Bungie Weekly Update - Jul 10 at 6:25:14 PM

This week at Bungie we're talking about Questlines as the new structure for your adventures.

As we observed on Bungie Day, the first year of Destiny has been amazing. Our shared journey has enriched us much more than just exciting moments, sweet loot, and new friends. We've also learned a lot about our game and the people who play it. Year Two isn't just a continuation of your fight against the Darkness. It's an evolution.

These things are best described by the people who design the experiences. It's my pleasure to yield the stage to Creative Director Luke Smith. He's talking fresh insights and packing them into The Taken King.

Special thanks to Senior Technical Artist Andrew Davis for the new User Interface art.

Luke: Hey everyone,

In the coming weeks and months, we're going to be using this space to look at some of the big changes coming in Destiny: The Taken King this Fall.

The first of these global changes we're going to talk about is how we're approaching Quests in Year Two.

In Year One, Exotic Bounty Chains (like Thorn and Bad Juju) ended up being something players really enjoyed (although the struggle to get Void Kills in Crucible was real). These Bounties took you on a journey through multiple activities -- which in the best cases had flashes of unique moments -- and ended with rewards players cared about. In many ways, these were the earliest tendrils of how we'd come to think about Quests in Destiny. Quests are an arrangement of activities and challenges that tell a story and represent a journey for the player.

We want Destiny to provide more experiences like that.

• Like the quest in The Taken King that has you construct your [REDACTED] or when you've found [REDACTED REDACTED] and can finish [REDACTED].
  

The implementation of Quests and Bounties in Year One was a foundation, but it was clear to us and the community that it was an area for improvement, especially if we wanted to rely on questing even more in Year Two.

The Taken King was built with Quests in mind, but we didn't want to ignore the Year One content in this global change. So as a part of this update, we've taken all Destiny content and - for lack of a better term - "questified" it.





Quests Page Highlights:

• We're increasing the number of Bounties players can carry
  
• Both Quests and Bounty slots will be tracked in the HUD
  
• Completed Bounties will be turned in from the Quests screen
  
• Reputations will be moved from Inventory to the Quests page
  

The 2.0 update includes a number of improvements for all Destiny players and in the coming weeks DeeJ and members of the Bungie team will continue to share them with you.

Count on it, Guardians. Guns, Balance, Progression, Destinations, Enemies... We'll unpack everything a hardcore player like you would want to know before launch.

And we'll have some help from our friends, too.

Moments on the Rise

Ever since we revealed Moments of Triumph (check your own progress here), a lot of you strutted your stuff on social media. We've seen a lot of completions. Congratulations to those of you who have met the challenge before we could even issue it.

Not everyone is ready to earn their trophy emblem on September 15th, though. Some of you were set scrambling back into the wild to forge your legends.

Comparing this week to last week:

• 39% increase in Public Event completion
  
• 74% increase in Skolas kills in Prison of Elders
  
• 40% increase in Crota's End Hard Mode participation
  
• 10% increase in Vault of Glass Hard Mode participation
  
  • (Everyone had already run it for Fatebringer)

Like many of you, I have some work to do. A pundit on Twitter noticed, and fired this missive directly across my bow:

"Can we get someone to be our community manager who is not just a casual fan?"

That hurt more than I would have thought. Filthy Casuals needs love, too. As much as the open shaming burned, I've decided to hunker down and accept the challenge. Each week, I'll check another box off my to-do list. Keep your eyes trained on your favorite LFG site. I might need some help.

White Gloves Inbound



Destiny Player Support rules our Help forum with iron fists clad in white gloves. Support might be their mission, but service is their style. This is the part of the Weekly Update that belongs to them.

DPS: Occasionally, we see reports on the Bungie.net #HELP forum of players losing their characters. We recognize how upsetting it is to potentially lose the character and gear you've put time into so we take these reports very seriously. It is our policy to investigate these cases to make sure characters aren't lost due to a bug or networking issue. In our investigations to this point, we have found that missing characters have been the result of manual character deletion. If your character is missing and you did not personally delete the character, please visit our Account Security Guide to help protect against unauthorized access. We will continue to investigate reports of missing characters, but unfortunately the result of the investigation may be that somebody with access to your account deleted your characters. More info on our character deletion policy here.

If you were one of the thousands of Bungie community members that helped show support for Nepal, your T-Shirts have been in the shipping process since late June. Due to the high volume of orders, it is taking longer than expected to fulfill. We have updated our Nepal Aid T-Shirt FAQ article with the most recent update.

Lastly, the Help forum is populated with an amazing crew of volunteer Mentors, Ninjas and helpful community members. We'd like to take this opportunity to thank them for their continued efforts. Be on the lookout for the recent addition of members sporting the Bungie.net Mentor tag. Witness them on the previously linked Help forum!

FraserBaws
Seraphim Crypto
TravisSch

Like all things at Bungie, player support is best executed in partnership with the community. Cheers, new Mentors. See you around the Welcoming Committee.

popcorn.gif

Before we darken the lights, we need to say one more time that this was a blast to make.

'Destiny Year One' was something we took with us to E3. It was the video that played at the end of a really long line. Members of our community who waited to play Destiny were entertained on the last mile by members of our community before they entered a space to be trained on the use of new Supers by (you guessed it) members of our community. We're fans of yours, Guardians.

There's waaaay too much awesome content created by this community to do it all justice. Doesn't mean we won't try. We have plans to do a better job of sharing the things you make and turning more of you into stars. Ready yourselves for the Destiny Year One Art Contest. We'll have prizes and glory to distribute on July 23rd. Along with some love.

As for the honors for this week. This made us laugh.

WINNER: Looks like you dropped something there...

I'm looking forward to meeting some more of you soon. Another Bungie away team is getting ready to go outbound and talk some more about The Taken King. I'm brushing up on my German, but I'm sure I'll be too shy to give it a try again. We're taking steps that lead to gamescom.

Perhaps we'll cross paths in K...ln, or even raise a toast to a great year as we look out over the Rhein.

That's weeks from now. All of us have more to look forward to before then. If you'll excuse me, I need to start gathering sweet artwork of heavy firepower from some new foundries for you to ogle and covet next week.

DeeJ, out.