The effects of Player Level in the Iron Banner

Now that another Iron Banner event is winding down, I wanted to talk about a few observations.

After the first Iron Banner event, Bungie tweaked the damage scaling so that player rank made more of a difference in terms of your ability to take and deal damage. At the time, I felt this change was good. I still think it was a good change, but I'm now starting to think that it wasn't enough of a change.

If my understanding of the Iron Banner damage system is accurate, then players within 2 levels of your current rank are effectively on even footing with you. If an enemy player is more than 2 levels above or below you, then the mismatch becomes apparent.

During this week's IB event, which I played every night of the week all the way up to Rank 5, I only encountered 1 player who was below level 30. Literally hundreds of opponents over the course of the week, and all but one of them were level 30-32. Since I myself was playing as a 31-32 character, the Iron Banner was essentially just standard crucible for me (not exactly, since the weapon balance is a tiny bit different, but pretty close).

This got me thinking: what else can be done to make the Iron Banner feel unique and special? How else can it distinguish itself from standard Crucible?

A fellow DBOer (was it Slycrel?) suggested the idea of elemental burns (similar to the ones added in the Nightfall missions). I dismissed the idea at first, but the more I think about it the more I think there might be something to this idea. What if every Iron Banner match featured a random elemental burn? Not as drastic as the PvE burns, of course, but a slight boost in elemental damage within the Crucible could be pretty cool. Having the burn change randomly from match to match could help encourage players to switch up their loadouts more often.

Another thought that did occur to me was that maybe the next IB should feature a different gametype. Perhaps Rumble, or introduce a new multi-team gametype? 3v3v3 slayer? Something that plays in to the "gladiatorial" feel of the event.

What do you all think?

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I don't think so to the burn suggestion.

It sounds like you are almost bummed that you didn't run into any lvl 10's to stomp on or something- to me that sounds like trueskill or bungie's mm system did a pretty good job of matching you up with players of your skill (not the lvl number that is displayed to you of course)

Having played several games of Iron Banner, I think it is working as advertised now.

Ideally, if you are a lvl 32 and your run into a lvl 20, you should be able to walk all over them. Of course, you honestly shouldn't HAVE those situations very much.That wouldn't be fun.

That means it should depend more on the level and perks of your weapons. Plain-jane crucible already lets you use your weapon perks, but balances damage levels across all players.

So in Iron Banner, say I'm using Mida, and I run into another player with Mida, we both see each other at the same time, and we both land all our head shots. Except my Mida is 3 damage nodes lower, and his is maxed out- He should beat me.

I think Iron Banner is more of a fantasy of what crucible could be.

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It sounds like you are almost bummed that you didn't run into any lvl 10's to stomp on or something- to me that sounds like trueskill or bungie's mm system did a pretty good job of matching you up with players of your skill (not the lvl number that is displayed to you of course)

Partially (;p) but not entirely. I'd like to go up against players that are both above and below me. As things are now, I CAN make that happen. I just need to buy and equip lower-rated armor. But I would rather see the damage scaling get polarized just a little bit more. I ran most of the Iron Banner as a 31 because I selected armor with a specific complimentary set of perks that I wanted. Since there is virtually no difference between a 31 and a 32, why not? Wouldn't it be more interesting if there was a tradeoff to such a decision. If choosing the best combo of perks meant being at a slight disadvantage to any 32s I came across? That way I could choose between having the exact set of perks I want, or more brute force.

And trueskill has ZERO relation to player level in Destiny (since, as you say, level has nothing to do with skill).

I would argue that the matchmaking actually does a pretty terrible job of matching players based on skill level. The number of times I've been the lone player on my team with a positive K/D, against an opposing team that just demolishes us... it happens the majority of games I play with randoms. It's horrible.

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I agree that there needs to be a more obvious difference derived from player level.

I use Praedith's Revenge in Iron Banner. It's fully upgraded, which gives it 300 attack power. This sniper rifle is a two shot kill in the body and a one shot headshot, which means it's the same as every other sniper rifle in IB in terms of damage. That simply should not be the case.

In a similar vein, the interaction of character level vs. weapon attack power seems to totally negate level advantages. If I understand how the systems interact correctly, your level only affects how high the attack power of the enemy weapon needs to be in order to deal full damage to you. The other character's level doesn't matter at all, aside from determining the attack power of his supers and grenades. So if a level 20 character has a 331 weapon, he's every bit as hard for a level 32 character as another 32 would be with that same gun, right? I've never shot a low level guy with my hand cannon and 1-shot him because he was so low. Rather, all enemies seem to take the same amount of damage, regardless of their level relative to mine.

I've noticed that if I equip a lower attack power gun, it will do less damage until I upgrade it, but getting an exotic to at least attack 300 (making it do equal damage to level 32 characters) is automatic... they start at attack 302 these days. And since Red Death was just sold by Xur last week, well, everyone is on equal footing this time around.

It's frustrating. "Bring your best gear" actually means "bring weapons of at least attack 300 and your armor doesn't really matter."

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This sniper rifle is a two shot kill in the body and a one shot headshot, which means it's the same as every other sniper rifle in IB in terms of damage.

You've described the situation in such warped terms that... wow.

Efrideet's Spear + final round = 1 shot kill on their toe.

EDIT:
1. You're wrong.
2. Why do think it should be different?

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This sniper rifle is a two shot kill in the body and a one shot headshot, which means it's the same as every other sniper rifle in IB in terms of damage.

You've described the situation in such warped terms that... wow.

Efrideet's Spear + final round = 1 shot kill on their toe.

EDIT:
1. You're wrong.
2. Why do think it should be different?

Okay, you're describing an extremely specific situation where you've also wasted spent two shots elsewhere, so in reality this is a three shot kill.

so 1: You're ignoring the intent of the post, which is normal bullet damage for a 300 attack sniper is effectively the same as a 331 attack sniper. A 300 Efreet's spear with final round would 1-shot with that last round just as well as a 331 version.
2: Because Bungie has stated that in the Iron Banner your gear matters. But that doesn't seem to be the case. A 300 weapon is equally effective to a 331 weapon as far as I can tell.

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This sniper rifle is a two shot kill in the body and a one shot headshot, which means it's the same as every other sniper rifle in IB in terms of damage.

You've described the situation in such warped terms that... wow.

Efrideet's Spear + final round = 1 shot kill on their toe.

EDIT:
1. You're wrong.
2. Why do think it should be different?

Okay, you're describing an extremely specific situation where you've also wasted spent two shots elsewhere, so in reality this is a three shot kill.

It's a counter-example. You calling it a 'three shot kill' still leaves that status unaffected.

'Number of shots to kill' on it's own is just such a warped, narrow, way of looking at it so as to be pointless.

so 1: You're ignoring the intent of the post, which is normal bullet damage for a 300 attack sniper is effectively the same as a 331 attack sniper. A 300 Efreet's spear with final round would 1-shot with that last round just as well as a 331 version.

2: Because Bungie has stated that in the Iron Banner your gear matters. But that doesn't seem to be the case. A 300 weapon is equally effective to a 331 weapon as far as I can tell.

Right, it was designed in the way that gear close to the maximum would behave similarly. Gear still very much matters outside that narrow range at the very top. Light level affects the damage grenade, melee and supers do. I've tried dropping to 29 and suddenly my grenades didn't quite kill when I expected them to.

Try a 242 Attack rare-tier weapon next time you're in IB.

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This sniper rifle is a two shot kill in the body and a one shot headshot, which means it's the same as every other sniper rifle in IB in terms of damage.

You've described the situation in such warped terms that... wow.

Efrideet's Spear + final round = 1 shot kill on their toe.

EDIT:
1. You're wrong.
2. Why do think it should be different?

Okay, you're describing an extremely specific situation where you've also wasted spent two shots elsewhere, so in reality this is a three shot kill.

It's a counter-example. You calling it a 'three shot kill' still leaves that status unaffected.

'Number of shots to kill' on it's own is just such a warped, narrow, way of looking at it so as to be pointless.

You are completely missing my point. Take any gun at 300 attack power in iron banner, and it is just as effective as a 331 version of that gun. You're comparing apples and oranges instead of looking at the actual issue I have here, which is that Iron banner is supposed to let your gear matter, but - as the OP said - the degree of change from one tier of gear to another is too small to be significant for most players. And number of shots to kill isn't "warped." There's no incentive to get a 331 weapon if you have a 300 weapon that you really like, because similar weapons take a similar number of shots to kill. There's no advantage bestowed by having a 331 weapon. If you have a 300 Efreet's Spear that has your beloved final round perk, guess what? It's a 1-shot kill with that final round in today's level 32 iron banner, and I don't think it should be. Below max level weapons should not be as effective in Iron Banner as max level weapons.

so 1: You're ignoring the intent of the post, which is normal bullet damage for a 300 attack sniper is effectively the same as a 331 attack sniper. A 300 Efreet's spear with final round would 1-shot with that last round just as well as a 331 version.

2: Because Bungie has stated that in the Iron Banner your gear matters. But that doesn't seem to be the case. A 300 weapon is equally effective to a 331 weapon as far as I can tell.

Right, it was designed in the way that gear close to the maximum would behave similarly. Gear still very much matters outside that narrow range at the very top. Light level affects the damage grenade, melee and supers do. I've tried dropping to 29 and suddenly my grenades didn't quite kill when I expected them to.

Try a 242 Attack rare-tier weapon next time you're in IB.

Again, you're missing the point. There should be a noticeable difference between level 32 and level 31, not just level 32 and level 29 and greater. It doesn't have to be massive, but you should notice a difference when you play at level 32 from when you play at 31. This far into the expansion, anyone who has been playing for a month or longer should easily be able to field at least 300 weapons, which pretty much negates the level differences of Iron Banner, making it basically the same as Control in the regular Crucible in terms of gameplay. You're saying "gear close to maximum" but that actually means "brand new and never upgraded exotics and raid weapons, as well as old pre-expansion weapons that are fully upgraded." Those guns simply should not be as competitive as post-expansion weapons that are fully upgraded to 331.

Personally, I'd like to see almost the opposite of what it is now: A steeper initial curve, that wasn't so bad later on. Maybe an inverted parabolic curve, where the difference between a 32 and 31 is big enough to require an extra shot from a 31 to kill a 32, and then the difference becomes less the further you go down, maxing out around 5 levels of difference, such that a level 20 and a level 27 are basically the same effectiveness against a level 32, but still quite a bit less effective than a 30 would be.

That would cause lower level players to, I think, feel less excluded from the event, and would still provide ample incentive to higher players to always bring their max level gear, and would also make max level players feel more powerful than they do now.

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I would argue that the matchmaking actually does a pretty terrible job of matching players based on skill level. The number of times I've been the lone player on my team with a positive K/D, against an opposing team that just demolishes us... it happens the majority of games I play with randoms. It's horrible.

On the other end of the spectrum, I see sub-30 players with some regularity. My limited experience when I play with more than a few DBOers is that we lose. (That might be my fault.) I don't know if that is because of disparate trueskill levels or what.

I've enjoyed Iron Banner for the most part--especially when I started using Bad Juju. I came very close to completing my Invective bounty, and got a 1.86 K/D once--a personal best with Destiny. When I played on my own, I won about every third or fourth game. I probably contributed to the horrible experience of our top-scoring player when we lost. I apologize to all you awesome players. I suck!

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Another thought that did occur to me was that maybe the next IB should feature a different gametype. Perhaps Rumble, or introduce a new multi-team gametype? 3v3v3 slayer? Something that plays in to the "gladiatorial" feel of the event.

ToO was supposed to be a sort of Iron-Banner-for-Skirmish, and assuming that ever gets released, it would somewhat provide that. This may be more of a gamemodes-for-PvP issue; we could really use more gamemodes in general.

Your 3v3v3 idea got me thinking on a tangent though. We already have 3 control points in control, and they've already shown they can move the locations of control points. How about 4v4v4 capture the flag? Defend a control point where your flag is located, and try to grab other teams' flags at their control points? That could be bonkers fun.

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I'll speak specifically to the player level advantages that I noticed.

- I was able to constantly one shot (body shot) lower level (27-29) players with my sniper and get the kill where I normally wouldn't.

- I was still able to be killed by lower level players on a fairly constant basis if they got the jump on me. I might have lasted slightly longer than normal.

- Seeing a level 22 go against level 32 players was really amusing. One match we had a level 22 who managed to get something like 2 kills and 14 assists or something like that. This could have been due to lack of skill but I'm betting more on being at a huge level disadvantage.

- Skilled players are still very skilled even when while being at a level disadvantage. I had a friend playing as a 29 who could still mop the floor with the other team.

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will never feel special to me, in any way

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It's a game mode based around the idea of "my gear is better than your gear". That's the point.

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It's a game mode based around the idea of "my gear is better than your gear". That's the point.

Maybe not the original point, more a curiousity: does anyone know if non-DLC owners can even play IB anymore? Or has it become DLC exclusive?

If it isn't DLC exclusive, it'd be nice for 32's to not have too great of an advantage over 29-30's. Just a thought.

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Non-DLC players can get into Iron Banner, can buy the rewards, and can easily be level 31 as well with just tower vendor gear. They can totally compete.

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Non-DLC players can get into Iron Banner, can buy the rewards, and can easily be level 31 as well with just tower vendor gear. They can totally compete.

I keep forgetting the Tower Vendors updated for Non-DLC purchasers.

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so basically, nothing of value for the thread...

I'll see myself out of it

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In future, I would definitely like to see a different game type introduced. This IB, I've found playing endless control to be mind-numbingly boring.

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I like the idea of some elemental burns, but perhaps a better one would be that a certain weapon type has a small increase to power (say 5%, and only for one match at a time). I like weapon type over burn because not everyone has attained a primary with each burn (I don't have an Arc primary).

As for level. I was playing last night as a 29 Titan (already got my hunter to 5 so why not) and the only people I struggled to take down were 32s. My shotgun would not one shot kill them like it had before, which meant I lost some of those battles when they, too had a shotgun. Even as a 29, I was consistently playing well, I had an evening with a 2.00 k/d and I think I know why.

TrueSkill is not a terribly accurate measure of skill because it heavily weights winning, which is not a skill/talent that an individual controls. I've played team sports my whole life and know what it's like to play a great game individually and lose horribly. Winning requires all team members to play well (or at least enough to make up for the worst). You can't control this at all. This is why you still get terribly unbalanced matches. A great player who plays with bad teams will still have a lower TrueSkill than is accurate for his or her abilities.

Personally, I think creating an algorithm that does not weight winning so heavily and K/D and KA/D more would be a better one. Positive k/d's almost guarantee you took more points from the other team than they took from you, which essentially is the key to winning. Get enough positive K/Ds and you win. That way, individuals with high K/D's would get ranked higher in TrueSkill and you would face people as adept at killing as you are.

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I like the idea of some elemental burns, but perhaps a better one would be that a certain weapon type has a small increase to power (say 5%, and only for one match at a time). I like weapon type over burn because not everyone has attained a primary with each burn (I don't have an Arc primary).

As for level. I was playing last night as a 29 Titan (already got my hunter to 5 so why not) and the only people I struggled to take down were 32s. My shotgun would not one shot kill them like it had before, which meant I lost some of those battles when they, too had a shotgun. Even as a 29, I was consistently playing well, I had an evening with a 2.00 k/d and I think I know why.

TrueSkill is not a terribly accurate measure of skill because it heavily weights winning, which is not a skill/talent that an individual controls. I've played team sports my whole life and know what it's like to play a great game individually and lose horribly. Winning requires all team members to play well (or at least enough to make up for the worst). You can't control this at all. This is why you still get terribly unbalanced matches. A great player who plays with bad teams will still have a lower TrueSkill than is accurate for his or her abilities.

Personally, I think creating an algorithm that does not weight winning so heavily and K/D and KA/D more would be a better one. Positive k/d's almost guarantee you took more points from the other team than they took from you, which essentially is the key to winning. Get enough positive K/Ds and you win. That way, individuals with high K/D's would get ranked higher in TrueSkill and you would face people as adept at killing as you are.

Some quick thoughts about what might be problematic with just using K/D:

-A player who kills 10 people a game and dies 5 times a game is not the same as a player who kills 30 people a game and dies 15 times.

-If this system worked perfectly, everyone would end up with a 1.0 K/D, which doesn't really solve the problem.

-Smurphing (intentionally feeding/afking/playing badly to end up in lower-skilled lobbies) would become a real issue.

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Some quick thoughts about what might be problematic with just using K/D:

-A player who kills 10 people a game and dies 5 times a game is not the same as a player who kills 30 people a game and dies 15 times.

-If this system worked perfectly, everyone would end up with a 1.0 K/D, which doesn't really solve the problem.

-Smurphing (intentionally feeding/afking/playing badly to end up in lower-skilled lobbies) would become a real issue.

Good points, so you need a formula that takes into account the quantity of kills, assists and deaths, as well as or instead of the ratio. I'm not suggesting eliminating winning altogether, as it can be a sign of teamwork. I'm just saying it shouldn't be weighted as heavily as it is.

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Some quick thoughts about what might be problematic with just using K/D:

-A player who kills 10 people a game and dies 5 times a game is not the same as a player who kills 30 people a game and dies 15 times.

-If this system worked perfectly, everyone would end up with a 1.0 K/D, which doesn't really solve the problem.

-Smurphing (intentionally feeding/afking/playing badly to end up in lower-skilled lobbies) would become a real issue.

Good points, so you need a formula that takes into account the quantity of kills, assists and deaths, as well as or instead of the ratio. I'm not suggesting eliminating winning altogether, as it can be a sign of teamwork. I'm just saying it shouldn't be weighted as heavily as it is.

Some hybrid of score and k/d might work. I still kind of want ranked playlists but we've had discussions here about how those probably wouldn't be very populated.

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My K/D is only about 1.08, yet I'm consistently near the top of the scoreboard (at least when I play by myself - it's a bit different when you have a highly skilled team of DBO peeps). My KA/D isn't that much better really, but when I get kills I tend to earn a lot of score multipliers (double/triple kill, headshots, defending or attacking control points, etc). I wish there was a stat somewhere that showed how many points you earned vs gave up to the opposing team.

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To really measure skill you'd need to look at things like:

Reaction Time
Overall Accuracy
Headshot %
Encounter Survival Rate
% of team points earned
Team win %
Points earned out of all players in a game (used as a comparative for ranking purposes)
Average points of teammates in games with this player vs. in games without this player
Other known win influencing factors such as: When this player is on a team, does that team capture more or fewer objectives than the average. What about the enemy team? Does this player's team collect more or less Heavy Ammo than the average. Enemy team?

And so forth.

You could probably come up with hundreds of stats to track for metrics like this. Compare them all to the average of all players, and then average out your player's rank. Bam, you've been ranked.

Here's the trick... You should NOT match your player against only players in the same skill rank. Rather, teams should be assembled to reach an average overall rank among all players. That exposes the players to different skill enemies, and provides opportunity for each to improve against enemies that are not within their tier of play. Maybe there should be alternating playlists, where some are all players of roughly equal skill, and some are matched teams of equal overall skill, but with wider internal variance.

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To really measure skill you'd need to look at things like:

Not really. You only need to worry about whether you win or not.

Obviously you need to worry about the win / loss record of the player you are gauging. But you also need to look at the wins and losses of other players when they are playing with that player. If a player causes other players they play with to win more than they otherwise would, it means that player is more skilled. You can compare relative to one, or all the players on your team to get a very good idea of how skilled the player is in a team, and even break down optimal team compositions.

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TrueSkill is not a terribly accurate measure of skill because it heavily weights winning,

In fact winning or losing is the only gamestat Trueskill takes into account.

which is not a skill/talent that an individual controls.

Each individual of a team will have a partial contribution to a game's outcome. Trueskill recognises this and that is why the larger the team size is (and the fewer teams), the more games it takes to converge an individual player's skill estimate.

Or in another way, the amount of information from each game has to be split up between the members of a team. In small teams (1v1) all of that information is about one player directly relative to another player, but in larger teams (8v8) the information has to be split many ways.

Winning requires all team members to play well (or at least enough to make up for the worst).

Nope, they don't need to play well, they just have to be better than the other team.

This is why you still get terribly unbalanced matches.

Trueskill makes no attempt (and can't really be expected to) account for performance variations or run-away wins. The example given on the trueskill page is of 2 people who are racing cars. B makes a bold move at a corner to try to overtake Player A, they fail, and crash. B drives slowly for the rest of the race - knowing they've lost - and end up crossing the finishing line 30 seconds after A. B isn't really 30 seconds worse than A, and if they hadn't tried to overtake would have come within a few seconds of A. But the point of Trueskill isn't to find 'how much better' they are in score-terms but rather to find a relative ranking and theoretical draw probabilities. B will do other races against C, D and others and win those instead, placing their estimate between A and the rest of the field.

A great player who plays with bad teams will still have a lower TrueSkill than is accurate for his or her abilities.

If a player chooses to play with those players, then that is their choice to be ranked the same as them. Conversely, the people they play with will have slightly higher skill estimates than they really are.

A totally valid criticism of Trueskill is that it can't separate, identify and quantify the 'teamwork effect' of a familiar group of players since it treat's the team skill as a sum of the individual players. Arguably too, the skill estimates are only valid in too narrow of an application. In the real world of online games with various gametypes, teamsizes and maps there is no inter-prediction of skill and no model of how to do so.

However, in the narrow scope of a single playlist, a player is expected to be matched into different teams, play against different teams and their individual skill is slowly teased out from the results of many games. Everyone does this, so the incidence of 'bad teammates' vs. 'good teamates' and 'I had a good game' vs. 'I had a bad game' should even out.

Personally, I think creating an algorithm that does not weight winning so heavily and K/D and KA/D more would be a better one. Positive k/d's almost guarantee you took more points from the other team than they took from you, which essentially is the key to winning. Get enough positive K/Ds and you win. That way, individuals with high K/D's would get ranked higher in TrueSkill and you would face people as adept at killing as you are.

Problem is that any metric that is not about winning and losing directly is potentially open to abuse. It also immediately favours certain playstyles. i.e. go around killing, hanging back, sniping, rather than actually contributing to winning the game by making captures.

If you remember, Halo Reach had the 'Arena Rating' system that attempted something along these lines. It favoured a playstyle around hoarding power weapons for yourself, rather than what was strictly best for the team's liklihood of winning.

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A totally valid criticism of Trueskill is that it can't separate, identify and quantify the 'teamwork effect' of a familiar group of players since it treat's the team skill as a sum of the individual players. Arguably too, the skill estimates are only valid in too narrow of an application. In the real world of online games with various gametypes, teamsizes and maps there is no inter-prediction of skill and no model of how to do so.

Trueskill simply needs to incorporate moneyball style algorithms, which were designed to determine just this.

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What do you all think?

Solar Burn.

Mythoclast. Black Hammer. Solar Jolder's Hammer.

You'd melt through enemies and people would complain :-p

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The entire time I was playing as my Warlock, who went from 28 to 30 during the course, I would have a buff that said 'Stat Boost". At first I thought it was because of nearby radiance, but I'd have it all match.

Anybody know what this is?

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Did some quick research on this. It appears that many players with low-level guardians also get this buff when playing crucible.

How much of your skill tree was unlocked while you were playing? Perhaps it applies to players who haven't completely unlocked the armour/agility/recovery bonus perks, and balances that?

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Did some quick research on this. It appears that many players with low-level guardians also get this buff when playing crucible.

How much of your skill tree was unlocked while you were playing? Perhaps it applies to players who haven't completely unlocked the armour/agility/recovery bonus perks, and balances that?

Void walker is fully leveled up, and I get the stat boost.

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I think it would be neat if your subclass determined what element your shields were. I'd forever play as a Titan just to annoy people with Mythoclasts!

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My voidwalker needs him some purple aura!

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Not even that dangerous of a gun anymore. I consistently out-shot mythoclast with my un-leveled Red Death during IB this time.

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I think it would be neat if your subclass determined what element your shields were. I'd forever play as a Titan just to annoy people with Mythoclasts!

See, now this is actually getting interesting to me. If our shields were elemental based, and elemental burns were added into the mix, it might be a cool little meta layer on top of the combat.

Or it could be a complete flaming wreck of a disaster ;p

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Or it could be a complete flaming wreck of a disaster ;p

So... ActionSack 2.0? :D

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Yeah, Iron Banner is basically just normal control once you get to level 31. Occasionally, my hunter will get a flaming knife kill that she wouldn't normally get but other than that I just don't notice a difference. So how about:

- Change the damage curves so that being even one level higher or lower is significant.
- Add in elemental shields determined by what subclass you are playing. If someone keeps owning you with a certain gun switch subclasses!
- Perhaps change kinetic damage to subclass-element damage so you don't have to beat a raid on hard or something just to do elemental damage consistently. This would make subclass selection even more important.
- Alter the scoring structure so kills award more or less points based on level. Sure, you can mop up that level 20 guy but doing so gets you next to nothing while if he manages to get the final hit on you he's going to get a massive bonus.
- Maybe do something like starting each match with ammo in all guns and supers pre-charged? Matches would start with a bang and shrewd teams would keep a guy or two back to put on the hurt a bit later in the match...

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One AR bullet is 11 damage on a body shot. To require a measurable difference, i.e. require an extra shot for a kill, you need a 5% damage reduction, but for the higher DMG/Shot weapons it will become greater. A hand cannon like Timur's Lash will still kill in 3 shots, even with a 5% reduction because it does about 8 more damage then it needs to kill on the 3rd shot.

The mobs get a 33% shift for being a level higher, but I doubt IB is anywhere near this huge of a change, so naturally there is little difference seen when players are using maxed out purples.

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Iron Banter Video

This gives you a great idea of what it's like to be the lowest level in Iron Banner

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That was awesome. I could not stop laughing!

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So huh. Apparently the attack power of your weapon isn't the only determinant when it comes to figuring out damage dealt. That's completely contrary to how I previously understood the gametype to work.

Damnit Bungie, WHY ARE YOUR SYSTEMS SO OPAQUE!?!

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2158 views

That's what this was for:
[image]

https://www.bungie.net/7_Bungie-Weekly-Update--11202014/en/News/News?aid=12419

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2249 views

I suggested elemental burns in chat at some point so maybe it was me or maybe more than one of us thought of it. After Cody's objections to the idea (which was mainly that TTK should not be lower or it would feel frustration. I played CoD. I agree.) my new revised idea was that players should have elemental shielding. Same encouragement to vary weapons, equal or higher TTK depending on if you have the gear you need.

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Only a few raid primaries have elemental damage, which would confer an unreasonable advantage to those few players in the first instance. More importantly however, it'd quickly devolve into a meta-game of swapping classes and weapons to try to foil the elemental damage your opponents are using. You would be playing rock, paper, scissors rather than Destiny.

Perhaps - maybe - if it was part of some larger, themed gametype where the class was pre-determined and unable to be swapped it would work.

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The effects of Player Level in the Iron Banner (Destiny)