Community Focus: Destiny Trials Report

Apr 17, 2020 - Cozmo_BNG

Our focus this week is a on a site providing valuable intel on opponents you face in Trials of Osiris. This team of developers harnessed the magic of the Destiny API and used it to create a tool that shows you what you’re up against on your way to the Lighthouse.

Please meet Destiny Trials Report.

Tell us a little bit about yourself and what your role is in the Destiny community.

DTR: Hello! We’re Vlad and Mark, the two developers behind Destiny Trials Report. We aim to build the ultimate companion for Guardians trying to reach the Lighthouse. Primarily this means that you can look up your opponents to have an idea on how they will play and how good they are. Among other things you see their loadout, kill/death-ratio, and how they did so far this week.

We spoke before back in the Destiny 1 days. What have you all been up to since then?

DTR: Judging by the header image of our previous Community Focus we’ve definitely improved our visual style since then. Besides that we have been busy rebuilding the site a couple of times, most notably for Trials of the Nine.

While Trials was away we managed to fill the deep void with a Guardian Theater inspired the PUBG site which shows you the reaction of every streamer you killed or were killed by. It felt dirty working for a different game though, so we were very happy when the return of Trials was finally announced. We started from scratch one final time and that resulted in the site that is live today.

Glad to have you back. I assume your team has probably changed up over the years. Want to introduce everyone and have them share their favorite subclass and weapons?

DTR: Vlad takes care of everything server-side, crunching all the numbers to make sure everyone has a flawless count and headshot ratio to show off with. He still misses the days when No Land Beyond used to rule the Crucible, a gun that fit perfectly with his Gunslinger.

Mark (Marruk) takes all that data, combines it with stats from the Bungie API and tries to make it look as pretty as possible. He finally got the Mountaintop last week (thanks Momentum Control) and feels like it isn’t overpowered at all and needs absolutely no nerf whatsoever for sure. The “linear-rocket-concept” matches great with his middle-tree Striker.

We also receive a lot of help from Dan (cowgod77) and Joel (LeBrometheus) in the form of advice and perfect Twitter-GIF-replies.

Choosing the proper GIF reply is an art. What have been some of the biggest changes you’ve made to the site since we last talked?

DTR: While the core of the site is still pretty much the same as it was four years ago, we’ve definitely improved on making it a way smoother experience. With every iteration, and we’ve had a few, we used a bunch of experience that we gained from building the previous one. The stats haven’t really changed over the years, but the amount of loading indicators and subtle animations have. 

But all our users really cared about was dark mode, so we added that as well.

I too love a good dark mode. What were your biggest challenges while building your latest version?

DTR: Dealing with cross-save functionalities was quite the challenge. We put a lot of work into making sure our autocomplete reflects the in-game name for cross-save accounts. It also complicated the way we previously obtained platform-specific stats since a single account can be used on every single platform on a single week of Trials. These are only a few of the issues preventing us from releasing weekly and platform-specific stats on the front page but we are extremely close to shipping those features.

Another big challenge for us was displaying the Armor 2.0 mods. We couldn’t simply show all of them, that would clutter the interface too much with irrelevant mods that might not even be active. Instead, we have some complicated (and ugly) code that categorizes all armor mods to match them with a subclass or weapon type that needs to be equipped. If both the mod and the item they work on are equipped we display them together, including a way to find out more in case you somehow manage to forget the difference between “Invigoration,” “Recuperation,” and “Innervation.”

Yea. Cross save has introduced a lot of fun challenges, but definitely worth it. Any other future plans you’re working on you want to share?

DTR: At the moment we are working on improving the “home” section of the site, showing more stats on every Trials week that passes. Once that is finished we want to reintroduce some fan favorites from Destiny 1, like in-depth leaderboards and opponent history. Maybe even Variks will make a comeback to challenge Guardians in the ways of old…

We’re also secretly working on a spin-off site called Guardian Report, a lookup site that also works with other Crucible modes as well as Gambit and raids. Don’t tell anyone yet though.

Your secret is safe with us and our readers. Where can we find you on the internet?

DTR: Our website can be found at https://trials.report and you can complain about your kill/death-ratio being too low through @TrialsReport.

Anything else you’d like to add before we let you go?

DTR: We’ve been doing this for five years now and the response has always been very positive from the community, thanks a lot to everyone for that.

Also, if you can spare some money, make sure you donate to Bungie’s [COVID-19] fundraiser for not only the emblem, but also a “Saint” badge on Trials Report. More details about that on our website. 

Stay positive, safe, and at home everyone! Go play Trials or something.

Thanks for stepping into the spotlight of a Community Focus again and we really appreciate you offering up a badge to help support the charity effort!

Whether you’re a pro at Trials of Osiris or just starting to dip your toe in the water. Destiny Trials Report is a great resource to see what you’re going up against.

We’re already looking for someone to feature next. If you have someone you think should be in the spotlight, share them with us on Twitter or our forums.
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