Bungie Weekly Update - 04/09/2015

Kevin:  At the highest level, we had a few goals in mind:

• Make Special ammo a more precious resource in Crucible
  
• Further solidify Heavy ammo's role in the Crucible
  
• Further improve the balance of encounters by limiting high-damage weapons
  

Kevin:  The Competitive Multiplayer Team is constantly listening to feedback - be it from people in our studio or players on forums and social media. A common thread has been the uptime, effectiveness, and usage of Special and Heavy weapons.

Kevin:  The recent update to sandbox balance was the first step. Creating a new system to manage ammo drops will enable us to adjust the Crucible experience without altering other activities in your Director. We believe that making ammo more scarce and important will provide players with more choices and more memorable encounters in Crucible.

Kevin:  Special Ammo will spawn less frequently, it will take longer to pick up, there will be less crates located on the map, and the bricks you find will provide you with less ammo. I’ll save the stats and gory details for the Patch Notes. [Editor’s Note: Coming very soon to a blog article near you!]

We wanted players to really think about how and when they should use their ammo. The hope is that you’ll ask yourself questions like:

"Is this snipe worth it right now?"

"Should I really shotgun rush these players?"

"Should I conserve ammo until the next crate?”

Kevin:  Like Heavy Ammo, a player who opens a green crate without waiting for their teammates will deny them of Special Ammo. To prevent this, we raised the drop radius for teammates by a considerable amount. Raising the drop radius helped players understand the importance of pulling a crate as soon as they could, while ensuring that nearby teammates would still benefit from the drop. We've already seen some great plays come from last second pulls to deny enemies and supply allies.

Kevin:  The main thing we wanted to prevent in terms of Heavy Ammo was players trying to buffer their supply by sitting within range of a brick without picking it up. This hurts your ability to anticipate when heavy ammo would be in play during a match. By introducing despawn conditions, we’re ensuring that players will have to acquire ammo when it becomes available, or risk losing it all together.

Kevin:  Internally, we've seen the arrival of Heavy Ammo create short bursts of intensity in a match that eventually reverts back to the "neutral game." We think the transition back to regular gameplay is super important because it gives the team on the losing end of Heavy Ammo distribution a chance to rally back.

Kevin:  Extending the inbound timer by five seconds allowed more players to get to the ammo. We’re also adding some new visual prompts, like timers and pre-spawn effects, to forecast the arrival of all ammo crates. More advance notice reduces how often players open the crate without their teammates having a chance to get to it.

Daniel:  One recurring story we keep seeing involves Legendary and Exotic gear getting accidentally dismantled by errant pets and over-enthusiastic children. We decided to empower players to protect their precious gear with Item Locking.

Daniel:  There were some unexpected complications to work through, such as preserving the locked state on our servers when transferring gear to and from the vault. (I hear some people like to put their exotics into the vault, after all.) Thankfully, fellow UI Engineer Ricky Senft was able to help smooth out the wrinkles and bring the feature to completion. Your Icebreakers will thank you.

Andrew:  The Design Team came to us wondering if we could give players the option to show off their sweet helmets while running around the Tower. We all agreed that it’s important to give players every opportunity to show off the cool gear they’ve earned. It turned out to be a fairly quick UI task to turn helmets on in the Tower. Our engineers banged out the code for it in short order. All we had to do was figure out where to put the menu option. A number of locations in the UI were discussed. Character screen? Details screen? We decided that the Settings menu was the most obvious and easiest place to control this new feature.

Christine:  Our first fundraising drive is aimed at winning the annual Men in Kilts competition. Celebrating its fourth anniversary, this competition raises funds for families staying at the Seattle Ronald McDonald House. Bungie won first place in the first two years running, but lost the crown last year, ending up in second place. Help our brave men get back to the top! Cast your vote for Team Bungie by donating $10 or more. Every $30 donated will pay for a family to stay at the House for one night. Head to the RMHC Donation Page to cast your votes today!

Christine:  Our second drive will coincide with the Second Annual Gauntlet Tabletop Tournament.  On May 16th, Team Bungie will compete in a tournament against fifteen other local businesses in order to raise funds for Hopelink, a local organization that works to help individuals and families in the community move towards self-sufficiency. Your donations will put food on the tables of those who need it most!  Your donations will raise money to help feed our community and embolden our team with Power Ups that will help them win the tournament. Head to our team’s Donation Page to commit your support today!

Christine:  Need a sweeter incentive? Check out these backer rewards for donating to either of these two causes:

$10 – Your name will be mentioned in the Bungie Weekly Update

$50 – The prize above, plus the “Sign of Duality” player emblem

$100 – All prizes above, plus a signed poster from the Dev Team 

$250 – All prizes above, plus a photo with Team Bungie*

$500 – All prizes above, plus lunch with Team Bungie*

In an effort to keep our forums clean and orderly, we now have pinned topics to help direct players to forum categories, broadcast FAQs, and notify when Bungie is undergoing patches or maintenance. Keep an eye out for them on our #Feedback forum.

There are many excellent third-party apps and websites out there to make item management, recruitment, and progression tracking easier in Destiny. We take pride in featuring some of these community-driven tools, but we also want to inform players on how to keep their accounts safe.  Please take a look at our helpful hints on reducing the risk of account compromise. 

While there may be some people out to get your account, there are also stellar members of the Bungie community who are helpful, knowledgeable and all around good team players. If you find yourself in a Fireteam with a person you would like to commend, please let us know by using the in-game report feature and report them for being helpful, friendly, or highly skilled.