This Week At Bungie - 5/24/2018

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

We kicked off the beginning of Season 3 with changes to Exotic Weapons. "What about the armor?" has been a popular question. Today, we're going to start answering it. This is the first wave of changes—the next are currently slated to come in July. Sandbox Designer Victor Anderson has the facts on what you can expect on May 29. 

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
Watch Bungie at twitch.tv/Bungie
Watch Vicarious Visions at twitch.tv/VicariousVisions

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

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

If you would like to enter a submission, post it to the Creations page and make sure you have your player name in the description of the video.

Twitch Master Scott wanted me to let you know that we have set up a Discord server that is attached to our Twitch account. We're not using it for messaging; there are plenty of Destiny 2 communities for you to seek out on Discord. We wanted to ensure any subscribers who are supporting the Bungie Foundation can use our Twitch emotes while on Discord. For more info on how, go here.

That's all for this week. Enjoy Iron Banner!

<3 Cozmo