This Week At Bungie - 6/03/2021

This week at Bungie, Mithrax told the legend of The Saint.

Over the last few weeks, the Tower has been bathed in darkness due to the Endless Night. Guardians have been exploring the Vex Network in search of solutions to this chilling predicament. With each Override, we're one step closer to our goals. Expunge. Mithrax has been with us from the start but took a moment this week to share what it's like as a member of the House of Light.

If you haven't seen the cutscene yet, finish your weekly quest to get a good dose of lore.

Let's get on with the TWAB, shall we? We have Iron Banner coming back around next week, and the announce of a fresh fashion show.

Iron Rising

Lord Saladin returns next week for a renewed round of Iron Banner. Things might feel a little different, as we released a new round of Stasis tuning earlier this morning. If you're aiming to get a little higher in the Pinnacle Power band, make sure to complete some Iron Banner bounties as they'll provide Pinnacle-powered rewards.

Last Iron Banner, the Riiswalker Shotgun and Archon's Thunder Machine Gun were introduced through a Seasonal quest. We quickly identified an issue where these new tools of destruction weren't available through alternate means. If you've been holding tokens for future loot, it's almost time to sell. I could make a joke about diamond hands here, but I think you've already connected those dots.

Iron Banner starts at 10 AM on Tuesday, 6/8, ending the following week on Tuesday, 6/15.

Splicing Down the Runway

Some say fashion is the true endgame of Destiny, and I'm somewhat inclined to agree. With the addition of the Guardian Appearance screen in Season of the Splicer, we've been seeing countless Guardians mixing and matching their armor to build wonderful creations. It's about time we put your skills to the test with a fashion show. Think you've got the best look in the community? Let's see if you can prove it and earn yourself this eye-catching fashion emblem.

So, how do you enter?

Dress up!

• Throw together a mix of awesome armor and sweet shaders to create a set that you believe is a winner.

Submit a screenshot!

• Snag a photo of your Guardian in the Guardian Appearance screen showing your armor set and shader selections.
  • Providing an additional picture of your Guardian in the wild is not required but may get you some bonus points.
• Submit your photo on Twitter or Instagram with #SplicerFashionShow to enter.

We'll be sharing winners from June 7 through June 12 from @DestinyTheGame. If you win, one of our community managers will reach out so we can hook you up with a sweet emblem.

If you need some help getting the creative thoughts flowing, we have some fun armor combos from a few developers who worked on the Guardian Appearance system!

Make Your Own Luck

Itinerant Disciple

Status: Kompromised

Skele-Gild

Transcendent Hailstorm

Unstoppable Force

We'll see you on the runway.

Another Patch Out the Door

Earlier today, Destiny 2 Hotfix 3.2.0.3 went out the door. Not only did we inject a Stasis tuning patch, we also included a few bugfixes. We're still tracking a few issues, and Player Support has the most up to date details.

This is their report.

PHOTOSENSITIVITY NOTICE

Recently, we've seen reports of certain in-game effects impacting photosensitive players. We appreciate everyone who notified us of these issues.

In addition to an in-game notice that was distributed this week, we're working on adding a permanent notice as part of the End User License Agreement (EULA) as well as adding notices to the sell text on the online stores where the game is distributed.

We're getting started by looking into player reports and addressing issues related to specific effect combinations. Due to the complex nature of these changes, we are targeting a patch for later this year. We'll let players know when we have more to share. We plan to use the knowledge from these fixes to refine our best practices moving forward.

TELEPORTING ENEMIES UPDATE

As mentioned in a previous TWAB, we've been noticing more "teleporty" enemies since the launch of Beyond Light. This past Tuesday, we tweaked the outgoing bandwidth limits that our servers use in order to provide more capacity for us to network data about what AI are doing to players. We believe that this will reduce significant source of AI teleporting across the game. Note that certain activities will still have some teleportation issues that will not be affected by this change.

PC PERFORMANCE UPDATE

Since Beyond Light shipped, players on PC have been experiencing less than ideal performance. Here is an update from our game performance team about PC performance updates:

Performance testing and optimization on PC is very complex due to the different combinations of hardware, software, and in-game settings. With the release of Beyond Light, we made some major engine changes while working from home. One of the unfortunate consequences of working from home is that we no longer had access to our PC compatibility lab to do in-depth testing on the performance impacts of our changes. Partially as a result of this, the update introduced regrettable performance decreases on some PC configurations - some configurations more than others.

We've been working on making improvements with every release since then, even though it doesn't always show up in the patch notes. Our work has been slow, as we've been forced to rely on our external partners and metrics from the live game. What this means in practice is that we make optimizations that seem effective based on our internal tests, but we don't know if they'll be helpful more widely until we receive feedback from the labs at external partners (such as AMD) or from you when you play the game.

Today, the game's performance is close to what it was before Beyond Light for some PC configurations. Because of the difficulty in predicting how much each change will improve performance, we've been reluctant to promise a fix, even though we are making regular performance optimizations.

We're aware of these problems and are continuing to work on them and are optimistic about the future.

EXPUNGE REWARDS

Last week, the new Expunge activity was released. Players noticed that they weren't receiving Pinnacle rewards that were highlighted in our Seasonal calendar. This activity won't grant Pinnacle rewards until the Weekly Challenge is added on June 15 and we're updating our articles and calendar to reflect this better.

HOTFIX 3.2.0.3

Hotfix 3.2.0.3 was released earlier today. Click here for a full list of patch notes. Here are some issues that were fixed:

• The Empty Tank Lost Sector will now correctly reward leg Exotics when they are advertised. 
• The Archon's Thunder Machine Gun and Riiswalker Shotgun can now be acquired from Lord Saladin, Iron Engrams, Bounties, or post-match Iron Banner rewards.
• Stasis subclass balance changes.

WEEKLY 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:

• We're continuing to investigate PlayStation 5 BEAGLE errors. While we investigate, playing the PS4 version or moving your Destiny 2 installation to an external SSD and back to the PS5 may temporarily alleviate this error.
• Exile Trials armor can't display Solstice glows from universal ornaments.
• Gravity Cannons can kill players in Expunge when walking up to them from behind.
• Some players are having loading issues, resulting in them and their weapons being somewhat invisible in activities.
• The stat tracker for fastest Expunge completion time gets reset for each completion.
• Sentinel Titans can use up Charged with Light stacks when they throw a shield when their Super is half full while they have the Energy Converter mod equipped.

For a full list of emergent issues in Destiny 2, players can review our Known Issues article. 

Rollercoaster of Emotions

Our first Movie of the Week of the week has been shared across the community for the last couple of weeks. It has highs, lows, and some awesome creativity throughout the ride. I'm personally terrified of roller coasters, but this one was a joy to sit through!

Movie of the Week: Prophecy Coaster

Movie of the Week: The Yeet Force of Atheon

If you'd like to submit a video for Move of the Week, make sure to tag it with #MOTW and share it on the Community Creations page of Bungie.net.

You Know the Music...

Above, one of our community members covered the Yeet Force of Atheon. That's not the only thing this mechanized God knows how to do. Golden Gun Hunters out there will know the pain of the Atheon Dance.

Art of the Week: Tap Dance

망할놈의 탭댄스 pic.twitter.com/Z0vGhodZeR

— 수과 (@Sugwa56) May 25, 2021

Art of the Week: Rescue

Kari rescues Jayesh from a pack of alien monsters who were trying to eat him. Good thing she has sweet lightning powers. #destinyart #Destiny2Art pic.twitter.com/qwvs3UuLfD

— K.M. Carroll (@netraptor01) May 27, 2021

Cheers to our selected artists this week! If you'd like to share your art with us, throw a few tags on it. #DestinyArt, #Destiny2Art, #HashtaggingbecauseDMGtoldmeto, stuff like that. Makes it easier to find!

Thanks for stopping by for another week of TWABness. Season of the Splicer has been fun so far and there's still quite a bit to look forward to. There is Iron Banner next week, weekly Raid challenges, Vault of Glass difficulty options, Solstice of Heroes, and more.

Even outside of seasonal content, there's a lot to get excited about for the future of Destiny. A few of us have said our best days are ahead. With every playtest, shot of gear, or piece of concept art that passes by my desk, I can't help but agree...

That was a quick tease, and we are eager to show you more about The Witch Queen. Expect to hear from us again with more details later in the summer. We have some awesome content to play between now and then. See you out there in the wild.

Cheers,
-dmg04