This Week in Destiny – 07/25/2024

This Week in Destiny, we’re talking PvP with a few updates from the PvP Strike Team. We’ve also got an adorable new friend joining us on the H.E.L.M., and we’re commemorating the occasion with a new Bungie Rewards item. There is a little something for everyone this week, so let’s hop in!

Topics for the week

• PvP Strike Team update
• Exotic class item Overthrow drop tuning update
• A new attunement option for BRAVE Arsenal weapons
• Destiny Art Show
• Bungie Foundation Tournament finale livestream
• Bungie Rewards Captain Jacobson pin
• Our favorite #BuildOfTheWeek
• The Final Shape cinematic blooper

PvP Strike Team Update

State of the Crucible

Hello everyone, it's the PvP Strike Team here with our pre-8.0.5 check-in. We have a bunch of stuff we want to talk about today but if you are short on time and just want the high-level bullets here's a quick summary of the changes we’ll be covering today.

Changes coming in the August 8.0.5 Update

• General Crucible
  • 6v6 Map Weighting - Increase weighting of popular maps, decrease weighting of unpopular options.
  • Improve Lobby Balancing - Move to our second variant of Snake Draft, with improved systems for dealing with fireteams.
  • Update Quitter Systems - The system should be more lenient for players who rarely quit or get disconnected, but much more restrictive for habitual quitters.
  • Sandbox Balance - PvP nerfs to Threaded Specter and Swarm Grenades.
• Trials of Osiris
  • Passage of Persistence Update for Trios - While in a 3-person fireteam, losses will not remove a win from this Passage.
• Competitive
  • Clash - Reducing the score to win to bring match times closer to our 8-minute target.
  • Collision - Improving spawn logic.
• Iron Banner
  • Temporarily removing Tribute for additional improvements - Looking to address things like the semi-random bank locations and kills not providing points.

Want to keep reading and get into the weeds? Let’s roll.

General Crucible

We want to start with a general "State of the Crucible" discussion to recap some changes we have made (separated by playlist) in the last few months that you may have missed, and to talk about where we're going to go from here.

Over the past few months, we’ve made several updates to Crucible with improvements to rewards and quality of life passes on all maps.

• Increased the base end-of-match rewards, including more Glimmer, and higher chances for Enhancement Cores and Crucible Engrams. We also created a double rewards booster for PvP.
• Spawning, Zone, and Heavy ammo location quality-of-life passes on all maps.
  • This included removing all backfield spawns from The Citadel, Cathedral of Dusk, Disjunction, and Convergence for non-Rift modes, which allows the maps to play 30-50% smaller than before.

Map Weighting

We have heard your requests for updated map weightings in our 6v6 playlists. Generally, we want to keep all maps as evenly weighted as possible to ensure that you get to play on a variety of maps, and we want to avoid removing maps from rotation whenever possible. However, we do acknowledge that players still prefer playing on popular maps more often. As such, in 8.0.5 we are making a change to:

• Increase weight for Javelin-4, Burnout, Endless Vale, Cirrus Plaza, Dissonance, and Eventide Ruins.
• Reduce weight for Disjunction, Cathedral of Dusk, Convergence, Twilight Gap, Exodus Blue.
  • Dead Cliffs is currently the only map not in Control, as we are reworking the spawn and zone locations, but we hope to have it back soon.
• All other maps will have standard weighting.

Also coming in 8.0.5 are a couple of substantial changes we're making to two problematic systems that we hope will greatly improve the Crucible experience.

Lobby Balance

Lobby balancing has proven to be an extraordinarily difficult puzzle to solve. Since Season 23 launched, we have been experimenting with multiple different types of lobby balancing systems, including Random, Average Skill, and a variant of Snake Draft. While each of the three solutions has its own positives, none of them have done much to reduce the volume of feedback we get that lobby balance can feel unfair.

• Random lobby balancing generates poor quality matches more than any other method.

• Snake Draft works well for all solo games but doesn't handle fireteams well.
• Average skill works better for fireteams but can lead to frustrating team compositions.

We have built a new variant of Snake Draft that should handle fireteams better, and will be rolling it out in 8.0.5, as we continue to look for the optimal solution to lobby balance.

Our internal tests have been quite promising, but we don't believe we're done iterating on lobby balance either. It's an ongoing battle to ride the line between pure fairness in terms of outcome and making sure that each player in the game has someone on the other team they can compete with head-to-head.

We’ll continue to monitor the results of these changes. We also plan to share a deeper dive into how we approach lobby balancing in a future article.

Quitters

Our second major topic ties in a lot to the one above, because quitters can throw a whole wrench into any lobby balancing equation. As it stands currently, quitting has become something of an epidemic, especially in modes like Control and Iron Banner, but it's even negatively affecting Trials and Competitive as well. In our 6v6 playlists, we've seen an uptick in quitting across the board over the last several months, stemming in large part from higher skill players who find themselves joining and then quitting to search for easier matches. The problems with this are two-fold:

• If they are one of the higher skilled players on their team, the lobby has been balanced around their presence. When they leave, it puts their team at a significant disadvantage.
• It forces us to try to pull a player to join an in-progress game, and it is unlikely we can find a player who matches the same skill profile, which means when that player joins a game that has already started, they are also at a disadvantage.

If this was an isolated incident, it would be one thing. But unfortunately, there are a number of players who are habitual quitters, leaving more than 30% of their total games, which causes a serious negative impact on the remaining players in the games.

A limitation of our current Quitter Penalty is that we could not make it too stringent, because we want to avoid punishing players who experience random error codes or who need to leave a game occasionally for a valid reason. So, to keep those players in mind while also better addressing the quitter issue, we have completely rebuilt the Quitter Penalty.

If you play a long string of games without quitting, the game will place you in Good Standing and be lenient if you occasionally get disconnected or must leave a game. However, if you habitually quit a high percentage of your games, you will be placed into a Probationary status, and if you continue to leave games, it will result in escalating time outs from Crucible for every match left. For normal players, this should result in less frustrating instances of being booted from a match and getting timed out, but high-volume quitters will find the system far less forgiving. The initial values for Good Standing and Probationary statuses are also tunable, so if we find it to be too strict or too lenient, we can quickly adjust to smooth out the experience.

Abilities

In 8.0.5, we’re changing two Prismatic Hunter abilities to address community feedback about Prismatic Hunter performance in the Crucible. The goal of these changes is to reduce frustration around playing against Prismatic Hunters without negatively affecting their performance in PvE content. Here are the changes:

• Threaded Specter
  • Reduced aim-assist strength on Threaded Specter by ~50% vs. players and added a short delay before the aim-assist takes effect.
  • Reduced Threaded Specter detonation damage vs. players by ~45%.
• Swarm Grenade
  • Reduced the distance that Swarm Grenade submunition projectiles can travel once they begin tracking a target by ~20%.

We’ll continue to monitor Crucible feedback and data throughout this release, and we’ll make additional adjustments if necessary. Check back next week for a more in-depth look at weapon and armor changes coming in 8.0.5.

Special Ammo Economy

Back in May, we discussed changes we were making to the Special ammo economy in PvP and detailed a new system, referred to as the Blended system, that we were going to be moving towards. In this system you receive one kill's worth of Special ammo on spawn, one kill's worth from crates, and Primary weapon final blows drop a brick with one kill’s worth. The Blended system has now been out in most game modes, and we wanted to detail how it is performing compared to the previous systems.

As you can see, the amount of Special ammo has gone up slightly compared to the Meter and Crates systems but is still down significantly from where it was in the old Respawn system. In addition, Shotguns are less egregious outliers compared to both iterations of the Meter, although they are not as in band as they were with either the Respawn or Crates system. The delta between usage for high and low skill players has similarly been reduced to a more acceptable level.

Moving forward, the Blended system will be the default system for Crucible until we have completed the rebuild of the Ammo Meter, a process which is extremely complex but is well underway. We will provide an update in the future when we know more about a potential release timeline. Soon, we will be swapping Trials over to the Blended system (not the system that was accidentally activated last weekend where you retained ammo between rounds) and the prototype Meter will be fully deprecated from our core Crucible experience. We will, however, continue to allow the Meter to be selected as an ammo option in Private Matches, and to be used as the default ammo system for the Checkmate game mode when it appears in a rotator.

Trials

Since Season 21, we've made some substantial changes to Trials that have had a positive effect on the playlist. We've updated most of the Passages, increased the post-game rewards substantially, provided bonus rewards for playing as a trio, and even added a weekly set of rewards that triggers when your card is initially flawed to help offset the sting of defeat. We've collected the changes below to help recap the full list of improvements currently in-game that we’ve made during that time.

• Passage Updates
  • Wealth - Rewards extra Trials rank on every win, the amount rewarded increases as a player’s major rank increases.
  • Persistence - Losses following a win will remove the win from a player’s card. Consecutive losses do not remove additional wins. Getting to 7 wins grants a drop of the weekly Adept weapon, regardless of how many losses the player has
  • Ferocity - If a player hasn’t been Flawless for the week, losses after 3 wins will reset them back to 3 wins instead of Flawing their card. Reverts to the old behavior of granting a bonus win for the third win once a player goes Flawless.
  • Mercy - If a player hasn't been Flawless for the week, two losses can be forgiven. Reverts to its old behavior of forgiving a single loss once a player goes Flawless.
• Reward Updates
  • Any win has a 50% chance to drop the non-Adept weekly weapon.
    • Once you have been Flawless and are playing on a 7-win card, you also have a 50% chance to drop the Adept version of the weekly weapon on wins.
  • When playing as a trio, for game completions (does not have to be a win) you get:
    • An additional 50% chance to drop the non-Adept weekly weapon.
    • A 50% chance at a Trials Engram drop.
    • Bonus Trials reputation.

• You now get bonus rewards (including Trials armor, Enhancement Cores, Trials weapons, and Enhancement Prisms) based on how many wins you got before your card became Flawed.

The above changes have helped keep the playlist in a healthier state than it has been in the past. In particular, the Passage of Persistence changes combined with the trios rewards have had a noticeable effect, increasing the percentage of trios games played by 30%, and providing a small influx of more casual players. Still, we believe there is room for improvement, and we want to more strongly encourage playing with friends.

• Passage of Persistence - When you play as a trio, we have updated the Passage of Persistence so that losses will no longer remove wins. This means, when you play Trials as a full fireteam on the Passage of Persistence, you only need to get 7-wins total, and you will receive a drop of the weekly Adept weapon. Quitting a match will still result in having a win subtracted. You must complete the match for it to forgive the loss.

We still want to make Trials more rewarding for more kinds of players, but we will have more details on this later. In the longer term, we are looking to bring more players into Trials by offering an alternative 3v3 experience that’s more like Iron Banner, in terms of the loot chase not being mostly reliant on wins. We also want to make the Challenger pool less of an "all or nothing" experience. We can lean on what we've started with the Flawed Card rewards and further reward win streaks to make it feel like less of a waste of time if you fall at the Gates, while still maintaining the exclusivity of the Flawless rewards.

Competitive

Our Ranked playlist has also received substantial changes over the last 6 months. To summarize them, we've:

• Moved to Rank-Based Match Making,
  • This has had the side-effect of increased matchmaking times at higher ranks, especially during off-peak hours or in low population regions, as there are far less available players to match with. We are monitoring the situation, and times are improving as the episode progresses and more players make their way to the higher ranks.
• Updated the way points are rewarded and penalized following wins and losses.
  • We have clamped the variance of point rewards.
  • You no longer lose extra points on losses if your skill is lower than your rank.
    • If your skill is higher than your rank, you still get bonus points on wins and reduced penalties on losses.
• Changed game modes to Clash and Collision.
• Added new tiers of weekly rewards and post-game Artifice armor drops.
  • A second tier of the Competitive weekly challenge now awards Ascendant Alloys.
  • A third tier of the Competitive weekly challenge for players Gold III and above that rewards Artifice armor and enables the ability to get Artifice armor as a post-game drop reward for wins (the chances increase based on your highest earned rank this season in Competitive).
• Added Competitive Weapon Focusing.
• Granted an increased chance to drop Exotic weapon catalysts on victories in the Competitive playlist.

With these updates, we feel the foundation of Competitive playlist is solid. Following the release of The Final Shape, we just had the best 30-day stretch in over a year in terms of player participation, and specifically this previous week was the highest hours played per account in the last 8 months. Since we have made a lot of changes recently, moving forward we want to allow the playlist to stabilize and give players time to get used to this iteration. We plan to build on this foundation, further refine the game modes and rulesets, and allow it to be a place where you can see and feel your improvement and growth as a player.

To start, in 8.0.5, we will reduce the score to win in Clash from 40 to 35, to bring gametimes closer to the 8-minute target. In addition, we'll be updating the spawn policy in Collision to favor spawning you nearer your teammates. We recently made this change to Clash, and we have seen the incidents of split spawns go down dramatically and believe this will improve Collision similarly.

Longer term, we have a couple of goals we want to tackle:

• We think the point rewards for the Ranking system, though improved, still need some work in terms of how understandable they can be. We'd like to move back to a system where player performance in-match has more of a direct impact on how much you gain or lose, and where each player can easily understand why they earned the amount they did at the end of each game.
• We also want to further improve Collision's gameplay, and we're investigating ways to make the matches feel fairer and more predictable. We'll share more on both goals later.

Iron Banner

To start, we have moved Tribute to the back burner for further improvements. While it was inspired by Halo Reach's popular Headhunter mode, we acknowledge and want to minimize some of the frustration that can stem from things like semi-random bank spawns and getting no progress from kills. Tribute will not return until we can improve it enough to make a noticeable difference. In the meantime, Iron Banner will rotate between Control, Fortress, and Eruption.

We've also made changes to the matchmaking and reward structures of Iron Banner.

• Rewards
  • Wins now guarantee a drop of a random Iron Banner weapon and a very high chance of an Iron Banner Engram.
  • Game completions also offer an improved drop rate for weapons and engrams.
• Matchmaking
  • Earlier this year Loose Skill-Based Matchmaking (SBMM) was deprecated, in favor of the same Outlier Protection system utilized in Control. This provides us with many of the same benefits, without impacting matchmaking times or connection quality. For a more in-depth explanation of the different matchmaking systems, see our earlier update.
    • To clarify a recent fix: During Tribute week we made a change that was not to the matchmaking parameters themselves. We had to correct an issue in a separate setting called Skill Variance, which determines how quickly a player's skill can update and by what amount. This value was erroneously set too low, and it was causing players to become "trapped" at whatever skill they started Iron Banner at and was preventing player skills from updating as intended.
  • Fireteam Based Matchmaking (FTMM)
    • Last year we made a change that softened the search parameters for larger fireteams to speed up matchmaking times and reduce massive skill disparities between the matched teams. This change has been successful, and we've seen matchmaking prefer similarly sized fireteams with smaller skill disparities over the same size fireteams with larger ones, without negatively impacting solos and smaller fireteams.
      • Previously, 6-player fireteams matched other 6-player fireteams 95.3% of the time. That has been reduced to 51.4%, and they now match other large fireteams 44.1% of the time, smaller fireteams 2.5% of games, and solos 2.1%.
      • Solo players still only go up against 6-player fireteams 0.3% of the time (or 1 in every 333 games), and they continue to match only other solos or duos 81.5% of their games (up from 80% in Lightfall).

Looking at the chart below showing Iron Banner participation over the last 4 years, you can see that since we moved away from purely random matchmaking in the fall of 2022, our participation peaks have generally increased, and our troughs are higher too. The current Outlier Protection system (when the Skill Variance setting is correct) paired with FTMM represents a strong balance between allowing highly skilled players and large fireteams to succeed, while promoting variability in match feel, without making newer and lower skilled players, solo players, and small fireteams feel completely like fodder.

That said, we still believe there is more work to be done to improve the Iron Banner experience, especially for casual and mixed skill fireteams. We'd like to investigate offering a more relaxed variant of Iron Banner, with minimal matchmaking stratification and a focus on the less serious game modes. We also want to be able to reward fireteams better in general, like we've begun to do in Trials.

Facing the Future

We’ll have a lot more to talk about later this season in terms of what is coming in our second Episode and beyond, and we’re excited to share that with you once 8.0.5 is out the door!

Exotic Class Item Drop Tuning Update

The Final Shape introduced new Exotic Class Items that can roll with some awesome perk combinations that enhance your Prismatic builds. This has made them a highly sought-after reward, and we’ve seen feedback from players that it’s currently difficult to get enough drops to target the rolls you want.

To address this, we're currently targeting the following changes for early August:

• Increasing chances for drops when opening Overthrow chests.
  • As you open chests tied Overthrow activities, your chances will increase.
  • Higher tiered chests give bigger increases to drop chances.
  • This should decrease the amount of time it takes (on average) to get an Exotic Class Item, but we'll be watching the feedback and tuning further if necessary.
• Reducing chances from unrelated Pale Heart chests in freeroam to encourage Overthrow participation.
• Increased chance stored up from Overthrow chests apply to Lost Sectors and Co-Op missions that take place in the Pale Heart.

Additionally, we're adding a weekly challenge to Dual Destiny. Players will be able to earn one additional Exotic Class Item when completing this activity per week, per character. Subsequent completions will function normally.

We are also aware of player feedback concerning the desire for these Exotics to come from more activities outside of the Pale Heart. Many thanks to all who've been giving feedback, and we'll continue to monitor after the above-mentioned changes go live.

BRAVE Arsenal Weapon Attunement is Back

During Destiny 2: Into the Light, players could attune to BRAVE Arsenal weapons in the Hall of Champions to improve a targeted weapon’s drop chance. We’re ready to introduce a new way to attune to BRAVE Arsenal weapons from Onslaught.

In Update 8.0.5, players can visit Zavala in the Tower to access a new Onslaught Attunement menu. From there, players can select a single BRAVE Arsenal weapon they’d like to attune to, increasing the drop chance by 60% in Onslaught. This is an increase from the 50% drop chance increase the Into the Light attunement system provided.

There is no cooldown or cost, so you can swap your chosen weapon at any time and your selected weapon will remain attuned until you change it or deactivate the attunement.

If you’re chasing an elusive BRAVE Arsenal god roll, now is the perfect time to jump in and try your luck. We’ll be checking out your feedback, so let us know how the new system feels.

Destiny Art Shows

It’s an art show a decade in the making! Join us in Los Angeles, New York, and London for a celebration of the Destiny universe, featuring over 30 pieces of original art, including paintings, Ghost sculptures, props, and more. A must-see experience for fans of all ages!  Entry is free, just be sure to keep an eye out on our socials next week for the page link to reserve your spot!

Bungie Foundation Tournament Finale Livestream

It all comes down to this. Four teams remain in the Bungie Foundation’s PvP tournament, but only one can be crowned Seventh Column Chaos Champions! Tune-in to the Bungie Foundation Twitch channel today, July 25, starting at 10 AM PT to see how the chaos shakes out.

The livestream will not only feature the semifinals and finals of the tournament but will also be your chance to get your hands on the exclusive Repeat Repeat emblem, which will only be obtainable during the livestream, grab it while you can!

We’re going full chaos mode for this finale with some wild PvP modifiers that would make even Shaxx proud, and we'll be leaning on you, the viewers, to make the final call on what pain our competing teams endure. Oh, and for every donation milestone we hit, we'll also be downing some chaotic beverages courtesy of our new drinko board. All in the name of charity!

Joining us in-studio for a special Q&A session will be Destiny 2 voice actors Brandon O’Neill (Crow) and Richard Sloniker (Glint). We’ll also have Twitch Drops enabled during the stream with the opportunity to earn the Born of This emblem.

So be sure to tune-in to the live stream, embrace the chaos, and help us celebrate the incredible community impact Guardians help make possible. We’ll see you on Twitch!

Bungie Rewards Captain Jacobson Pin

The new research specimen aboard the H.E.L.M. feels less like a specimen and more like our new amphibious crew member. It’s Failsafe’s new best friend, the adorable little frog, Captain Jacobson. And while the frogs of Nessus can be quite deadly, don’t let that deter you from giving Captain Jacobson your love and affection. Guardians that give our new friend a gentle pet will earn the Spiritual Successor Triumph and unlock access to the new Captain Jacobson pin.

This Bungie Rewards offer will be available to earn until October 8, 2024 at 9:59 AM PT.  For full details on this offer and other Bungie Rewards, visit the Bungie Store.   

Build of the Week

Last week, we asked you to submit your favorite build for our #BuildoftheWeek so that we could pick our favorites to share over the next few weeks. This week we’ve got a fun Solar Warlock build from RestAssured on X aptly named “Infinite Ignitions v2.”

The focus of this build is spreading mass ignitions and watching everything burn. The build utilizes Dawn Chorus to increase scorch damage and Dragon's Breath to help kick off the ignitions when entering a battle. The new Solar Fulmination Artifact mod alongside the Ember of Char and Ember of Ashes Fragments help spread the ignitions, with the ability to chain ignitions among groups of powerful enemies.

If you're a fan of mass explosions and fiery chaos, check out RestAssured’s guide below.

DIM Link: https://dim.gg/xz7waqy/Rest's-Infinite-Ignitions-V2

We'll be featuring more builds in the weeks ahead, so use #BuildoftheWeek and keep them coming.

Cayde-6 Blooper

You've seen how the Combat Team has fun with Gjallarcorgi. Now see how the Cinematics Team keeps the spirit light with this never-before-seen blooper from The Final Shape.

Player Support Report

Cloudstrike causing global issues? At least it wasn’t Telesto this time.

Known Issues List  |  Help Forums  |  Bungie Help Twitter

FREE STRANGE COINS

With the release of Update 8.0.0.7 last week, an issue was introduced where the Strange Favor buff was not providing bonus Strange Coins when completing ritual activities.

As a resolution to this issue, all players will be able to claim 47 free Strange Coins from Xûr, Agent of the Nine, when he appears in the Tower. This is a one-time bundle for each account and will be available to claim until August 27. You must have 52 Strange Coins or less to acquire this bundle of Coins.

KNOWN ISSUES

While we coninue investigating various known issues, here is a list of the latest issues that were reported to us in our :

• A subset of players are unable to claim rewards or Passages from Saint-14 and/or are unable to receive post-game Trials rewards.
• Enigma Protocol and some Battlegrounds do not grant progress toward the first step in the Specimen ID: NES004 quest to open chests at the end of Echoes activities.
• On rare occasions, the Witness cannot be killed in the Salvation’s Edge raid after depleting its health, soft blocking the activity. Players may need to return to orbit and relaunch the activity to circumvent the soft block.
• Havoc Hardware is currently displayed as "Normal" alongside normal Hardware in the Crucible Labs selection list. Havoc Hardware is the second option (at the bottom) and can be identified by the “Havoc Rules” modifier.
• The Battleground: Echoes playlist does not feature Commendations at the end of each Battleground.
• Only the fireteam leader can purchase the Monolithic Memento in the Salvation’s Edge raid after meeting the requirements.
• Launching into the new Battlegrounds features a long bright white screen when first spawning in.
• The first encounter of the Salvation’s Edge raid does not grant progress to the Unified Front Triumph is the fireteam is made up entirely of Warlocks.

For a full list of emergent issues in Destiny 2, players can review our Known Issues article. Players who observe other issues should report them to our #Help forum.

Saint Imprisoned

We loved this beautiful representation of the Conductor's command over Saint-14 during the conclusion of Echoes, Act 1.

Sage991767 via Bungie.net

The Taken After King’s Fall

Has anyone checked on Oryx recently?

Movie of the Week: 

That’s everything we have for this week. If you haven’t met Captain Jacobson yet, make sure to pick up the NES005 quest from Failsafe to bring our new friend on board. You’ll also unlock weapon focusing for Aberrant Action and Corrasion in the process.

We’ll be back next week with a look at Solstice and a preview of the weapon and armor tuning updates in update 8.0.5.

Destiny 2 Community Team