This Week in Destiny - 07/06/2023

This week in Destiny, we're drooling over more cutscene goodness, taking a peek at upcoming weapon changes, and scoping out the latest update regarding the community-voted Exotic weapon ornament that kicked off earlier this year. Oh, and celebrating the new secret Exotic mission. If you haven't checked it out yet, you totally should. Not that I'm trying to be your mom or anything, but it's pretty spiffy. Just saying.

Before diving into this week's TWID delight, let's take a quick look back at what was shared last week:

• An update on game stability and next steps.
• Next week is Lucky Week in fishing.
• The Witness's origins cutscene.
• Final round of #DrownInTheDrip.
• Current Prime Gaming drop extended to July 19.
• Community emblem competition.

Now for what's coming up:

• Tomorrow is Bungie Day!
• Cutscene and hang?
• Mid-Season weapon tuning preview.
• Final Iron Banner heads up.
• Show that Exotic fish pride.
• We heard you like Witherhoard.

Now, let's dive into the latest cutscene that we hope you enjoyed, shall we?

Get Those 7s Ready, It's Bungie Day!

Tomorrow is Bungie Day, because you know we love our 7s here, and we're excited to be celebrating with the Bungie Foundation for this year's Giving Festival, fishing shenanigans, and some solid loot to snag before the week is out. First up, let's look at what the Bungie Foundation has going on.

Once again, the Bungie Foundation is empowering our incredible community to put their best gaming foot forward for a good cause. In case you missed the full blog post about Bungie Day Giving Festival, which you can check out right here, here's a brief breakdown for what to expect:

• New prizes!
  • In-game items, limited edition Marathon T-shirts, and even PlayStation game codes for titles like The Last of Us, Ghosts of Tsushima, God of War, and more.
  • Don't miss out on the Seven Days of Prizes too, which includes dope finds like plushies and even a Variks statue!
  • A variety of emblems for those Guardians chipping in for a good cause.
  • Community emblem: Create an emblem you'd like to see in Destiny 2 for a shot at winning our #Emblematic competition for a shot at that dream becoming a reality!

You can also directly donate to the campaign if you're feeling generous! Any support helps, big or small. You can do that right here through the official campaign link.

As part of our Bungie Day celebration, we've got a series of community fishing derbies for players to compete in for those that want to really dive deep into this Season's fun. To compete, Guardians will need to catch as many fish as possible within a given time frame. There will be five fishing derbies, which will be one hour each, spread out throughout the day to help you find a good time to participate:

• Alpha Derby at 2 AM PST at 2 AM PST
• Bravo Derby at 6 AM PST at 6 AM PST
• Charlie Derby at 10 AM PSTat 10 AM PST
• Delta Derby at 2 PM PSTat 2 PM PST
• Echo Derby at 6 PM PSTat 6 PM PST

The top three scorers from each of the five derbies will be highlighted in next week's TWID as well as receive a special Bungie Foundation Digital Prize Pack that contains the following items:

• Heartful Shell Exotic Ghost, fully equipped with heart bubbles galore.
• Blue Blood Cells, this year's Bungie Day Giving Festival emblem.
• Helium Hearts, give your bestie something to lift their spirits.
• Bungie Day emblem bundle. Every Bungie Day emblem released over the past five years.

If one person wins multiple derbies, we will award the next highest scorer. With the Lucky Perk that went live at reset this week, you'll have a chance to catch double the number of Exotic fish while scoping out your favorite hot spots for some chill time. Ready to tally up? Here's what you need to know on the scoring:

• Junk = 0 points
• Uncommon = 1 point
• Rare = 2 points
• Legendary = 5 points
• Exotic = 20 points

Oh, and did we mention increased reputation gains across the board for Rituals until July 11? Because that's pretty sweet too.

The Bungie Store has wares if you have engrams. The Bungie Store will be kicking off its big Bungie Day sales event on July 7. You'll have exactly one week to browse the goods to see what you like! Fancy adding to your collection? We'll have some sweet, sweet collectibles up to grab. Want to refresh that lewk? We get it; net yourself some new apparel while you're at it.

For anyone that shops the store during the Bungie Day weeklong sale, you'll also get a free Bungie Day-themed emblem too. Just make sure you add scoop up desired drop before July 13, otherwise, you'll miss out on emblem goodness and some sick sales. Oh, before we forget, we'll also be featuring a massive restock of previously retired Bungie Rewards for anyone that is eligible and may have missed out the first go around.

Follow @BungieStore on Twitter and Instagram if you're looking for some more details. And because we all know I'm eternally five years old in spirit and am overly obsessed with replicas and collectibles of any kind, here's a little sneak peek, as a treat: This week, the remaining few units of the NERF LMTD Gjallarhorn blaster are on sale for one week only before this limited edition Gjally of glory sells out!

Planning your own Bungie Day celebration? Whether it's showing off your epic collection, most treasured screenshots, or player creations (Hello, #Emblematic, fancy seeing you here), be sure to share and tag the @Destiny2Team, @DestinytheGame, @Bungie accounts so we can continue celebrating together!

Sloane Dropping Those Knowledge Bombs in Perfect Cutscene Form

Not that I'm a fan of dramatics, per se, but last week's cutscene broke me in the best way, and judging by your reactions, I'm far from alone. Sloane is a total badass and what's next is going to be one heck of a wild ride. For anyone who wants to revisit an intense moment ala Sloane, Zavala, and Ahsa - or anyone who may have missed it entirely and doesn't mind spoilers, check out the cutscene below. And don't be shy, hit us with your best theories about what's coming next for Season.

And on that note, time for some revelations:

Get Your Mid-Season Weapons Preview Update Here

You get a weapons update; you get a weapons update—everybody gets a weapon update. It's that time again, time to prep for the mid-Season weapon update. If you missed the full breakdown earlier this week, you can scope out that delectable pew pew goodness right here. Here's a brief recap and a short message from the team:

Weapons Team: For Season 21's mid-Season patch, we wanted to address a few weapons and perks that have been over- or underperforming in Crucible leading up to the larger set of changes coming in Season 22. We also wanted to respond to feedback that the Shayura's Wrath ADS reticle was difficult to use, and that Graviton Lance has felt like it lacks a punch in PvE content. If you missed the article from earlier today, we've got a TL;DR below for you that briefly summarizes the changes:

• Pulse Rifle nerfs (including NTTE and Graviton Lance).
• Graviton Lance PvE damage buff.
• Lightweight Bow buffs.
• Lightweight Shotgun buffs.
• Changes to Shayura's Wrath reticle.
• Fighting Lion's Chimera perk fixed.
• Target Lock nerfed in PvP, Gutshot Straight, and Slickdraw buffed.
• A look at balance changes in Season 22 and beyond.

As always, we'd love to hear your thoughts on what Exotic weapons or weapon archetypes you would want to see buffed in future Seasons, so let us know on Twitter or Reddit what your top three list would be!

How do we balance weapons?

We've talked about this before, but we thought this would be a good opportunity to dive a little deeper into the metrics we use when we balance the weapon sandbox. As mentioned previously, we use a mix of personal experience, playtest feedback, community feedback, sentiment, and usage and effectiveness when we decide how we should handle a weapon that is over- or underperforming. The first handful of those are self-explanatory, but we have never really gone in-depth as to how we define a weapon's performance in the Crucible. As far as the data goes, we have five main things we look at that answer specific questions:

1. Usage - What percent of total time in Crucible games do players have this weapon equipped?
2. Kills - What percent of all weapon kills in Crucible come from this weapon?
3. Win Rate - Do players who have this weapon equipped win their games at a higher rate than players with other weapons equipped?
4. Kills Per Minute - How many kills do players with this weapon equipped get in a minute of gametime compared to other options?
5. Kills Over Expected - Given the above data, and filtering for things like player skill, game mode, subclass, ammo type, date range, controller input method, weapon slot, etc. is a specific weapon or type of weapon getting more or fewer kills than would be expected?

While we look at everything listed above, we focus most heavily on Kills Over Expected (KOE), which blends the data into a single easily understood percentage value. Low usage weapons can have highly variable KOEs, but as usage increases and more of the given population slice utilizes a weapon, we want to see KOE normalize.

Below, you can see a chart of our Kills Over Expected metrics for the last month for primary weapons in high-skill PvP lobbies across all platforms with all input types. As you move towards the right side of the chart (usage time increases), we want to see weapons get closer to the 0% KOE level on the Y-axis, which means they are performing as expected. You can see that The Messenger (Adept), No Time To Explain, Graviton Lance, and The Immortal (Adept) are currently slightly elevated above where we'd like them to be for their current usage levels compared to weapons further to the left, hence us taking a pass at what may be allowing them to outperform their peers (Aim Assist, Range, Target Lock, etc.) As an example, in Season 19, Dead Man's Tale was at 60% KOE with 4.5% usage, leading us to issue a hotfix and bring it more in line with expectations. As a note, KOE is not a one-size-fits-all metric. Certain weapons, in particular support weapons or weapons like Le Monarque, must be evaluated separately as their effectiveness is not tied to their ability to kill Guardians directly.

We hope this has been an interesting and educational insight into how we work on weapon balance, and we're sure we will have more to share in the future!

Iron Banana: Long Live Salad Fingers

You know the drill; another week—another Iron Banner. Heads up that if you want that wolfy new emblem, this is your final shot at snagging it this Season. So, get out there and kick butt; Saladin would want you to.

This week's rotation: Fortress (Zone Control)

One Fish, Two Fish, Exotic Fish, Pin Fish

Sometimes, you just need to get out to a good spot, don your best Guardian fashion, and just chill away the stress with a nice bout of fishing. For those fishers that are dedicated to the art of casting the perfect line, you may want to peep the new Exotic Angler pin set, a Bungie rewards offer on the Bungie Store that can be purchased once you've achieved greatness*

**Earned the Exotic Angler Triumph.

Live now, you can snag a set of five pins, including four Exotic fish and one hook. So, go ahead and relax on the shore, cast your line, and build your fish collection with this spiffy collectible item right here.

To Witherhoard or not to Witherhoard, Either Way It's Gonna Look Awesome

Earlier this year, we rolled out the results of the next weapon to get the community-voted ornament treatment. With a whopping 45% of the vote, Witherhoard took out both Izanagi's Burden and Thunderlord. The next step, then, was to get with our chosen community artist to start working on some spiffy designs to consider. Well, the time is now, so go ahead and give these lovely designs a gander and prepare to vote. Make sure to keep an eye out for that email. Having trouble receiving emails? Check out this article here for the updated process of getting emails, or you can simply bookmark this link here, which will go live tomorrow at 1 PM PST. Whatever works best for you.

Enough yapping though, am I right? Let's look at the created designs to get a head start on voting, which goes live on July 7:

Just a quick reminder, here's a quick recap of the process. As soon as you all pick the concept and it's ready to go into production, it's going to take some time to move through our content pipeline, so we want to let you know upfront that the ornament won't appear in Destiny 2 until The Final Shape. Yeah, we know... that might seem like a long way off with no set date in place, but we're glad you can be along for the ride on this one.

Player Support Report

The Witness Wants me, fish fear me

It's time for our Player Support heroes to do their thing and provide their latest update on what players need to know about the immediate pipeline, including a reminder about Cross Save and known issues that are being worked on.

This is their report

Known Issues List | Help Forums | Bungie Help Twitter

CROSS SAVE REMINDER

Deactivating Cross Save will result in an unskippable 90-day deactivation cooldown period prior to players being allowed to re-enable it.

Please double-check that the correct platform accounts are linked and the correct characters are selected as your active Cross Save prior to enabling the feature. For more information on Cross Save, please click here.

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:

• Defeating Unstoppable Champions too quickly during the intro to the PsiOps Battleground: Moon Nightfall can result in missing revive tokens as well as players earning a lower than expected reward tier.
• Altar of Reflections memories may not appear centered when viewed.

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.

Have Forklift, Will Travel—Now With Ambition

Hippy: Ever wanted to become "forklift certified" in Destiny 2? Well, don't let those dreams be dreams, friend, because we've got info on exactly how to do that courtesy of this week's #Destiny2MOTW pick.

Movie of the Week: Forklift Certified

Sam: Who loves a good montage? We love a good montage. As a non-PvP player (you can normally find me looking for regional chests or reviving my partner after he falls off a ledge) it just blows our minds to see players do things like this. The movement, the editing, the energy — it sure is something neat to see.

Movie of the Week: Ambition

We Stan Eris Morn in This House

Bruno: Eris Morn. Isn't she the best? An unbreakable ally, an outstanding teacher and a powerful warrior. To this day, I still feel uneasy when she looks at my Guardian. Not because of the three eyes, but because there's something behind them, I still can't fathom. But I feel it, something as pure and potent as moonlight.

Art of the Week: The Witch by @Wrigglewyrm via Twitter

Ivan: Ivan: This art has a poetic touch—just like near the end of older movies, when the hero gets their ultimate power (Strand) and is fighting the villain while snow (or rain) is everywhere. I'm glad I don't need to count the number of eyes in this illustration—I would fail anyway. Congrats on the win!

Art of the Week: "Before you die, you will see only twelve red eyes" by @Canny_paragon via Twitter

Also, just as a reminder: don't forget to include your Bungie.net profile links in your submissions and use #Destiny2AOTW and #Destiny2MOTW for your submissions.

And that's another week of TWID in the books. Don't forget, we're still keeping an eye out for #Emblematic submissions, be sure to tag the @Destiny2Team account for some additional visibility.

As we continue makin' our way downtown, walkin' fast, the Witness's many faces passed, and we're Final Shape bound; just a friendly reminder to make sure you're drinking your water, prioritizing self-care, and always leading with your kindest foot forward. We'll see you next week, friends.

"I should go,"

<3 Hippy