This Week At Bungie – 8/9/2018

Aug 9, 2018 - Cozmo

This week at Bungie, we demonstrated the evolution of combat in the second year of Destiny 2.

During an action-packed livestream, we showed off the changes that all players can expect, including our new weapon slot system, random rolls, more meaningful weapon mods, and a decreased time to kill in the Crucible (crispy three taps and spicy Devils!). All Destiny 2 players can experience a preview of our sandbox updates on August 28.

One topic that we’ve seen a lot of questions about is how we’ll migrate from old weapon mods to new weapon mods. Starting on August 28, your current mods will be deprecated, and your inventory will tell you that you can safely discard them for materials and parts. On September 4, the Gunsmith’s inventory will be dedicated to new Forsaken mods.

Between now and the preload on August 28, use your Year 1 mods to lock in the elemental damage type you want for your Year 1 weapons. They will retain that damage type after the mod deprecation. On August 28, the old mod slot will go away, and you will no longer be able to insert any mods into Year 1 gear or change the elemental damage type. Some weapons will be moving to the Kinetic Slot and will not retain elemental damage regardless of what mod you had applied. The IKELOS Sniper Rifle and Shotgun will be locked to Solar. Here are the Legendary weapons that will be moving to Kinetic:

Baligant
Shepherd’s Watch
Hawthorne’s Field-Forged Shotgun
Alone as a God
Perfect Paradox
The Frigid Jackal
Silicon Neuroma

There is plenty that’s about to change. Right now is a good time for us to set your expectations about a lot of it. This is a big one. Let’s dig in.

Wide Awake and Dreaming

Far away from the Crucible, you’ll find the first dedicated endgame destination we’ve created, home to our largest endgame experience ever.

You’ll discover the Dreaming City in Destiny 2: Forsaken.

How to Become Legend in Year 2

Weapon tuning and systems aren’t the only things that are changing in Forsaken. When your next journey begins, you’ll also discover new ways to earn rewards and become more powerful. The Investment Team can give you a sense for what’s coming.

Investment Team: Here are our high-level goals for progression and economy in Season 4:
We want to bring back the days when you are impressed when you see someone at max Power in the Tower.
The experience of leveling and then powering up should be meaningful.
Players should have a sense of discovery when earning rewards from different activities.
When players accomplish something difficult, the rewards should be special or unique.
Not all of the sources of Power in a week should be apparent on the Director.

Acquisition of Power
In Year 1, an activity such as the raid would have an absolute range of Power that it could generate. Rewards would grant only a small difference in Power level, even if you were overcoming the challenge while under-leveled. In Forsaken, we are scaling the Power production of all content by the difficulty of that content. If you manage to beat the raid while 40 Power under the recommended level, you should expect to receive more potent rewards.

When players earn powerful rewards, these items should never scale down to where they do not give an increase in Power. Even if your Power is 100 over an activity’s recommended level, it should still grant a reward at least one Power level above your current average. This means that players should still benefit when grouping with teammates who haven’t accomplished as much as they have.

We’ve also created multiple new sources of Power for powerful rewards that refresh on a different cadence than the weekly reset. The goal is to provide more to do for the players who want to play a variety of activities. That said, not every reward you find in the wild will be a powerful upgrade. We don’t want to spoil the entire journey to max Power, so we’ll be leaving it in the hands of the players to discover the best ways to reach endgame and beyond when Forsaken is released.

As a final note on Power, we’ve heard a lot of feedback concerning Exotics. To make these rewards feel more useful, whenever you receive an Exotic reward in Forsaken, it will always be at or above your Guardian’s Power.

Milestones
The Milestone tray has been revamped in Forsaken, and will now specifically show the most important, nonrepeatable quests for every player of Destiny 2. The campaign quests are a good example of this. Meanwhile, our world quests for destinations will now live in the Pursuits section of your character inventory. Many Milestones from Year 1 have been converted to activity challenges. These will continue to grant powerful rewards, but they will no longer be displayed in the Milestone tray. When you access the Director, you’ll see activity challenges in the tooltip of the associated activity.

Activities
The base strike playlist for Destiny 2: Forsaken players has been updated to feature difficulty selection and modifiers. Heroic strikes are being retired on August 28 with Destiny Update 2.0.
Forsaken Players
The strike playlist has three difficulties to select from:
Power 300
Power 400
Power 500
Once you’re 40 Power over a given playlist, it will no longer appear as an option for you to select.
This ensures a healthy matchmaking pool when players reach endgame Power levels.
The Power 500 playlist will always available.
Strikes will have modifiers.
Legacy Players
The strike playlist matches the legacy playlist that is currently available in Year 1.
Recommended Power 200.
Strikes will have modifiers.

Between August 28 and September 4, modifiers will be unavailable for all strike playlists.

The Nightfall activity is also being revisited for Season 4. Prestige difficulty is being retired, but the base difficulty for the Nightfall activity will increase. Additionally, players will have the ability to choose one of three Nightfall strikes each week. If there’s a specific Nightfall Unique Reward that a given player is hunting for, this reduces the time they have to wait for the strike to be featured again. While having three options, players may only select the strikes for which they own the appropriate expansions. Legacy players will still be able to enable modifiers via their Challenge Card. Scoring will not be available for legacy players in the 270 Power Nightfall.

Meditations are being retired and replaced with a Heroic story playlist. New campaign missions will be featured at 500 Power, while old campaign missions will be set to a Power level relative to their release. This ensures legacy players can still enjoy story activities at their leisure.

Ikora Rey’s Vanguard Research reputation tokens will no longer be used as a currency after August 28 and will be removed from player inventories. The Legendary parade gear will also no longer be available, so if you want it, get it before August 28.

Heroic adventures are being added to all destinations. When that destination is the Flashpoint, one adventure will be selected to be Heroic per day, with the exceptions of Mercury and Mars. Those two destinations will function as they currently do, but they will gain an additional adventure per day when they're the featured Flashpoint. Players will no longer be able to purchase normal adventure tokens from vendors on destinations other than Mercury and Mars.

Activity modifiers will be shared across Heroic adventures, Heroic story missions, and strikes. This ensures that each day you know what to expect from the PvE content that you play as a ritual, and that when we balance and tune modifiers it’s happening across the game. This will include one weekly singe, one daily buff, and one daily debuff.

The Brawler and Grenadier modifiers will have their recharge times adjusted to ensure they’re noticeable. Adjusting your equipment for either also has a rather significant impact. We’ve seen some pretty crazy plays by the new Solar Hunter in our playtest. Some experienced players out there may be reminded of the feelings found when they equipped Nothing Manacles in the past.

Economy Updates
For the last few weeks, we’ve seen a lot of players asking about items and currencies available in Year 1 and whether they’ll continue to be available in Year 2 or not. Expect the following changes on August 28, when Destiny Update 2.0 becomes available:
Destination materials will become your main source of reputation on their respective destinations.
Destination materials will be a part of the cost to infuse different weapons and armor across your arsenal.
Year 1 challenges that granted reputation tokens are being retired, but will be replaced by bounties offered on each destination that provide destination materials.
Destination tokens and Rare destination materials are no longer awarded, but you can still redeem them for reputation if you have them in your inventory.
Anything that previously granted destination tokens or Rare materials will reward Common destination materials moving forward.

The Gunsmith will also be updated in Season 4. In Year 1, this vendor required 40 Gunsmith Materials for one reputation package. This will increase to 100 Gunsmith Materials.

Iron Banner, Vanguard, and Crucible tokens earned in Season 3 may be redeemed at their respective vendors in Season 4. Trials of the Nine will be on hiatus during Season 4, and its reputation tokens will not be redeemable. At this time, we have not yet determined whether its currency will be used when it returns.

It’s Lit Fam

Lord Saladin makes his final appearance in Season 3 next week. This will be your last chance to earn your Season 3 rewards.

Begins: Tuesday, August 14

Ends: Tuesday, August 21

The game, as always, is Control!

There are a few changes to the Iron Banner Control you know and love. Iron Temple fire pits have replaced the usual Control flags. There is also a new Power Play rule where capturing all three zones will lock them down for 20 seconds. At the end of the Power Play, all the zones are reset to neutral and must be recaptured.

Power Enabled

Starting in Season 4, Iron Banner will be updated to enable Power level advantages, like in the days of old. All players of Destiny 2, regardless of expansion ownership, can participate in Iron Banner events. Year 2 rewards, featuring random rolls and compatibility with Year 2 modifications, will also be available to all players. Players who acquire new Power during their adventures in Forsaken will have an advantage, but we don’t want to exclude anyone who wants to compete in Iron Banner and reap the rewards. Iron Banner rewards will be capped for legacy players at their maximum Power available.

Trials of the Nine will be unavailable for the duration of Season 4. The design team is putting it back on the workbench to make it a fitting challenge for the hardcore warrior. When the weekly activity returns, it will feature updated rewards, Power advantages, and other gameplay changes. The final weekend of Season 3 Trials of the Nine will take place on the weekend of August 24.

We’ll tell you more about our goals and our progress during Season 4.

Faction Farewell

In Season 3, we introduced some changes, notably the Renown mechanic, to Faction Rallies. The community responded with a lot of great feedback about how we could continue to improve the experience. The feedback ranged in topic from experience to rewards, but many of you expressed the following:

I don’t want to feel forced to participate in every instance of the event each season
Make the event progression a bit less hardcore and more engaging

We plan to take that feedback and use it to improve activities and events in the future. When Season 4 begins, Faction Rallies will be on hiatus. This will give us a good opportunity to focus on some other areas of the game that need attention and reevaluate some of the fundamental aspects of the event.

While the Faction Rallies event is on hiatus, faction tokens will not be redeemable. We’ll tell you more about their fate in the future.

For players who were unable to acquire specific Exotic weapon catalysts during previous Faction Rallies, we are working on new ways for you to earn them. They will not be available at the beginning of Season 4, but we will provide more information on where to find these rewards when they do become available.

Eververse

As a new season begins with the launch of Forsaken, Eververse also gets a refresh.

Goals and Philosophies

Provide players with more data

Share Bright Engram reward probabilities on bungie.net
Provide players their private purchase history on bungie.net

Give players more choices to earn rewards the way they want

Full season of Prismatic Matrix
Free weekly Prismatic Facet

More Bright Dust earned from new bounties
Allow players new ways to customize their Guardians

Ghost projections
Legendary weapon skins
New Exotic ornaments and emotes

Eververse Bounties

Similar to how other bounties work, Tess will start offering bounties that reward Bright Dust to players. Here’s how they work:

Each Bright Engram grants one bounty note in Season 4
Bounties refresh weekly, but players can acquire as many Eververse bounties as they have bounty notes
These Notes can be exchanged for a three different tiers of weekly Eververse bounties

Tier 1:

Costs 1 Eververse Bounty Note
Rewards 20 Bright Dust

Tier 2:

Costs 3 Eververse Bounty Notes
Rewards 70 Bright Dust

Tier 3:

Costs 6 Eververse Bounty Notes
Rewards 150 Bright Dust

You can carry one of each type at a time
Bounties will expire seven days after acquisition

Prismatic Matrix

The Prismatic Matrix returns in Season 4. We received a lot of feedback that players enjoyed this feature and would have preferred if it had stayed active for all of Season 3. This time, we plan to keep the Prismatic Matrix live all through Season 4. The free weekly Prismatic Facet will be obtained from a special Tier 1 Eververse bounty. This bounty does not require a bounty note and will cost 250 Glimmer. Players will still be able to hold three Prismatic Facets at one time.

Bright Dust

Continuing with the theme of giving players more control over their Bright Dust balance, Bright Dust gained from dismantling Eververse items will be granted at a fixed rate. Players can now reliably dismantle items for specific gains.

Collections and Eververse Items

Eververse items will be retrieved from the Collections interface like all other items. An exception is Year 2 Eververse Armor, which (like all other armor with random rolls) cannot be reacquired from the Collections. The ways in which players acquire and interact with emotes and weapon/armor ornaments have not changed. All other items can be retrieved for an expense of Bright Dust.

Current season Eververse items which have not been acquired will display in the Collections interface until the end of the season. Past season Eververse items which have not been acquired will not display in the Collections interface. This prevents players from having incomplete Collections that cannot be completed.

Bright Engram Updates

New Legendary weapon ornaments have been added to the Bright Engram. These are unlocked account-wide like all other ornaments in the game. A new Ghost Projections category will also be added to Bright Engrams. This account-unlockable item permits players to put a holographic projection badge above their Ghost. This badge is only visible when the player has their Ghost deployed for Navigation Mode. Weapon and armor mods will no longer be dropping from the Bright Engram. In their place, players will now receive bounty notes.

Eververse Armor and Perks

With the addition of Random Perk Rolls on armor, we have made some changes to how perks are applied to Eververse Armor. Eververse Armor acquired from Bright Engrams will have random perks when rewarded. Eververse Armor acquired from sources like the Prismatic Matrix or the Bright Dust Storefront will have fixed perks.

Eververse Leveling Rewards in Forsaken

Like the Red War campaign in Destiny 2, in Forsaken, Bright Engrams will not be earned until you hit the level cap. As players complete pre-Forsaken campaigns they will be rewarded with an Eververse gift package tailored to each experience, which will also include Bright Engrams. Once players reach their level cap, based on what Expansions they own, Bright Engrams will once again be awarded each time a player levels up.

More Labs

Our last experiment in Crucible Labs went well. It’s time to put on your safety goggles and get back in there. Senior Designer Andrew Weldon has the details about what mode will be played in the next Crucible Labs.

Andrew: Hello again!

Hopefully you’re all having an excellent Solstice of Heroes! I’ve been going scorched-Earth with my Dawnblade in my quest for yet another Destiny 2 t-shirt for the collection.

But, even in the midst of the celebration, The Science™ must continue!

Thank you to all of you who played Lockdown in Labs! We saw a very positive feedback trend for the mode overall, but we also received some good feedback on areas to explore for improvement. We’ll be examining that feedback as we continue to close down Forsaken, and we’ll provide updates in the future as we have them.

Speaking of updates… in our first TWAB post discussing the Crucible Labs debut, I spoke about how we started fairly simple with the mode Showdown. We met our goals for the rollout, but as noted, the reception of Showdown itself was fairly mixed. Iteration is a critical phase of development, and we’ve taken some time to iterate a bit on Showdown based on notes we gathered both internally and externally from all of you. Here’s the set of changes we’ve made for this next iteration:

The round time limit has been reduced to 90 seconds
Rounds now have a score limit of 10
Revives are now enabled
Reviving a teammate before they respawn will take the point back from your opponents

Whether you played Showdown in the first Labs or this will be your first time in the playlist, we hope you’ll drop in for a few matches and let us know what you think. Hit up the feedback forum with your thoughts after you’ve played!

As with Lockdown, Labs will continue to drop standard Crucible rewards and contribute to your Valor rating, so your time spent here will also count if you’re working through your ranks for the Triumphs and armor. And, of course—you can play the new Showdown right now.

Valor for All

If you’ve been working on your Solstice armor, you may notice a few objectives tied to the Crucible. Once you reach Legendary-tiered armor, your final Crucible objective is to have your Valor rank reset at some point since Crucible Ranks were implemented.

Leading up to the beginning of Year 2, you’ll see multiple opportunities to earn Valor points at an accelerated rate including a special triple Valor Iron Banner weekend. Mark your calendars appropriately:

Double Valor Week

Start: 10 AM PDT on August 10, 2018
End: 10 AM PDT on August 17, 2018

Triple Valor Weekend

Start: 10 AM PDT on August 17, 2018
End: 10 AM PDT on August 21, 2018

Final Double Valor Weekend

Start: 10 AM PDT on August 24, 2018
End: 10 AM PDT on August 28, 2018

Happy hunting, and we hope to see you out there.

Not All Heroes Wear Capes

Player Support is hard at work tracking known issues with the Solstice of Heroes event. If you are blocked, they have the info you need to get back to upgrading your armor.

This is their report.

Destiny 2 Hotfix 1.2.3.2
To resolve issues blocking some players from upgrading their Solstice armor at the Statue of Heroes, we will be deploying Destiny 2 Hotfix 1.2.3.2 on Monday, August 13.

Players who were in this blocked state prior to Hotfix 1.2.3.2 will be able to resolve their issue by interacting with the Statue of Heroes in the Tower once this hotfix has been installed. Please be aware that this hotfix will cause the “Solstice of Heroes” milestone to linger for previously affected players, even after their Solstice Armor is upgraded completely. No rewards will be missed, and this message will disappear when Solstice of Heroes concludes on August 28.

To see the Hotfix 1.2.3.2 deployment schedule when it’s available, players should follow @BungieHelp on Twitter or monitor our support feed on help.bungie.net.

Solstice Armor Vital Information
Leading into the second week of Solstice of Heroes, Destiny Player Support began receiving reports from players encountering issues upgrading their Solstice Armor. To speak directly to these concerns, we have listed vital information that players should be aware of when upgrading their armor for Solstice of Heroes:

Solstice Armor can only be upgraded during the Solstice of Heroes event, which ends at the weekly reset on August 28.
Once players unlock their legendary Solstice armor, they will be presented with the Masterwork upgrade requirement, “Achieve the Legend rank in the Valor Crucible rankings.” To accomplish this, players must max out their Valor ranking with a Valor score of 2,000, then complete one more match.
Players who achieved maximum Valor ranking before the start of Solstice of Heroes and/or have previously reset their Valor ranking and whose Legend requirement is not already marked as complete may also need to complete an additional match.
Objective percentages on Solstice Armor may round up to the nearest whole digit. If players see that their Solstice Armor displays 100% progress, but is not marked as complete, they should continue performing its listed objective.

Solstice of Heroes and Moments of Triumph Known Issues
Listed below are the latest known issues that players should be aware of during Solstice of Heroes and Moments of Triumph:

Some players who achieve 250 Triumph points or more may encounter the bungie.net error “input parameters are invalid” when receiving their Solstice of Heroes T-Shirt code from their bungie.net profile. Players who encounter this error should try accessing their code through the Destiny Companion app. The official Destiny Companion app is available via the iOS App Store and the Google Play Store.
On some mobile devices, players may be unable to see their Solstice of Heroes T-Shirt code when viewing the Destiny Companion app in portrait mode. Affected players should rotate their device into landscape mode to view their code.
Players on PC have reported that Redux mission statues in the Tower may sometimes not be interactable when approached, even with a full Solstice Armor set equipped. According to player reports, launching into another activity then returning to the Tower may be a potential workaround.
Players on console may encounter an issue in Redux missions Payback and 1AU where the Drake tank does not steer left or right. Players encountering this issue should try clearing their console cache.

For the latest information on known issues as they are discovered, players should visit our Solstice of Heroes Known Issues thread. For more information on Moments of Triumph, players should visit our Moments of Triumph Guide. Players who encounter other issues with Solstice Armor or Moments of Triumph should submit a report to the #Help forum.

Wide Angle

Please silence your cell phones and take note of the emergency exits—the movies are about to begin. Every week, we pick a few of our favorite videos from the Creations page to show off here on the blog for all to see. The winners receive a special Emblem as a reward. If you would like a shot at Movie of the Week, just send your submission into our Creations page.

Here are this week’s winners.

Movie of the Week: Faction Rallies Dance Off

Honorable Mention: Bouncing Friend

Before we go, here are last week’s top Nightfall Scores.

It’s been another exciting week. Solstice of Heroes is still in full swing. Iron Banner is starting back up again next week. Fewer than three weeks until the start of Year 2 on August 28, where you will all get your hands on the Sandbox changes to combat we showed off on stream. I’m sure many of you will be able to rock triple shotgun far more effectively than I did.

This TWAB contained a lot of info. We’re sure you still have more questions. We’ll answer some of them in the next few weeks. Others will remain a mystery until you start playing Forsaken on September 4 and finally visit the Dreaming city for yourself.

<3 Cozmo