This Week at Bungie - 03/30/2023

This week at Bungie, we're still recovering from the emotional roller coaster that was last week's story mission and this week's remembrance centering around Amanda Holliday. While we're still making our best attempt at pretending we aren't sobbing messes over our favorite mechanic, we did want to share our preview of the mid-Season weapons update, a fun behind-the-scenes look at development animation horrors, and an update on what our Player Support team is working hard on.

Here's what we're going to be digging into this week:

• A preview of our mid-Season update from the team.
• Answering a question about one particular weapon players are searching for.
• A behind-the-scenes look at placeholder animations regarding that gun.
• Update from our Player Support team on known issues and coming updates.
• The community's favorite #AOTW and #MOTW picks of the week.

In case you missed last week's blog, here's a helpful TLDR:

• We said farewell to the man behind our beloved Commander, Lance Reddick.
• Shared a quick wrap-up of a recent Crucible blog post.
• Shared some changes to the Root of Nightmares raid.
  • A bonus heads up that Master and Challenge Mode begins this week.

You can check out last week's update here to learn more!

Before we move on to the actual TWAB, we wanted to pay tribute to the incredible Amanda Holliday. Last week, we all said goodbye to a character that proudly walked the Guardian path in every way but her title. Holliday gave her life during Season of Defiance, and she did so in the most Amanda way possible: like a compassionate Badass with a capital 'B.' No matter her trials, her heart never shied away from caring about those around her, even when her mind begged her to be more reserved. We saw it with her friendship with Crow, and against all odds, we saw it in the small ways she showed our Vanguard that she was there to support them. We also saw it each time we spoke with her, even if we just needed a little ship tune-up.

On a more personal note, I worked on aircraft when I was active duty military, so I always looked up to Amanda as a character and felt a special bond with her. I could see myself in her. I wanted to be her. She was a Light and had a strength I don't even think she knew about. It has always been inspiring, and her journey will continue to inspire long after her sacrifice.

Amanda Holliday gave up her life to help those around her, for those who needed protection. Needed safety. She sacrificed herself for a cause she believed in, and it's our job as Guardians to make her proud.

Time For a Difficult(y) Conversation

We've been keeping an eye on community feedback on overall difficulty since Lightfall's launch, and we have some changes in today's update and future updates that retune certain experiences. In today's update, we've reduced Legend and Master enemy HP scalars for non-boss units, which we felt were a little higher than we liked:

• Reduced the enemy HP scalar in all non-raid/dungeon Legend and Master activities by 10%.
• Reduced the co-op enemy HP scalar in Legendary Avalon by 33% in a full fireteam.

We've also made some additional reductions to Commendations requirements so players can reach their milestones at a more enjoyable pace:

• Reduced Hawthorne's weekly challenge Commendations target from 20 to 5.
• Removed Guardian Rank objectives that require players to give Commendations from Ranks 7, 8, and 9.
• Further reduced Commendation score requirements for Guardian Ranks 7-9:
  • Rank 7: 200 (was 460)
  • Rank 8: 477 (was 790)
  • Rank 9: 910 (was 1290

Mid-Season Preview, Weapons Edition

Hello everyone, and welcome to another mid-Season weapons balance pass preview! Weapons team here. This is not going to be a huge one, but we feel that the changes we do have are impactful to the sandboxes in both PvP and PvE. Also, as a note in case you missed it, in last week's patch, we corrected an issue with Target Lock that was making it significantly more forgiving to use than intended, which originally would have been included in this patch, but we felt the change warranted being pulled forward.

PvE Primary Weapon Balance

We wanted to see how the PvE sandbox shook out after the release of Lightfall, not necessarily to see if primary weapons needed a buff, but more to see how much we should buff them. We've done quite a bit of testing on these numbers, in content ranging from Heroic Nightfalls to Legendary campaigns, all the way up to Grandmasters and we think that the changes are impactful without invalidating the difficulty of the appropriate levels.

In Heroic and Legendary content, you should be more likely to one-shot red-bar enemies depending on your weapon type, and even in GMs, we have shaved how many shots it takes and time it takes to kill for the below weapons against red and orange bar enemies. We want to add that we do not believe we are done with tuning weapon damage in PvE, this is merely a starting point, and we will revisit it in the coming Seasons to make sure everything has a place in the sandbox.

• Increased the damage of the following weapon types against red and orange bar enemies in PvE:
  • Auto Rifles face steep competition from Submachine Guns (SMGs) within parts of their range, and having a longer possible engagement distance wasn't doing enough to offset it. We don't want Auto Rifles to defeat combatants faster than SMGs, as that would flip the script and invalidate the lower range options instead, but we did feel like we could close the gap substantially.
    • Auto Rifles: 25%
  • Pulse Rifles and Hand Cannons have been considered weaker in harder PvE content for some time, so we wanted to make sure the buff we gave them was substantial, while at the same time keeping them below the lower ranged options in terms of pure lethality. Pulse Rifles have struggled, being less effective than Scout Rifles despite, for the most part, having a less effective range. We also put Sidearms into this group because they similarly lagged in damage output compared to the longer ranged SMGs. At these values, Pulse Rifles should be in a more reasonable spot, Hand Cannons should feel like they pack more of a punch, and Sidearms should fall much better into the "high risk, high reward" category.
    • Pulse Rifles, Hand Cannons, and Sidearms: 20%
  • Scout Rifles - We need to be careful tuning Scout Rifles up too much, because they offer the benefits of very safe engagement ranges paired with unlimited ammo, so making them too strong instantly turns most endgame PvE content into "sit as far away as possible and plink," which we want to avoid. That being said, after the changes to the other weapons, they felt like they were trailing just a little too far behind, so we have moved them up as well.
    • Scout Rifles: 10%
• SMGs and Bows - We tuned the rest of the primary weapons using these two archetypes as benchmarks, but as mentioned above, we will continue to keep an eye on the primary weapon balance in PvE and may revisit their tuning as needed.

Weapon Archetypes

• Submachine Guns
  • Aggressive Frame SMGs have been very strong in the PvP meta for the last couple of months, with a handful of outliers taking most of the credit. The IKELOS SMG was something of a mystery to us, as we continually felt, and got reports, that the gun seemed to have much better stability than its stats would indicate it should, compared to other SMGs. Originally, the IKELOS SMG was built back in the Warmind era when we had fewer guidelines on how to keep weapons balanced, and upon doing a deeper investigation we found that some custom tuning had been added to the weapon's scope to give it a recoil reduction effect. For comparison, the recoil reduction tuning was like having an effect nearly equivalent to Zen Moment at max strength, and always active. We have removed that custom tuning, and the recoil should now feel in-line with other SMGs.
    • IKELOS SMG:
      • Removed some tuning in the custom scope causing these weapons to have significantly less recoil than intended. The recoil is now in line with other Aggressive Frame SMGs.
    • We are aware that this change in isolation, while noticeable, is unlikely to put much of a dent in Aggressive Frame SMGs current dominance, so we have a larger change to reduce the damage of the Aggressives sub-family that will release alongside Season 21. The change will be targeted at shifting the resiliency threshold where the gun can achieve its optimal 0.67s Time to Kill (TTK) down to a lower value, to force a more reasonable 0.77s TTK against most players, while also decreasing their forgiveness of missed crits.
• Fusion Rifle
  • When we last touched Fusion Rifles, Shotguns had seen a big drop in effectiveness, and we were concerned that Rapid-Fire Frame Fusions would rise up to take their place. As such, we preemptively nerfed Rapid-Fires pretty hard. In today's sandbox, this is less of a concern due to the renewed strength of Shotguns following the airborne effectiveness and pellet spread changes, so we have walked back some of the damage nerf we made to Rapid-Fires. This change will push them back to defeating all resilience levels in 7 bolts and give them a decent bump to ease of use.
    • Increased burst damage by 15 (damage per burst goes from 245 to 260, damage per bolt goes from 27.2 to 28.9).
    • Damage in PvE is unchanged.
• Trace Rifle
  • Trace Rifles are in a bit of a precarious spot in the Crucible. In the right hands, they can kill very quickly from long ranges, even outside of their optimal time to kill (TTK). On the other hand, they can be difficult to use, and they often feel heavily ammo limited if you are not hitting the optimal TTK. We did a lot of experimenting with them for this change, including multiple combinations of damage and crit ratios, and settled on the values below as the highest we could push their damage output before they became frustrating to deal with in Crucible. Interestingly, with damage any higher than this the feeling was that they had a surplus of ammo, especially in 6v6 modes, and could often net 2 kills per Special brick picked up, which was concerning. Once we moved their damage values, they still felt like they needed a little bit more, and we wanted to lean harder into making them feel good to use, so we increased the effect that stability has on reducing flinch at the high end of the stat. We will monitor this change when it goes live and may revisit the ammo situation in a future update if their effectiveness remains low.
    • Increased base damage by 4% (base damage goes from 12 to 12.5).
    • Reduced precision hit multiplier from 1.4x to 1.35x (crit damage goes from 16.8 to 16.9).
    • Increased the effectiveness of stability at reducing flinch by 10% at 100 stat (scales down at lower values).
• Sniper Rifle
  • Rapid-Fire Frame Sniper Rifles have long struggled to find a place in both the PvP and PvE meta. In PvP, their inability to kill with two body shots puts them on uneven footing with other Snipers, and in PvE their fast RPM but standard inventory sizes mean you constantly feel low on ammo. To address these concerns and differentiate them from other Sniper sub-families, we have reduced their recoil by 50%. This means hitting crits on a boss or Champion in PvE is much easier, and taking rapid follow-up shots in PvP is too. We have also increased their inventory stat by 30%, which should give them a lot more rounds to play with in PvE content.
    • Reduced recoil by 50%.
    • Increased total ammunition (magazine + reserves) by 30%.

Exotic Weapons

• Final Warning - Final Warning being able to track targets through barricades, while funny in some cases, felt pretty unfair to play against and was not an intended mechanic of the weapon.
  • Can no longer mark targets through Titan Barricades.
• Tarrabah - This weapon is something we have been keeping an eye on for a while, and with the spotlight being shown on Aggressive Frame SMGs, it felt like Tarrabah has had its time in the sun. When the weapon was introduced, there was substantially less survivability in PvP, and the intention was that it would take nearly two full engagements to get Ravenous Beast active, which made it one of the costliest perk activators we had in game and justified the extreme power it offered. As the sandbox has progressed, however, survivability has increased, and it has become possible for Ravenous Beast to be very close to activating after a single engagement. This has meant that savvy players could purposefully bait or take a small amount of damage (like standing in a grenade's effect) to top off the perk, and then have it active for the second engagement. The increased ease of access has made Ravenous Beast an outlier in today's Crucible, and we were left with the options of reducing the potency of the perk itself or trying to make its activation more difficult, and we decided to work with the latter. This reduction in energy granted from taking damage puts the onus back on the user to deal damage and shifts the balance of the perk back towards a difficult activator that justifies its reward of a potent effect. In addition, we are continuing our mission to address zoom outliers, and this felt like a good time to reduce the zoom of Tarrabah back down to something more in line with the rest of the SMG archetype.
  • Reduced the amount of Ravenous Beast energy generated when taking damage from 3% to 1%.
  • Reduced zoom from 16 to 15.
• Revision Zero - Fourth Times the Charm (FTTC) working when Revision Zero went into Hunter's Trace is a fun and intended interaction, but it caused some unfortunate issues. Activating it too early while the perk was up caused the weapon to overflow its limited mag size and return to the normal Pulse Rifle mode. We have made a fix so that FTTC can continue to work while Hunter's Trace is active, but it will not be able to grant ammo until all shots have been expended. This means you can still enjoy the 2 free shots provided by the perk as long as you hit all 4 Hunter's Trace rounds without worrying about being kicked out of the mode. In addition, we have buffed the damage of the Hunter's Trace rounds by 25% in PvE, and we have buffed the Häkke Heavy Burst rounds by 75% in PvE. This will now make it more of a tradeoff when choosing between the origin perks, either dealing more damage in the primary mode but charging Hunter's Trace more slowly or dealing less damage but charging the bonus shots more quickly.
  • Fourth Times the Charm will now be reset when entering Hunter's Trace.
    • This will prevent the issue of firing a single shot while in Hunter's Trace and being forcibly returned to Pulse Rifle mode when FTTC activates.
  • Increased PvE damage of the Hunter's Trace rounds by 25%.
  • Increased PvE damage of the Häkke Heavy Burst rounds by 75%.

At Season 21 Launch

• A sweeping rework of weapon hip fire reticles to better display useful information to players (accuracy, aim assist, charge state, Exotic perk state, etc.).
• The Aggressive Frame SMG nerf.
• A 10% PvE buff to Sniper Rifle damage.
• Buffs/adjustments to more than a dozen Exotic weapons, including Graviton Lance and Salvation's Grip.

In the Future

• We are going to be taking a look at how zoom interacts with damage fall off, and the base damage fall off ranges of all weapons in general.
• Zoom, and perks like Rangefinder that manipulate zoom, have become a requirement on several weapon types, either to compete at all in the sandbox, or to allow the weapon to exceed its intended engagement ranges. This has led us to begin to consolidate zoom values on certain weapon archetypes, which removes an important lever that we can use to modify weapon feel, given the effect zoom has on field of view, recoil reduction, and aim assist falloff.
• We will be investigating decoupling damage falloff from zoom (this would be paired alongside a refresh of the base damage falloff values to compensate), which should allow us to better control the engagement ranges of individual archetypes, while at the same time letting us continue to use zoom as a tuning knob for weapon feel without dramatically changing their performance.

The Case of the Missing Khvostov, A Peek Behind the Developer Curtain

Cinematics Director James Myers has an answer that many of you have been asking: "Where the heck is the Khvostov weapon seen in cutscenes?!" Funny story about that, we'll let Myers take this one.

Myers: During the production of Lightfall, a certain story beat was pitched related to reluctantly aiming a weapon, and we quickly realized that we would need to animate that moment much more specifically than we typically handle Guardians pointing weapons in previous scenes. Many players have noticed some of the sillier results in some real-time scenes, even when we avoid extreme poses (like our Guardian holding a Bow at the end of The Witch Queen.) So, I spun up a thread with the studio leads and suggested that we decide on a "default weapon" that we could feature if we ever needed something specific like this. I suggested the Khvostov because it's the very first weapon every player receives in Destiny. Literally every Guardian has tinkered around with this weapon, so it felt like the right call.

At the same time, new systems were being developed that would feature Guardians (like Commendations), and similarly, there were a lot of visual bugs popping up with certain weapons like Glaives and Bows. The animation team was stretched thin closing on cinematics, and a new set of animations was, unfortunately, something that would cost us other content. Because of that, we made the decision to use the same default logic in the instances where a visual bug would detract from the quality bar we aim to achieve.

Regarding helmets seen in in-engine cinematics, I have seen some folks post screenshots of their Guardians from recent real-time cinematics, and many were helmetless! Something we started doing in Lightfall is respecting the player's choice of helmet or no helmet in real-time scenes, where appropriate (we'll keep your helmet on in the vacuum of space for example). But for the most part, if you choose "hide helmet," you'll see your Guardian's face. And if you don't, you won't unless there's a special exception (I don't want to make that promise too airtight, just in case!). There is one caveat to keep in mind: the Season 20 cinematics were in production before we finalized this plan, so from Season 21 onward this will be consistent!

As a little bonus "sneak peek," some animators in the film industry were recently discussing how they push animation poses in ridiculous ways to get the framing just right on camera, making for better shot composition and framing. It stirred up some interesting conversation, so we figured we'd show you one of these reframings with an example from the Season 20 intro cinematic. Whatever it takes to get the shot, y'know?

What you see:

What we see:

There Will Be Wallpapers

And because you all had to see the hidden horrors of animation right alongside us, here are some freebie wallpapers to enjoy as a return to normalcy. You know, as a treat. Plus, can we just take a moment to drool over the Mara art? Because definitely going to snag that one for my new background.

Desktop:

Mobile:

Player Support Report

Poll: Do you call it Root or RoN?

Another week, another Player Support Report. This week, we're diving into Loadout crashes, providing another update to Guardian Ranks, and detailing a list of known issues that the crew is working on.

This is their report.

Known Issues List | Help Forums | Bungie Help Twitter

LOADOUT CRASHES

We are aware of an issue where attempting to equip certain loadouts can cause game crashes for players. We recommend that players experiencing error code WEASEL when equipping loadouts ensure that their Class Items are using the updated version of the Empowered Finish mod as outlined in Hotfix 7.0.0.6.

GUARDIAN RANK UPDATE

The Commendation requirements for unlocking Guardian Ranks 7, 8, and 9 have been updated. The updated requirements can be viewed in the Guardian Rank objectives by navigating to the Journey tab. Players must complete and claim all required objectives, then interact with the Ironwood Tree in the Tower to unlock their next Guardian Rank.

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 Preservation mission in the Throne World is not available for some players.
• The Hydroponics Delta Lost Legendary Sector has a longer respawn timer.
• Veteran players do not receive the correct amount of lore books when they rank up for the first time.
• Reservoir Burst explosion with Subsistence can sometimes fail to activate on kill.
• Adept Trials Hand Cannon is getting one round less in the magazine than the non-Adept version.
• The grav-lift on Neomuna is tied to framerate, causing players with higher framerates to die upon landing.
• Non-Lightfall quests showing up under the Lightfall quest category.
• Hunter gauntlets Thunderhead Grips are missing as an ornament for armor synthesis.
• Certain Heavy weapon archetypes are not benefitting from equipping a third reserve mod.
• Players are no longer able to equip the Unbroken title.
• Restoration reverts to a lower timer when reapplying the original source of the buff.
• Weapons can mark targets through Titan barricades.
• Thread of Generation stops functioning on Hunters for grenades that aren't Grapple after using their Super.
• Unpowered melee can produce fast melee combos in quick succession.
• Players experience a black screen when previewing armor bundles on PS5.
• Some players on Steam are unable to progress past the class icon loading spinner on launch. Please send us your DxDiag on our Help forum.
• Commendations are greyed out as already given in some activities.

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.

To Strand or Not to Strand, It's Not Really a Question at This Point

Hippy: It's pretty easy to see that we love ourselves a good Strand grapple. Seriously, some of the videos y'all tag us in are making Spider-Man proud. We just know it. While some videos out there go ham on making a statement ala green-flavored Darkness, this "strange anomaly" is so subtly hilarious it was impossible to leave out of this week's movie picks.

Movie of the Week: Investigating a strange Strand anomaly.

Sam: We've seen rocket riding, but have you seen this?

Movie of the Week: Guardian Down

Due to certain... circumstances... the Guardian Space Agency is hard at work determining new ways to support the Guardian fleet with space travel! #MOTW

Preliminary Results:
❌ Rocket Riding
❌ Lumina Riding
✅ "Guardian Down" Riding pic.twitter.com/jAhZVuXgYx

— DVStill A Behemoth Main ❄️ (@A_DVS_NTT) March 23, 2023

So, Nezarec and Eris Walk Into a Bar (Stop Us If You've Heard This One)

Bruno: I think the Root of Nightmares raid has been around long enough for us to start praising your art around a certain Final God of Pain. Nezarec is an amazing character with a unique design, and I'm so happy so many artists are making their own versions of him.

Art of the Week: The Final God of Trapezius, too

I've fallen in love with Nezarec, actually #Destiny2AOTW #Lightfall pic.twitter.com/5fcourZxok

— The Edgeless Terror (@ascendantraisin) March 20, 2023

Ivan: This piece has some (space) magic behind it. Now I'm curious what's there behind the curtain. I guess we'll need to wait and find out. Great #Destiny2AOTW submission, congrats!

Art of the Week: Eris Morn

Eris Morn

Drawn by a friend's request!#Destiny2Art #Destiny2AOTW #Destiny2 pic.twitter.com/d80bkwMTxJ

— 백곰 (@polarbear2324) March 26, 2023

And that's a wrap on our latest TWAB! This one was pretty weapons-focused, but with so much talk about recent changes, we wanted to spend some time going over what's coming down the pipeline.

Now that our paths must diverge once more, just a friendly reminder to please remember to drink your water, prioritize that self-care, pet all the good puppers out there for me, and always lead with your kindest foot forward. See you on the flip side, friends.

"I should go,"

<3 Hippy