This Week At Bungie - 09/28/2017

This week at Bungie, we're rallying to our favorite faction.

Anytime your favorite faction is brought up, some friendly smack talk follows. With Faction Rallies, we get to settle those old scores and declare a winner based on which garners the most Guardian support. Right now, millions of Guardians are seeking out and destroying enemy supplies, completing public events, competing in the Crucible, and tackling the endgame. They're doing their part. Would you like to know more?

Many of you are asking, "Who's in the lead?" We won't report on the race while it's still in progress, but next week, once the winning faction rules the Tower unopposed, we might give you some insight on how things shook out. We will announce the winner on Tuesday, October 3, as soon as the scheduled downtime to deploy Hotfix 1.0.3.1 ends. That will be your chance to purchase the weapon from the winning faction in the Tower. There will be a significant discount if you pledged your loyalty to them during the event. The winning faction's weapon can be purchased anytime during victory week, which lasts until the next reset.

Faction Rallies is set to become a new ritual that visits the Tower periodically. Once the event is over, tokens can no longer be earned, but you can still redeem any that you're still holding to receive packages. Any engrams that are waiting to be claimed from a faction vendor will be auto-decrypted and placed in your inventory at the reset. Make sure you turn in all of your tokens before the end of victory week. They will reset before the next Faction Rallies event returns... sometime in the near future.

We are eagerly waiting, along with you, to see who prevails. You have until the weekly reset to make your mark on this event, and earn some loot to help define your identity. Get back out there and fight!

The Sands of War

Destiny 2 has a brand new sandbox full of weapons and abilities at your disposal. The community is already discussing what they believe to be the best tools of destruction to dispatch both alien combatants and other Guardians in the Crucible. Our team has been monitoring these conversations, along with the constant flow of data, to continue supporting the live game as we learn more from the millions of players playing it. We asked Senior Designer Jon Weisnewski to give us a brief update on their mission to keep your box full of sand fun. 

Jon Weisnewski: Hello, Guardians. Since the launch of Destiny 2, we have been reading your feedback, spectating streams, and watching YouTube videos. Very recently, we received our first real batch of player data from our analytics team. We've also been shoulder-to-shoulder with you in the trenches daily, playing the ever-loving crud out of this game. We're not ready to go into detail about any weapon or ability tuning at this point, but there is an ongoing process in play, so we did want to drop a quick line and say...

We have heard your feedback. Thank you!
Destiny 2 will get updates that tune the sandbox experience. 
We are aware of MIDA Multi-Tool's popularity and are looking at it very closely. It is popular, but according to our data, there are options out there that match or exceed its effectiveness in all activities. Have you found one?

It's only the first month of a long adventure. Many players are still gathering weapons for their arsenal and we have a handful of guns that haven't even hit the game yet. We're excited to see how things evolve. As always, thanks for playing, and keep the feedback rolling in.

Thanks for being part of the process. If you want to make your voice heard, but you're not sure where to jump in, I'm always keeping a sharp eye trained on our #Feedback forum. Constructive criticism and war stories are shared with the entire development team.

Patch Notes Preview

Next Tuesday, October 3, we are deploying Hotfix 1.0.3.1. It contains some fixes for issues some players are experiencing. Here is a preview of some of the changes you can expect to see when you download the update next week. 

• Fixed an issue in which players could lose access to the Veteran's Transmat Effect by deleting characters
  
• Fixed an issue in which clan engrams would grant Trials of the Nine and raid rewards at only 10 Power 
• Fixed an issue in which progress for the Exotic Quest Step "His Highness's Seal" was not incrementing properly
  • Quest progress will still increment by 1, but the Quest Step now only requires 10 Seals to be collected
• Fixed an issue in which raid milestones would not show for some players after the weekly reset (This didn't affect any raid rewards)
  
• Fixed issues in which players could enter a state where they are continuously killed or unable to resurrect if encounter complete and failure events occurred simultaneously
  

If you're still experiencing an issue not listed in the fixes above, check the list of known issues we are still investigating. If it's not included, let us know. There will be more updates in the future. Destiny is always evolving.

Hotter Fixes

Speaking of known issues, our Player Support Team is in charge of monitoring our help forum for any player reports and making sure our team has the info they need to diagnose and treat any ailments in the game. 

This is their report.

Destiny 2 Hotfix 1.0.3.1
Destiny 2 Services will be taken offline on Tuesday, October 3, in preparation for Destiny 2 Hotfix 1.0.3.1.

Maintenance begins at 8AM PDT (3 PM UTC)

• Players will no longer be able to sign in to Destiny 2
  

Players will be removed from all activities at 9 AM PDT (4 PM UTC)

• We advise players complete raid and Nightfall activities well before this time to avoid a Cabal victory
  

Maintenance expected to complete at 12 PM PDT (7 PM UTC)

• Players may encounter the Destiny Server Queue when attempting to sign in after maintenance
  

For vital information concerning Destiny 2 Server and Update Status, please see this Help Article. Stay tuned to @BungieHelp or monitor our support feed on Help.Bungie.net for status updates throughout the maintenance window.

PlayStation 4 Crashes
We are continuing to work with our platform partners at Sony to address an issue where players encounter PlayStation Error CE-34878-0 when attempting to visit the Tower, or during general gameplay. Stay tuned to @BungieHelp and @AskPlayStation for updates.

Cayde's Stash, Lost Sector, and Planetary Chest Reward Issues
We are investigating reports of players opening rewards chests and not receiving loot. If you are encountering this issue, please post a report to the #Help forum detailing the following:

• Which type of chest did not grant rewards?
  
• Had you interacted with alternate chests or planetary materials prior to this issue occurring?
  

It is expected that if too many planetary chests are opened within a short amount of time, players may not receive items. Cayde's Stash and Lost Sector chests should not follow this functionality. We will provide updates on our investigation when available.

Leviathan Raid Keys
Through our investigations with internal teams, we have identified two instances where Leviathan raid keys are erroneously removed from character inventory.

• Signing in with alternate characters will remove raid keys if the character had not been signed in since the weekly reset.
  
• If a player earns Raid keys and creates a new character, raid keys are removed from inventory.
  

To prevent this issue, we advise players sign in with all characters or inspect all characters on the Destiny Companion App prior to completing checkpoints within the Leviathan raid after the weekly reset.

Please note: Leviathan raid progress, including key rewards, are reset each week. We are looking to address issues where keys are removed erroneously with a future update. Stay tuned to @BungieHelp for future announcements. 

Lens Flair

You may have noticed the new MOTW Gif above. That's because the new MOTW emblem arrived with Update 1.0.3.0 earlier this week. All MOTW winners since the launch of Destiny 2, including honorable mentions, will be rewarded with the Lens of Fate emblem.

This week, we have three more winners receiving top honors for multimedia storytelling. If you would like your shot at winning it in the future, submit your video to the Creations page.

Move of the Week: The Booping - A Tractor's Story

Honorable Mention: Lower the Shoulder

Honorable Mention: Balancing Act

At Bungie, we're all having a great time playing Destiny 2 with you. We're also enjoying reading everyone's ideas on how to keep making the game better. Keep the chatter coming.

Tomorrow, I'm heading back to Texas for a week, to surround myself with the ol familial fireteam. That means DeeJ will be back in the pilot seat for the next TWAB. I've told him you prefer my conversational writing style, and that he should keep the purple prose to a dull roar. Maybe you can talk him into hiding some Bungie dogs in it? I'll still be online, but you may not hear from me as often. I'm technically supposed to be off work. In reality, I usually can't help but keep an eye on things.

Keep being excellent to each other. 
 
<3 Cozmo