This Week In Destiny - 04/11/2024

This Week in Destiny, we’ve been busy! Not only did we launch Destiny 2: Into the Light, but we also gave you all a sneak peek of what's coming with The Final Shape. So, let's talk a bit about it, shall we?

• Prismatic summary.
• Destiny 2: Into The Light is live!
• Pantheon starts April 30.
• Heads-up-display changes coming with The Final Shape.
• Weapon drops rotating soon.
• Kilts for Kids returns.
• The weekly Player Support Report.
• And the Artist and Movie of the Week winners.

A New Subclass is Coming

Prismatic is a new subclass arriving with The Final Shape that will allow Guardians to mix and match some of the most popular Arc, Solar, Void, Stasis, and Strand abilities—combining them to unlock new potential in power and customization.

When using Light and Darkness powers,  Guardians will be able to  break their limits and achieve Transcendence, a new empowerment state only possible though Prismatic. Our latest Dev Insight article focuses on the crazy potential unlocked when mixing Light and Darkness powers. Go read it if you haven't already!

Go play Destiny 2: Into the Light!

On Tuesday, we also shipped Destiny 2: Into the Light, our two-months-long content update that’s open to all players. Hooray! Everyone at Bungie is incredibly proud and happy that you all can finally play it.

No matter if you’re seeking some beloved weapon drops, want to show Shaxx you can protect the whole Last City all by yourself, or are looking to have some fun with friends, there's something here for everyone! We've gathered all you need to know about Destiny 2: Into the Light in one article so you know what's coming and when.

We also added this awesome opening video that ponders the question, “What is a Guardian?” We know you are all busy answering that as you push back against the forces of the Witness. We pulled a few screenshots that should make good wallpaper material.

Wallpapers

Ready to Challenge Gods?

We have already shared some details about Pantheon, the new PvE challenge that will start on April 30. It involves not only a gauntlet of raid boss encounters currently available in the game, but also a few twists on how to approach them. We are keeping some details close to the chest, including the list of enemies that you will face, but since you are all eager to know more about it...

The goal of Pantheon is to relive those incredible and heroic moments that raids always deliver, while also changing what you expect from some of the encounters many of you already know so well. Prepare to be nimble, adapt your strategies (or throw them out of the window), and your fireteam will find success.

Pantheon will increase in scale and difficulty each week, starting with four bosses in the first one and growing up to eight in a row on May 21. Each time a new boss is added, the active modifiers will rotate,  and the Power cap will change, starting with players at 5 Power below all the way up to contest mode equivalent of 20 Power below.

As difficulty goes up, so does the pool of available rewards. You can get Adept raid weapons, Deepsight versions of raid weapons, and even Exotic weapons. Some rewards are weekly and others are linked to pursuits or Triumphs (like the four new emblems), but many will also depend on your performance. We challenge you to complete each encounter before the bonus timer expires to get a Platinum score and the greatest rewards.

When April 30 arrives, we hope you have trained and prepared yourselves, Guardians. Shaxx will have the quest you'll need to start your journey to become a Godslayer. Yeah, that's the title waiting for the champions that conquer Pantheon.

Updating the HUD

Today we also have some news to share about the HUD update coming with The Final Shape. To that end, we leave you in the capable hands of our UI and UX team.

Destiny 2 has over 2,000 player-facing buffs and debuffs in the game that can appear on the HUD. These include things like subclass verbs, Armor Charge, Pervading Darkness, or text to help you triangulate a signal on Neomuna.

Prior to The Final Shape, only four buffs could be displayed at once, meaning important buffs were continually being pushed off the screen. With this system, we were asking players to constantly juggle a lot of information in their head. In the worst cases, this limitation would cause players to miss feedback about important activity mechanics that lead to teams being wiped. (Unstable Light, anyone?)

That's why, as part of the many quality-of-life improvements coming with The Final Shape, we set out with two goals to improve the HUD experience:

• Visually prioritize important buffs. We promote buffs that matter in the moment and add new locations where they can be spotted more easily.
• Increase the number of buffs that can be shown. New locations for buffs to appear means more buffs on screen, while not being overly intrusive.

New Buff Channels

In The Final Shape, we've created two new areas on the HUD where modifiers can appear:

• Critical info channel (top center)
• Weapon channel (above the Super meter)

Here’s a visual of how these are organized on screen, in addition to the existing channel where all other buffs get shown on the left:

Let's take a deeper dive into what appears on each of these channels.

Critical Info

The modifiers that appear here are important for successfully completing the current activity. This includes things like wipe mechanics, roles (e.g., Deep Stone Crypt's Operator role), or other special mechanics in the activity that are beneficial for you to notice.

You'll see this channel appear in prime real estate underneath your health and shields. Since we want players to focus on only the most important modifiers here, this channel will not display more than two modifiers at a time.

Weapons

You'll find weapon-related modifiers showing up in the space above the Super meter, conveniently close to where weapon information appears. Given the high up-time on a lot of these buffs, we wanted to split them out from competing for space with everything else.

The space here is restricted, so only the two most important weapon modifiers will show up here.

Prioritization

As part of these changes, we've made a prioritization pass to help the most relevant buffs and debuffs in the moment stay visible on screen, even when there is a lot going on. Higher-priority buffs will push lower-priority buffs out of the HUD display. Previously, it was very unpredictable which buffs would get knocked out of your HUD display as more buffs would get added.

You’ll find buffs generally prioritized within all channels as follows:

• (Highest) activity information – These are buffs that guide your play in the activity. We want to make sure players always have this information available.
  • Note that dangerous or otherwise critical activity information will always be shown in the critical info channel.
• Second-to-second gameplay choices – These are buffs that are required to play your build effectively (such as Armor Charge) or ability cooldowns (like Tangle Cooldown).
• Short- to –medium-term gameplay choices – Subclass verbs (like Amplified), weapon damage buffs, or temporary ability bonuses such as those from Aspects and Fragments are prioritized this way.
• Passive buffs useful for learning or confirming intuition – Includes ability regeneration buffs and temporary stat boosting buffs.

Updates to Buff Appearance

In addition to setting up two new channels on the HUD, the team also took a pass at the readability of our buffs and debuffs.

All of our green buffs and red debuffs now have a thick line weight on the top or bottom respectively to make them easier for colorblind players to read. Subclass-related buffs and debuffs maintain their diamond shape, but they more clearly indicate whether they are a buff or debuff in nature.

Also, timers now display on the left side of the buff icon. Previously, it was displayed after the buff name. This should make it easier to know when a buff or debuff will expire, no matter how long its description might be.

Future Considerations

As many of you noticed, some footage shown on our April 9 The Final Shape Developer Gameplay Preview showed an in-development HUD channel that was on the right side of the screen. During development, we got a lot of feedback that this was pulling players' eyes to unfamiliar parts of the screen and that it was too much of a change all at once.

That's why we refocused the display in The Final Shape and will evaluate adding another channel in upcoming releases, after we have learned more about how players react to the changes announced today. What do you think? What would you want to see on that channel, or moved into it? As always, your feedback is invaluable to us, and we want to hear it all.

Weapons Rotating on June 4

As with every new content release in Destiny 2, we’re swapping some of the weapons that drop. We already shared some details about the loot pool for The Final Shape, but we don't want you to miss the opportunity of getting some rolls before that time, so here's the list of weapons leaving the loot pool on June 4:

Trials of Osiris

• Unexpected Resurgence Glaive – Out of rotation.
• Cataphract GL3 Heavy Drum Grenade Launcher – Last week April 23.
• The Messenger Pulse Rifle – Last week May 14.
• Igneous Hammer Hand Cannon – Last week May 21.

Nightfall

• Braytech Osprey Rocket Launcher – Last week April 9.
• Loaded Question Fusion Rifle – Last week April 23.

Iron Banner

• Jorum's Claw Pulse Rifle – Last week April 30.
• Bite of the Fox Sniper Rifle – Last week April 30.
• Pressurized Precision Fusion Rifle – Last week April 30.
• Swarm of the Raven Heavy Grenade Launcher – Last week April 30.

Even if the weapons are not dropping any longer, you can always focus them on their respective vendors, but remember that the Adept variants of Trials of Osiris and Nightfall weapons can't be obtained or focused unless featured. And regarding what weapons are coming to take the place of these, we'll share more info about that in the future.

Kilts for Kids Fundraiser Returns

And now, a message from the Bungie Foundation.

Guardians! Join us for the 13th Annual Kilts for Kids event to help raise critical funds for Ronald McDonald House Charities of Western Washington & Alaska! Your dedicated kilted crew is back—Christine, Mark, and Forrest never shy away from donning a kilt and getting in front of a camera to help encourage you all to join the cause.

Thank you to all of you who’ve kept this tradition alive, helping us raise over $850,000 to date. That equates to nearly 28,500 nights for families from all over the world to stay at the Ronald McDonald House completely free of charge while they receive medical treatment from Seattle Children’s Hospital. Amazing!

Between now and Friday, April 19, help us achieve our $77,777 goal by heading to the RMHC Donation Page and casting your votes for Team Bungie. Each vote is $10, and every $30 donated will pay for a family to stay at the Ronald McDonald House for one night.

In addition to helping kids and families facing illness, we have a great lineup of rewards* for you!

• $10 Donation: Receive the new Kilted Out shader .[insert graphic]
• $30 Donation: The Kilted Out shader plus the new Heart of a Highlander emblem.
• $50 Donation: All prizes above, plus this year’s annual Kilts for Kids postcard, designed by Bungie artist, Amanda, and digitally signed by Christine, Mark, and Forrest. It will be shipped to you after the event ends.
• $100 Donation: All prizes above, plus a digital copy of this year’s new and unique piece of artwork, crafted by Mark Flieg himself.
• $250: All prizes above, plus a physical print of Mark’s exclusive art, shipped to you.

Heart of the Highlander emblem

*Note: All rewards will be provided by the Bungie Foundation, not RMHC. Rewards will not be automatically redeemed, as we must receive donor data from RMHC before reward distribution. Expect any rewards you’ve earned to be sent to your email on or before April 30. Only one code for each digital item will be provided per unique individual donor email. Multiple codes of the same item cannot be granted to a donor, regardless of total amount donated. 

Thank you for providing a safe, welcoming, and supportive home away from home for kids and families in need through this fun annual tradition. You are a light in our community.

Love,

The Bungie Foundation ❤

Player Support Report

Superblack shader heist planning ongoing, inquire at Drifter.

Known Issues List  |  Help Forums  |  Bungie Help Twitter 

TEXT CHAT

Beginning with the launch of 7.3.6, in-game text chat has been updated to auto-join players into chat channels by default. Additionally, players will default to automatically joining voice chat when in a fireteam or fireteam lobby. Players can view and update their settings in-game by navigating to Settings and selecting the Social tab.

To learn more about the language filters used for in-game text chat, click here.

Some players may still see chat turned off by default. This is intentional for our younger players. To learn more, please see our Date of Birth requirements for Destiny 2 and Bungie Services Guide.

KNOWN ISSUES

While we continue investigating various known issues, here is a list of the latest issues that were reported to us in our :

• Onslaught bonus objective UI may overlap player buffs on the side of the screen.
• In Onslaught, certain enemies may teleport and appear behind the ADU on Vostok.
• Some previous Season Pass items available in Eververse display incorrect Seasonal icons.
• In Onslaught, players who spend too long within the Pyramid Ship can miss the portal to return to the ADU, resulting in them missing the next purchase phase.
• Players who have text chat disabled will have text chat UI disappear entirely instead of displaying a disabled message.

For a full list of emergent issues in Destiny 2, review our Known Issues article. If you observe other issues, please report them to our #Help forum.

Pew Pew Pew

Do you ever feel a blistering burst of energy in your stomach to the point you must create a weapon hotter than the surface of the Sun to relieve it? Yeah, we also know that feeling.

Guardian Hideo, by OrangeCoco. Via X/Twitter

Dance, Warlock, Dance

Motion capture is magical. Sometimes we wish we had moves as amazing as our Guardians... or otherwise, in this case.

And there you have it, folks. We are going to cut this outro short ‘cause we have some BRAVE weapons god rolls to farm. Just remember not to touch anything in the warehouse outside of the Hall of Champions. It might look like chaos, but Eva Levante says she has a system.

Now, let's play some Onslaught!

Destiny 2 Community Team