This Week at Bungie - 01/26/2017 3h - DeeJ

This week at Bungie we're seeing green.

Green is a fine color, often used to signal things like good weather, operational readiness, or clearance to merge with the highway. When we approve a download for Destiny here at Bungie, it is said to have been "greenlit."

The next download will be Destiny HotFix 2.5.0.2, scheduled for "Mid-February."

The greenlighting process for a deployment like this is a collaboration between studio arts and sciences - although all the developers are creative. The leaders of our team come together many times throughout the life cycle of the game to identify the elements that need to be on our change list. That development work happens in parallel to all of the other projects housed under our roof, so allocations of talent are essential. Timelines are validated by implementers, operations, and release management. Testers make sure updates will make the game better, and not cataclysmically worse. Our deployment team prepares the vehicle to carry the product of that work from us to you.

If we stay green through the final stages of that process, 2.5.0.2 will become available for download in a few weeks.

When we forecast the weather patterns of a live game, we hedge our bets until the bits are certified. That's still being done, as it always is at this stage. Some fresh changes are being prepped and loaded onto a rocket, so let's talk about them. The worst that can happen is that we'll make you watch them explode in the sky.

Never Met a Perfect Meta

The main goal of 2.5.0.2 is to adjust all sorts of attacks and counter attacks in the Crucible. We've mentioned that last week. This week, we have a guest who is part of the team doing the actual work.

Senior Designer Josh Hamrick was on hand for some of the original space magic riddles. He'll tell you he was the origin of the Hunter species. Before the launch of Destiny, he was a frequent Weekend Champion as a member of the design team that first figured out how the Nova Bomb, the Golden Gun, and the Fist of Havoc could exist together in a brave new world filled with Primary, Special, and Heavy weapons. And Melees. Oh, and... (you get the idea.)

He's back on the Bungie blog today to begin a conversation about what's been happening up in our Playtest Labs lately.

JOSH: Friends, the time draws near... 

Sandbox and Crucible designers have been investigating and updating the competitive ecosystem, and I am proud to say that we are getting very close. Through experimentation and near daily battles to the (digital) death, we have begun to home in on a set of changes that we believe freshens things up.

Without further ado, I give you our "Fairly Vague Mysterious Overview."

• GOALS:
  1. Promote alternatives and counters to Shotguns
  2. Align potency of Primary Weapons with surgical changes
  3. File down a couple of issues from each class
  4. Fix some issues with a sampler platter of Exotics
  5. Supporting adjustments to Special Ammunition

We realize you thirst for facts and details. I hope that these snippets of information will at least tide you over until we can tell you more...

Maybe we can even do that live in the near future.

That's right! I told Josh to save his powder for a stream chat, complete with a math class and a shooting gallery. We'll show you what we have in mind as part of a live fire exercise before "Mid-February." We're also still testing all the things that are being done in pursuit of those goals.

More on this next week.

Network Status: Green?

Destiny Player Support is an idea more than a team. They operate near the nexus of every team at Bungie. Everyone from Community to Engineering (i.e. ranked in ascending order by intelligence) look to them for status and rapid comms.

This is their report.

Destiny Maintenance
Earlier today, the Destiny servers underwent scheduled maintenance. No changes were made to the player-facing Destiny experience. For information on future Destiny updates and maintenance, players should keep an eye on our Destiny Server and Update Status page. 

Additionally, players who follow @BungieHelp will receive tweets with the latest information on when Destiny services may be interrupted.

Permissions to Access Online Multiplayer May Have Changed
Over the past week, we have received reports describing an issue where players are returned to the title screen if they are logged in to multiple consoles within the same platform family. In particular, this was blocking players from using Remote Play to access Destiny on PlayStation 4 from their PlayStation Vita.

We are working with our partners to investigate the root of the issue. If you are seeing the above-mentioned error, try performing the following troubleshooting steps:

• Ensure that your PlayStation Plus or Xbox Live Gold membership is up to date
  
• Log out of all other consoles within your household
  

More information on this issue, including further troubleshooting steps, can be found in this Help Article. For general network troubleshooting, players should visit our Network Troubleshooting Guide.

If you encounter other issues of this nature, searching help.bungie.net will guide you through our full suite of support documentation.

Players who continue to encounter issues in Destiny should report them in the #Help forum.

Green With Envy

People ask us often how the winning videos are selected each week. Judging art is an emotional process. Meet your judge. Maybe he'll talk about how he picks winners on the Destiny Community Podcast. 

Cozmo: We have a great lineup this week. The Creations page is always packed with content and we have picked a few of our favorites for you. All Honorable Mentions and the MOTW will be receiving the Emblem as a badge of honor commemorating a major award. This week we have a creative way to kill a Strike boss and a really good dance mashup as the Honorable Mentions. The MOTW is a long one, but extremely impressive and worth the watch. 

Movie of the Week: Just... Wow (language warning)

Honorable Mention: Dance

Honorable Mention: Creative Use of Combatants

There are greener pastures to come.

Stick to your guns. We'll tell you more about them soon.

In the meantime, I need to pull my Momentum pants out of the Holiday kiosk.

DeeJ, out.