This Week At Bungie - 6/4/2020

This Week At Bungie, Season of the Worthy is ready for departure.

Before we talk about anything else, we'd like to maintain your focus on the events unfolding around the world. You may have seen demonstrations in your town, or like many of us here, down the street from the place you call home.

• https://blacklivesmatter.com/
• https://www.showingupforracialjustice.org/
• https://antiracismcenter.com/
• https://eji.org/
• https://www.colorlines.com/

Support does not end with a single statement or action. We'll continue to use our games and our shared voice to make the world a better place. We hope you'll join in supporting these efforts by visiting the following resources noted above, and more, by getting directly involved.

This week also kicks off Pride month. If you hadn't seen the @BungieStoreannouncement, our Pride Pins are back in stock. All profits from sales of Bungie's Pride Pin benefit theIt Gets Better Project, which inspires people across the globe to share their stories and remind the next generation of LGBTQIA+ youth that hope is out there, and it will get better. We also have some words from the Bungie Diversity Committee, speaking to the design of the pin:

Diversity Comittee: Our Pride pin was specifically designed to include black and brown stripes, in an effort to be inclusive and show support for people of color within the LGBTQIA+ community. In that spirit we want to continue our support for all intersectional communities; including LGTBQIA+ individuals who are also part of the Black community currently fighting against racial oppression, demanding justice and equality. We can support the Black Lives Matter movement and the LGBTQIA+ community at the same time, because without the leadership and heroism of Transgender Black and Brown individuals, like Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera, today's LGBTQIA+ rights would not exist. And so now is a time to do more to help both, rather than dividing our efforts.

If you snag a pin, you'll also receive a code for the True Colors Emblem to show your support in-game when playing Destiny 2.

• Bungie Store
• Bungie Store EU

We'll continue sharing Bungie initiatives to support LGBTQIA+ communities throughout the month of June, so stay tuned. Our commitment to racial justice is just getting started, so you can expect to hear more soon.

Within Destiny 2, you may have been watching the approach of the Almighty. You're itching to see the conclusion of the Season, but you're also starting to hear whispers of what's coming next. Join us on Tuesday, June 9 at 9 AM PDT to learn about the future of Destiny 2.

Coordinates received. The future of Destiny 2 arrives.

June 9 // 9AM PT

? https://t.co/003kheRMmX pic.twitter.com/9lV2l7Snvp

— Destiny 2 (@DestinyTheGame) June 3, 2020

Something calls. It's time to answer.

June 9 // 9AM PT

? https://t.co/003kheRMmX pic.twitter.com/Yj7dEQpjJK

— Destiny 2 (@DestinyTheGame) June 4, 2020

See you soon.

Preview 2.9.0

Destiny 2 Update 2.9.0 will become available next week, meaning we have a pile of patch notes to get through. Let's take a quick moment to look through some of the changes.

Eververse
A few TWAB's back, we talked about the future of Eververse, and how we're making changes to some reward structures to better balance gameplay rewards with Eververse content. Season of [REDACTED] will contain a few introductory changes, with more shifts coming in Season 12. The following changes will become available next week:

• Legendary Armor Ornaments
  • As noted in a previous TWAB, we have shifted the Season 11 armor offering to be a gameplay reward for aspirational content.
  • The Season of Opulence "Intrepid" Ornament sets are returning to the storefront.
• Season Pass
  • Added an additional 2300 Bright Dust to the Season Pass.
• Bright Dust Purchases
  • Added a "Flair" section to feature Shaders and Spawn FX.
• Highly requested items from previous Seasons will once again be available.
  • We're looking at you, Wishes of Sorrow.
• We will once again communicate Season 11 Silver-only items at the beginning of the Season.

We're expecting to have an update later in Season 11 on further changes to Bright Dust acquisition, so keep your eyes peeled.

Sandbox

• The Powerful Friends armor mod will no longer stack. If multiple copies of this mod are equipped, the mods will provide no bonus stats.
  • Developer Commentary:
    • Only Solar Seasonal mods are intended to stack. No part of Arc mods are intended to have stacking functionality.
    • Powerful Friends granted +20 to Mobility, which players could leverage to get three stat columns to the max of 100 points. The mod is not priced sufficiently to justify its benefits, and increasing its cost would have adverse effects on its primary benefit usage.
    • Season 11 introduces a new Arc mod, granting a similar stat bonus to Strength and will not stack.
• Enhanced Auto Rifle Loader, Enhance Fusion Rifle Loader, and Enhanced Bow Loader armor mods now have a chance to drop from pinnacle mod sources.

Raid Rewards
The following raid Exotics now have increased drop chances:

• One Thousand Voices
• Anarchy
• Always on Time (Exotic Sparrow from secret chest in Scourge of the Past)

NOTE: Drop chance begins at 10% and increases to a max of 50% over 20 clears.

Trials Rewards

• Additional Masterwork material rewards now drop at 3, 5, and 7 Trials wins.
• Added a Trials weekly bounty which unlocks Trials Engrams on Saint-14.
  • The bounty reward will match the Win 3 Milestone reward of the week.
• Trials Tokens distribution has been rebalanced to focus on wins 3, 5, and 7 of a Trials Passage.
  • This includes repeat Passages.
• Trials Tokens are no longer awarded from match completions.
  • Tokens are now granted specifically through wins and bounties.
• Passage of Wealth now doubles the bonus Trials Tokens earned at 3, 5 and 7 Trials wins.

Hope you enjoyed this appetizer. Full course (and more) coming on June 9. See you then.

Mixing a Green Thumb with a Bumper Jumper

So, we heard you like patch note previews. They're short, sweet, and to the point. This topic, though, needs a bit more time to get through. Today, Staff Designer Lisa Brown takes center stage to walk us through the upcoming Controller Remapping feature that the team has been working on.

Lisa: Greetings, Guardians! I'm Lisa, a staff designer on the sandbox team here at Bungie, and I'm going to give an overview of the controller remapping feature for gameplay actions that will be coming to Destiny for all players in the Season of [REDACTED].

Although we have controller presets in Destiny, these aren't enough to meet basic accessibility guidelines for motor control and mobility. We've been working with some amazing accessibility consultants - Cherry Rae Thompson (https://www.cherryrae.com/) and Ian Hamilton (http://ian-hamilton.com/blog/) - to create support for remapping buttons on the controller. Here, I'll give an overview of how to use the feature, what it can and can't do, and then share some setups that have been used by various Bungie employees as examples. As a quick note, all of the below examples will be shown using Xbox button layouts.

Overview
Players can create a custom controller layout by going to the Controller section of the Settings screen and choosing Button Layout. A "Custom" option is available in the list.



On this screen you'll be able to customize mappings for gameplay actions on your character, in vehicles, and in general settings (like emotes and interacting with prompts).



If you're like me and you typically use a preset other than Default, you can use the "Reset" button to start from one of those presets.



To rebind a button, select the button mapping next to the action you want, and the next screen will allow you to input the button you want to remap to.



Verbs, Verbs, Verbs

One of the challenges with controller remapping in Destiny is that we have a LOT of player verbs. Think of verbs as actions - throwing grenades, triggering your Super, jumping, sprinting, sliding, etc. With PC remapping, there's a whole keyboard at your disposal to map buttons. On the controller, though, there's only so many buttons, and we have many more verbs than buttons.

To solve this, we allow the player to map an action not just to a button, but also a type of input. Our three supported input types are:

• Press - a standard button press (for example, crouching on the default layout).
• Long Press - requires holding down the button for a brief period of time to initiate the action (for example, casting Barricade or Rift as a Titan or Warlock).
• Double Press - pressing a button twice in succession to initiate an action (for example, dodging for Hunters).

As an example, some of our Exotic weapons (Borealis, Symmetry, Hard Light, etc.) have an alternate weapon action, which has typically been activated by holding the reload button. Now this can be mapped separately, to a different button or different input. For example, I like to change it from long press X to double press X. Now when I want to switch Symmetry's firing mode, I double press the X button.

For the Double Press input type, you can also increase the amount of time between button presses for it to register as a double press. This option is on the main controller page.



Chord Support
In addition to mapping actions to an individual button, we also support mapping to Chords, meaning two buttons pressed simultaneously. In the default layout in Destiny, pressing the Left and Right Bumpers together to execute your Super is an example of a Chord.
Here's a custom layout example where a player has mapped some of the basic character options to just the face button using Chords:

• Fire: X
• Toggle Zoom: Press Y
• Reload: Press A + X
• Alternate Weapon Action: Long press A + X
• Melee: Press B + Y
• Grenade: Double Press B
• Super: Press A + B
• Jump: Press A

Constraints and Caveats
Although this feature is a step towards greater motor accessibility in Destiny, it is still limited in what it can do. For example:

• This controller remapping feature is limited to gameplay actions, not UI input or menu navigation.
• One motor accessibility challenge are inputs that require the player to hold down a button. We have options to switch between holds and toggles for some of our actions (zoom, sprint, crouch) but we were not able to address all cases (examples: weapon firing, class jump ability, charging grenades, drawing a bow, etc.)
• We opted for flexibility in allowing players to map any action to any button and input combination, but that flexibility means there are some combinations that may give unexpected results for the player.
• Example: if you map melee to press X, and some other action to Long Press X, the melee action resolves before the duration to detect a long press, so the player would always melee and never do the other action.
• There is no individualized error verification for these cases.
• This update was just focused on controller remapping, so there are some mappable options that appear here that are not yet available for keyboard remapping (for example, individual mappings for different class abilities, and some Warlock abilities like Phoenix Dive or Icarus Dash).
• Our chord support is for simultaneous press of two buttons only, it does not detect if you press one button, hold it down, and then press another.
• Unlike our presets, there's no dynamic controller preview image for the custom layout.

Bungie Examples
Here are a few examples of custom mappings that some of our Bungie players enjoy.

I'll start with my own. I'm typically a Jumper player, but I also have a problem with melee on Right Stick Press. Even though it's a faster input for my hand to reach, I am a stress-clicker, and many a perfect shot line up has been ruined by a wayward melee. I needed to move my melee action to something more intentional, so I put it on A, and moved Super back up to the Double Bumper Chord. I put player highlight back on right stick press, but made my finisher Double Press A. I also made my alternate weapon action Double Press X instead of Long Press, because I prefer that input.

Another example is from a left-handed player who typically uses Mirror, but wanted a true left-handed experience, and so swapped the function of the face buttons with the d-pad buttons. Actions like reload, jump, crouch, etc. were now on the d-pad buttons, while emotes were mapped to the face buttons.

A third Bungie employee really wanted to recreate a classic Halo experience in Destiny. He started with the default layout and switched zoom to a Toggle on Right Stick, grenade on Left Trigger, melee on B and crouch on Left Stick Press. He then mapped Super to A, jump on Left Bumper, and class ability on Right Bumper. He also chose to leave heavy attack, light attack, and guard (actions only used in third person modes like roaming Supers) mapped to their original Right Trigger, Right Bumper, and Left Trigger mappings.

We hope that this feature will make Destiny more accessible and flexible, but do note that this is but one step on Destiny's journey to improve accessibility across the game.

We're excited to bring another form of accessibility to Destiny 2, and will be watching as this first iteration goes live.

Last Call

It's pretty much closing time. You don't have to go home, but you should definitely get your Triumphs done before the servers go offline next Tuesday. Player Support has a full roundup.

This is their report.

CLOSING OUT SEASON OF THE WORTHY

When Season of the Worthy ends at the weekly reset on June 9, 2020, there will be a number of items, activities, and Triumphs that will no longer be available to players. Some of these items include:

• The Season of the Worthy Season Pass and any available bonuses.
• The Season of the Worthy Seal and Almighty title.
• PLEASE NOTE: Almighty title must be claimed and equipped.
• Access to the EDZ, Moon, and Io Seraph Bunkers.
• The Warmind Kanjali Seasonal Artifact and the player power increase from said artifact.
• The Seraph Tower Public Event.
• The Fourth Horseman and Felwinter's Lie quests.

A full list of items being removed at the Season's end can be found here.

Please note that Season Pass rewards from Season of Dawn will be unavailable to claim when Season of the Worthy ends. Past Season Pass rewards can be claimed here.

UPDATE 2.9.0

On Tuesday, June 9, Update 2.9.0 will be available to players. Below is a timeline of Destiny 2 maintenance for Update 2.9.0:

• 9 AM PDT (1600 UTC): Destiny 2 service maintenance begins.
• 9:45 AM PDT (1645 UTC): Destiny 2 is taken offline on all platforms.
• 10 AM PDT (1700 UTC): Destiny 2 Update 2.9.0 begins rolling out across all platforms and regions. Players will be able to log back into Destiny 2 at 10:01 AM PDT.
• 10:01 AM PDT (1701 UTC): Destiny 2 is back online on all platforms.
• 2 PM PDT (2100 UTC): Destiny 2 service maintenance concludes.
• For future release timelines when they are available, players should visit our Destiny Server and Update Status help article. For live updates as this maintenance occurs, players should follow @BungieHelp on Twitter or monitor our support feed at help.bungie.net.

UPCOMING RESOLVED ISSUES

Below is a list of issues that will be resolved with Update 2.9.0 on June 9:

• Polaris Lance's "Perfect Fifth" explosive shot is no longer being cancelled by a subsequent shot.
• Dunemarcher's "Linear Actuators" perk will now work after triggering on yellow bar enemies.
• Players on Steam will no longer have their FPS locked to 30 FPS when relaunching the game.
• Offline players in Clans will no longer have their names set to 'Offline.'
• Warlock's "Celestial Fire" melee ability will now trigger the Winter's Guile "Warlord's Sigil" perk.

CURRENT KNOWN ISSUES

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

• If the Worms used in the Broodhold strike despawns, players need to kill all remaining Worm Knights and place any remaining Worms for another Worm Knight to spawn.

For a full list of emergent issues in Destiny 2, players can review our Known Issues article. Players who observe other issues should report them to our #Help forum.

Last Screening of the Season

This is our final MOTW of the Season. How time flies, eh? We've featured hundreds of creations in this space, and this week had the most individual contributors of any creation we've selected so far. Congrats to all of the Guardians who are taking a W home as Season of the Worthy comes to a close.

Movie of the Week: Quarantine Guardians

If you're hunting a MOTW Emblem, make sure to submit your video to the Creations Page on Bungie.net. Link the Bungie.net accounts of anyone who helped in the video description, or we won't know where to send your prize!

There are so many important things going on in the world, it's difficult to maintain focus on much of anything right now. I've been spending a lot of time with friends in Discord servers while hitting weekly milestones, talking to them about their health, thoughts, and feelings concerning current world events. Much of our attention has been on what's happening right outside our windows. The thing is, this isn't new. This has been happening since well before many of us were born. It's time to listen and learn from our neighbors and communities. Check in with your fellow Guardians, friends, and family. Take action to help them out if or when they need it. It's perfectly OK to press pause, put your controllers down, and focus your attention elsewhere - especially if you're going out there to demand justice and to support the Black community. You may find many of us out there with you in the greater Seattle area. Destiny will still be here when you want to sit down for a few games. It isn't going anywhere.

Be well, be safe, and we'll see you starside.
-Dmg04