#This week at Bungie

[puppyboyprincess]

This is the most important info in the TWAB

[theclaravita]

Live with my TWAB reading!

It's another week, and that means another post from the Architects! Let's see what's going on This Week At Bungie!

Check it out below! ;)

[artemyiss]

Geppetto, your boy is tangled in strings again . .

[hyakunana]

Until the End and Beyond

[screebyy]

[boy problems by carly rae jepsen plays in the distance]

i. really enjoyed the radio message this week

ID: a 2 panel comic featuring Crow and Petra Venj from Destiny. Panel 1: Crow is sitting cross-legged on a purple couch. He is wearing a black t-shirt with a white bird on it, in the same pattern as his in-game cloak, and dark gray shorts. There is a reddish-purple blanket draped around his shoulders. He is holding a tub of chocolate ice cream in his left hand and is lifting a spoonful of ice cream to his mouth with his right hand. He is crying and has a comically sad expression as he looks up at his ghost Glint, who is floating to the left and looks sad. Crow says: "What if Jolyon doesn't want to talk to me though? What if he doesn't like me anymore? Wah." There are multiple frowny faces surrounding him in speech bubbles. Panel 2: A black cellphone has been thrown from off screen and hit Crow in the face with a "bonk" sound effect. Crow is in the middle of tumbling over on the couch from the impact, spilling his ice cream. Glint looks alarmed. A cartoonish cutout of Petra's face is shouting angrily from off-screen: "Just call him, idiot. And stop eating all my ice cream."

[kaiserouo]

(thinking about titan)

[l3rking]

So the State of the Game came out today and...there’s not too much to really talk about. 

It’s clear this wasn’t planned when LF launched (at least not this soon) and was written as a response to recent backlash (some necessary, most not). There were quite a few interesting things. Some meh. A couple disappointments. All in all I don’t think we really learned anything we didn’t already know. 

Hand Cannon buff next season is substantial

New Crucible map and modes

Stability improvements

Matchmaking improvements 

And probably the biggie imo: the future of Gambit

It’s an unpopular mode. We know that. It’s had poor community sentiment around it for years now. No amount of work short of a full overhaul will solve that. No amount of maps, or top tier weapons, or matchmaking adjustments are going to bring everyone back in. So they’re cutting their losses. It’ll still get its shader and new seasonal weapon and an old map but that’s it. Am I disappointed? Sure. Am I surprised. No. Not at all. Am I angry? Absolutely not. Bungie isn’t some deity. They’re people doing the best they can and usually their best is brilliant. They just don’t have the resources and NONE of us are in any position to argue that point. We just don’t know enough about the internal affairs of Bungie and no one except their employees ever will. I’m sure it wasn’t an easy decision to let Gambit down gently like that but it’s what they believed was best for the game rn. Who am I to argue?

Either way, I’m looking forward to next season. The new Crucible modes Relic and Checkmate sound like a lot of fun (I was a huge D2Y1 PvP fan) and the tease of some new exotic reworks is enough to get me interested in some new buildcrafting. This might as well have been another TWID for me. 

You’re going to  see people outrage over it. Disappointed in the Gambit news. Disappointed in the lack of information. And a lot were going to be disappointed no matter what Joe said. He could’ve promised every player all expansions for free and you’ll see rage bate at the top of r/DTG with a gajillion upvotes. It’s just the way this community is as exhausting as that can be. 

Either way, once the Final Shape hypetrain starts, we’re all going to forget about this and be excited again. 

Reminder: If you’re feeling burnt out. Step away. From the game. From online spaces. From even thinking about it. It’ll do wonder for you. And if you decide to stay away, that’s fine. I hope you find a hobby that gets you excited like D2 used to. If you decide to come back, I’ll see you in the tower next season.  

[ilumel]

y’all ever start audibly sobbing

[thefirstknife]

Btw Bungie replied to someone asking about the structure of quests on Reddit. You know who sometimes quests are kinda weird and require you to load into another zone, even when the NPC is standing right there anyway? Especially apparent in Defiance, with a quest having you speak to Mara at the Farm and then requiring you to go to the HELM to hear her on the holoprojector.

Well, Bungie knows that sucks! They already have feedback on it from internal testing, but apparently the issue that forces them to do it that way is something more complicated to solve. Here's the Reddit thread (linked to Bungie's reply).

Really cool insight into some details about development as well as some important information about how feedback works. A lot of the time people think that when something is broken or works badly, that Bungie simply didn't notice it or doesn't have internal testers. But they do, and sometimes the feedback they get is impossible to implement in time.

This is a really nice little piece of info that is refreshing to see and helps explain certain issues to players. People tend to always assume the worst (like "Bungie doesn't have testers") so hearing it in this way is really important.

Full reply:

Full transcript below:

Hi. I understand that you’re annoyed that some quests like this make you go multiple places, but there are logistical reasons why this happens. Sometimes it’s how the quest was built as part of the overall gameplay loop and its incredibly hard after the fact to change it, such as in Season of the Forge where you had to visit Ada multiple times.

And other times it’s due to time or budgetary constraints. Full vendor performances take up much more time and budget to create than an upper torso performance in the holoprojector or just a voice recording.

In your example about going to the Farm then the HELM and back to the Farm, that’s intended as part of the gameplay loop since both locations are important to the story, but the main reason is because certain performances are hooked up at each holoprojector and we can’t put them all in the same place without other issues occurring.

We actually have many gameplay specialists who play through the content prior to release, many many times, and then provide feedback to us about their experience. However, sometimes we’re unable to act on that feedback for various reasons, such as production schedules. More than likely the feedback you’re giving today was pointed out months ago. Could we have done things better? Absolutely, and that’s feedback we’ll be looking at for future seasons.

[your-fave-is-bi]

I think i gotta be firmly offline for a few days ngl

[crow-posting]

Taking my mind off of What Just Happened by yelling about this week's cutscene. Look at my boy!!

[twothirdsgenius]

whatever bungie. i don’t even care if i get the navigator i just enjoy spending time with the homies

[hyakunana]

"Your people need their heroes."

Their heroes:

[guardian-down]

[echozone]

Oops! All hotheads: the iron banana experience.

I'm begging you for just one piece of armor, lord saladhead. Please, sir, I have so many more ranks to go...

[boogrr-7]

Riven plushie, please. I need you ಥ_ಥ