This Week At Bungie -11/09/2017

This week at Bungie, we're tallying the rally. 

The battle for resources between the factions is raging on all fronts. Can New Monarchy or Future War Cult rise to the occasion and knock Dead Orbit off their black throne? Their fates lie in your hands. 

Each leader sits on their perch in the Tower, waiting for you to do their bidding in the wild. Which one will you choose? We will find out who awarded the most packages and declare them the winner on November 14. Their banners will adorn our home and their chosen weapon will be available to all. The price you pay will depend on where you pledged your loyalty.

High Fidelity 

The holiday season is nigh, so you might be compiling your wish list. The PlayStation 4 Pro and the Xbox One X are now both out there in the wild, and either of them would make a great gift - even if it's one you buy for yourself. We've seen a lot of questions about whether or not Destiny 2 would scale to meet the potential of new hardware. On this festive occasion, the answer is "Yes!"

On December 5, along with the launch of Curse of Osiris and Season Two, we'll be deploying an update to Destiny 2 that will deliver stunning gameplay with high dynamic range (HDR) lighting to these new consoles. You'll also see adaptive 4K resolution on the PlayStation 4 Pro and 4K on the Xbox One X.

If you're migrating to these new consoles, or already have, we'll make it worth your investment.

Answer the Call

Starting on November 17, the first Clarion Call for Destiny 2 will be live all weekend long. This will be an opportunity for you to earn double XP for everything you do with a fellow clan member in your fireteam. If you aren't in a clan, this would be a perfect time to join one. Your increased gains will run from 10 AM Pacific on November 17 to 10 AM Pacific on November 20. If you are dedicated to playing solo, there will be future Clarion Calls that won't require you to play with a clan.

Social Cues

Since the first launch of Destiny 2, we've seen a lot of feedback about the social features you use to share your adventure with other players. Social Designers M.E Chung and Steve Dolan are here to shed some light on Guided Games, in-game chat, and that emote wheel we talked about a few weeks ago. 

How is Guided Games going?

M.E.: Well, one thing we're really happy to see is that Guided Games has enabled a bunch of new players to play the Nightfall and/or Raid for the first time (since Destiny 1).  Our goal with Guided Games for end-game content is about helping players find tight-knit communities to join, but we see and are very aware of the current issues. For example, we know that the lack of reconnections causes all kinds of problems with unintentional oathbreakers, that the lack of audio feedback when a clan is found is causing players to miss the queue, that guides lack proper incentives, that we need a guided games option for Trials of the Nine, etc.

Steve: We have several of our superhero engineers working on really important things, like network stability across the game, but we hope to continue making progress on Guided Games as soon as possible. Here are some short-term fixes we'll deliver with the release of Curse of Osiris on December 5: 

• We've added an audio cue so that you know when you've found a guide.
  
• Full clans can now guide.
  
• Added reminders that if you reject a clan, you're still at the front of the line, so you can only pick guides with a mission statement that looks appealing.
  
• Guided games will support the new Nightfall and Raid content you'll find in Curse of Osiris (and you'll learn more about that next week on our first livestream).
  

Why aren't there checkpoints in Guided Games?

M.E.: The original goal was to prevent checkpoint farming (where players would start a game with a pickup group and drop right when they reached the right checkpoints to take to their buddies), but not having checkpoints causes different issues that we're not happy with either.  We're still looking at this.

Steve: We also wanted to make sure every player had the same expectation of where you would be starting.  When you go into a guided game, you will always start from the beginning.  We considered breaking up the starting points by checkpoints, but our fear is that if we split up the matchmaking pools on a per-checkpoint basis, we would make queue times even longer. It's always a balancing act when putting new players together to play endgame content. 

Why can't players talk to their clans in the game chat?

M.E.: Oh, man, we want it in the game too! Getting clan chat into the game is one of our highest priorities, and we hope we can get it into a release as soon as possible. 

Steve: And yes, we're interested in a Tower/zone chat too, but we have to prioritize it against all of other asks. 

Will we see improvements to chat functionality?

M.E.: We can do a waaaaayyyyyy better job in the game to encourage players to communicate, like making more obvious public/team channels and a good time to enter (i.e., NOT when the player gains control when boots are on the ground), or letting players know about chat setting defaults up front when you start the game, or letting you know when someone is trying to whisper you, etc. These are the kinds of things we have on our backlogs, but again, everything is prioritized against all other asks.

What about that emote wheel we just heard about?

M.E.: Yes! No one wants this more than me, and we're trying our best to make it happen as soon as possible.

Steve: I've wanted this forever! Even without an emote wheel there has been amazing content put out by the machinima community. I can't wait to see what y'all create once the wheel is out and it's easier to chain your favorite moves together.

Thanks for your patience, for sending feedback, and being a passionate community!

Resetting the Reset

The DPS team is always working diligently behind the scenes. They are making sure you have the info you need to have the best Destiny 2 experience. Player Support Specialists are your tireless advocates behind the scenes - in the meetings, repeating what you talk about on our forum.

This is their report.

Curse of Osiris: Reset Changes
With the release of Curse of Osiris, Ritual Resets will no longer take place at 1 AM Pacific. Starting December 5, resets will occur at 1700 UTC.

Throughout Destiny 1's lifespan, players would frequently encounter an issue where weekly resets would not always coincide with content releases. This would prevent impacted players from earning new rewards. Countermeasures were taken by disabling activity playlists, but we were unable to prevent every scenario. Additionally, we're seeking to align the Milestone resets with event availability, such as Trials of the Nine or Iron Banner, to provide a uniform experience for players to follow each week.

The following is a short list of time zone conversions from 1700 UTC. If you do not see your local time below, we advise using an online time zone converter to prepare for the upcoming change.

• 9 AM PST
  
• 12 PM EST
  
• 5 PM GMT
  
• 9 PM MSK
  
• 2 AM JST
  
• 4 AM AEDT
  
• 6 AM NZDT
  

Stay tuned to help.bungie.net for future Support updates regarding the Curse of Osiris and the start of Season 2, releasing on December 5, 2017.

PC Support:
We are actively investigating general issues and crashes impacting Destiny 2 that have been reported to the PC Support forum. This chatter is helpful and we invite more of it.

Framerate Stutters or Hitches: Hotfix 1.0.6.2 was deployed this week to address issues introduced in Hotfix 1.0.6.1. Some players are reporting continued framerate stutters or hitching. We advise the following troubleshooting steps:

• Ensure you have installed the latest Windows updates
  
• Ensure you have the latest graphics drivers available for your GPU
  
• Attempt running Destiny 2 in true Fullscreen mode
  
• Set clock speeds for hardware, including memory, to manufacturer-recommended defaults
  

General Gameplay Crashes: As we continue to investigate general crash reports during Destiny 2 gameplay, we advise the following troubleshooting steps:

• Ensure you have the latest graphics drivers available for your GPU.
  
  • Note: AMD Vega and AMD R9 380 GPU's have been reported frequently to the #Help forums.
• Set clock speeds for hardware, including memory, to manufacturer-recommended defaults.
  
• Some anti-virus programs may interfere with Destiny 2. Please consider temporarily disabling the program to see if this resolves your issues. If so, please report your findings to the #Help forum.
  
• If you are receiving a "Run a scan and repair" error when crashing, yet seeing no improvements after doing so, attempt installing Destiny 2 to an alternate hard drive if available.
  

Additionally, we are investigating reports of issues encountered when attempting to visit the Third Spire destination during Trials events. Players may circumvent this issue by using in-game vsync settings or the framerate_cap setting in their cvars.xml file to limit framerate to under 100. Stay tuned to @BungieHelp for updates on our investigation.

If you encounter any issues when attempting to play Destiny 2 on PC, please see our Vital Information and Known Issues thread in the #Help forum.

Movie Madness

Seen any good movies lately? We have. And now we are going to share them with you. Every week we sift through all of the good submissions on the Creations page to pick out the great ones. If your movie gets chosen, we will send you a special emblem in Destiny 2. To enter, just send your movie to the Creations page. Here are this week's favorites. 

Movie of the Week: Voice Effects

Honorable Mention: Fragments of Time

Honorable Mention: Drawing a Nightstalker

Next week, we will start a series of streams to give you more info on Curse of Osiris, Season Two, and more. The first stream is next Wednesday at 11 AM Pacific. Join us live to learn about the new stories we'll tell.

Are you excited yet? I am. We have some cool stuff coming up and we are looking forward to sharing more of it with you soon.

<3 Cozmo