allowing incredible flexibility and customization so you and your team can strategize and build your way to greatness. Momma always said, “Loadout for the job you want.”

I promise you’re going to get more, very specific details soon(tm) alongside a TON of additional Forsaken information.

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To the Victor Go the Spoils

Its winner’s week. Dead Orbit rose above the rest and claimed victory.

They broke the previous streak of dominance by New Monarchy who had won the previous four events in a row. New Monarchy finished second this time, and Future War Cult took home the bronze. Here’s a breakdown of the pledges and packages.  

Dead Orbit is offering their weapon to everyone all this week. Make sure you pick it up before the next reset. If you pledged to them, you also get a hefty discount. New Monarchy and Future War Cult will get another shot when the Faction Rallies start back up again.

Oh Lordy

The banner is going back up again. Saladin invites fireteams of six to do battle for glory.

BEGINS: Tuesday, June 19

ENDS: Tuesday, June 26

The game is Control!

If you didn’t earn all your Season 3 ornaments during the first event, your progress carries over, and you can pick up right where you left off. Same goes for working your way through Saladin’s reputation ranks.

Good luck out there!

Comic

Next Friday, we are delivering the next episode of our web comic Warmind. Follow Ana Bray as she continues her adventure.

We will also release the localized versions of Warmind episode 2 next week. All of it is going live on June 22 at comics.bungie.net.

Pride

Bungie is dedicated to every individual in our community and embraces what makes us each unique. We are excited to support the LGBTQIA community through the sale of our Bungie Pride shirts and tank tops on the Bungie Store. 

100% of the profits will support The Trevor Project, a leading national nonprofit organization that provides crisis intervention and suicide prevention services to LGBTQIA young people under 25.

Lifeline

Destiny Player Support is already preparing for your next adventure. They will be on hand to make sure you have the information you need when we roll out Forsaken this fall. Until then, they are still supporting the live game every day. 

This is their report.

Young Wolf and Saladin’s Pride Memorialization Emblems

Since Destiny 2 launched, DPS has monitored reports from eligible veteran Destiny players who have not yet received the Young Wolf or Saladin’s Pride memorialization emblems in Destiny 2. We have determined the cause of this issue and have set up a process to verify reports and resolve the issue for impacted players. To submit a report, affected players should see our Missing Memorialization Emblems pinned thread.

Player-Impacting Issues on Xbox One

DPS is currently investigating an issue which is causing some Xbox One players to be unable to launch Destiny 2 from their console dashboard. Additionally, some players have reported infrequent framerate issues on Xbox One following Hotfix 1.2.1.1. While we continue to investigate these issues, affected players may find resolution by following the mitigation steps listed in our Xbox One Application Launch and Framerate Issues pinned thread.

Reports of Recent Crashes on PC

Recently, the DPS team has observed reports from players encountering crashes or freezes while playing Destiny 2 on PC. While this issue is still under investigation, so far it has been determined that the causes of the majority of these reports are unrelated. As always, players who encounter issues on PC should report them to our #PC Support forum. For confirmed issues on PC, players should visit our PC Known Issues list.

Warmind Known Issues List

With the launch of Destiny 2: Warmind, DPS has consolidated all the latest gameplay known issues reported by players into the Warmind Vital Information and Known Issues list. Before players report an issue to the #Help forum, we recommend they visit this page to determine whether or not the issue is already tracked by the DPS team. If they are available, potential workarounds and mitigation steps will be there as well.

I Don’t Feel So Good

The movies keep on rolling. We have two more picks for you this week. As always, we’ll be sending the creators a special emblem to celebrate their victory. If you are one of said creators, make sure you put the player names of everyone involved in making the video in the description. For a chance to win next week, submit your video to the Creations page. 

Movie of the Week: Cayde-6 Tribute

Honorable Mention: Borealis Mayhem

What a week. We’ve had a great time sharing details about Forsaken and watching players experience Gambit for the first time. There is plenty more to talk about. We know you have lots of questions. The answers are coming.

<3 Cozmo

This week at Bungie, we revealed Forsaken. 

On September 4, we’re kicking off the second year of Destiny 2 with a brand new story. We have some bold plans to take you to new places and change the way you play. If you haven’t seen it yet, check out the ViDoc that revealed Destiny 2: Forsaken.

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We’re committed to reinforcing the hobby for every player of Destiny 2, and we have a lot of changes coming in Year 2 that do just that. The ViDoc was followed by a live conversation on what we have planned for September. Didn’t get to tune in to watch it live? We’ve got an archive for you to watch at your leisure.

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Too long, didn’t watch?

You’ll learn a lot more about this new story we’re telling at E3. Gambit will be playable at both E3 and GuardianCon.

Annual Pass

Another topic of the stream was the new Annual Pass. As the evolution of the Expansion Pass that delivered content like Curse of Osiris and Warmind, the Annual Pass is a new plan for how we’ll give hardcore players more ways to fight their enemies, collect new loot, and customize their characters. Here is Game Director Christopher Barrett to tell you more about our goals.

Christopher: Destiny 2 Year 2 begins with Forsaken, and throughout that year we’re going to be focusing our teams on delivering content that gives players reasons to come back to Destiny. This means new activities, endgame challenges, progression systems, and awesome rewards. With the Annual Pass, we want to deliver content more frequently throughout the entirety of Year 2, with three releases in Winter, Spring, and Summer.

In addition to everything new in Forsaken and the Annual Pass, we’re continuing to fully support Seasons and deliver updates to all players of Destiny 2. During each Season, all players can expect new rewards to earn, new Crucible maps and modes, improvements to gameplay features, recurring activities, special events, and more.

This graphic puts everything we have planned for year two on the map:

We’re excited for the second year of Destiny 2. You’ll soon learn more about what to expect in the coming weeks and months leading up to September when Forsaken and the Annual pass officially launch.

Lab Report

Andrew: Hello everyone!

Thank you to everyone who participated in our debut Crucible Labs playlist last week!

Understandably, many of you are curious about the decision-making process behind developing Showdown and deploying it with Labs. I wanted to take some time to talk briefly about these decisions, what they mean for the first reveal of Labs, and how this first Labs run will help shape our future.

Every mode you’ve ever played in Destiny has been the product of design, iteration, playtesting, more iteration, more playtesting, polish, and final bug fixing. This takes a lot of time and effort across multiple departments within the studio, and as players, you don’t get to see it until it’s finished and in the game or featured in a press event or public beta.

Labs gives us an opportunity to open up some of this development process to the community, so you can be there with us earlier. But rolling out a feature like Labs is not without risk—we’re showing you unfinished work that is below our shipping bar, and we expect there to be issues that need addressing.

It was important for our first Labs to be measured and cautious. Our primary focus for this first round was to make sure that Labs itself worked, and Showdown made for a great simple test case that we already have some familiarity with shipping through Crimson Days and Doubles. Now that we’ve successfully launched Labs, we’ll be able to consider more options over time, ranging from new competitive experiences to more silly and just-for-fun experiments.

In general, expect that any mode that deploys in Labs:

• Has no concrete timeline or schedule
• Must not interfere with must-ship features and updates (i.e., the Summer Update and Forsaken—Labs modes are in addition to features you’re already scheduled to receive!)
• Can be iterated on in a semi-public setting
• Can succeed and be polished for a full release in a playlist or rotator
• Can fail and never be seen again

The broad feedback to Showdown in this setting has shown us there is a lot of room for improvement, and that’s OK! Some of your favorite modes in Destiny have had terrible playtests where we’re left wondering if we can even save them. Some modes that showed promise never came together the way we hoped and had to be left behind. This is a normal part of the development process that we’re inviting you to join, and we welcome your feedback and criticism as we make decisions not only in this mode, but in the future as well.

You may very well see Showdown again in the future with changes based on feedback from this week, and we have some additional Labs experiences in the pipe in our Summer update. Over time, we’ll continue to get into the zone and lock down the best process and path to deploying new experiences for you. We’re glad to have you along for the ride!

The Night Is Dark

Destiny Player Support keep the trains running on time. We don’t have a lot of trains, but they do keep you up to date on game-impacting issues and when fixes are on the way. 

This is their report.

Extra Butter

Let’s get to the movies shall we? Every week, we pick our favorites from the Creations page and show them off to the world. Here are this week’s winners. 

Movie of the Week: Ra Ra Rasputin

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It’s been a fun week. We love getting to finally reveal the exciting things we’ve been working on. And we are not done yet. E3 is next week and we will have our away team ready to give you some more details about Forsaken. After that, we have all summer to fill in the blanks as we know you have a lot of questions.

<3 Cozmo

Game Director Christopher Barrett:

It’s time to talk more about the second year of Destiny 2. This September, we’re adding core systems that will reinforce the Destiny hobby. We’re also planning to deliver much requested features centered around customization and end-game pursuits. Now that Forsaken has been revealed, we can be more specific about what Year Two will deliver to every player of Destiny 2.

We’ll be talking about these things all summer long. You’ll learn more about Forsaken and Year 2 at events, on streams, and on the blog.

At Bungie, our purpose is to build worlds that inspire friendship. For over twenty-five years, through Marathon, Myth, Oni, Halo, and Destiny, we’ve created fantastic places where players have gathered to become heroes. Now, our long-term goal is to become an entertainment company that sustains many worlds simultaneously – Destiny and new worlds to come.

Today, we’re excited to announce that we’ve entered into a new partnership with NetEase to help us explore new directions. With their industry expertise, they’ll empower us to build new worlds and invite players, new and old, to join us there. They’ll help us support separate teams inside Bungie to bring our newest ambitions to life.

If you’re a player of Destiny, this news won’t impact the hobby you’ve come to know. Destiny is an experience that will grow for many years to come. We’ll continue to work with our partners at Activision to foster this global community and turn new players from all over the world into Guardians. Our commitment to that world is not diminished by this announcement. We have exciting plans for the future of the Destiny franchise, and you’ll learn more about the next steps we’ll take together in the weeks to come.

For now, we’re grateful for the opportunity to welcome NetEase to the family. We have a bold vision to explore with them, but that is all a conversation for another time.

DeeJ: We’d like to invite you to catch a glimpse of what we have planned for the second year of Destiny 2. We have some big ideas for how we’re going to transform your Guardian lifestyle and reinforce your hobby as an interplanetary hero. We’ll tell you all about it, and we’ll do it live!

You’ll hear from many members of our development team, who will set some big goals for September in their own words. We’ll explore deeper into new territory with Game Director Steve Cotton and Project Lead Scott Taylor—two faces that you might recognize from previous reveals. We’ll respond to a bunch of community feedback and unveil some other things you haven’t even been looking forward to… yet. We’ll top it all off with a look at a new Roadmap with exciting new promises for everyone.

This will be the beginning of a conversation that will last all summer long. You won’t want to miss it. We hope to see your names in chat as you give us your hot takes and spam those emotes.

Friendly Rivalries

In case you missed it, we spun up the Twitch studio for another Bungie Versus stream. It was our second challenge using Private Matches in Destiny 2, and this time we invited our friends at Vicarious Visions to do battle. This happened to be their first ever Twitch stream—keep an eye on their shiny new channel! The games were great, and we enjoyed some friendly competition. When the dust cleared, Team Bungie came out on top. There’s a solid chance of a rematch in the future. We know they’ll be out for revenge. 

Thanks for playing, VV! All is fair in love and war. See you next time…

Return of the Rallies

Destiny Update 1.2.1 brought improvements to Faction Rallies for Season 3. Back in March, the Seasons team discussed their overall goals for the event. Today, we’ll revisit those goals and outline the changes that have been made to achieve them.

Pledging to a faction should be a meaningful choice.

• Players may now only pledge to one faction per account during a Faction Rallies event
• Reputation progress is retained through multiple events, and it will not be reset during the season, even if a player changes allegiance
• Each faction offers unique rewards, such as Exotic armor ornaments or Masterwork Catalysts for Exotic weapons
• We are planning to host three Faction Rallies events over the course of Season 3

• Dead Orbit will offer the Eye of Another World ornament and the Graviton Lance Catalyst
• New Monarchy will offer the Crest of Alpha Lupi ornament and the Sweet Business Catalyst
• Future War Cult will offer the Knucklehead Radar ornament and the Sunshot Catalyst

Seasonal Vendor Progression

• Each faction now features ranks, which players can reach by earning faction tokens
• Faction rank-up rewards will continue to grant Legendary armor and weapons past Rank 30

Dead Orbit:

New Monarchy:

Future War Cult:

Faction Rallies should provide a unique gameplay experience and not simply be a reward layer on top of the existing game. Additionally, these events should build interest in Lost Sectors and armor ornament objectives.

• Faction Rallies now features the “Renown” system
• • After pledging to a faction, players may earn Renown by completing a public event or patrol, or by defeating high-value targets on destinations
  • Players who loot a Lost Sector with Renown active will receive significantly more faction tokens than usual—the more stacks of Renown they have, the more faction tokens they earn
  • Renown is lost when players are defeated by enemies, so be careful when you’re attempting to loot a Lost Sector with high Renown!

• Renown increases the level of challenge in gameplay
• • Health regeneration is vastly reduced (all stack levels)
  • • Enemy kills have a chance to drop health orbs (all stack levels)
  • Player damage decreased (scales with stack, up to 5)
  • Incoming damage increased (scales with stack, up to 5)

While Renown is active on a player, others around them can see which faction the player has pledged to:

Note: Renown displays which Faction a Guardian is pledged to, but only from a third person view. This functionality applies to all players.

Faction Rallies will continue to feature a Winner’s Offering to the faction that earned the most rank packages during a given event. These rewards will then be available in the rank-up reward pool in the following event. During Seasons 1 and 2, New Monarchy dominated the charts. We’re eager to see whether Dead Orbit or Future War Cult can rack up some wins.

Faction Rallies will be available Tuesday, June 5 at 10 a.m. PDT through the following weekly reset. We’ll continue to collect feedback once Faction Rallies is live, and monitor the conversations.

Lab Work

Yesterday, Crucible Labs became available with its first featured game mode. We’ve gotten quite a few questions on how the mode works, where to leave feedback, and what to expect moving forward. PvP Design Lead Derek Carroll has some answers:

Derek: The game type we’re testing in this Crucible Lab is Showdown, a 4v4 team game that might feel a bit familiar to those of you who played Doubles. Double Doubles? Anyway, the rules are simple: Take out the enemy as many times as you can within the time limit to win each round, best 3 out of 5. If the game is tied 2–2 after four rounds, you will play a FINAL SHOWDOWN that’s pure elimination, to crown the victor.

Crucible Labs is a work in progress, and we’re learning as we go!  We expect this Lab to be available until the next weekly reset on June 5, but if something goes truly sideways, we might have to end the test earlier. We’re deliberately starting Labs off simple, not just to test Showdown, but the Labs process itself.

This time around, we’re going to ask you to sound off in the feedback forums on Bungie.net, though we’ll be watching Reddit, Twitter, and all your usual haunts. In the future, we’d like to get more scientific about the whole process, but for now, your gut reactions will be great.

We’re interested in any and all feedback you may have to offer, but the most obvious things we’d like to hear are:

Thanks in advance for checking this out, and I hope you have fun as you help us make the Crucible a better place for everyone!

Jacob/Ben: The moment this weekly update goes live, the Power levels for Escalation Protocol enemies will be lowered in waves 4–7. Waves 1–3 are unchanged and will remain at 370 Power (so still watch out for that level 2 Wizard boss).

Players who have stayed on Mars since before this update will need to return to Orbit and land on Mars again to see the following change:

Old values

New values

NOTE: To avoid matching into an area that has been running since before the change, wait a short time after this update before landing on Mars again to attempt Escalation Protocol.

How We’re Making This Change

Normally changing enemy Power levels requires a patch, but during development, we created unique server flags which can flip between two sets of Power levels for all Escalation Protocol enemies. These were created in the wake of the community summit, when we decided to make the activity even more difficult. The flags don’t require any download from you to flip, which is how we can enact this change so quickly.

Reasons for This Change

We’ve been looking at our internal data while listening to all of your feedback about Escalation Protocol since the launch of Warmind. Reading these stats, not as many players are attempting Escalation Protocol with a fireteam of three as our designs intended, mostly because of how difficult waves 6 and 7 are. Tweaking the difficulty of waves 6 and 7 very quickly through Power level changes is something we can do right away because of the server flags mentioned above, rather than waiting a number of weeks to deliver a patch.

By reducing the Power levels of the latter waves, we are intending to make Escalation Protocol more approachable for players who want to try the activity at 385 as a fireteam of three with potential help from others in the world. Getting nine players into the same space will still be possible, but for those at or close to max level, it shouldn’t feel as necessary as before. If anyone is worried that we’re nerfing this activity into the ground, rest assured that it will still be a highly difficult end-game experience. All the mechanics, timers, and enemy behaviors will remain unchanged, so you should still plan to bring your best team, gear, and strategies to succeed. 

Turn the Page

Tomorrow, Issue 2 of the Warmind digital comic will become available, written by Mark Waid (Doctor Strange) and David A. Rodriguez (Destiny 2: Warmind), and inked by Kris Anka (Runaways). This is expected to become available at 10 a.m. PDT, but stay tuned to @Bungie on Twitter for announcements of availability.

Private Investigators

Update 1.2.1 shipped fixes for various issues that impact Destiny 2 gameplay. A few more have been discovered since release. Destiny Player Support has the most up-to-date information on confirmed issues in the game and what’s being worked on.

This is their report.

Update 1.2.1 Known Issues

Since the release of Destiny Update 1.2.1, the following issues have been identified and confirmed:

• Nightfall Unique Rewards: We have identified an issue where Nightfall unique rewards from base Destiny 2 and Curse of Osiris strikes are not dropping for players. Teams are actively investigating the issue, and we will provide updates when possible.
• Xbox One Login: We are investigating reports regarding an issue impacting some players’ ability to log into or launch Destiny 2 on Xbox One. Players who can provide video footage of this issue as they are encountering it should report to the #Help forum.
• Prototype Engrams and Powerful Rewards: We are investigating an issue where players who level up and earn a prototype engram when turning in a milestone for a Powerful Engram will not actually receive the Powerful Engram. In the meantime, players can work around this issue by making sure they are not near the level-up threshold when turning in milestones.
• Finite Impactor Masterwork Enemies Defeated: Players may observe that the Finite Impactor Iron Banner Hand Cannon does not correctly track enemies defeated in its tooltip.
• BrayTech RWP Mk. II Masterwork Enemies Defeated: Players may observe that the Masterwork BrayTech RWP Mk. II does not correctly track enemies defeated in its tooltip.
• Victorious Veteran Kill Tracking: We are investigating an issue where the Victorious Veteran Crucible emblem may not be accurately tracking Crucible kills for some players.
• Mars Adventures Unavailable: We are investigating an issue where Mars non-Heroic adventures are not available for some players.

Reeling for More 

Each activity in Destiny 2 has potential for Movie-of-the-Week-style experiences. Raids, Crucible, destinations and more could lend a moment or two of unforgettable fun or ultimate testaments of teamwork to achieve a goal. Take your seats, as the show is about to begin:  

Movie of the Week: Teamwork Makes the Dream Work

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Honorable Mention: Don’t Stand So Close to Me

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Another step on the roadmap has been executed, and we have much more in store through the coming months. If you want to make sure you don’t miss a beat, subscribe for updates via email on Bungie.net. When you invite us to keep in touch, it gives us a chance to send you communications that are tailored to your specific play style. You’ll also earn an Emblem that will only be displayed by the well-informed.

Steps on Email Validation can be found here – and for those of you who are already subscribed, we’ll be sending out an exclusive Emblem for your troubles. We’ll be sending this out to active subscribers periodically throughout the summer.

Enjoy the weekend, and we’ll see you Tuesday!

Cheers,

Dmg04

As noted in our most recent Roadmap, Crucible Labs shipped with Destiny Update 1.2.1. While the content has been downloaded and installed on your platform, the feature is not yet available. PvP Design Lead Derek Carroll has some information to set proper expectations for the feature, and what to expect when it becomes available:

Derek: The Crucible team has been working hard behind the scenes to improve Destiny 2’s PvP offering, and to get new content to players more quickly. With update 1.2.1, we shipped some bits that will let us turn on our experimental Crucible Labs playlist. To set your expectations somewhat, Crucible Labs isn’t a totally different game. It’s not a different version of Destiny 2 hiding out on the Crucible page of the Director. It is a playlist that will feature new game modes (soon) and some different tweaks to the modes you already enjoy (starting tomorrow!). Crucible Labs is a way for our team to try stuff out in the wild, before it’s “done”, and solicit feedback from the community. We’ve never done this before, and there will be bumps in the road, but I hope you’ll come along for the ride and help us make Destiny 2’s Crucible even better for all Guardians.

This week at Bungie, we lit the Iron Banner again.

Iron Banner 6v6 is back for Season 3. To celebrate its return, we added a reprised version of the Bannerfall map to the playlist. This was another fan favorite we brought forward by popular demand. It will be available in the Iron Banner playlist until the next reset, when it will become available in Quick Play, Competitive, and Private Matches for all players of Destiny 2. You also might see it in Trials this weekend, but we’ll know that for sure tomorrow!

Hive Annihilation 

Escalation Protocol has been live for two weeks now. Ever since the launch of Warmind, we’ve seen Guardians bravely battling hordes of Hive on Mars. The bravest among you have gone on to defeat seven levels of bosses. As always, combat leads to feedback. Today, we’re responding to a popular request for new matchmaking systems that would unite nine players in battle. Lead Designer Jacob Benton has some comments about this new activity in Destiny.

What were the design goals for Escalation Protocol?

Jacob: Escalation Protocol was designed to be a high-difficulty endgame activity for a max-level, three-player fireteam. Other players in the world can contribute to make it easier, but they shouldn’t be required as long as your team is highly skilled and coordinated. We have received a lot of feedback since the original launch of Destiny 2 that players felt like reaching max Power was not satisfying. There weren’t enough activities that required and rewarded that level of commitment. Escalation Protocol was designed to fill that gap.

So this activity was not specifically designed for nine players?

Other than Raid Activities, all PvE activities and private spaces are optimized for three players to allow for multiple types of activities in the space. So no, it wasn’t designed for it, but it’s not a surprise that it’s easier with nine players, given how under-leveled most of us are right now. We knew that players would use the same creative workarounds to get nine players into a space similar to Court of Oryx, but we did not specifically tune the difficulty around requiring that many players.

Any plans to enable larger fireteams in the future?

We’ve had a lot of conversations here about what to do to answer the community’s feedback. We’re going to continue to monitor as more players progress up to max Power and are able to attempt Escalation Protocol at the difficulty it was designed for and we’ll determine what, if any action, is necessary. We also hear players are really enjoying large groups of players fighting against enemies, so we’ll use that feedback to inform our future plans.

Armor Updates

Victor: We’ve received a lot of feedback on Exotic Armor in Destiny 2. With 1.2.0, we introduced changes to Exotic Weapons to make them punchier and more compelling, and with the 1.2.1 release, we’re taking steps to update some of the existing Exotic Armor.

It’s my hope that the changes to Exotic Armor will result in more interesting choices, whether you’re doing a strike or going for wins in the Crucible. When deciding to update the Exotic perks, our goal was to keep the identity of the Exotics the same, even if the way they influence your playstyle is slightly different.

With the release of 1.2.1, we’re updating six pieces of Exotic Armor, two for each class, and we will be updating more in the future. Please note that any mechanical changes are in addition to the already established effects unless explicitly stated otherwise.

Titan

• Synthoceps
• • Mechanical Changes—Previously, the perk adjusted your melee damage depending on the number of enemies surrounding you. Now it grants a flat bonus to melee and Super damage when you’re surrounded by three or more enemies. The buff is retained for a short duration after you are no longer surrounded.
  • Although Synthoceps has gotten a fair bit of love in the Crucible, players are often focused on the increased lunge rate. The outgoing damage bonus was hard to appreciate and plan around with it being so variable in nature. With this change, you will be able to feel the impact more often in all scenarios, particularly in PvE.

• Lion Rampant
• • Mechanical Changes—You can hipfire while Lift is active without interrupting it, and your aerial hipfire doesn’t have an aerial accuracy penalty.
  • The Lion Rampant was focused around Lift and how it impacts your playstyle and tactics, so we decided to push further in that direction, emphasizing fast moving aerial assault.

Hunter

• The Dragon’s Shadow
• • Mechanical Changes—Dodging reloads all weapons simultaneously. The effects of Wraithmetal Mail now also include a bonus to mobility.
  • Although the Dragon’s Shadow does have a small following, we wanted to make it more useful in a general sense under even neutral conditions, while keeping in the theme of a fast-moving ninja.

• Mechaneer’s Tricksleeves
• • Mechanical Changes—Swapping to a sidearm while critically wounded greatly increases its damage.
  • We went for the fantasy of a holdout weapon; the pistol tucked into your sleeve that you pull out in an emergency to save you. These changes should let you turn around a fight more easily.

Warlock

• Lunafaction Boots
• • Mechanical Changes—Rift reload is automatic instead of being activated on entry/exit. Empowering Rift makes weapons more effective at extended ranges.
  • Players having to dip in and out of the Rift to reload their weapons was not consistent with other Rift effects, particularly with the overshield effect on Healing Rift. It’s been made automatic to be easier to understand and use. As this is a more offensive choice in terms of Rift Exotics, we also wanted to further reward players who want to double down with Empowering Rift instead of playing it safe with Healing Rift. 

• Sunbracers
• • Mechanical Changes—Original effect replaced with: Increases the duration of Solar Grenades. Solar melee kills grant unlimited Solar Grenade energy for a brief time.
  • While effective under some circumstances in terms of things like flat damage output with your Solar Grenade, Sunbracers didn’t feel flashy enough for gloves where your hands are perpetually on fire. So, while retaining the original flavor of “The Solar Grenade Exotic Armor,” we’ve scaled up the potential output significantly to give the player a strong taste of power on a more frequent basis.

Bungie Versus

A few weeks ago we kicked off a new type of stream where we have a friendly match against a predetermined team of worthy opponents. Our friends at Vicarious Visions have put their quarters down and called next.

If you are not familiar with VV, they have partnered with us to create awesome content for Destiny 2. They want to show off their Crucible skills and see whether they can defeat us in a friendly exhibition. Here are the details:

Bungie Versus Vicarious Visions

May 30 at 11 a.m. PDT

Team Vicarious Visions

1. Barry Morales, Production 

2. Chris Pietrocarli, Art 

3. Paddy Hennessy, Engineering 

4. Dave Keenan, Art 

Team Bungie

1. Dmg04, Community

2. Cozmo, Community

3. Kevin Yanes, Crucible

4. Victor Anderson, Sandbox

This will be a best-of-five match. Bungie will pick two game types, and VV will also pick two. The final game will be Mayhem on Bannerfall.

Good luck, have fun.

Fixing to Fix It  

We have another update inbound. Destiny Player Support is here to tell you when your bits are scheduled to arrive and what you need to know about the upcoming patch.

This is their report.

Update 1.2.1 Release

Destiny 2 services will undergo maintenance on Tuesday, May 29, 2018. No downtime is expected. During this time, Destiny 2 Update 1.2.1 will become available to players. Please see below for the timeline of the maintenance window.

• 9 a.m. PDT (1600 UTC)
• • Destiny 2 server maintenance is scheduled to begin
  • No downtime is expected
  • Destiny 2 Update 1.2.1 will be available to download and install
• 1 p.m. PDT (2000 UTC)
• • Destiny 2 server maintenance is scheduled to conclude
  • Players who have not installed Update 1.2.1 will be removed from activities to begin the download and install process

Patch Note Preview

Here’s a quick overview of issues that should be resolved in Destiny Update 1.2.1:

• Fixed an issue where players would lose Glory Rank Points for leaving a match too soon after the match ends
• Fixed an issue where the Clan XP Milestone was not granting a powerful reward
• Fixed an issue where Vanguard Boons would block progression of strike-specific quest steps and milestones
• Fixed an issue where Shriekers would close too quickly during Warsat public events, thus blocking players’ ability to trigger a Heroic public event
• Fixed an issue where Calus’s shields required too much damage to break after Destiny Update 1.2.0
• Fixed an issue where players would experience long load times for Iron Banner matches on PC

The full patch notes will be made available on Tuesday, May 29. Stay tuned to @Bungie on Twitter for further announcements.

Bungie.net API Issue: Item Equip Currently Disabled

This week, we identified an issue where players could reach 385 Power within a short amount of time if characters had no items equipped in their weapon inventories. Characters could enter this state only by using the item equip functionality available through the Bungie.net API. As such, the ability to equip or unequip items through the API has been disabled until we can resolve the issue. While players may still transfer items from character to character, any item that is equipped will need to be unequipped within Destiny 2 before it can be transferred using the Destiny Companion App or any third-party application.

The ability to equip items is one of the most used features available through the API, and the decision to disable this functionality was not made without our weighing the impact it would have on the community. To preserve the meaning behind reaching max Power, we decided that this action needed to be taken.

Once a solution to this issue has been identified, we will provide updates on when to expect a hotfix that will allow us to enable these features once more. Stay tuned to @BungieHelp on Twitter for updates.

Please Recycle Your 3-D Glasses 

It’s time for our Movie of the Week. This is a recurring segment where we find cool videos that the community has made and award their creators with a special emblem, the Lens of Fate.

Movie of the Week: Magic Bullet

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Honorable Mention: No Guns No Problem (warning: language)

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<3 Cozmo