This Week At Bungie - 1/28/2021

This week at Bungie, we introduce Seasonal Challenges.

Welcome to the second-to-last TWAB of Season of the Hunt. Many of you have been navigating the secrets of the Harbinger mission, uncovering randomly rolled Hawkmoons and earning the Radiant Accipiter Exotic ship. Content-wise, we're coming to a close for the Season, and we're incredibly excited for what's to come in just a few short weeks. We've been covering some upcoming quality of life changes to Destiny 2, like the return of Umbral Engrams, but it's almost time to take a peek at fresh content.

Season of the [REDACTED] trailer goes live on February 2, 2021.

Before we get there, we have a new feature to cover, Seasonal Challenges, and a round of weapon-focused sandbox changes to walk through. As a warning, this is a pretty large amount of information in a small space. We've joked about "meaty" TWAB's before, but this one may feel a bit overwhelming if you rush through it. Let's take it slow, step by step, and get through it together in one piece.

Introducing: Seasonal Challenges

Over the last year, we've been looking at ways in which we can reduce the amount of FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) in Destiny 2. We've recently made some changes to Seasons and how Seasonal content is available throughout a given year of Destiny 2. This week, we're looking to bounties and Bright Dust, introducing a new system not only to remove FOMO, but give fresh ways to earn XP and alternate rewards. To walk us through the ins and outs of Seasonal Challenges, we pass the mic to the Development team.

Dev team: During production of Beyond Light, we started looking at the problems of bounty fatigue and FOMO, as well as Seasonal legibility (i.e., "What is in a Season?" and "How to I engage with it when I log in?"). We created a few goals which we believe will improve the experience:

• Provide a guide to new, returning, and veteran players for what to do today/this week.
• Guide the player through the Seasonal content, week-over-week.
• Encourage players to engage with complexities and nuances of the Seasonal activity and rituals.
• Reduce the penalties on XP and Bright Dust for missing a given week.

To solve these goals, we are introducing a new pursuit type for players - Seasonal Challenges. The Seasonal Challenges live on their own page, are accessed through the Quest Log or Season Pass, and are separated by week.



Here's a quick breakdown of how this feature works:

• Every week, for the first 10 weeks of a Season, between 3 and 10 new Challenges appear automatically for players.
  • Some of the Challenges deal with the Seasonal content.
  • Others push players to complete strikes, Gambit, and the Crucible, or to focus on non-activity focused Destiny rituals, like gaining Power, unlocking Seasonal Artifact mods, or improving guns and armor.
• These Challenges can only be completed once per account, but once they become available, these Challenges can be completed at any time before the end of the Season, and do not need to be started or picked up from a vendor.
  • As an example, if a player doesn't play for weeks 2 through 4, they can return on week 5 and have all of those Challenges waiting for them!
• Completing each Challenge awards XP, contributing to your Season Pass ranks.
  • Other rewards could be Bright Dust, Seasonal currency, or other interesting items!

In moving away from weekly bounties, which were restricted to broad objectives tied to ritual activities, we have taken more leeway with creating some interesting or more difficult Challenges. These may be things you are already doing, or things that test your ability. Some examples include:

• Defeating Primeval Envoys in Gambit
• Defeating enemies in Nightfall: The Ordeal with Seasonal weapons
• Gaining Infamy or Valor ranks
• Acquiring the ritual weapon and its cosmetic ornaments
• Winning rounds in Trials of Osiris
• Completing a Grandmaster Nightfall

Not all the Challenges will require that level of accomplishment, but the harder or longer the Challenge is, the more experience it rewards. Challenges that focus on the Seasonal activity and ritual mostly need the Season Pass to complete, but most of the ritual focused Challenges can be completed without the Season Pass. Overall, roughly 60% of the Seasonal Challenges do not require the Season Pass.

With the changes above, we are removing weekly bounties from the three ritual vendors (Zavala, Shaxx, and Drifter), Banshee-44, and the Seasonal vendor. These vendors will still have daily bounties which reward XP, and the three ritual vendors will still have repeatable bounties for those of you who want to pursue additional XP and Bright Dust.

Lastly - most of the Challenges disappear after the Season they were introduced, and anything that isn't claimed will be lost. We don't add any new Challenges after Week 10 - which should give everyone a few weeks to clean up any Challenges they didn't finish. Any Challenge that rewards unique or Seasonal items (currencies, lore books, Seasonal weapons, etc.) - can be completed as long as the Seasonal activity is in the game, but XP awarded for completing the challenge will only be available during the season it was introduced.

Let's Talk Bright Dust
Back before Beyond Light launched, we discussed some of the goals around the changes to Bright Dust. As a refresher, we wanted to change the way you earn Bright Dust and move more towards account-specific paths to give players with only one character significantly more Bright Dust than they've been earning over the last year. In Season 13, we'll be continuing to move toward these goals by adding Bright Dust onto Seasonal Challenges.

Since you no longer have to purchase weekly ritual bounties, each of the strike, Crucible, and Gambit Seasonal Challenges will award between 75 and 300 Bright Dust. We are also introducing an end-of-Season Bright Dust bonus - if you complete (nearly) all of the Seasonal Challenges, we are awarding a single 4,000 Bright Dust pile.

Additionally, each ritual vendor challenge ("Complete 8 bounties") awards 120 Bright Dust for each character who completes it each week. And because this is prompted by the removal of weekly bounties, the only Seasonal Challenges that will be awarding Bright Dust are the ones that both Season Pass owners and free players can complete. Here's a quick breakdown of how much Bright Dust you should expect to earn over the course of Season 13.

Seasonal Challenges Bright Dust (All Players)

• Free Seasonal Activities - 6,000
• Seasonal Extra - 4,000
• Total - 10,000 Bright Dust

Season Pass Bright Dust

• Free Path - 7,500 (All Players)
• Paid Path - 3,000 (Players who own Season Pass)
• Total - 10,500 Bright Dust

Weekly Ritual Vendor Challenge Bright Dust (All Players)

• 120 Bright Dust per ritual vendor, per character, per week
  • 14,040 total if completing all required weekly Challenges over the course of Season 13

Additionally, we still plan to offer weekly and repeatable Bright Dust bounties for Seasonal events, giving you a bit more Bright Dust towards desired rewards.

As a final note, please be sure to claim all Seasonal Challenges that award Bright Dust prior to the end of a Season. Once a Season ends, associated Challenges and their Bright Dust rewards will expire and can no longer be claimed.

It's always exciting when we bring a new feature online for Destiny 2. We hope that the changes detailed above make it easier to create goals to complete each week. As always, we're eager to hear your feedback once you start finishing your first Seasonal Challenges, so please sound off with your thoughts!

Back to the Sandbox

Every Season, we have a collection of changes to the Destiny 2 sandbox to spice things up a bit. This Season, we're making some targeted changes to weapon archetypes that need some love as well as beginning some preparations for crossplay.

Dev team: In preparation for crossplay, coming later this year, we're making some changes to the Recoil stat.

Currently, several weapon archetypes have their Recoil reduced by around 40% (dependent on archetype) when using mouse and keyboard. This results in an issue where players on mouse and keyboard are able to largely ignore the stability weapon stat, creating unintended discrepancies in weapon performance between controllers and mouse and keyboard.

The following weapon archetypes will have their mouse and keyboard Recoil adjusted closer to controller (reduced the difference from ~40% to ~20%).

• Auto Rifle
• Scout Rifle
• Pulse Rifle
• Submachine Gun
• Hand Cannon
• Machine Gun

In the case of Pulse Rifle, Submachine Gun, and Machine Gun, we will also be introducing some buffs. In some cases, these weapons will have less Recoil across both Controller and mouse and keyboard input methods compared to what's in the game today.

• Submachine Guns are largely outclassed by Auto Rifles at medium range, and by Sidearms at short range, with player feedback often mentioning how hard they are to control. To address this feedback, we're introducing the following change:
  • Reduced camera movement from firing a Submachine Gun by 24%.
• Pulse Rifles with the mouse and keyboard changes were kicking a little too much.
  • Reduced camera movement from firing a Pulse Rifle by 7%.
• Machine Guns with the mouse and keyboard changes were kicking a little too much.
  • Reduced camera movement from firing a Machine Gun by 9.5%.

We will pay close attention to how these changes play out when they go live, and plan to revisit individual archetypes in a future update as needed.

Outside of Recoil adjustments, we will also be tuning a few weapon archetypes in Season 13. Looking through backend data and community feedback, we landed on the following:

Buffs

• Rocket Launchers have fallen behind other Heavy weapons in most measures of effectiveness, we're pushing them more into a burst damage role.
  • Increased Rocket Launcher damage by 30%.
  • Exotic Rocket Launchers have been adjusted individually and are affected by this change to different degrees.
  • Paired with the buffs to reserves from last Season, we're hoping you'll explode many more things in Season 13!
• Fusion Rifle usage is very low, and they feel like an unreliable choice in Crucible compared to Shotguns.
  • Increased Fusion Rifle damage falloff start distance based on Range stat. (6% with 0 Range, 16% with 100 Range)
  • Reduced camera movement from firing a Fusion Rifle by 9.5%.
• Breech Grenade Launcher usage is very low (outside of Mountaintop). We believe part of the reason is that the loop of "hold the trigger to arm, then release to detonate" is challenging to execute, particularly since projectiles can bounce off targets if the trigger is held
  • Breech Grenade Launcher projectiles will now detonate on impact with a character, even if holding the trigger.

Nerfs

• While Sniper Rifle usage has dropped in Crucible, we've observed that it's hard to challenge someone with a Sniper Rifle - even if you get the first shot on an enemy, they can often respond and win the fight.
  • Increased ADS flinch to Snipers when taking damage from other players
• Swords are extremely dominant in PvE. At this time, 65% of players are using Swords for the majority of gameplay encounters in Destiny 2. While we are introducing a buff to Rocket Launchers to make them a bit more enticing, we feel that Swords do too much damage compared to other options.
  • Reduced Sword damage by 15%.

Exotic Changes and Bug Fixes

• Some Exotic weapons lose their buffs when you switch weapons, which is intended. They would also lose their buffs when pulling out your Ghost Shell, which is not intended. Fixed that issue on these weapons:
  • Ace of Spades
  • Tarrabah
  • Hawkmoon
• Borealis and Hard Light now have a custom (quite short) animation for switching damage type.
• Duality
  • Increased damage falloff distance by 1.25m (while both firing from the hip and aiming down sights).
  • Reduced maximum buff stacks from 7 to 5, each stack now grants more of a damage bonus, extended buff duration slightly.
• Sturm will once again reload any equipped Special slot weapon on kill provided the Special weapon's clip isn't full already and there's available reserve ammo.
• Fixed an issue that was preventing Merciless from increasing its charge rate on non-lethal hits.

Ah, and before we go - we are planning to take a quick tuning pass on Arbalest. This won't be ready in time for February 9, but we are expecting to have this touched later in Season 13!

Now, we know it can be difficult to understand the scale of buffs and nerfs without having these changes in your hands. Not to mention, there will be some new perks for you to hunt as you start navigating content in Season of the [REDACTED]. As always, we're excited to see these changes out in the wild on February 9, and will be eager to hear your feedback.

Crimson Days

Each year, we look to February as a time to celebrate bonds of friendship throughout the community. Guardians have come to know this celebration as Crimson Days. It was one of our first "Seasonal" events in Destiny 1, a tradition that we carried to Destiny 2. While there was great enjoyment of Crimson Days, we feel that it's been missing the mark in terms of quality over the last few years.

As such, we have made the decision to discontinue Crimson Days moving forward. While we'll miss the event, this move will allow us to maintain focus for alternate Seasonal offerings, ranging from quests to activities and more. We have quite a bit planned for Season of the [REDACTED] and our hope is that we've maintained, or even improved, the quality you've come to expect from this upcoming release.

Some of you may be asking about the fate of Crimson Doubles, our once-a-year Crimson Days playlist. This mode is currently being shifted to the Destiny Content Vault but may return in the future.

Many thanks to every Guardian who has joined us over the years for this event. Crimson decorations may not be hung in the Tower, but we have no doubts that you'll continue to form Crimson Bonds over the years to come.

BugTrax

For those who may be new to the TWAB, welcome to the Player Support Report. This section is dedicated to known issues, active investigations, and pending updates for Destiny 2. Our Player Support team navigates the Help forum daily, collecting info on new issues and dishing out help articles.

This is their report on the most frequently reported issues of the last week.

CRUCIBLE TOKENS AND FRAGMENT QUESTS
Due to the updates to the vendor progression system, Crucible Tokens and Crucible Token Gifts are no longer needed and will be deprecated into Junk that will delete as a full stack starting in Season 13. Additionally, current Stasis Fragment Quests will be deprecated at the end of Season of the Hunt. Players are advised to turn in all Crucible Tokens and Crucible Token Gifts and finish all available Stasis Fragment Quests before Season 13 starts.

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:

• Stasis abilities can be difficult to distinguish between enemy and friendly for colorblind players.
• The Double Trouble Triumph is unobtainable.
• In the Deep Stone Crypt raid, the augment lockout timer occasionally resets during the final encounter against Taniks.
• During the final fight against the Sanctified Mind in the Garden of Salvation raid, sometimes a shielded tether box can become tethered instead of the correct glowing tether box.
• Hunter legs clip through the Ten-Grasp Sword Sparrow.
• In the Last Wish raid, the Shuro Chi puzzle room plates don't work if a Titan bubble or Warlock well are placed on them.
• The Titan Phenotype Plasticity Helm eye clusters no longer glow red.
• Weekly and daily elemental kill bounties have stopped rotating off of Void.
• When overcharging grenades while using the Voidwalker top tree subclass as a Warlock, Super energy stops charging.

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.

[Bird Noises Intensify]

It's been fun watching Hawkmoon clips and montages throughout the Season. With recently introduced random rolls, players have been pushing the limits of this Exotic, taking on 1v1 encounters in the Crucible that they may have otherwise avoided. This week, our top pick not only got a sweet roll on perks, but a killer roll on audio, too!

Movie of the Week: Ting Ting Ting Ting

Movie of the Week: Deep Stone Lullaby Violin/Piano Cover

Movie of the Week: ...That's a lot of Hawkmoon

As always, if you'd like to submit your creation to be featured in a future TWAB, make sure to create a post on the Community Creations portal of Bungie.net.

Credit Where It's Due

Every day, we take a moment to scroll through various social media apps to take a look at community artwork. We're always awestruck by the talents that many of you possess, and eager to share your works with a wider audience.

Here's a quick roundup of some sweet art, and direct links to their authors. Give them a follow if you want to see more of their stuff!

Art of the Week: Art Sharing

destiny art share!!! spread the positivity, doesn't matter how frequently you do art or how many pieces you've made - post your favorites!! #Destiny2Art #DestinyArtShare pic.twitter.com/bq6hHJrCLD

— alex (@miyagiie) January 25, 2021

Art of the Week: Eris

# pic.twitter.com/MI6Y6Gi1LY

— (@NyarNyarbon) January 17, 2021

Cheers, and make sure to tag your content with some form of #Destiny2Art so we can find you easily!

That's it for this week, folks. Season of the [REDACTED] is almost here. We'll have some patch previews to cover in the TWAB next week, so stop by if you're interested!

If this gets 7 likes we'll add a new LZ on Europa next Season.

— Destiny 2 (@DestinyTheGame) January 27, 2021

We'll see you again next week, bright and early on Tuesday morning.

Cheers,
dmg04