Category: Bungie News

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

This week at Bungie, we watched Guardians become Legends.

This last week has been one to remember. It’s one of the best things about Destiny, really—when memories are forged in the fires of combat. It’s been an absolute pleasure to see these experiences unfold, and we’re excited to see more of these stories shared throughout the community.

In the coming weeks, we’ll dive into what’s changing about Faction Rallies and shed a bit more light on what Crucible Labs will bring to the table. This week, our focus is on feedback…

Powerful Progress

Feedback never stops. From the moment Warmind landed, we’ve had our eyes on the chatter surrounding all aspects of Destiny 2. One trending topic is how players reach appropriate Power levels for endgame content. Senior Investment Designer Daniel Auchenpaugh has some details on what to expect moving forward:

Daniel: Warmind is out! We’re super excited this is in your hands now, as we’re able to get a bunch of excellent input on what we did well and what we still need to work on. One of those areas I’d like to talk about a bit is progression. I spoke a little about this before the Warmind launch, but I think one thing I could have been more clear about was that the Warmind progression system is an improvement over Curse of Osiris, but still not where we ultimately want to end up. It’s a step down the road to make the game more in line with where we want it, but we need to make these iterations one step at a time so we can incorporate feedback and ensure we’re heading in the right direction.

Heroic strikes are a great example of something we definitely want to keep iterating on. In the May 29 update, you’ll see a small change to help make these better. 

• Escalation Protocol Key Fragments will become a 100 percent drop chance from each Heroic strike. The goal here is to make getting these fragments more accessible while also preserving the need to go play non-open-world content to get the fragments. 
• Heroic strikes will be able to drop better rewards. Every three to five Heroic strikes will drop a Legendary that can carry you up to 360 Power (before mods). This should better align the rewards of Heroic strikes with the difficulty of the activity and help solo players have a more reliable source of upgrades. 

We won’t have any time to make changes to what’s coming on the 29th, but please let us know how you feel about these rates; it is good information to inform future updates.

We’re tracking some additional issues that don’t have immediate solutions, but that I want to bring up as things we’re thinking and talking about. I don’t currently have any potential solutions to talk about, but I want to make sure we’re communicating the kinds of things we’re looking at and considering. In that spirit, here are some of the top progression-related issues we’re thinking about right now:

• How to smooth out the transition into the endgame grind once the campaign is over. Currently, there is a brick wall players seem to be running into at 345, where progression goes from fast to super frictioned. This is one of those areas we definitely don’t believe is perfect, so we’re looking at how to smooth this transition out.
• Once milestones are complete, there aren’t rewards to chase. Exotic Masterworks and seasonal ranks help this problem a little bit (giving some amount of non-Power chase to work on once milestones are done) but these definitely aren’t enough. As highlighted in the roadmap, Weapon Randomization and Records should also help give players more to do once their milestones are done. That doesn’t mean we believe this is a fully solved problem, and we’re talking about other ways to help mitigate this.
• Endgame progression needs more tiers. Right now, everything gives similar-sized upgrades without discrete tiers in the progression system for players to climb to (so they can tackle new activities and, in turn, climb to a new tier with new activities). This is something I definitely wouldn’t expect a solution for prior to September, but it is on our radar.
• The quality of the rewards don’t always match the difficulty of the activity. We’re seeing a lot of this feedback around raid lair rewards in particular, so talking about how to better align with the quality of reward and the difficulty of activity is something we’re going to be thinking about more going forward.

Huge thanks to everyone who has spent time to type up their thoughts, what they love, and what they don’t love with the progression and reward systems in Warmind. We’re keeping our ear to the ground. 

P.S.: Send me images of your favorite shader + Escalation Protocol gear combos. This is unrelated to progression—I just wanna see ’em!

Going for Glory

Progression isn’t just achieving new levels of Power, we also look at how players are rising through ranks of Valor and Glory. We’ve gotten some questions on the hows and whys of the ranking system. PvP Design Lead Derek Carroll has some answers.

Derek: Now that we’ve added a serious ranking system to the Competitive playlist, we’re seeing many more Guardians attempt to climb the ladder to become Legend. On their way to the top, some players have raised questions that we can address here.

Q: Why would I match against a player with a higher Glory rank than me?

A: For a variety of reasons, we don’t match directly on your Glory number, instead using our per-playlist “Skill” value. It’s quite likely that your opponent is a good match against you, but they’ve been grinding Glory more consistently, so have moved up the ranks faster. Take this as a sign that you’ll likely reach that rank with continued play.

Q: Why can I match against pre-formed fireteams when I’m searching as a solo player?

A: After a bit of server-side tuning and investigation, we re-enabled the Crucible Fireteam Matchmaking feature yesterday. This does not directly reduce the chances of matching against pre-made fireteams, but does tweak the “Skill” values of those fireteams to make it more likely that they find evenly-matched opponents.

Q: Why won’t you make a solo-queue-only playlist?

A: We don’t want to do that because it would split the population in an unhealthy way, making it less likely for everyone to find good matches. Furthermore, that would probably mean splitting the Glory rank into “Solo Glory” and “Team Glory” numbers, and we’d much rather there be one single number to represent your prowess in the Crucible.

Q: Why would you place me in a game in progress that you know I’m going to lose, ending my streak?

A: There’s no join-in-progress in Competitive, so this can’t happen for Glory. However, we are working on a fix for Valor in the other playlists, so you won’t lose your Valor streak that way.

As always, thanks for the feedback. We are always working to make the Crucible a great place to compete with and against your fellow Guardians. Good hunting!

Ironclad

 

Lord Saladin returns—with updated rewards!

BEGINS: Tuesday, May 22

ENDS: Tuesday, May 29

The game is Control!

The ways in which players earn rewards have also been updated for Season 3. Saladin will feature a similar reputation system to Vanguard, where players can climb the ranks by turning in Iron Banner Tokens. Each reputation rank up will lend progress to unlocking desired rewards.

New Ornaments have also been added, each with specific objectives for players to complete in the Iron Banner playlist when available.

At Your Fingertips

Destiny 2 isn’t the only thing that’s evolving over the course of the Roadmap. The Bungie.net team is also making plans to improve the experience on the website and Destiny Companion App. Senior UX Designer John Stvan and UX Designer Stosh Steward are here to give a report of what’s to come:

John: Two weeks ago, we started a discussion on Bungie.net and Reddit to get feedback on the Destiny Companion App and Bungie.net. We’ve combed the feedback and created a prioritized list of themes and sentiment that have been trending throughout the community. Priority was based on the volume of specific feedback items, how a feature or change could impact the user base, and if current feature usage data matched up with some of our inferences. We then proceeded to sort them into groups of Features/Experiences and UX/UI Improvements.

With Warmind out the door and a few Destiny updates between now and September, we want to be sure to set the right expectations on what’s coming. Each content release comes with a host of changes, updates, and fixes that we as a small team have to make sure don’t break our experiences. We don’t expect there to ever be issues, but sometimes the game makes a simple tweak to some investment, and by the time that gets to Bungie.net or the companion, the effect is magnified. As a recent example, players were unable to interact with characters after Destiny Update 1.2.0 due to issues between the companion and the new emote wheel. With that said, here are our initial goals for what will be coming soon to the Destiny Companion App and Bungie.net:

Timeframe—Early Summer

Stats (Medals): We are actively looking into how we can add medals and other stats incrementally to PGCR’s (post-game carnage reports) and player profiles. We knew ahead of the feedback collection that this would be a widely requested feature, but we were surprised by how many throughout the community wanted more stats surrounding medals acquired in the Crucible.

LFG: We have recently added the Clans Fireteam feature to the Destiny Companion, but we are looking to give players more ways to form fireteams through the companion and website.

Vendor Accessibility and Primary User Experience: Vendors are currently available to interact with through the companion app, but a recurring piece of feedback was that players are unable to locate the feature. We think this is due to vendors being in Progress which may be an unexpected location. The numbers also don’t lie—Progress isn’t getting the views we expected. We suspect that’s due to other sections in the app either having similar features or it being hidden.

Moving forward, we’ll be working to merge the Explore and Progress tabs to fulfill some of our initial goals. Explore was intended to be, “What’s going on? What don’t I want to miss out on?” However, it’s barely been more than a news feed. Progress was intended for users to know what their progress is towards their goals in Destiny 2. 

By combining these two sections, we feel we can create an experience that gives you the “What don’t I want to miss out on?” and the “What things do I need to go do?” sentiments. 

Timeframe—Summer

Gear User Experience and Sorting: When it comes to gear, third-party apps have provided amazing user experiences paired with Destiny and Destiny 2, and we couldn’t be prouder of them. We can’t tell you how excited we are that third-party apps have found solutions and satisfied that itch for the full screen, multi-character, nobs-and-switches experience. We are actively investigating ways to up our own game and provide better experiences within the Destiny Companion App when it comes to things like transferring, sorting, and equipping gear.

Timeframe—…and beyond

The future is bright and hopeful for Destiny 2 and the Companion. We want to ensure that we have targets to aim at—some big, daunting targets—and you’ve definitely helped provide us with those. We are grateful for the discussion we had, and can’t wait to have more ongoing conversations and feedback about the Companion and Bungie.net.

This conversation is far from over. In fact, it should never end. We want to always be listening and responding either with dialogue or action. Post feedback on Bungie.net. Stosh and I will be monitoring closely for your thoughts. It doesn’t go without saying how valuable your contribution to Destiny 2 is, and we want to ensure we’re providing the right tools and features to support your gaming experience.

Would You Like to Know More?

Destiny Hotfix 1.2.0.2 has shipped, but we still have some issues to address. As they say, the only good bug is a dead one. Destiny Player Support has the information you need to take on the threat.

This is their report.

Destiny 2 Hotfix 1.2.0.2

This week we deployed Hotfix 1.2.0.2 to players. Among the fixes to game issues, we resolved an issue blocking characters from appearing in the official Destiny Companion App, Bungie.net, and third-party applications that rely on the Destiny API.

Warmind Known Issues

With the launch of Destiny 2: Warmind, Destiny Player Support has continued to monitor player chatter regarding issues players are encountering in the wild. Those who do run into issues in Destiny 2: Warmind should make our Warmind: Vital Information and Known Issues thread their first stop for information on potential workarounds. As always, players who experience issues should report them to the #Help forum.

Listed below are a couple of items that we believe require further explanation to assist in mitigating their impact:

Heroic Strike Progress and Boons of the Vanguard

Progress toward the weekly Heroic strikes milestone, as well as toward some endgame quests, will be blocked when players activate a Boon of the Vanguard. Characters who enter this state will be unable to make progress on any pursuit that requires Heroic strike completions until the Boon expires.

As we continue to investigate this issue, we recommend that players save their Boons until after they have completed the pursuits mentioned above.

Clan XP Milestones and Powerful Gear

Currently players are not receiving powerful gear from Hawthorne when completing and turning in the weekly Clan XP milestone.

Players can work around this issue by completing the Clan XP milestone, then waiting for the next weekly reset to pass. After the new week starts, the previous week’s milestone will autodecrypt and correctly award powerful gear.

Additionally, we’d like to take this opportunity to remind players that Power progression from weekly clan engrams has changed with Destiny 2 Update 1.2.0. For details, players should revisit This Week at Bungie – 4/18/2018 for more information. 

Try This at Home

Grab your popcorn. Don’t forget the butter. We’ve got a few Community Creations well worth a watch, especially if you’re looking for a good strategy to take on the “Spire of Stars” raid lair.

Movie of the Week: World First

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Honorable Mention: Pure Power

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Honorable Mention: Sleeper Strikes Again

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1v1:

4v4:

See you on Mars? Maybe we’ll bump into each other. I have a bit of data to collect.

Cheers,

Dmg04