Happy TWIDsday, Guardians! This week in Destiny we have a save-the-date, a mid-Season preview with some Crucible info, the winner of our Witherhoard community vote, and more! Let's get started with what we talked about last week and then get into the new stuff.
Last week we had:
This week we have:
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The Bungie Day Giving Festival enters week two and the Bungie Foundation has some exciting things in store. But first, we are making the last call on emblem submissions for the Bungie Day Giving Festival emblem competition. Submissions are due by 12 AM PT tonight, July 13. Full details on the contest can be seen here and don't forget to tag your art with #Emblematic.
Now on to the goodies. Prize week kicks off today and the first item up for grabs is a signed Lightfall Collector's Edition. Any donation (minimum $1 USD) received from 7/13 10 AM PT until 7/14 09:59 AM PT will receive an entry* to win today's prize. Each day we will have a new prize to earn, and you can see the full schedule below.
| July 13 | Signed Lightfall Collector's Edition |
| July 14 | Destiny Plush Bundle |
| July 15 | Drifter Collectible Bundle |
| July 16 | Lord Shaxx Statue |
| July 17 | Variks Statue |
| July 18 | Witch Queen Statue |
| July 19 | Sony PlayStation Game Code Bundle |
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Don't forget that each day you enter, you will receive an additional entry into the grand prize drawing. Meaning, you can earn a maximum of seven entries for the grand prize: a signed Lightfall Collector's Edition, a signed The Final Shape Collector's Edition, a copy of The Final Shape Deluxe Edition, and a PlayStation game code bundle.
*Full rules for contest entries can be viewed here. Maximum one entry per day, per prize. Only residents of US and Canada (ex-Quebec) eligible for prizing).
It's not quite time for the mid-Season Update, that's coming 7/18, but today we have two patch notes we managed to sneak away with.
Speaking of the Crucible, let's hear from the Dev team and see what we have coming up.
Hi Crucible Fans,
Following on from our Lightfall Crucible blog a few months ago, we have a few updates around Season 21 mid-Season!
Back when we launched Season of the Deep, we made a couple of tuning changes to the Crucible that missed the patch notes. Many of you have called out the respawning changes (we have some additional changes coming soon), but the second change has gone mostly uncommented upon so we wanted to let you know what has changed.
We made a number of adjustments to Control and Clash respawn logic. All Crucible respawn points are evaluated on a number of factors: proximity and sightline to enemy players and owned objectives, as well as proximity to friendly players and owned objectives. Previously in Control (and many other objective-based modes) it very strongly weighted friendly objectives (good) and enemy sightlines/proximity (bad).
With a goal of helping players get back into the action quicker on some of the larger maps and reduce the "I usually spawn in the backfield" feeling in Clash-style modes, we reduced the importance of friendly objectives and enemy sightlines, and increased the importance of friendly players. Ideally players would spawn near other friendly players, but safely. In testing, this seemed to work well on a variety of maps, but it's hard to replicate the chaos of real 6v6 matches and, as many players noticed, we turned the influence of enemy player sightlines down too far. This causes a number of problems that many players reported (you can often spawn in the middle of a firefight, and spawn trapping is easier on many maps). This also led to a sharp increase in the number of matches ending in a Mercy.
In the first hotfix after the mid-Season patch (coming next week), we are going to be increasing the influence of enemy player sightlines and proximity back to where it was before. Ideally, we keep some of the benefits, like spawning nearer to active engagements without the downsides of spawning in in the middle of a fight! We will keep an eye on feedback and analytics over the coming weeks and continue to adjust as needed.
The other major change we implemented in Season of the Deep was an adjustment to how we placed players in Competitive Division matches. Previously (as discussed in the blog post here), we matched players purely based on their skill, and throttled the amount of division points won or lost based on the how far above or below your skill is from your "target skill". While pure skill-based matchmaking may produce the fairest matches for players, it also diminishes the experience of climbing the ranked ladder. A player who only just completed their placement series shouldn't immediately face off against the highest (or lowest) ranked players, regardless of their skill.
Thus, in Season 21, Competitive 3v3 match making rating (MMR) is calculated based on both rank and skill, with the goal being to improve the ladder-climbing experience while maintaining competitive integrity and match fairness. So, if you are near your target skill, you will match at your rank rather than skill. We limit how far above or below your target skill you match, so if your skill marks you as an Ascendant player, for example, you will never be considered below Adept, no matter what your current rank is. The same goes for if you are above your target skill— you will never be considered more than one major rank above your target skill.
A few changes are we considering for a future season:
1. Adjusting the rank → skill limiting so that it doesn't limit at all if you are above your target skill.
2. Loosening up on the division points throttling we do if you are too far above/below your target skill.
Finally, we have a quick update on a feature we discussed in a TWAB a while back: Dynamic Skill Ranges. This is a feature designed to equalize matchmaking pools during low population times, or in low population skill brackets. We built this feature back in Season 19, but there were some issues preventing us from turning it on and getting good data. We finally found a window to turn it on at the start of Iron Banner a few weeks ago... and promptly broke all matchmaking, so we immediately turned it back off.
We are fixing the bugs we found and are doing another round of intense testing on it but are hoping to redeploy it in a future season.
That's all for now but stay tuned in the coming weeks. We have some exciting reveals coming before Season 22.
It's time! Time to share the winner of the community voted ornament for Witherhoard.
[drum roll]
Thank you for voting! Make sure you sound off on socials if you want us to keep doing things like this and what weapons you want to see ornaments for.
We also want to give a shout out to Nine Rivens for doing such an incredible job on all of these concepts. Make sure you are following her over on Twitter and check out the rest of their work! For an added treat, tune in on Friday for a special edition Community Focus with the artist herself.
If you are one of the Guardians running around with your Wicked Implement glued to your side, we have some information for you regarding the catalyst. When designing catalysts, our teams aren't there to create something you need to get, but something to entice you to let your weapon achieve its full potential. So, with that, here is some more info from the Weapons team themselves.
The main thing we wanted to facilitate is getting you into a rhythm with your precision hits. Refilling the magazine when collecting a shard accomplishes that, letting you continue aiming down sights to chain precision damage, but adding mag overflow with the catalyst lets you extend that even further, especially when picking off red bars in between damaging stronger targets and collecting the shards when they return to you.
Being able to potentially slow targets with a Primary weapon in the PvP neutral game is already kind of spicy, which is why we tuned the perk so a single target would either be dead or close to it by the time you start slowing them. (If you switch targets when outnumbered, however...) The perk works with any Stasis shard though, so if you're running a Stasis subclass you'll rarely have to reload.
We also heard feedback on the base weapon and have a few buffs on the way! Among other things, we were cautious with the timing window for Creeping Attrition, but we're looking at adjusting that in the future. Keep an eye out for that!
Next week we have Solstice coming back! Team up with others, gather those Silver Leaves, and celebrate with sweet Eva Levante! It is a party after all.
Is this your first Solstice? Every year we get together and celebrate our achievements, what civilization will become, and how we will get there. After chatting with our favorite grandma, Eva Levante, you will head on over to the EAZ (European Aerial Zone) and fight against waves of enemies to earn rewards and Silver Leaves. There is more to it, but that's the TL;DR. Get ready to get out there, Guardians!
Before the event starts, we want to give you a quick refresher on the basics of how armor upgrading works in Solstice and tell you a bit about some upcoming changes to Solstice and some new buffs we created.
Last year, we streamlined the armor upgrade process for all classes. This year, we worked on the enemy density and overall difficulty of the Bonfire Bash. You will find out that you must work a little harder to light the bonfire. Also, we are implementing two new buffs to mix it up even further.
During Solstice, you can chase down a desired roll on your armor. Looking for 100 Discipline for the best grenade builds or are you in the need for some more Recovery to have better survivability in Crucible? If you've ever wanted to fine tune, Solstice is your time to shine!
Upgrading your Solstice armor requires finding and spending Silver Leaves, Silver Ash, and Kindling. Here's how to get them:
Silver Leaves
Silver Ash
Kindling
Remember you only need to do this once per armor slot. Every time you upgrade a piece of Solstice armor, it is permanent and shared across all Solstice pieces for that armor slot. So, if you upgrade a helmet all the way to tier-3, every Solstice helmet currently in your inventory and any future helmets you earn for that class can now access tier-3 stat rerolls.
The new Solstice armor sets feature both free and paid glows like previous years. And just like last year, fully upgrading a piece of armor with kindling will cause it to glow.
And without further ado, here is the new Solstice armor:
Oh, and here is a little preview of the first ever Strand Rocket Launcher that will be earnable during Solstice:
We sent you out with the task of catching fish, and we are pretty sure you caught all of them. We are so excited to announce the results of the Bungie Day fishing tournament. Our top fisher overall was Arladouc with the top score of 660 points! Special shout out to Mafia who not only one the Delta Derby, but also caught the most Exotic fish overall with 10. There are also 11 players who can tell big fish stories now that they've caught the maximum-sized fishys at a chunky 80Kg. Here are the full results!
Alpha Derby:
Bravo Derby:
Charlie Derby:
Rampage - 483
Delta Derby:
Echo Derby:
Rock ship best ship.
There is no terrible poem writing from me this week, but the Player Support team is back and ready to share the bugs and known issues we're aware of.
Known Issues List | Help Forums | Bungie Help TwitterEMBLEM OWNERSHIP REMINDER
Starting with the launch of Season of the Deep, emblem ownership values were updated. For security purposes, players who have emblems on their account that do not appear in their Collections (Collections-Flair-Emblems-General) will no longer be able to equip these emblems, and players will no longer be able to see these emblems if they are still equipped. Those who are affected by this change will need to reacquire these emblems through proper means by unlocking them in their Bungie.net profiles or on their platform if they wish to continue using them.
Additionally, pre-order and Collector's Edition-specific emblems will be restricted to use on the platform that owns those licenses. If you acquired one of these emblems on one platform but are now playing on another platform, you must play on the original platform to use these emblems.
Players who have emblems unlocked on their Bungie.net accounts and platforms are unaffected by this change.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:
- Due to an issue, we have temporarily disabled the Utility Kickstart armor mod.
- The Child of the Old Gods Aspect is not providing ability energy or health as expected.
- 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.
- Some players are unable to acquire new Trials of Osiris rewards.
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.
Bruno: Cool sisters trying to reconnect while saving the world? Yep. Mean grandpa that hates everyone and that is hated by everyone? S'. Badass godlike war machine stepbrother that speaks with a thick accent? да. This would certainly be an amazing anime.
Movie of the Week: The Bray Sisters
🚨NEW ART🚨 Destiny 2 Anime Ending - "Sisters".@Bungie @DestinyTheGame#Destiny2 #Destiny2Art #Destinythegame #seasonofthedeep #destiny2MOTW #destiny2AOTW #Destiny2lightfall #CLIPSTUDIO #aftereffects #premirepro pic.twitter.com/lJ5lB3yOy5
— Patrick Garcia |🖖🎨📷 (@patgarci) July 3, 2023
Bonus Movie of the Week: A Real Kinderguardian
Sam: Sometimes the Witness brings you knowledge you've been craving. Sometimes all you catch are carp. It's called balance.
Art of the Week: They Desire structure.
Bonus Art of the Week: At least it's a carp.
"They desired meaning. Structure. A "Winnower"...to shape the garden..."#Destiny2 #Destiny2Art #Destiny2AOTW pic.twitter.com/XmFnPekPcL
— knightlight (@knightscendant) July 8, 2023
Some days luck just isn't on your side, but I've come to love my aquarium full of carp.#Destiny2Art #Destiny2AOTW pic.twitter.com/8breXxVi6R
— ANIVI🍃🍂 (@anivi_art) July 3, 2023
Alright Guardians, that's it for this week's TWID. Well, almost, two more things.
One, we want to remind you that this is the last week Hung Jury is in rotation in the Nightfalls. Dead Orbit sure did know what they were doing when they made this weapon, so make sure you go snag one!
And second, it's getting closer, the Destiny 2 Showcase will be here before you know it. Be sure to tune in to our Twitch or YouTube channel on August 22 at 9 AM PT.
Okay, now that is all we have for this week. We're five Tuesdays away from Season 22, so plenty of time to wrap up any titles, Triumphs, or shenanigans you want to finish before the next Season. Make sure you're taking care of yourselves and we will see you next week pals.
Stay Crafty,
Sam
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