So, a bunch of people noticed today that Auto Rifles weren't doing any more damage in PVP. Most people figured this was a bug in the patch and we would see the promised 4-7% increases in damage.

NOPE.

Turns out the initial communication was wrong and the damage increases were ACTUALLY a tenth of that for all classes,

the patch notes have been updated as such.

Low RoF (Suros Regime, An Answering Chord): 0.3% increase from previous base damage
Med RoF (Zhalo Supercell, Paleocontact JPK-43): 0.7% increase from previous base damage
High RoF (Arminius-D, Necrochasm): 0.04% increase from previous base damage

Similarly, the Pulse rifle nerfs were off by a similar amount, but people seem to be noticing numbers above the stated amount. notably the Lyudmila D seems to have eaten a 19% damage reduction.

Supposedly we'll be getting clarifications in the weekly update. If I had to guess it's that the damage we see in integer format isn't the actual damage calculated, which is a floating point (number with a decimal). SO these super tiny numbers manage to cross some threshold and shave maybe 1 shot off the AR's bullets required to kill.

Either way, all around terrible communication. Even if those are working as intended, they built a set of expectations that aren't being hit. When discussing the patch, some acknowledgment that the visible numbers wouldn't match the final values would have helped.

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I wish they'd just say it was a mistake.

.04% change is virtually nothing. There's no way that would have any effect practically.

A 4% increase would multiply the damage by 1.04
A .4% increase would multiply the damage by 1.004
A .04% increase would multiple damage by 1.0004 which is basically a rounding error.

It's near impossible this was the intended value and the patch is working as planned.

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Urk: "A dubious, incorrect value was found in our patch notes. We're gathering details to clarify. No illuminati involved, as far as I can tell."

I wish they'd just say it was a mistake.

.04% change is virtually nothing. There's no way that would have any effect practically.

A 4% increase would multiply the damage by 1.04
A .4% increase would multiply the damage by 1.004
A .04% increase would multiple damage by 1.0004 which is basically a rounding error.

It's near impossible this was the intended value and the patch is working as planned.

On one hand, it seems weird,

On the other there's not really any reason for them to lie about it. It's not like they ahve some record of "NEVER BUGS IN DESTINY UPDATES" they need to protect or something.

The update tomorrow is supposed to have explanations for it.

On one hand, it seems weird,

On the other there's not really any reason for them to lie about it. It's not like they ahve some record of "NEVER BUGS IN DESTINY UPDATES" they need to protect or something.

The update tomorrow is supposed to have explanations for it.

Relevant Urk (again): ".@JordanScharff We're people and we can make mistakes. It's never gonna be perfect, but there's no spin or ill intent here."

I'm going to just speak in Urk Tweets from now on...:P

Of course, their QA team should have caught this immediately. Bungie, hire me for a week, fly me up to Washington, and I'll come fix your workflow and QA checklists. Your organization and/or team structure is failing you left and right. It's really disappointing.

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While I find this story implausible, as they had been citing numbers for weeks and someone should have caught it, I also remember it taking months before someone corrected Frankie on what BSP meant.

I think he called it Binary Separation Plane in like 12 straight Halo 2 updates.

It's certainly possible that this isn't indicative of anything internal. It's kind of a trend going back over 10 years to make consistent mistakes such as this. This one's a little different as it's in patch notes, but I don't think we should assume anything.

I wonder if this was a percentage vs. percentage points thing. It can be easy to miss the '.' after the % in an email, especially if you are unfamiliar with the notation or concept. I actually thought it was unclear what they meant by percent decrease in the update, since they didn't clarify the base value.

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Right. I'm sure they just updated the patch notes because people are still going to be finding their way to that page via searches and such. Better to update the original notes so when people find that page they get the correct info. Otherwise, people might see the old (wrong) numbers, not knowing there's a different set of corrected numbers out there somewhere.

If it was me, I'd probably put a note in there explaining that the article had been changed from its original form, though.

While I find this story implausible, as they had been citing numbers for weeks and someone should have caught it, I also remember it taking months before someone corrected Frankie on what BSP meant.

I think he called it Binary Separation Plane in like 12 straight Halo 2 updates.

I thought it stood for Blackstar Productions?

On one hand, it seems weird,

On the other there's not really any reason for them to lie about it. It's not like they ahve some record of "NEVER BUGS IN DESTINY UPDATES" they need to protect or something.

The update tomorrow is supposed to have explanations for it.

Relevant Urk (again): ".@JordanScharff We're people and we can make mistakes. It's never gonna be perfect, but there's no spin or ill intent here."

I'm going to just speak in Urk Tweets from now on...:P

So they intended to buff auto rifles essentially zero percent? The update talked about making them part of the meta again. If you think it was a decimal error, then all along they really meant "to bring auto rifles back into the current meta we're going to buff them by zero percent effectively".

They are not being straight.

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While I find this story implausible, as they had been citing numbers for weeks and someone should have caught it, I also remember it taking months before someone corrected Frankie on what BSP meant.

I think he called it Binary Separation Plane in like 12 straight Halo 2 updates.

Glad you mentioned this. I STILL think of Frankie whenever I hear people talking about BSPs!

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They still haven't fixed the typos:

https://www.bungie.net/en/News/News?aid=14016

In context, the values listed there make the most sense.

Based on that data, Autos are coming up a tiny bit to help them fulfill their intended role.

Because coming up effectively zero percent sure helps them fill that role.

Maybe the auto rifle changes were listed right but the pulse rifle changes were listed wrong?

Here's the Job Post for the replacement ;-)
link

Centimeters vs. inches. And then we spent millions of dollars launching it into space. And it didn't work because of, essentially, a clerical oversight.

Anyway, I worked in test for 13 years. These mistakes happen all the time. Someone says "4%", it gets written down as 0.04, someone else enters 0.04 into the database spreadsheet, the computer is programmed to read the number and turn it into a percentage, you end up with 0.04%.

This is why you need testers who are knowledgeable about coding and empowered to check the tools being used to make the game, and not just the game itself. I do not know whether or not Bungie has either of those things.

Centimeters vs. inches. And then we spent millions of dollars launching it into space. And it didn't work because of, essentially, a clerical oversight.

Anyway, I worked in test for 13 years. These mistakes happen all the time. Someone says "4%", it gets written down as 0.04, someone else enters 0.04 into the database spreadsheet, the computer is programmed to read the number and turn it into a percentage, you end up with 0.04%.

This is why you need testers who are knowledgeable about coding and empowered to check the tools being used to make the game, and not just the game itself. I do not know whether or not Bungie has either of those things.

Also, I might add, we are all human and sometimes we f$%& up.