* There are sparrows on Mercury?
* Saint-14 weapons and armor
* There are Sparrows on Mercury!!
* New seasonal artifact, a Lantern or some such.
* THERE ARE SPARROWS ON MERCURY!!!
* Some new activity called Sundial
* THERE ARE GODD*MN SPARROWS ON MERCURY GODD*MMIT!!! Do you believe in miracles?!

Remember back before Shadowkeep dropped, and Bungie said that there would be "a renewed focus on PvP in Season 8"? And then they removed four maps in exchange for one new map, we got solo queue in comp, and... that's it.

But people were like "give them time, it's a huge content drop".
Well, season 9 is here, and we get... One new Crucible map, one Lab mode is made permanent, and... that's it. They couldn't be bothered to turn Elimination into Trials during a Mercury-focused season. Future evolutions of the Crucible indeed.

But hey, at least they're retconning the death of one of the few interesting characters in the lore.
Also, Sparrows on Mercury after two years!

Busy and didn't get to watch it. What's new? I take there are the following based on the trailer amd your post:
- Sparrows on Mercury
- Are there new areas?
- I'm guessing missions/quest involving Saint 14
- New version of Menagerie (Sundial)
- Any other exotics than the ones in the trailer?
- New armor and ornaments (at least 1 set of each)
- Is there not a new raid?
- 1 returning PvP map
- Any mention of trials?

Is that all?

- Is there not a new raid?

Nope

- Any mention of trials?

Nope

Is that all?

There was also some discussion of a new mechanic whereby you charge up with light in some way and this allows you to do something powerful which is either affected by or controlled by armor mods.

To be honest I had a visitor and had to turn the sound off during most of it. It was probably one of the shortest reveal streams they’ve had. I caught parts of it like them jumping on a sparrow and the new activity having a new landing zone just for it. Didn’t see much of it but it seems to be leaning more to a menagerie like activity. About a minute after I got rid of my visitor and started really paying attention and catching up it was over.

* There are sparrows on Mercury?
* Saint-14 weapons and armor
* There are Sparrows on Mercury!!
* New seasonal artifact, a Lantern or some such.
* THERE ARE SPARROWS ON MERCURY!!!
* Some new activity called Sundial
* THERE ARE GODD*MN SPARROWS ON MERCURY GODD*MMIT!!! Do you believe in miracles?!

I always thought on some level that Mercury was designed the way it is (small and few paths) BECAUSE there are no sparrows on Mercury.

I didn’t watch the stream, but after Vex Offensive, expecting the Sundial to be anywhere close to as fun or mechanically challenging as the Menagerie seems like just setting yourself up for disappointment.

I hope I’m wrong.

The first season-intro lore entry has been posted here.

I highly recommend it.

They said not long after Curse of Osiris that sparrows on Mercury caused some sort of performance issues they couldn’t fix, so they just got rid of them.

I guess it’s possible that those problems occurred early enough that the design of Mercury was changed somehow to compensate, but that wasn’t the impression I got.

I always thought on some level that Mercury was designed the way it is (small and few paths) BECAUSE there are no sparrows on Mercury

People from Bungie have been quoted in the past that their were sparrows on mercury until they discovered some big bug and disabled them. Don’t recall any indication of what the bug was or why it has taken them two years to fix it.

Where does more of this live? I couldn't see an easily-accessible hub (on mobile).

And also, what was the lore for Season of Undying? I have no idea outside of the season intro video and the fact yhere are Vex on the Moon?

I didn’t watch the stream, but after Vex Offensive, expecting the Sundial to be anywhere close to as fun or mechanically challenging as the Menagerie seems like just setting yourself up for disappointment.

I hope I’m wrong.

It’s impossible to say for sure at this point, but from what they showed on the stream, Sundail looks more interesting and fun than Vex Offensive. I doubt it’ll be as involved as the Menagerie, though.

They said not long after Curse of Osiris that sparrows on Mercury caused some sort of performance issues they couldn’t fix, so they just got rid of them.

I guess it’s possible that those problems occurred early enough that the design of Mercury was changed somehow to compensate, but that wasn’t the impression I got.

It wasn't that Sparrows on Mercury caused bugs/performance issues mid-development, it was that adding sparrows into the already-launched CoO caused bugs. Launching without them was a design choice.

More to the point, it didn't take them two years to root out the issue and fix it, they simply chose not to prioritize looking into it until Year 3. To quote DeeJ:

"To give some context on why QOL is sometimes delayed or not acted upon, I want to call out the Mercury Sparrow bullet in particular. This was something that players were asking about many, many moons ago. It's something that the team actually tried to implement, but it ended up causing some bugs that would crash the game, or impact various activities on Mercury. This jammed up our development timeline, as we essentially lost resources that could have been allocated to testing other content that was being cooked up.

Ultimately, it was decided that the Mercury Sparrow QOL request needed to be reverted and looked at again in the future, as we didn't have enough time to hammer away at the issues brought on by the change. To put another way, each QOL request has a trade off. Do we go back and add sparrows to mercury, or do we spend the same amount of test time on things like the Dreaming City curse cycle? What if a simple QOL request ends up bringing deep rooted bugs that require more time to hammer out? Keep working on that, or hit other items that are easier to implement?"

As far as I know Bungie no longer hosts the Grimoire on their website proper, but a great deal of it is available through the API, and Ishtar Collective does a great job of putting it all together in a searchable format. I would highly recommend reading through the "Lore Books" (found at Sitemap -> Lore Books Archive) for some more short story type Destiny lore.

There seems to be almost no lore about the Vex Offensive itself, but there is quite a lot about Shadowkeep, including "Narrative Previews" (search that phrase on Ishtar) that were very similar in tone to this new Saint-14 stuff.

They said not long after Curse of Osiris that sparrows on Mercury caused some sort of performance issues they couldn’t fix, so they just got rid of them.

I guess it’s possible that those problems occurred early enough that the design of Mercury was changed somehow to compensate, but that wasn’t the impression I got.

It wasn't that Sparrows on Mercury caused bugs/performance issues mid-development, it was that adding sparrows into the already-launched CoO caused bugs. Launching without them was a design choice.

It just doesn't feel like it was designed with sparrows in mind. It would nice if we could now teleport to other areas of Mercury (that aren't the infinite forest).

More to the point, it didn't take them two years to root out the issue and fix it, they simply chose not to prioritize looking into it until Year 3. To quote DeeJ:

"To give some context on why QOL is sometimes delayed or not acted upon, I want to call out the Mercury Sparrow bullet in particular. This was something that players were asking about many, many moons ago. It's something that the team actually tried to implement, but it ended up causing some bugs that would crash the game, or impact various activities on Mercury. This jammed up our development timeline, as we essentially lost resources that could have been allocated to testing other content that was being cooked up.

Ultimately, it was decided that the Mercury Sparrow QOL request needed to be reverted and looked at again in the future, as we didn't have enough time to hammer away at the issues brought on by the change. To put another way, each QOL request has a trade off. Do we go back and add sparrows to mercury, or do we spend the same amount of test time on things like the Dreaming City curse cycle? What if a simple QOL request ends up bringing deep rooted bugs that require more time to hammer out? Keep working on that, or hit other items that are easier to implement?"

Yep. Sounds like software development.

My takeaway is that I miss the old model. I'd love if they'd devoted all the resources going towards making this seasonal stuff and just give us a Forsaken sized expansion every year.

I'll definitely jump in and play this stuff, and I know I'll have fun, but damn this just doesn't look all that exciting.

It just doesn't feel like it was designed with sparrows in mind.

I think that's what Korny was saying. It WAS designed assuming there wouldn't be sparrows. Hence why it's pretty much small enough to traverse on foot (I know doing so is a bit tedious, but it's still nowhere near as big as a lot of other destinations).

It would nice if we could now teleport to other areas of Mercury (that aren't the infinite forest).

Heh, you can kinda do that already, but only when the Vex mini-event with the rings is going on. Hopefully if we have sparrows now it's a non-issue. If we DO have sparrows now, it makes me wonder whether they fixed the original problem? Perhaps instead they just built a new version of Mercury (which they might have been doing anyway, due to new areas and/or content) which doesn't have the problem to start with.

It just doesn't feel like it was designed with sparrows in mind.

I think that's what Korny was saying. It WAS designed assuming there wouldn't be sparrows. Hence why it's pretty much small enough to traverse on foot (I know doing so is a bit tedious, but it's still nowhere near as big as a lot of other destinations).

Yeah, and that's what I started out saying.

It would nice if we could now teleport to other areas of Mercury (that aren't the infinite forest).

Heh, you can kinda do that already, but only when the Vex mini-event with the rings is going on. Hopefully if we have sparrows now it's a non-issue. If we DO have sparrows now, it makes me wonder whether they fixed the original problem? Perhaps instead they just built a new version of Mercury (which they might have been doing anyway, due to new areas and/or content) which doesn't have the problem to start with.

True enough. Man cannons make everything better--even lackluster public events.

I was thinking more about the areas you can see in the distance. Bungie has a history of taking us places we can see on the horizon. (Is it Halo 3 where you can see the end of most levels from the beginning?) I love how you can look back and see Devrim's church when playing Lake of Shadows.

Vanguard Commander

Remember back before Shadowkeep dropped, and Bungie said that there would be "a renewed focus on PvP in Season 8"? And then they removed four maps in exchange for one new map, we got solo queue in comp, and... that's it.

But people were like "give them time, it's a huge content drop".
Well, season 9 is here, and we get... One new Crucible map, one Lab mode is made permanent, and... that's it. They couldn't be bothered to turn Elimination into Trials during a Mercury-focused season. Future evolutions of the Crucible indeed.

But hey, at least they're retconning the death of one of the few interesting characters in the lore.
Also, Sparrows on Mercury after two years!

-------------------------

[Link] Hey all,

At Shadowkeep launch, we refreshed the Crucible nodes, added a Solo playlist for Comp, refactored Glory gains, and started curating Crucible maps to pull ones that weren't performing well out of rotation for some love. This was the beginning of our work on Crucible over the next year, and we are far from done.

In Season of Dawn, we'll be reintroducing Rusted Lands, bringing Elimination to a static playlist node available at all times, and doing a bit of Sandbox work to refresh how Crucible gameplay feels. A few weeks back, we previewed the changes for OEM and Recluse, which may shift the sandbox around a bit. On top of that, we have a slew of new legendary weapons, exotic armor pieces, and subclass changes which we hope will push players to new builds. We'll also have a few maps returning to rotation with fixes to spawns and other issues, with a selection of maps being removed. We'll have some details on that in the TWAB later this afternoon.

As for Masterwork materials, we're passing this feedback along to the team. The current source of mats, as stated in the [reddit] OP, is after a full Valor refresh. This isn't comparable to other parts of the game. Gambit shares this issue to an extent, but there are fully masterworked weapons that drop from time to time that end up granting more mats than Crucible.

We have been introducing new pursuit weapons for players to earn via Glory, but we hear you on the Legend rewards, and have been passing this feedback along as well.

I understand the feedback right now, in that things feel slow. We have three month seasonal rotations with a few additional updates within each season, which players find to be too long for upkeep and refreshes. While we're passing this feedback along to the team, we also have to be sure to balance our resource allocation internally, and not rush fixes or changes which may break the experience. This isn't meant to downplay your feedback in any sense, just wanted to say that game development takes time, and that we don't want to rush things that could end up creating more issues in the wild.

As we have more information on future changes for the Crucible, we'll let you know. Until then, we have people working on the crucible internally, whether it be tweaks to modes, matchmaking, sandbox, or other.

Please keep the feedback coming, as we continue to collect it to help prioritize what players want to see most.

Cheers,

-dmg

[Link] Re: Trials

We've had a few blog posts talking about Trials of the Nine being on indefinite hiatus, and Luke speaking to what worked and what didn't in one of the Director's Cut blog articles.

This season, Elimination is returning as a static mode that you can play at any time. We collected a lot of feedback from Crucible Labs over the last season, and we'll continue to look at how the mode plays this season with upcoming Sandbox changes and other things. You bet your ass I'll be in there.

Please continue to sound off with what works and what doesn't. Maps, mode settings, weapons, armor, etc.

Edit: As in this post I've made here. Why? Because it's all lies anyway, right?! ;D

The Sundial