This Week At Bungie - 2/25/2021

This week at Bungie, we returned to Presage.

Before we go about our weekly TWAB programming, we have some required reading! Well, maybe required isn't the correct word, but you are definitely going to want to read the news that was delivered earlier today about the state of the game and our plans for the future, provided by Assistant Destiny 2 Game Director Joe Blackburn.

State of Destiny 2021 - The Road to The Witch Queen 

We aren't going to provide a TL;DR, as we want you to go read this thing, but I would like to provide a quick list of topics covered:

• News about The Witch Queen's release date, Lightfall, and beyond.
• Power, and how it raises Season over Season.
• No additional Infusion Caps.
• PvP: Our goals for the future of Crucible, Stasis balancing, game security, and Trials of Osiris
• Information about Vault of Glass.
• The new transmog system we're calling Armor Synthesis.
• And more!

Now, we leave it to you to read the article! Don't worry, we'll still be here when you get back.

...have you read it yet? Yeeees? Good. We hope that you're just as excited for the future of Destiny 2 as we are. Now, let's shift our focus to the live game.

This week has been a fun ride so far! Saladin is not only hosting Iron Banner but has sent Guardians back to Nessus to fight through a fourth Battleground. With approval from the Vanguard, we've also been seeing many Guardians venturing back into the Presage mission, uncovering new lore, and finding a sweet new catalyst for Dead Man's Tale (for those of you who like to shoot from the hip).

Master difficulty can prove challenging, but with the right fireteam, you can absolutely find success. As you venture through this derelict ship, be sure to watch out for scannable objects. They may prove valuable to you on your journey to uncover more knowledge.

The TWAB this week will be looking at a few feedback items concerning Ritual playlist rewards, an update on DDoS protection for consoles, and an announcement of our upcoming Deep Stone Crypt developer deep dive. Read on for more.

Diving Deeper into the Deep Stone Crypt

It's been a while since our last stream, hasn't it? One of our favorite things to do is bridge the gap between player and developer, giving a peek behind the proverbial curtain of Destiny 2 development. In the past, we've offered deep dives on raids, dungeons, secret missions, and more! This time, we're heading back to the Deep Stone Crypt. As our brave fireteam ventures through the frozen wastes of Europa and polished halls of BrayTech Research labs, developers will be providing commentary on how the secret sauce was made. You won't want to miss this!

Deep Stone Crypt Developer Deep Dive
Wednesday, March 3
10 AM PST
Twitch.tv/Bungie and Youtube.com/Bungie

We'll have representatives from various disciplines of development including design, art, VFX, narrative, and more! We're excited to dust off the stream equipment and hope to see you there.

Ritual Playlist Weapon Rewards

If you're like me, you've been sinking a lot of time into Gambit searching for a Bottom Dollar Hand Cannon over the last two weeks. It's beautiful, lives in the 120 RPM archetype, and can be found when completing Gambit matches. Today, we've invited Weapons Feature Lead Chris Proctor to walk us through freshly introduced ritual playlist rewards, where to get them, and some plans to address feedback on drop rates.

Chris: At the release of Beyond Light, we introduced new weapons into the reward pools of Crucible, Gambit, and Vanguard Strikes. To give a quick rundown for the New Lights out there, each of these weapons has a low drop rate and deep perk pools, intended to give players dedicated to a particular playlist a weapon to hunt. Our goal when introducing these rewards was to provide space for longer term, ritual-specific goals for players as they chase after the perfect roll on a given weapon, and explore the possibility space of perk rolls on a weapon archetype in the same way weapon designers do.


Pictured: Vanguard Shotgun, Crucible Pulse Rifle, Gambit Grenade Launcher

As we saw some positive reception to these weapons in Beyond Light, with players digging through the perks and comparing rolls, we've added two more to each ritual in Season of the Chosen, bringing the total per ritual to three.


Pictured: Vanguard Pulse Rifle/Rocket Launcher, Crucible Sniper Rifle/Sidearm, Gambit Hand Cannon/Fusion Rifle

While the drop rates for each individual weapon are not intended to be so high that it's easy to quickly acquire a large amount of rolls, we've been seeing some feedback that they currently feel too scarce. Our current plan is to increase drop chances for these ritual-specific weapons later in Season of the Chosen. While we don't want these weapons to become a short-term grind for players seeking perfect rolls, we do believe that they need to drop a bit more frequently for them to be a positive experience when completing their associated activities. Once these drop changes are live, we'll be watching the conversation to see if any other changes need to be made.

Our current plan is to continue adding weapons to these pools in future Seasons. There may be some Seasons where these pools remain the same, and others where a new weapon is added while one is rotated out. This should help keep the offerings streamlined for players on the hunt for a specific reward.

Thank you to all who've been sounding off with feedback since these were introduced, and we're excited to hear more!

Console SDR - Status Update

Prior to the release of Season of the Chosen, we announced that distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) protection would be coming to consoles during Season of the Chosen, bringing protections for your network connection against DDoS and IP harvesting attacks via usage of the Steam Datagram Relay (SDR) service. As our Seasonal content went online, we uncovered a few general bugs and crashes which needed to be addressed before we could start bringing this feature forward.

As these issues have now been mitigated, our teams have started to bring console SDR services online. This will be a multi-week initiative, as we want to ensure service stability across all platforms while weeding out any bugs or increases in error codes. If any major issues are found during this process, it may take more time for us to bring this fully online, but we'll be sure to announce when our work is done.

If you begin to encounter any error codes or crashes when playing Destiny 2, please report them to the #Help forum right here on Bungie.net.

Battleground Throwdown

Season of the Chosen has been a wild ride for our support teams. We've shipped multiple hotfixes, have another on the way, and we're not even halfway through the season yet. While we've squashed many bugs along the way, we still have more to catch. Our Player Support team has a quick update on what we're tracking, what we're about to fix, and a quick note about our transition to a new Help Center!

This is their report.

HOTFIX 3.1.0.2

Next Tuesday, March 2, Hotfix 3.1.0.2 will be released. Here is a timeline of events:

• March 2, 8 AM PST (1600 UTC): Destiny 2 maintenance for Hotfix 3.1.0.2 begins.
• March 2, 8:45 AM PST (1645 UTC): Players are removed from activities and won't be able to log back into Destiny 2 until 9 AM PST when Hotfix 3.1.0.2 is available.
• March 2, 9 AM PST (1700 UTC): Destiny 2 Hotfix 3.1.0.2 is rolled out across all platforms and regions. Players can log back into Destiny 2 at this time. Ongoing maintenance is expected to conclude at 10 AM PST.
• March 2, 10 AM PST (1800 UTC): Destiny 2 maintenance is expected to conclude.

Below are some issues that will be resolved with Hotfix 3.1.0.2. A complete list will be shared when the update goes live.

• Barrier Colossus in Battleground: Behemoth will no longer mosey out of their barrier shields to say hello to unsuspecting Guardians.
• The Chosen Destruction Umbral Focusing Lens will now allow players to focus Umbral Engrams.
• Beneficial modifiers in the Battlegrounds playlist now work as intended.

PRESAGE COMPLETIONS

To ensure progress is recorded for "The Voice on the Other Side" quest for Dead Man's Tale, players should make sure that they have the quest in their inventory prior to starting Presage. If the quest was originally acquired on another character, players will need to reacquire the quest on their current character from the Quest Archive at the Tower.

Upon completing Presage, players will need to pick up Dead Man's Tale and wait for the mission complete end timer to appear prior to returning to orbit. Failing to pick up the weapon or leaving before the mission completes will result in progress not being recorded for the quest.

MISLABELLED EXOTIC ORNAMENTS

Earlier this week, a refund was sent out to players affected by the mislabeled Exotic ornaments in Eververse. Players who qualified for the refund received a message on login and had the Silver from their ornament purchase added back to their account.

We are continuing to investigate the issue causing some players to not receive their Bright Dust rewards from completing the Weekly Challenges for Gambit, Crucible, and Vanguard. Players affected by this issue will be granted the Bright Dust they should have earned in a future update.

HELP CENTER MIGRATION

Last week, the Help Center at help.bungie.net completed its migration to a new service. Players who encounter broken links, untranslated sections (excluding Contact Forms), or other issues with the new Help Center should report them to our #Companion Forum.

COMPANION APP KNOWN ISSUES

Players can now stay up to date on current Destiny Companion App known issues on our new #Companion Forum Known Issues List. Players who encounter issues not already on the Known Issues List are encouraged to report them to our #Companion Forum.

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:

• The Trash the Thresher Triumph is not properly recording destroyed Threshers in The Arms Dealer Nightfall: The Ordeal.
• The Scanner and Operator augments in the Deep Stone Crypt are the same color in Tritanopia colorblind mode.
• Trying to equip the Mindvault ornament for Insurmountable Skullfort may result in a "Requires Mod Item" error.
• The portal to the Ascendant Realm in The Corrupted strike after the Ogre encounter may close if a player is too far ahead of the rest of their fireteam.
• The door to the Spider Tank encounter of the Hollowed Lair strike may not open for players.
• The Lost Sector puzzles for the Xenophage Exotic quest may not correctly record player inputs.
• Players may earn the "I Am Invincible" medal when the opposing team actually completed the requirements.
• Players who complete the Xenology quest from Xur while already having an Exotic Cipher in their inventory will have the quest removed with no reward.
• There are no Champions in the Master Presage mission because Scorn Champions don't exist.
• Players who kill the boss in the Fallen S.A.B.E.R. strike and then die may see a "Darkness" screen and will respawn at the beginning of the strike, which can't be restarted.
• As a result of this, players can load into that blocked state and be unable to progress through the strike. This issue is also occurring in the Hallowed Lair strike.

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.

Atmosphere

One of the most important aspects of a movie is the atmosphere it brings. You not only remember the lines, but the way you felt as you watched the action unfold on screen. Our recent Presage mission brought some great horror vibes to Destiny 2, and this week's winner embraces that while giving their take on an unsuspecting Guardian.

Movie of the Week: Follow the Signal (Spoiler alert for those who haven't played Presage yet!)

Movie of the Week: First Sounds From Mars

Cheers to the winners this week! If you'd like to throw your movie in for consideration, make sure to submit it to the Community Creations page on Bungie.net. Please credit appropriate creators in the description of your video with links to the bungie.net profiles so we know who to grant emblems to!

Inspiration

Another good thing about atmosphere is inspiration. When reading through lore books, you might begin to feel some of that inspiration when diving through the darkness, or the feelings a Guardian might have sitting in a specific seat at a local ramen shop. The featured artists this week captivate those feelings perfectly in their pieces.

Art of the Week: Lore Inspires Creativity

Thank you for the lore that inspires creativity!#Destiny2 #Destiny @DestinyTheGame @Bungie @BNG_Ivan @A_dmg04 @DestinyComArt pic.twitter.com/clDJhRyTV0

— ZIMOSLAVA (@Zimoslava) February 20, 2021

Art of the Week: Ramen

I saw a lone guardian, chilling at the ramen shop, where Cayde used to sit. #Destiny2 #Destiny2Art #fanart #bungie #crow #TheCrow #ramen pic.twitter.com/P9yZNsZSTn

— JedixThanj (@JedixThanj) February 17, 2021

If you'd like your art to be featured in a future TWAB, make sure to tag it with #Destiny2, #Destiny2Art, #DestinyArt, or even tag a community manager in your post. We're always excited to see your content, and celebrate it with the overall community.

Another TWAB in the books. The fires of Iron Banner are raging, and it's about time I start hunting for a sweet new role on the Time-Worn Spire. I'm starting to focus on the Pinnacle band of my Power Level, so the weekly bounty rewards are giving me a great start towards that final cap.

See you out there.

Cheers,
dmg04