Destiny 2
This Week At Bungie – 4/2/2020Apr 2, 2020 - Community AnnouncementsThis week at Bungie, we look towards Io. So, you’re a few weeks into your seasonal journey. You’ve cleared the EDZ Bunker of Fallen, and have been taking the Hive to task on the Moon. You’ve reclaimed The Fourth Horseman, and maybe even completed its catalyst. So, what’s next? {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/35190912/edfac6860c62cb7ea11aeb7511521b0fbf8dce74.jpg Tuesday, the final Seraph bunker will open on Io. New Seraph weapons and seasonal mods enter the mix, giving you more options to build your monster-killing machine. Later in the month, Guardian Games will kick off some good old-fashioned Guardian rivalry, accompanied by the Grandmaster Nightfall difficulty. This week, we’ll be parsing through some feedback we’ve been seeing since the season launched, a quick Game Security update, and discussing next steps for emblem stat trackers. Hit the jump for more.Lord Shaxx's Destiny 2 exercise mixtape is here to pump you upMar 31, 2020 - Rock, Paper, Shotgun If you too are trying to do home workouts with bottles of water and bags of sugar for weights, this might get you pumped up: a mixtape from Destiny 2 combining throbbing beats with the motivational words of Lord Shaxx. The Shaxxercize tape is a wee Easter egg in one quest from the new season, hidden on a shelf in the office of Commander Zavala, and now Bungie have put it on YouTube for everyone to enjoy. Shaxx is the hornhatted fella who commentates PvP matches with Shakespearean boisterousness, our fightdad who’s always proud of us but knows we can push just a little harder. And now he wants you to feel the burn. (more…) Google Stadia is helping Bungie keep Destiny 2's lights on during Covid-19Mar 28, 2020 - Rock, Paper, Shotgun Google Stadia might still be struggling to find its place in people’s living rooms. But for one studio’s home offices, it’s becoming an invaluable piece of tech. After Covid-19 hit their home state of Washington pretty hard, Destiny 2 developers Bungie have explained the beefy laptops and cloud streaming workarounds that aim to keep Guardians fighting while working from home. (more…) This Week At Bungie – 3/26/2020Mar 26, 2020 - Community AnnouncementsThis week at Bungie, a new bunker was discovered. Doors, once hidden, open on the lunar surface revealing another Seraph Bunker in Rasputin’s network. Guardians have begun exploring it to see what upgrades lie within. And if you’re up for the challenge, there are also new Heroic Lost Sectors available and new weapons to get your hands on. That’s not all. Lord Saladin is at the Tower and has a new Bow for you to earn along with several opportunities for pinnacle drops. On top of all that, week three of Trials of Osiris begins tomorrow. What map do you think will be featured this week? World Drops There were several armor sets added to the engram loot pool with Season of the Worthy. We saw a lot of feedback that, while you were excited to see your favorite armor sets from the past, the fact that none of them had Seasonal mod slots made them feel less desirable and not worth including in your builds. Good news! We’re adding Seasonal mod slots to these sets in an update next month. The three faction sets will get Season of the Worthy mod slots and the rest of the armor will get either Season of Dawn or Season of the Undying mod slots. Season of Dawn Mod Slot Added: Dead End Cure Retro-Grade TG2 Heiro Camo Road Complex AA1 Devastation Complex High-Minded Complex Season of the Undying Mod Slot Added: Red Moon Phantom Mimetic Savior Thorium Holt Tangled Web Prodigal Frumious Noble Constant Type 2 Ego Talon IV Errant Knight Kerak Type 2 Philomath All of these sets will be able to use Seasonal mods from the Seasons before and after the Season they are designated above (as explained in a previous TWAB). The Fixings We are currently targeting Tuesday, March 31 to deploy Hotfix 2.8.0.2. The main target of this update will be the issue affecting Trials of Osiris challenges not being reset properly. Here’s a quick preview of other fixes coming in this update: Fixed an issue where upgrades on the Season Pass where only unlocked for one character and will now properly unlock for the entire account. Fixed an issue where the first weekly clear of a Heroic Lost Sector would not award a powerful drop. Fixed an issue with Raiju’s Harness that allowed players to hold Whirlwind Guard indefinitely. Fixed an issue where Titan Season Pass arms ornament would block first person view. Season Pass SMG and Shotgun will now create Warmind cells with Season Pass ornaments equipped. Fixed an issue where Sentinel Titans were able to extend Sentinel Shield/Banner Shield by suppressing themselves. Fixed an is sue where players were not getting the correct amount of planetary materials from bunker upgrades. Aside from the fixes in 2.8.0.2 we’re also continuing to investigate disconnects, crashes, and error codes being reported since 2.8.0 we released. Currently, we are seeing elevated disconnects from the Tower on all platforms but disconnects from other activities seems PC-specific. The fix we deployed has appeared to resolve the crashes affecting Gambit, but didn’t help with other...This Week At Bungie – 3/19/2020Mar 19, 2020 - Community AnnouncementsThis week at Bungie, the Fourth Horseman rides again. Some of you may have heard the legend of the Fourth Horseman - a weapon so powerful, Spider Tanks run from it in fear. Any enemy foolish enough to come within range … ripped apart within seconds by the arc pellets launched from its four barrels. At the invitation of Zavala, you can get your hands on this beautiful Shotgun in Destiny 2. Let’s say you want to strike fear into the hearts of the Cabal, but feel this already ridiculous weapon needs a little something extra. Keep your eyes peeled for its catalyst by continuing to upgrade Rasputin through Seraph public events, or clear Legendary Lost Sectors of the darkness found within. And so, we begin another TWAB. Your weekly dose of Bungie and Destiny 2 news. We’ve got some exciting news on a new Twitch extension, an update from the Bungie Foundation, and more. While there isn’t a cat picture hidden in this article, I still expect you to read every single word. No exceptions.Video games to play while you're self isolating and social distancingMar 18, 2020 - Rock, Paper, Shotgun Unless you’re in one of those international versions of Big Brother that are still going on, you’ve probably noticed that we’re in the midst of a pandemic of something called the Covid-19 virus. I can tell it’s serious because my dad’s American girlfriend isn’t allowed to visit him, which means he’s bored and phoning me in the middle of the day. Haha, I joke. But he is 70, and has a weak heart, plus he’s immunocompromised on account of catching Lyme disease from a tick once (which is exactly the sort of ridiculous thing that only happens to country dads). If you’re anything like us, you’re now at home, staring at the walls of your living room because of this social distancing thing. But it’s not just you. In fact, all of RPS is now working from home for the foreseeable future, too. So in the spirit of camaraderie, I’ve pooled some suggestions for video games to play while we’re self-quarantining. We’ve got some multiplayer ones, some board-gamey ones, and, of course, a healthy dollop of free ones. (more…) Trials Of Osiris PvP starts free for all Destiny 2 players todayMar 13, 2020 - Rock, Paper, ShotgunDestiny 2’s new Season Of The Worthy is now underway and with it comes the triumphant return of the Trials Of Osiris PvP mode. The gauntlet of increasingly difficult matchups challenges players to earn the sickest of loot. The best of the best will get special rewards for completing seven consecutive matches without losing. The new trials are free for all players and they kick off today. (more…) This Week At Bungie – 3/12/2020Mar 12, 2020 - Community AnnouncementsThis week at Bungie, a collision course was set. With the launch of Season of the Worthy, Guardians are heading into the wild to discover lost Seraph bunkers and power up Rasputin’s defenses to take on this new threat. Here is a quick look at some of what you can expect during the new Season of Destiny: Before we embark on the first TWAB of the new Season, we’d like to acknowledge some feedback that we’ve been seeing in the wild. We had a large change to emblems and stat trackers, which we’ll be talking about later in the TWAB. We’re also seeing some discussion on the new weapons of the season, and lack of Ritual Weapons for Vanguard, Crucible, and Gambit. The team is currently reviewing and discussing the feedback, and we will be looking to talk about our goals for weapons in a future TWAB. There are a variety of other topics, from Eververse to armor mods, which we’re collecting feedback on and discussing internally as a team. While we don’t have any specific changes to announce at this time, we wanted to make sure you know that we see the feedback and are actively discussing this internally. Once we have more information, we’ll be sure to let you know. It’s been a wild launch week, but we’re just getting started. Tomorrow’s Friday and the day isn’t just reserved for Xûr anymore. Trials returns, and we’ve got a bit to talk about to get you prepared. Trials Returns In case you still haven’t heard. Trials of Osiris returns this Season. The first weekend of action-packed high-stakes PvP starts tomorrow. Let’s set the mood, shall we? For everyone not familiar with Trials of Osiris, here’s a quick rundown of what to expect. The game mode is 3v3 Elimination, using the same rules showcased in the last few Seasons. The key difference is that Saint-14 will be calling the matches, and now your Power matters. You must be 960 Power to participate. Your Trials Passage, or “card” is your ticket in. Try to get as many wins as possible before you hit three losses and have to start over. Earn a flawless victory by winning seven matches with no losses. You can reset your Trials Passage at any time by accessing the item in your quests, or on the Trials of Osiris activity node. One change from the previous Trials of Osiris is that there are no Boons that you will need to purchase and apply. Instead, there will be five different Trials Passages you can choose from that offer different bonuses built in like forgiving one loss per run or granting bonus experience from wins that increase with the number of wins on a ticket. Players will also be able to earn Trials Tokens to turn into Saint-14 to increase their reputation and earn Trials Engrams. Any Tokens that a player doesn’t spend that week will be removed when Trials ends at the next weekly reset so spend them if you got them. We have more details on these features and how Trials of Osiris will work in our full Trials of Osiris help article. Trials of Osiris will match you with opponents based on your connections a...Destiny 2 has started Season Of The WorthyMar 10, 2020 - Rock, Paper, Shotgun A new season has started in Destiny 2 today, bringing a new existential threat to the human race and new weapons to beat it back. This time, baddies riled that we broke their star-destroying superweapon are retaliating by straight-up crashing the miles-long spaceship into Earth. Rude. So here we are in Season Of The Worthy, powering up the defences of an ancient AI named Rasputin and nabbing new guns of our own. Ye olde supersweaty PvP mode Trials Of Osiris is returning too. As is the way, some parts of the season are free to all players but some require buying a pass. (more…) Destiny 2 fashionistas are thrilled and shocked by next season's premium looksMar 6, 2020 - Rock, Paper, Shotgun Eververse, the premiere Destiny 2 fashion house, last night revealed its spring collection of street wear for Season Of The Worthy. Reactions from fashionistas have been loud and charged. I adore this collection, welcoming the option for some more casual duds, even if the Warlock outfit in the middle is so ludicrously, wonderfully, decadently uncasual (a look I think works for the class). The big shock is the outfits for the agile, tricksy, gunslinging Hunter and the beefy, punchy, hammerhurling Titan. You thought it was the Hunter on the left, right? Naw mate, that’s a Titan. The lad with the big plated arms is the Hunter. It’s catwalk chaos. (more…) This Week At Bungie – 3/5/2020Mar 5, 2020 - Community AnnouncementsThis Week at Bungie, we prepare for the worthy. We’re just five short sleeps from Season of the Worthy. Last week, you completed the Empyrean Foundation event, lighting a beacon for Guardians to follow back to the Lighthouse and Trials of Osiris. On Tuesday, we unveiled Season of the Worthy all up. If you haven’t seen the trailer, there is a new threat for you to confront. Bungie.net also has a dedicated page for the new Season, jam-packed with information to get you up to speed before next Tuesday’s launch. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/35190912/edfac6860c62cb7ea11aeb7511521b0fbf8dce74.jpg We have some housekeeping to do before we arm an ancient Warmind, so let’s get to it. Hit this link for a preview of patch notes, Power increases, Eververse updates, and more.Destiny 2's Season Of The Worthy is about stopping a giant spacegun from crashing into EarthMar 3, 2020 - Rock, Paper, Shotgun The next season of Destiny 2 starts next week, and Bungie today revealed more of what we’ll be doing in the Season Of The Worthy and why. Turns out, the dregs of the Cabal who survived our latest drubbing have a spiteful last-ditch plan to straight-up crash a miles-long superweapon spaceship into Earth. That’ll be a problem. So off we’ll go, powering up the defences of the cranky ancient AI, Rasputin and looting all sorts of new shinies along the way. This season will not benefit from Bungie’s recently-announced intent to cut down on FOMO but hey, I’ll take any newness for now. (more…) This Week At Bungie – 2/27/2020Feb 27, 2020 - Community AnnouncementsThis week at Bungie, Trials is back on the menu. It’s been an exciting week. You all came together and donated your stockpiles of Fractaline to the ongoing effort to build the new Lighthouse and usher in the return of Trials of Osiris next Season. As soon as the final stage was complete, you were invited to survey the completion of the project and light the beacon. We saw your signal as our cue to release this developer insight video confirming what many have been speculating for a while now. To follow the video, Luke Smith wrote another Director’s Cut that covered a few topics, including our philosophy on Seasons and some challenges in sustaining a game with weapons that last forever. Similar to the three-part epic he put out last year, it contains a lot of important info you won’t want to miss. We also information on upcoming subclass changes and a new round of Twitch Prime rewards. Check out the full This Week at Bungie for all the details.Destiny 2's new seasons have too much FOMO , the game's director concedesFeb 26, 2020 - Rock, Paper, Shotgun The director of Destiny 2 has dropped another of his sporadic 4000-word thoughtdumps reflecting on the state of the MMOFPS, its successes, and its failures. One big problem Luke Smith acknowledges is that the latest seasons, starting with Season Of The Undying, create a disappointing “feeling of ephemeral private activities and rewards that go away” rather than the exciting “evolving world” they’d wanted. Bungie will try to fix that with the next year, he says, and they have some other big changes planned. It sounds promising but I wish he’d addressed Eververse’s role in FOMO. (more…) Trials Of Osiris is coming to Destiny 2 next season, and it's gonna be sweatyFeb 26, 2020 - Rock, Paper, Shotgun Guardians, it’s time to build your sweatiest, most shameful loadout: Trials Of Osiris is coming to Destiny 2 next season. The 3v3 PvP mode is returning from the first Destiny, once again challenging players to run a gauntlet of increasingly tough matchups to claim loot with serious bragging rights. The announcement came overnight after players finally completed the communal challenge to donate 9,777,777,700 Polarized Fractaline to the Empyrean Foundation effort. While Trials will launch with the Season Of The Unworthy in March, they’ll actually be open to all players, which suggests Bungie still have more to reveal. Watch the Trials announcement below. (more…) Oh hang on, Destiny 2's best gun is getting buffedFeb 25, 2020 - Rock, Paper, Shotgun While some players are griping about Destiny 2‘s weapon balance changes coming next season, Bungie have missed a trick by burying the big news: Fighting Lion, already the game’s best gun, is getting buffed. Is it a huge buff? No. Is it a welcome buff? Absolutely. Alice, is Fighting Lion really Destiny’s strongest gun? Look, I said best, not strongest. Hand on heart, I adore no gun in the MMOFPS more than this scrappy wee grenade launcher. (more…) Destiny 2's next season will shake up snipers and The Last WordFeb 21, 2020 - Rock, Paper, Shotgun Bungie still haven’t even revealed the name of the new Destiny 2 season starting in three weeks, let alone what’s new in it, but they are opening up about what it’ll do to the old meta. On top of the sword changes discussed a few weeks ago, they have big plans for weapons including sniper rifles, long-range fusion rifles, and the exotics Lord Of Wolves, Izanagi’s Burden, and The Last Word. I’ll be sorry to stow some current favourites in my vault but I am theoretically glad for the freshness of a new meta for a new season. (more…) This Week At Bungie – 2/20/2020Feb 20, 2020 - Community AnnouncementsThis week at Bungie, all eyes are on Stage 7. Time and time again, this community humbles us. A few weeks ago, you were challenged with the Empyrean Foundation, requiring billions upon billions of Fractaline donations to light a beacon of hope. You’ve strategized your investments, brought riches to our dear friend Spider, and smashed six goals faster than we could have imagined. We have a graph showing your progress in the full article, head on over to check it out! Whether you’ve been donating or investing, this has been a community-wide effort from the get go. Your combined efforts are paving the way to success. Soon, the final Triumph for the Savior title and a fancy new shader will be available for everyone, and it’s all thanks to you. Now, let’s shift gears. A few weeks back, we promised some Sandbox previews leading up to Season of . Read more in the This Week at Bungie article on Bungie.net.Destiny 2 will stop making you get new armour every season to use new modsFeb 14, 2020 - Rock, Paper, Shotgun Some much-needed changes are coming to Destiny 2‘s ‘Armour 2.0’ gear system next season to reduce grind, most notably (to me) opening up the seasonal mod slots to also accept armour mods from the previous season and the next. This means you won’t need to replace your gear every season if you want to use the new mods. As someone who plays too much damn Destiny but still doesn’t have outfits with stats as good as much of my gear from last season, I welcome this change. We’ll also become able to change the elemental affinity of armour pieces to use other elemental mods, though at a cost. (more…) This Week At Bungie – 2/13/2019Feb 13, 2020 - Community AnnouncementsThis week at Bungie, we had to fix the timeline . . . again. Sometimes when you kill a bug it doesn’t stay dead. Earlier this week, while deploying Hotfix 2.7.1.1, a small number of servers failed to restart with the proper configuration file. This reintroduced a previous issue that caused some players to lose currency. We had to reset the clock again, and roll back character data to ensure that no one’s hard-earned currencies were lost. To give you some details from behind the scenes, we posted a detailed recap of why this issue remerged and how we’re working to prevent it from rearing its ugly head again. Player Support has more info below on Hotfix 2.7.1.2 going live this morning and how it put this bug to bed for good. In other news, Crimson Days is back and Guardians are partnering up to show their love. The Tower decorations are up and Lord Shaxx is inviting partners to enter his special Crimson Doubles playlist in the Crucible. For the full details, check out our Crimson Days page or last week’s TWAB. Fronktaline {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/35190912/6f66c147f4eed9e97b82e3adba316e7cdb383597.jpg To invest or to donate? That is the question the community has been pondering since the Empyrean Foundation event began last week. Many in the community are recommending that players keep investing in Obelisks, but we’re seeing a steady rise in donations as players have already hit stage five. We’ve also received reports from Spider that this economic stimulus has been great for his business. Billions of Fractaline have been donated, but you have billions more to go to reach stage seven and unlock the final Triumph for the Savior Seal. An Affinity for You When we introduced Armor 2.0 with Shadowkeep last fall, we got a lot of feedback on the new armor system – specifically pertaining to Elemental Affinities. Many of you have been asking for the ability to change Elemental Affinity types on armor. We’ll be adding the ability to do this starting next Season. You’ll soon be able to change the Elemental Affinity on any piece of armor to either of the other two Affinity types directly from the item’s inspection screen by hovering your cursor over the armor's energy icon. This is intended to mitigate the experience of getting an armor drop with a stat roll you want, but the wrong Elemental Affinity. Changing an armor Affinity type will cost 1 Upgrade Module. If your armor is already upgraded to a higher energy level, the cost will be the total upgrade materials necessary to reach that energy value plus 1 Upgrade Module. Seasonal Mods We also received a lot of suggestions on how to improve Seasonal mods. Starting next Season, the Seasonal armor mod socket (e.g. Undying Mods, Dawn Mods) will also be able to use mods released during the Seasons before and after the armor piece was released. For example, armor with a mod socket from Season of Dawn can now equip Dawn Mods, Undying Mods from Season of the Undying, and Mods (from Season of ) Iron Banner {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}...Destiny 2 Had a Peak of Over 200k Concurrent Players During its First Day on SteamOct 2, 2019 - GitHypWith Bungie and Activision officially parting ways, yesterday marked Destiny 2's first day on Steam after leaving the Blizzard launcher.
Now free-to-play on Steam with a brand new $34.99 "Shadowkeep" expansion, Destiny 2 peaked with 219k concurrent players on Tuesday.
That number might have been even higher if not for technical issues that prevented many users from logging in and Bungie taking the game down for “emergency maintenance.”
However, with Mostly Positive reviews right now on Steam, it doesn't seem like said issues being fixed tomorrow will have a drastic impact on the player counts.
Destiny 2's player count hitting 200k was enough to help the game rank in as the #3 most played game on Steam for a couple hours yesterday. But D2's numbers were far behind yesterday's peaks for Steam's top 3 games: Dota 2 (606k players), CS:GO (605k players), and PUBG (566k players).
Destiny's biggest competition over the years has been the growing popularity of Warframe -- a similar free-to-play loot shooter -- which is still in Steam's top 10 averaging around 50k concurrent players and peaking at 132k players back in November 2018.
Yesterday also marked the first time we've ever been able to see Destiny's actual player counts. So, it'll be interesting to see if Destiny 2 is able to grow any more to compete with PUBG or if its player base will decline closer to Warframe's numbers.
However, with Mostly Positive reviews right now on Steam, it doesn't seem like said issues being fixed tomorrow will have a drastic impact on the player counts.
Destiny 2's player count hitting 200k was enough to help the game rank in as the #3 most played game on Steam for a couple hours yesterday. But D2's numbers were far behind yesterday's peaks for Steam's top 3 games: Dota 2 (606k players), CS:GO (605k players), and PUBG (566k players).
Destiny's biggest competition over the years has been the growing popularity of Warframe -- a similar free-to-play loot shooter -- which is still in Steam's top 10 averaging around 50k concurrent players and peaking at 132k players back in November 2018.
Yesterday also marked the first time we've ever been able to see Destiny's actual player counts. So, it'll be interesting to see if Destiny 2 is able to grow any more to compete with PUBG or if its player base will decline closer to Warframe's numbers.
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