This week at Bungie, we're talking sandbox news, matchmaking, and we're getting amped up for Neptune!
Before we jump into this week's TWAB, let's do a brief recap of what went down in last week's blog post for anyone that may have missed it:
So, if you haven't checked that out, go do that! But not right now. Right now, we've got this week's TWAB to dive into.
For this week, we're diving a little deeper into the shiny new trailer that just dropped, highlighting a deep dive with Bungie developers into upcoming buildcrafting changes, and chatting about matchmaking, weapon and ability changes, and more. So, without further ado, let's get into it, shall we?
Some people whose accounts were banned have said they don't remember cheating or having any sort of cheat software on their platform of choice. Any time we investigate these cases, both recent and in the past, we often find that they gave their account to someone else to play the game for them. Because of this, we want to again remind everyone that you must protect your account and do not use account recovery services. Saying that your fingers were not on the keyboard when cheating occurred will not be considered during the thorough appeal process.
Can you smell... what the Neptune... is cooking?! OK, so that doesn't make sense, and we all know I'm no Dwayne the Rock Johnson, but we do have an epic (if we say so ourselves... which we are, uh, saying so ourselves. Right now.) new trailer showing off more of our upcoming Neptunian adventure with Lightfall!
Lightfall is almost here. I still can't believe it. The chance to swoosh around like some sort of undying, cyberpunk-inspired Spider-Man will be here before you know it. We're excited to show you more about Cloud Striders, Strand, and the brand-new location to explore. For now, can we just take a second to appreciate those sweet, sweet slo-mo shots? Because those are dope.
Buildcrafting. It's a massive part of Destiny, but it's also an ever-evolving component to what it means to be a Guardian that's always ready for what's next. For those that may have missed it, the team shared a more in-depth look at how buildcrafting has evolved and what it will look like in the near future, particularly with anti-Champion systems, the new Loadout system, and more.
So, what was talked about exactly? Glad you asked. Here's a simplified breakdown for those looking to learn more about specific topics:
If you haven't checked this out yet, you can read all about what's new, what's changing, and how feedback played a role right here. For those interested in learning even more, we'll be featuring more standalone articles like this in the coming weeks. You know, to keep TWABs not-novel length.
As we race towards Lightfall's release next month, we've got a few updates that we're excited to share. As a small preview, we're talking about red borders, Dredgen gilding, Rumble's back, blues woes, Year-3 catalysts, and Glaive Exotic crafting. Let's dive in:
Red Border Drop Rates
On January 18, a change went live in-game that makes it easier for players to get the red borders they crave in all raids with craftable weapons and in the Duality dungeon. Stay tuned for additional information about weapon crafting changes in Lightfall in the coming weeks!
Faster Dredgen Title Gilding
Rather than requiring 30 Gambit wins to gild the Dredgen title, we are changing it to 50 match completions, with bonus credit for wins. At a minimum, this reduces the number of wins needed by 5, and most players will require significantly fewer to get to where they are trying to be: Title Town.
Regarding what is planned for upcoming patches:
Bye-bye Blues (at Soft Cap)
It's happening. Starting with next week's patch, after you reach the soft gear cap, blue engrams will stop dropping in the world (whenever that would have happened), and the equivalent amount of additional Glimmer baubles will spray out instead.
We're also adjusting all other Gunsmith reputation gains by +25% to compensate for removing Gunsmith reputation from dismantling blue gear. We may not have caught every single blue engram in the game, but a vast majority should behave this way. If you find a source that still gives a blue item, please report it in our Help forums so we can squash!
RUMBLE, Y'ALL
In response to player feedback, we're bringing Rumble back to the Crucible screen as a permanent fixture and remove it as a rotator in the next patch. There are more exciting Crucible changes coming with Lightfall—stay tuned.
Year 3 Catalyst Evolution
The catalyst quests for the Year-3 Season Pass Exotics (Eriana's Vow, Symmetry, Tommy's Matchbook, and Witherhoard) will now benefit from the Season Pass boosts like other Exotic catalyst quests. Additionally, any Seasonal ritual playlist activity will count toward ritual progress for all Season Pass Exotic catalyst quests.
Easier Exotic Glaive Crafting
Did you know there are class-specific craftable Exotic Glaives? We're adjusting the quest needed to receive them to only require one portion of each Weapon Pattern from the Wellspring weapons, as well as ensuring the first drop of each daily Wellspring weapon will have Deepsight. Once you unlock the recipe for the first Exotic Glaive, the other class recipes can be purchased by your other characters from the Evidence Board.
Oh, man, you're going to love the new raid, especially the part wher—
Save the date, folks. We're doin' it live on March 10, 2023, at 9 AM PST, which is the second Friday in March. Another World First, who's going to take the win this time? Who knows, but we do know we have some delicious popcorn ready to watch Guardians from all over the world shoot their shot at earning that coveted World First belt.
We've experimented a lot with various matchmaking tools through the years to help make PvP more enjoyable for all. Earlier last year, we spoke about what the team had in their sights for future changes. With those goals in mind, we've got the Destiny 2 Rituals team and the Sandbox teams here to go over a few things like matchmaking, abilities, and weapon tweaks. First, let's look at matchmaking.
Destiny 2 Rituals team: In previous TWABs, we have talked about our goals to make the Crucible an accessible and fair activity for all players, and how we plan to accomplish those goals with matchmaking. In Season 18, we added a loose form of skill-based matchmaking to Control. We gathered data, reviewed the analytics, and adjusted the matchmaking configs, establishing the foundation for Season 19's matchmaking for Quickplay, Iron Banner, and Competitive 3v3.
In Season 19, we added fireteam-based matchmaking. And as before, we will continue reviewing the analytics and player feedback to adjust our configs as necessary. Fireteam-based matchmaking is the first step towards enabling a fair playing field for fireteams of all sizes and eliminating the need for freelance nodes. As we grow more confident in our settings, expect to see fewer freelance nodes, beginning with Iron Banner. We know that it may seem a little jarring written out in text like that, but this is a part of the process for long-term goals that will improve the experience across the board. After we've gotten sufficient data on this from players and from internal systems, we will extend the fireteam matchmaking feature to Trials and eventually Competitive 3v3.
Once we have ironed out the kinks associated with fireteam-based matchmaking, the next feature on deck is dynamic skill matchmaking. As mentioned before, this feature is geared towards improving matchmaking if you are in a low population skill bracket, or during a particularly low population time.
This is all to say: we are aware of the current status of matchmaking , and we are continually working toward improving our features and systems. We believe we are on the right track, and we would like to share some of the data that makes us believe as much.
One such data point is match outcome prediction . We use a particular algorithm that considers multiple variables to predict the outcome of a given match, where 50% prediction accuracy is considered ideal. This would mean both teams are evenly matched, and we are unable to determine the winner based on statistics alone. The graph below (figure A) displays our prediction accuracy for Control before and after Season 18 (when we introduced loose skill-based matchmaking). The drop in accuracy is a strong indicator that our current implementation of skill-based matchmaking is headed in the right direction.
Figure A
Additionally, the following graph (figure B) displays our prediction accuracy for Glory (pre-Season 19) and Competitive 3v3 (Season 19). The upper lines are the main Glory and Competitive activities, while the bottom lines are the Freelance variants. With Season 19, we adjusted the skill bands for matchmaking in Competitive, leading to a significant drop in prediction accuracy (i.e., matches are becoming fairer). Note that there is still a strong discrepancy between the main node and Freelance. This shows it's more difficult to produce fair matches with fireteams due to the immeasurable advantages that a fireteam possesses (communication, team composition, team synergy, etc.). However, that is why we are testing fireteam-based matchmaking. We aim to reach a point where matches in the main node—where mixed fireteam sizes can queue together—reach levels of fairness comparable to the Freelance node, at which point we can confidently shelve Freelance nodes.
Figure B
Hopefully, this provides some insight into our efforts to make the Crucible a fair, accessible, and fun experience for all players. This is an ongoing process , so please pardon the dust as we build toward a better future.
Airborne effectiveness, weapons, abilities—oh, my! For the second TWAB of the year, we're diving back into the world of sandbox goodness with the team to learn about what's next for Destiny 2 regarding combat, movement, and more. Take it away, Destiny Sandbox team!
We introduced the airborne effectiveness (AE) system in Season 17 to give us levers to balance weapon effectiveness while airborne in a consistent and comprehensive way. We did this in preparation for a sandbox that's introducing more airborne gameplay options, particularly with the Strand subclasses in Lightfall.
We had two primary reasons for this:
The first reason remains true, but the second has become less relevant as SBMM has rolled out across more PvP modes, and despite achieving our goals, the cost in player fun was too high . After observing for a Season, we made some updates in each subsequent weapon balance update, while starting on a larger rework in Lightfall.
We've been playtesting these changes for a while now and are confident we can safely pull them into the Season 19 mid-Season balance update.
Airborne effectiveness affects the following aspects of weapons (these affect both mouse and keyboard as well as controller unless otherwise noted):
With this update, you can expect a Primary weapon with no investment (i.e., at the default AE stat of the weapon) to be as accurate (i.e., shoot just as straight) as a Primary weapon with the Icarus Grip mod equipped did before the introduction of AE. The auto aim angle is also significantly improved, and the magnetism penalty has been eliminated.
Instead of relying on accuracy and aim assist penalties, we're requiring more precision to land crits while airborne. This means your guns will behave more like they do when grounded, except that you must aim right at the head to get a headshot unless you really build for airborne gameplay.
One side effect of this change is that airborne gameplay on controller should feel better than ever before with moderate investment since we've reduced the airborne magnetism penalty below what was in the game before AE.
We still don't want it to be too easy to build into AE with Special weapons, but we believe we have space to reduce the penalties on Shotguns and Sniper Rifles. We may revisit this later.
In playtesting, this makes baseline airborne gunplay feel substantially better, and building into higher AE feels more rewarding.
Specifics:
Submachine Guns (SMGs) have long been heavily dependent on the range stat to be competitive. SMGs with a high range stat easily outclass all other SMGs and low range Auto Rifles and Hand Cannons. We recently made a change that brought these higher range options more in line, but the difference between them and other SMGs was still too large, and some special case offenders that could hit nearly maximum range were still a bit too strong. As such, we have made a large improvement to SMG performance at lower range values, combined with a small decrease to the higher range values.
Pulse Rifles are very potent in the current meta for a multitude of reasons. Their effectiveness and ease-of-use at longer ranges makes it hard to close the distance to challenge them with many other weapons. This is especially true on MnK, where the normal effective range is significantly increased by the tighter bullet spread of each burst. The current map rotation (which is scheduled to change in Lightfall for both Competitive Crucible and Quickplay) heavily favors the ranged playstyle, and airborne effectiveness has made airborne play more difficult. With those things in mind, we didn't want to hit Pulse Rifles too hard and without first seeing the effects of the other changes on the overall sandbox, but we have reduced the top end range of Pulse Rifles on all input types and increased their native recoil on MnK to bring their ease of use more in line with controller. These changes should combine to make Pulse Rifles less effective at longer ranges without hurting players who choose to use them more actively.
The mid-Season 18 Sidearm aim assist falloff buff had the desired effect of encouraging players on both input devices to experiment with Sidearms. After letting the meta settle, Sidearms have cemented themselves as very strong contenders in close quarters engagements, but they are exceeding their intended effective range by a small amount. We've walked back the buff slightly to pull them in and give other lower range Primary weapons a little more room to thrive.
Dead Messenger can be oppressive to play against, as the triple wave pattern can easily be combined with a number of abilities or other weapons to effectively one-hit kill a player, so we've brought the damage down significantly to make such playstyles less effective. With this change it still has use cases in PvP (and hasn't changed at all in PvE), but is a lot less frustrating to play against.
Dead Man's Tale's tweak in the 6.3.0 update (switching its aiming from preferring body shots to preferring crits) had a much more dramatic effect than expected. The weapon was initially tuned around it preferring body shots. This meant it had a larger aim assist cone to compensate, and once this was addressed, it spiked in effectiveness. At the same time, a damage penalty for hitting maximum stacks of Cranial Spike never felt good. We've pulled back various hip-fire tuning to make hip-firing at long ranges much harder and removed the Cranial Spike penalty.
We're seeing Revoker usage increase as more PvP modes have Power level removed. The Reversal of Fortune perk is extremely strong, particularly in combination with certain playstyles. Ultimately, we decided to cap the maximum return on this by requiring multiple misses to return one shot.
Coming in Lightfall, we're doing a Heavy weapon balance pass, adding Subclass 3.0 verbs to several Exotic weapons, tuning Kinetic weapons, and adding a new perk to make Kinetic weapons more valuable.
In post-Lightfall Seasons, we'll be shipping some updates we're pretty chuffed about:
We also wanted to call out one more change, this time about the Titan Exotic gauntlets, Citan's Ramparts:
Increased the cooldown of the Barricade ability while Citan's Ramparts are equipped by 70%. Increased the amount of damage players deal to a Citan's Barricade by 25%.
OK, now onto abilities.
In patch 6.3.0.5 scheduled to be released the week of January 24, we're releasing some abilities changes that we've been playtesting in Lightfall to address some outliers in both PvE and PvP.
In the Crucible, class ability uptime has inflated significantly over the course of the last year, so we're increasing the base cooldown of Barricade, Thruster, and Dodge by 20%.
With Update 6.3.0 at the launch of Season 19, we reduced the linger time of Touch of Thunder's enhanced Storm Grenades, but this hasn't meaningfully moved the needle on either their potency or usage across game modes, so we're taking a harder swing here. We're reducing the damage dealt by each lightning strike by 25% and making it significantly easier to avoid the roaming storm by decreasing its tracking speed and distance, especially near the start of its lifetime.
In August 2021 with update 5.3.0, we added weapon penalties that affected the player while sliding. The goal of this change was to reduce the percentage of engagements where the outcome was effectively decided by sliding, especially when used with Shotguns that instantly ended the fight from significant range. Shotguns and other weapons have been tuned since then, and we've implemented skill-based matchmaking into the Crucible, so we're removing the slide penalties in order to improve the feel and consistency of combat.
It's important to note that these changes are a first step toward where we want to be with ability potency and uptime. With Lightfall and beyond, we have large-scale ability balance tuning in the works and will have more to share in the near future.
New (Lunar) Year, who dis? 2023 is the Year of the Rabbit in the Chinese Zodiac with bunny cuteness symbolizing a year filled with hope, prosperity, longevity, and peace. It's also another reason to celebrate, so what do we have to kick off the Year of the Rabbit?
Join your fellow Guardians in welcoming the Year of the Rabbit! Add a brand-new emblem to your collection and join in on the celebration.
— Destiny 2 (@DestinyTheGame) January 17, 2023
🖥 https://www.bungie.net/7/en/codes/redeem
🐇 TNN-DKM-6LG pic.twitter.com/pBVe6BSzXH
From January 17 to 31, you'll see Lunar New Year loot from ol' Tess, so you will want to mosey on over to the Eververse just like last year. Her Year of the Rabbit wares will celebrate a fresh start with new items and some blasts from Lunar New Year's past.
Oh, and if you happen to see a mysterious red envelope at Eververse, you're going to want to grab that for a celebratory gift of Bright Dust. You know, to splurge on some sweet cosmetics at a later date. Because you deserve it. Treat yo' self.
And for those that may be looking to stay at home due to something like a bad hare day and get that celebration on even sooner, we've also got a nifty free emblem for Guardians to don to ring in the Year of the Rabbit in style.
Enjoy:🐇 TNN-DKM-6LG
Prime Gaming is a pretty sweet program with Amazon Prime that offers Guardians select Exotics and Legendary items.
Strike a pose, then hit the road. 🤳
— Destiny 2 (@DestinyTheGame) January 17, 2023
Grab the Selfie Exotic Bundle before February 8, 2023. Available now from @PrimeGaming!https://t.co/TfwSno1abs pic.twitter.com/50xPIiMdWP
Starting on February 28 with the release of Lightfall, any unclaimed loot older than one year will expire. If you need to do any last-minute drop grabs from Prime Gaming, it wouldn't be a bad idea to check in and see if you've got anything to scoop up. Need a little refresher on Prime Gaming? No worries, we've got you! Feel free to make your way downtown (walking fast) to our support article here.
Season of the Seraph has new ways to evolve weapon play, some hilarious scenes (oh, I'm sorry, we meant "cute" ways) regarding Clovis and everybody's favorite grumpy grandpa, Osiris, and some beautiful Warmind-inspired imagery. Because of that, we've gotten a lot of requests for higher-resolution images and wallpaper fun. Ask and ye shall receive. Now go make that phone pretty in a way that only a shiny new wallpaper knows how, here are just a few you can take with you with more found in the links below:
4K Download:Here
Mobile Download: Here
4K Download:Here
Mobile Download:Here
4K Download:Here
Mobile Download: Here
4K Download:Here
Mobile Download:Here
Fashion is endgame.
We're halfway through the first month of 2023 and our incredible Player Support team continues to work hard on ensuring that the Destiny 2 experience is the best it can be for players. That includes tackling known issues and updates for a variety of things coming up soon. Let's dive right into their report.
Known Issues List | Help Forums | Bungie Help TwitterSTADIA ACCOUNT BUNGIE.NET LINKS
As of Tuesday, January 10, players are no longer able to access Destiny 2 from the Stadia platform.
Players with Google Stadia as their primary account should not deactivate Cross Save for any reason. Doing so will result in players completely losing access to their characters.
Stadia players who encounter issues accessing their characters once they set up Cross Save should see our Stadia Cross Save Troubleshooting Guide.AN UPDATE FROM OUR ENGINEERS
Maintaining your characters and progress is our top priority.
— Bungie Help (@BungieHelp) January 18, 2023
After kicking off a deep dive investigation of a very low number of reports of missing characters out of an abundance of caution, we are confident that no characters or progress were incorrectly lost by our systems.
To learn more about how to protect your account and to answer any other questions you may have, please check out our Account Security Guide here. We'd like to take an additional moment to remind you to please not share your account details with anyone else, regardless of the relationship. Protect your account.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:
- Players may be unable to crouch after acquiring the first Scanner augment in the Operation: Seraph's Shield Exotic mission. This can be resolved by entering and exiting a menu or remapping keys.
- We are investigating an increase in CENTIPEDE error codes.
- Players are unable to progress the objective in Operation: Sancus. To circumvent this, players should restart the mission, move slower, and wait for Rasputin to finish his dialogue before progressing to the next area of the activity.
- Players are unable to progress the Reshaping the Enigma quest beyond step six, as well as other weapon crafting quests.
- Bounty acquisition via the Destiny Companion App is noticeably slow.
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.
Hippy: I'm not going to lie, as a Titan that likes to pretend that they're an elegant elf archer from Lord of the Rings launching into victory, this video of arrow-led perfection gave me chills all over. Between the cuts, the concept, and the smart crossover using the returning Iron Banner armor, this Elden Lords video is something we think all kinds of Guardians can enjoy.
Movie of the Week: Elden Lords
This bow seems to have opened a portal to a tarnished dimension...@ClanElysiumD2 presents "ELDEN LORDS"!#MOTW @DestinyTheGame @DirtyEffinHippy @Cozmo23 @TheSamBartley
— Saltagreppo (@SaltagreppoD2) January 15, 2023
Retweets are much appreciated! pic.twitter.com/Wh8AgSwXf8
Sam: Ever since I joined the world of Destiny, I have been constantly blown away by the creativity, talent, and passion that endgame content brings to our space. Soloing dungeons, Exotic missions, and especially raids with anything less than a full fireteam are things I couldn't imagine being able to do. Today we get to see this fireteam of three get their clear.
Movie of the Week: A fireteam of three
QUE LOUCURA! Nunca pensei que um dia faria RAID em TRIO. Foi uma experiência incr'vel e tenho que agradecer o Guerrilae e o TODE pela oportunidade!
— madameshaw (@themadameshaw) January 17, 2023
Depois vou colocar a incursão inteira no meu canal do YouTube. 🥰#Destiny2 #MOTW @destinygameBR pic.twitter.com/GST4qQufVc
Hippy: One more because y'all already know the undying devotion some of us have for our Crow, and it was a beloved pick from many both on the dev side and from the community. Not to be dramatic or anything, but I'd die for him. I—ahem, what? Everything's fine. Moving on. Here's a bonus MOTW featuring our precious baby boy, Crow:
B-b-b-bonus Movie of the Week: Lemon Boy
Bruno: We all know Rasputin is a badass, right? The weapons he gives us are outstanding. Every piece of insight he drops is relevant. He looks quite scary in his Exo frame. And let's not forget about certain protocols and contingency plans he always has up his sleeve. Anyway, cool representation of the might of the Warmind.
Art of the Week: He has now equal
"Earth's Archangel"
— Gustavo Bleyer (Guguf22) (@BleyerGustavo) January 10, 2023
"From this day forward, I will defend humanity on my own terms. I am Rasputin. Guardian of all I survey. I have no equal."
— Rasputin
#Destiny2Art #AOTW @DirtyEffinHippy pic.twitter.com/tGWmrnnnvF
Timon: Ready to take her Dawnblade into the fight and bring fear to the enemies who stand in her way!
Art of the Week: A beautiful painted Warlock
- For @WCheslik ~#Destiny2Art #AOTW pic.twitter.com/OTUZRofC23
— Anxiety | Ester (@unfaded_anxiety) January 16, 2023
One goal we have this year is to continue improving how we communicate with our community. In the past we have relied heavily on community manager accounts to share a lot of information, context, and clarifications. Often, it worked great, and we saw that many of you appreciated the additional transparency. But it also created some unfun times for community managers or other Bungie employees who shared Destiny 2 specific information from their personal accounts. We want to make sure we are protecting our people without sacrificing opportunities to engage directly with you on various platforms.
So, what are we doing?
Today, we are creating "Destiny 2 Team" accounts on the following platforms to help us move away from using community managers' personal accounts as we have in the past:
These are live now and where you will see us interacting with the community going forward on. Our goal is not to share less info or shy away from sharing context or clarifications, when possible, but to use the accounts to be more proactive in these efforts and avoid the need to follow and tag several CMs.
"What about the community managers? I like following them."
You are still free to follow me and the rest of the CM gang, as well as any other Bungie employees you see out there. We will all still be posting memes, sharing cool Destiny art, and having fun on our personals, but if you want answers to questions or a good avenue to share your Destiny 2 specific feedback, the Destiny 2 Team accounts are the new hotness.
Another goal we have going forward is to more actively solicit feedback regularly using these accounts like we did recently on Reddit, but on all three platforms. You don't have to wait for a post though. You can share your feedback any time and will be able to tag any of the Destiny 2 Team accounts if you have something you want us to see and not feel the need to tag several CM accounts. We have a few posts up right now on Bungie.net, Reddit, and Twitterasking for feedback right now so go share... after finishing this TWAB of course!
@BungieHelp is still going to be the primary place for updates on maintenance, outages, and ongoing issues being tracked. @DestinyTheGame is where we will drop the latest game trailers and high-level Destiny 2 news. The plan with the new @Destiny2Team accounts is to give us another avenue to give deeper insight on certain topics and a means to interacting on Bungie.net and Reddit more. Expect to see a lot more replies on those platforms going forward.
And there we go, second TWAB of 2023 in the books. There are a few more of these handy TWABs before Lightfall arrives, including more on Strand, upcoming economy changes, and more. You can also look forward to special stand-alone articles from different developer teams, like the one mentioned above that dove into buildcrafting, which will offer more insight for those that want it and keep TWABs a little more focused on a hub of info without drowning in wordcounts. Think informed but not in a panic-I-don't-want-to-read-a-10,000-word blog post type of way, you know?
Anyway.
More to come, but for now: make sure you're drinking that water, prioritizing that self-care, and remember to always lead with your kindest foot forward.
See you next week, friends.
"I should go,"
<3 Hippy
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