Some Bungie Dev Comments. (Destiny)

by INSANEdrive, ಥ_ಥ | f(ಠ‿↼)z | ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ| ¯\_(ツ)_/¯, Sunday, August 07, 2022, 22:00 (628 days ago)

Alright. Why am I posting so late? TL;DR; If you find gold on the ground, pick it up. Furthermore, sharing is caring and lots of fun.

As I'm writing this, it is indeed quite late in the evening. I was about to go to bed and finish a chapter, but NO! You know what I said? I said, "I wonder what's on r/DestinyTheGame". And, you know what? I DON'T.-KNOW.-WHY! But, there I was, on the fourm, and I see "Forget Classy Restoration. I'm going to miss Revitalizing Blast and Solar Fulmination." with Bungie Employ comments. (NOT THAT I'M JEALOUS ABOUT THAT OR ANYTHING! ;_;)

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CLASSY RESTORATION - Legendary / Class Item Mod
Activating your Solar class abilities grants you restoration.
Requires 6 of ANY energy

REVITALIZING BLAST - Legendary / Class Item Mod
Stunning a Champion causes it to ignite and clears your shield stun.
Requires 4 of ANY energy

SOLAR FULMINATION - Legendary / Class Item Mod
Your ignitions do increased damage in an increased radius.
Requires 3 of ANY energy
- - - - - - -

So I jump in and I see this:

jryniec - Suppressive Darkness, Particle Deconstructor, Oppressive Darkness, Breach and Clear. I think every time the community says how much they are going to really miss a certain artifact mod, Bungie has hit a home run. I love that they can make something over powered and fun because it’s going away.

v33n - This guy gets it.

v33n here is the Bungie Employee. Naturally, I find myself asking, "What does this good gentle sir do?"

Well, that answer may become apparent after I copy and paste everything. WHY? Well... now that this game (and this studio, frankly) is so big now that the trashiest of manchildren are staking, death-threatening, and being all around the worst humanity has to offer to not just devs but their families too (as I understand it), super interesting information/conversations with Bungie Devs have been far more scarce as of late while Bungie figures out the best course of action to deal with all of this... bleh.

But apparently, a few months ago, this good sir dropped some VERY interesting (and reafirming) takes on what he is doing and why he is doing it. IT'S GOLD JERRY! GOLD! I missed this. Maybe you missed it too? And we shouldn't, it's too jam packed.

Yeah, I could go and just link the thread; "I will never understand why The Stag gets different resist values for both PvE and PvP, gets different cooldowns when critically wounded in PvE vs PvP, but Renewal Grasps just got universally nuked across the game with no care given." ...but it's not the easiest way to read v33ns comments. Helping is fun too.

As you may have gathered from the title, it's a salty thread about the very-much-needed nerfs that Renewal Grasps received. And so, here is how this is going to work. I'm going to repost his words here, no quote formatting. I'm going to try and make this as easy to read as possible, with links to each comment. I'm not bringing over EVERYTHING, just the particularly interesting bits. There may be also some edits in the comment ordering, for clarity (not darkness) reasons.

Cool? Cool. (Yes yes, I know I know... I spoil you all. ;D)

So then, take it away good sir!

(ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ*:･ﾟ✧ ✧ﾟ･: *ヽ(◕ヮ◕ヽ)

v33n: Hey all, Armor Feature Lead here. I'll give some insight into these changes in a bit, but first, I'd like to clarify: It actually is different in PvE vs PvP.

Emphasis mine:

• The outgoing damage penalty applied to players affected by a Renewal Grasps’ Duskfield Grenade has been reduced from 50% to 20%.
  
• Damage unchanged vs. PvE targets.

Nerfs are never going to be popular, but this change was a collaborative effort between Armor and Abilites / Combat Systems. Combat Systems was concerned that the amount of DR granted was too high given the uptime of the grenade. The additional DR granted by Renewal Grasps is only 15%. Most of the DR comes from combining it with Whisper of Chains (25%) AND when the incoming damage is also being reduced by the other perk on Renewal Grasps (50%).

The emotional core of the exotic is that the Hunter can make tactical decisions about area denial and/or reinforcement. Design intent was that there were two parts to that: My allies and I are stronger while we are within the zone, and my enemies are weaker when within the zone. When both were true, it was outrageously stacked against the enemy for a truly daunting amount of durability for the wielder. This proved to be a lot of fun in PvE, including Master+ content, and was strong but not completely absurd in PvP playtests. Our playtests can never be an accurate representation of the aggregation of all of your games, but as happens occasionally, we were further off than we expected, and many players were having unfun experiences fighting against the Grasps in the Crucible.

The suite of changes we decided on preserved the 15% DR granted by the Grasps, as that was the primary intended use case. We left the MASSIVE outgoing damage reduction in PvE as that was not leading to negative experiences and was also essential to it's draw in PvE, especially endgame content. We were then left with the question of uptime. I was convinced by my colleagues that the use case was similar enough to Bleak Watcher to warrant a similar cooldown treatment. While it doesn't radically transform the effect, it does deny an area with threat of freezing, protect allies, damage enemies, and provide an area of increased relative safety.

Finally, if you want to use RG and Duskfields, you don't have to wait for the entirety of the base cooldown for the nade to come back. There are a ton of options available from among stat mods, ability energy mods, Fragments, and weapon perks to get that ability back quicker (with even more in PvE).

edit: to further answer "but why ding the CD so hard?":

Ultimately I left the specific number up to the subject matter experts on ability cooldowns, but I absolutely agree with where they're coming from.

The way I used RGs and the way I saw them used in testing was to throw them at a choke or to extend cover, then move to the zone and fight from there when on the offensive, or to throw it to an enemy position and fight them when they were weaker. The use case of waiting for an engagement and throwing it directly at the ground is a lot worse when the CD is the shortest of the bunch. It's easy to say "oh I won't fight this person in the Bad Place" when you can see said Bad Place, but if you want to engage a Revenant and you haven't seen them use the nade, it's rough when you basically have to assume they have it up at almost all times.

PlentifulOrgans: I'm sorry but everything you said that justifies this is talking about balancing from a PvP perspective, which isn't the issue here. The issue is that in order to achieve what you described in the crucible, you have made the exotic serve no purpose in PvE. Meanwhile the solution you give is to build better in PvE, which, as an armor lead, I'm sure you know we can't do because of the limitations around necessary mods, match game, and the shitshow that is orb generation.

What's doubly infuriating is that most of us have seen the sandbox lead on twitter talking about how this was a choice in order to preserve a feeling of synchronicity between PvP and PvE, not a technical necessity.

It is maddening to see you guys deliberately make a huge section of the game worse because of the crucible. If exotics are that much of a problem in PvP, turn them off in the crucible. I'd be willing to bet a lot that that would make the community overall happier.

v33n: It doesn't serve "no purpose", it just serves that purpose less often. We absolutely try to have things feel as close as is reasonable between the modes, and this was a large factor in the decision. Both because it's my job and because I truly love the game, I can assure you with complete sincerity that I never deliberately make the game worse :)

PlentifulOrgans: I don't for one second believe you have ill intentions, or that you wake up in the morning and ask "how can I make things worse?" And if we're being honest, I, like many here, are basically addicted to the game, in a good way :)

But on the receiving end of the changes, things feel worse.

As always, though, the reply is appreciated.

v33n: I am, too! I have almost every title, gilded to the max, and I can't wait for each season to drop. I hope everyone here understands how much time, thought, and effort we put into the game, for ourselves as players as well as devs.

- - -

The_Bygone_King: The reason Stag got a different nerf overall is pretty simple.

Renewal Grasps doesn’t provide inherent uptime to the grenade via energy regen. Renewal Grasps was originally designed around a grenade with an active recharge of 24 seconds at 10 Discipline, and so they were never created with grenade regen concepts in mind.

Since grenade regen was not inherent to the exotic, the only way to nerf uptime was to nerf the cooldown itself. The real way Bungie could have adjusted this exotic, was to provide some kind of method for regenerating your grenade energy while also directly nerfing the cooldown, IE: Extended cooldown, bur you get 50-75% of your grenade back on direct hit in PvE. That way you get comparative uptime on the exotic in the PvE experience while still preventing it from being oppressive in PvP

As for why the DR was never adjusted over cooldown, any form of DR on an area as large as duskfields are in PvP was going to be disruptive unless that DR was completely made irrelevant. Having a DR option on a 24s cooldown that also controls such a large portion of the map just isn’t healthy for the PvP experience.

The cooldown nerf was 100% justified, it just should have been compensated by adding an intrinsic exotic perk to the gloves themselves that returned energy, that way that energy return could be better controlled in the sandbox over a flat 24s cooldown.

v33n: This is a solid take. Just so you know, I actually DID consider refunding some grenade energy on direct hit, but that made it seem to similar to Osmiomancy and it also felt a little bit weird with the intent of the exotic (I'm supposed to throw the grenade at where the enemies will be or where I don't want them to go, but I only get energy back if I hit them directly?).

However, good insights!

- - -

dundlenut: bungie replied and all it screams is... We are right and the community is wrong. u/v33n thanks for confirming our beliefs.

v33n: This change was in response to community feedback, and everything we learn here impacts future decisions. I don't expect a response, but imagine for a moment that your job is to make things that make people happy in a game that they love, would you ever completely disregard what those people say?

Assume there are people who liked the exotic before and people who didn't. My goal with the original comment was to try to explain to the people in the former group who I'd be upsetting with the change why we did what we did.

- - -

SparksTheUnicorn: I'm sorry salty players are giving you a hard time instead of playing the game and realizing that the nerf isnt that bad

v33n: No worries. Players can only get this upset if they're invested enough for it to matter to this degree. It sucks to see that we upset a bunch of people, but the flipside of the coin is that our players REALLY CARE about this game. (and, to a lesser extent, it means that players liked my original design for RG, so I guess that's something?)

doritos0192: I think this is a very bad take in any business.

Releasing or modifying an existing product below customer expectations and saying it isn't that bad after all because an upset customer is a customer that at least cares about what you do. This reasoning justifies releasing bad products. If it's good they are happy, if it's bad...well, they care.

I say that in a meeting and people would fall off the chair.

v33n: This is not in defense of the content, this is in response to someone saying "I'm sorry that this behavior exists" and I'm saying "the behavior exists because we have passionate fans"

This is me not taking the salt personally because I know it's coming from people who care about the product, not saying "lol I'll just release bad stuff because it makes people mad and they'll engage"

- - -

h34vier: Thank you for the detailed response, it is appreciated and I wish we could see more like this /u/v33n .

While I completely agree the nerfs were necessary in PVP, like most, I feel like the massive CD nerf in PVE was completely unnecessary.

It went from being a fun, great feeling exotic to actually feeling worse than not using the exotic.

I'm pretty sure this is not what Bungie intended, but it is unfortunately the end result.

v33n: You're welcome! While we can tune certain things relatively easily between the two modes, core cooldown is not one of those things. You are correct that we certainly did not intend to make using the exotic feel bad. The power level in PVE is just as high as it was before, but now the uptime is lower. I understand that it has fallen down in the power rankings, but I believe it still has a place.

MtnDewX: I'm curious if this a policy decision aligned with Bungie's stated goal of keeping guns feeling the same across PvE and PvP (so only really tweaking damage values between the two modes)? Or is it a technical limitation of some kind?

(I realize you may not want to answer and give more fodder to folks, but guessing it's the former)

v33n: There actually isn't a one or the other answer here. Some things we can easily adapt between modes, some things we can't. We do strive for parity because it makes the game feel more cohesive, is easier for new players to pick up, and is easier to maintain. However, when something just can't work in one mode or the other for obvious reasons (Warmind Cells, etc), we make the call to let them drift apart.

- - -

EthioSalvatori: I appreciate your bravery coming to discuss this

I just feel that shattering a crystal was the biggest problem since it provided a ridiculous cooldown reduction before this nerf, changing the entire toolkit with no real investment other than equipping a single fragment and investing a decent amount of discipline. My tier 8 Discipline Duskfield had a cooldown as long as the duration of a ToW Duskfield had!

I agree that it was unnecessarily strong, but the pendulum swung a little hard in the other direction for PvE utility

What if the teams had agreed to reduce Duskfield cooldown to somewhere in the ballpark of 120 seconds base for cooldown (I forget what the grenade regen tiers are, forgive me)...

But in turn, down-tuned the effectiveness of Whisper of (Shards, I think) that provides a massive cooldown reduction just from shattering a crystal? This would affect all the Stasis subclasses and bring them all more in line and bring a more healthy, passive regen back to the Stasis subclasses instead of an active, near-mandatory fragment. Could even lower Glacier Grenades cooldown with this change :)

I know it's a long shot, but I'd like to at least hear thoughts from an experienced and knowledgeable source on the matter of Renewal Grasps' design. I really want to be able to use Stasis as a support option on my Hunter, considering its defensive toolkit around "freezing" and "slowing" enemies plays hand in hand with this amazing Exotic. It's gorgeous visually, the lore behind it is amazing given that Ada-1 designed it, and it changed how I looked at Stasis.

v33n: What else were you looking to hear about besides what was in the original comment? I was trying to carve out a new playstyle for Hunters that was based around support and area control, like miniaturizing Silence and Squall, that would be relevant in both PvE and PvP.

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chrom_ed: I just want to say we really appreciate you being willing to post these insights into the design process. I know not everyone is polite, and I hope you know the majority of us value your posts even if we don't agree with the outcome. Thanks.

v33n: