*** The Official Destiny Thread (now includes 2.0 and TTK) ***

[martin9887]

They explained why it was a difficult bug to fix, it's right at the core of the way zones are initialised. Finding a suitable solution, implementing it and then thoroughly testing and getting it incorporated into the release timetable in amongst everything that is going on is not a quick process.

The people raging at Bungie all the time would have a very different outlook on things if they had any experience in the industry. They do a pretty damn good job with Destiny imo.

Glad someone else thinks this. They also mentioned in another weekly update that they knew it was happening and wanted to be careful about how they fixed it to make sure nothing else breaks in doing so.

I said a few days ago in party chat, that why can't they just swap the perk out for something else? but obviously its not that simple with how the game works, glad they got the developer working on it to talk about it in this weekly update.

It would still be nice for the ammo packs to cost less glimmer from the gunsmith but its not the end of the world. Another thing would be to make the actual boxes drop more consistently, just taking the chamber you clear in the crota fight, sometimes no boxes will drop, and then another time they'll be everywhere. Too many to carry!

The no land beyond and ice breaker trick does work though, so take those if you're struggling to buy any synthesis.

With everything going on in the game, I think they've done a really good job! and I'm glad they've figured out a solution to fix the ammo bug.

 

[LackyT]

I have learnt this the hard way. Buy every exotic weapon you don't already have that XUR sells.

Even more so if people on here say it's not worth writing home about

Don't mean to have a go mate but I would advise people to take this with a pinch of salt. It takes 2 mins to Google/Reddit/Youtube and find out if it is worthwhile buying. Bear in mind that not everyone has coins to burn, you can only ever have one Exotic equipped etc and there are multiple weekly chances for Exotic's to drop.

Well P and T is best PvP sniper in the game.

Blanket statement. Praedyth's Revenge and LDR 5001 are both very strong PvP snipers and do not take up an exotic slot which could be used for Vex, Suros, Thorn, Hawkmoon, Truth, Thunderlord etc

Even if it is a pile of crap (strangers rifle). It could get a massive BUFF with future updates, so just store it til it's buffed. Buy it.

True, within reason. I mean even if No Land Beyond gets a turbo buff, is it really going to worth levelling and using? If you have time, maybe, but not everyone does, which brings us onto the next point.

Everyone should have a big bag of coins now I have around 150. There is no reason not to buy.

No. Not everyone has played since launch or has 3 characters with 150 coins. This is the primary reason not to buy. What if the next week Gjallarhorn and the perfect piece of armour come up and you can't afford them both.

Dragons breath is supposedly the second best PVE launcher in the game.

Blanket statement. Does not have tracking and has slow velocity.

So they've known about this bug for good knows how long and they have only just come back with a response saying they are in the process of fixing it . Meanwhile they remove heavy ammo from Xur and don't reduce the cost of heavy ammo from the gunsmith, if they had any consideration for the players at all they would have made it easier to acquire heavy ammo, not harder.

Completely agree Rabbit. I don't know why they haven't done something to lower the prices etc

 

[thor]

They explained why it was a difficult bug to fix, it's right at the core of the way zones are initialised. Finding a suitable solution, implementing it and then thoroughly testing and getting it incorporated into the release timetable in amongst everything that is going on is not a quick process.

The people raging at Bungie all the time would have a very different outlook on things if they had any experience in the industry. They do a pretty damn good job with Destiny imo.

I don't mind that it takes them a long time to come up with a solution, test and deploy it. To be honest, I don't even really care about this bug - I thought it was an actual penalty when you die until someone told me otherwise - but what I'm starting to get quite frustrated with is the next-to-zero communication that's coming out from Bungie on a wide range of things.

We get a weekly update and that's about the only communication we get from them. Most of the updates have very little actual information - this week's one is a good example: there's a bug that people have been complaining about for a long time, they've found a solution and they'll be issuing a fix in about a month. That was the entire weekly update.

I could go on a massive rant about their poor communication, but I'm at work, so I'll spare everyone the trouble

 

[mid_gen]

What communication do you need?

You don't talk about what you're working on, because you don't know when you will be able to get it released. It is *way* more trouble to promise things then not deliver, than to just release things when they are ready.

Gamers will bitch and cry whatever you do. No point making up targets to miss.

 

[krisboats]

I said a few days ago in party chat, that why can't they just swap the perk out for something else? but obviously its not that simple with how the game works, glad they got the developer working on it to talk about it in this weekly update.

Well they didnt actually say they couldnt do that, they said the extra ammo one cant just be fixed, they didnt say anything about swapping it to "find more ammo for this weapon type" perks. They've swapped and changed perks on various things before so it should be within reason for it to have been swapped to a workinh perk by now.

I like hearing about the complexities of it though, interesting to hear how the game loads you up each time you respawn!

 

[ps3ud0]

What communication do you need?

You don't talk about what you're working on, because you don't know when you will be able to get it released. It is *way* more trouble to promise things then not deliver, than to just release things when they are ready.

Gamers will bitch and cry whatever you do. No point making up targets to miss.

Acknowledging bugs and what their relative priority are to fix it would be a good start - no need for a timeline but least have an idea they know something isnt working as designed and how important it is to fix it compare to other known bugs

Its hard not to think Bungie just arent BSing every time they make a blog post statement. Honestly it isnt hard to hold the value of ammo at death and use that as a 'checksum' once they evaluate all the armour/weapon perks when someone revives - its unlikely to be different unless someone changes armour/weapon after they die (hell that could be checked/converted easily too).

In the meanwhile as Reeve said knowing why the heavy ammo bug is such a big issue right now they could alleviate the situation until they get the bug fixed. For a dev that was throwing out stats about how expensive and important this game is, I think they made their own noose regards what is expected of them when it comes to making sure its bug-free.

EDIT: TBH part of the reason why I wont cut Bungie slack is that there are really simple things they really need to address like the glimmer and vault caps - I just cant comprehend how those have to be so finely tuned that there needs to be some massive internal discussion. Everything about Destiny is pushing through the frustration to get to the stuff we enjoy...

ps3ud0

 

[Psycho Sonny]

I cant play Destiny till they do something with HUD. ****ing gun icon burned in on my 3 year old 1200 pounds plasma and thats with formatting it and heating and cooling it down after gaming sessions.
Its barely visible after 200 hours of pixel jogger but still see it.

ever thought of buying a gaming monitor for £100-£300 just for gaming?

 

[mid_gen]

Acknowledging bugs and what their relative priority are to fix it would be a good start - no need for a timeline but least have an idea they know something isnt working as designed and how important it is to fix it compare to other known bugs

Its hard not to think Bungie just arent lying every time they make a blog post statement. Honestly it isnt hard to hold the transient absolute value of ammo at death and use that as a 'checksum' once they evaluate all the armour/weapon perks when someone regens - its unlikely to be different unless someone changes armour after they die (hell that could be checked easily too).

ps3ud0

They explained in the post quite clearly why it wasn't a straightforward fix. Hats off to the coders for sticking to their guns and doing a PROPER fix instead of hacking something in. If the codebase I work on didn't have 4 years of accumulated 'quick fixes' in, my job would be a lot less painful, and the game would be much more stable. It says a lot about the company that they have done it properly imo.

'Liars' is one of the more tame insults that get thrown at you daily as a game dev, you learn to ignore it, or just not read forums if you value your sanity

 

[ps3ud0]

They explained in the post quite clearly why it wasn't a straightforward fix. Hats off to the coders for sticking to their guns and doing a PROPER fix instead of hacking something in. If the codebase I work on didn't have 4 years of accumulated 'quick fixes' in, my job would be a lot less painful, and the game would be much more stable. It says a lot about the company that they have done it properly imo.

'Liars' is one of the more tame insults that get thrown at you daily as a game dev, you learn to ignore it, or just not read forums if you value your sanity

I did reword it but looking at how they described fixing the lack of random teleports at Atheon I dont consider them wholly honest. As a customer I dont really care how complicated the fix is, why should I?

Its been a known bug pretty much a month after launch so why shouldnt my expectations be that theyve had more than enough time to get this fixed. Should have said this nearer to when it was discovered, I have little slack for excuses months down the line...

Obviously this is all tainted by what Bungie delivered in the first place, Im sure people would turn the other cheek if it hadnt already been slapped because we got duped into buying a game that never actually existed. Im sure things will get fixed quicker once the next expansion pack is being marketed...

ps3ud0

 

[martin9887]

Well they didnt actually say they couldnt do that, they said the extra ammo one cant just be fixed, they didnt say anything about swapping it to "find more ammo for this weapon type" perks. They've swapped and changed perks on various things before so it should be within reason for it to have been swapped to a workinh perk by now.

I like hearing about the complexities of it though, interesting to hear how the game loads you up each time you respawn!

I'd imagine people would still moan if they did this, as its not really fixing anything, just pushing aside for a bit, maybe the armour perks are applied differently to the weapons, I don't know.

Personally, I like the perk as its very useful carrying more ammo (especially in the raids). Just frustrating when you lose 1-2 rockets per death, cutscene, or whatever else. I think we've all been a siuation where we just used an ammo pack only for something to go wrong and wipe again, losing the ammo we just gained!

Do find it funny with people saying "it's not that hard", "just do x, y, and z and it will work" etc, etc. They must know more about how their game works than the people who actually built it.

 

[mid_gen]

Well y'know, for me there's nothing seriously wrong with Destiny.

The lack of lore and story in the original release was a let down....but I'm happy enough to enjoy the game as it comes together over the years. If they'd released the whole original + DLC 1+ DLC 2 at launch we'd still have burned through it by now and people would still be complaining.

The amount of wailing on release is another reason why devs a reluctant to communicate more than the absolutely minimum....because people will be gleaning things from every screencap and making all kinds of inferences and assumptions, declaring them the spawn of satan for removing content yada yada yada.

Believe it or not, Bungie does actually know better than you the levels of glimmer and amount of vault space that people are using! There are reasons why these things are set the way they are....and yes, sometimes those reasons will be that they need to keep their daily active users metric at X number, which means they are gonna make you grind. Economics is a necessary evil in game design.

 

[Psycho Sonny]

Acknowledging bugs and what their relative priority are to fix it would be a good start - no need for a timeline but least have an idea they know something isnt working as designed and how important it is to fix it compare to other known bugs

Its hard not to think Bungie just arent BSing every time they make a blog post statement. Honestly it isnt hard to hold the value of ammo at death and use that as a 'checksum' once they evaluate all the armour/weapon perks when someone revives - its unlikely to be different unless someone changes armour/weapon after they die (hell that could be checked/converted easily too).

In the meanwhile as Reeve said knowing why the heavy ammo bug is such a big issue right now they could alleviate the situation until they get the bug fixed. For a dev that was throwing out stats about how expensive and important this game is, I think they made their own noose regards what is expected of them when it comes to making sure its bug-free.

EDIT: TBH part of the reason why I wont cut Bungie slack is that there are really simple things they really need to address like the glimmer and vault caps - I just cant comprehend how those have to be so finely tuned that there needs to be some massive internal discussion. Everything about Destiny is pushing through the frustration to get to the stuff we enjoy...

ps3ud0

Bungie Weekly Update - 01/29/2015

by DeeJ

This week at Bungie, we gave our front page a facelift.

Like what we’ve done with the place? It’s another step in our effort to show off more of the amazing things you’re doing in Destiny. You complete us. Don’t worry. I’m not going to prattle on about Bungie.net for seven paragraphs. We know you have heavier concerns that need to be addressed.

Let’s get down to some super serious business.

Heavy Ammo Inbound

Before I ran away from home to join Cirque de Bungie, I was a huge fan of the way the team shot people out of cannons. For me, it was always fascinating to pull the curtain back a little bit and look in on the world where games get made. If you’re reading this, I hope you agree.

I still remember the time, long ago during the age of another game, when one of them posted “I just fixed a ten-year-old bug,” on a social network. I was shocked to learn that there were bugs buried so deep in the code that they could take a decade to squash – and that there were developers tenacious enough to hunt them for that long. That developer was Jon Cable.

These days, Jon works on Destiny as a Sandbox Engineer. The fancy title means he’s one smart guy on a team of smart people who create the code that makes your armor and guns work. They still hunt bugs where they live, no matter how deep, or for how long, they've burrowed into the code.

http://i.imgur.com/2uOwJb7.jpg

Hypothetical Aside: You love Heavy Weapons. The purple glow of ammunition is a promise of future enemy annihilation by way of your favorite Rocket Launcher or (even better) belt-fed Machine Gun. You buy it in bulk when you visit the Gunsmith. To get the most bang from your space bucks, you equip armor that lets you carry more of the stuff. Unfortunately it turns out that those deep pockets have metaphorical holes in them.

Thus, you tend to lose your coveted ammunition when one of the following happens in a PVE activity:

You die
You return to orbit
You encounter a cutscene
If you’ve spent any time reading about Destiny on a forum where Guardians congregate, you know this is far from hypothetical. It happens to us all. It makes Raids harder to clear. It deprives you of precious Glimmer, and patience. Frankly, it sucks.

For some time now, we’ve been tracking this one. To date, the best we’ve been able to do is to admit that we were aware of the issue. This week, we can give you some additional information.

Did we mention that Sandbox Engineer Jon Cable loves to hunt the really big bugs? He’s working on a fix that we hope to deploy before the end of February. While we test his work and prep it for deployment, he wanted to say a few words about what he (along with his team) has been wrestling with behind the scenes.

Jon: The basic flaw here is an ordering problem. Our inventory system creates your weapons when your characters spawn. When that happens, it tries to restore the same fraction of ammo that you had when you died. The bug occurred because the weapon is created before capacity modifiers from armor perks are applied, so the persisted fraction yields fewer rounds.
Way over my head! Sounds like you’ve identified the issue, though. Any word on why it’s taking so long to resolve?

Jon: Fixing bugs in a live game is always about managing risk. What are the chances that the fix is going to cause an issue that might be worse than the original bug? Players outnumber our testers by factors of several thousand, so if there is a problem that slips through the cracks, it is virtually guaranteed that the community will find it. This bug was mainly risky because it was at the intersection of a lot of different systems – player profiles, investment, sandbox, perks, and weapon management.
Would it be simpler and faster to just fix the affected perk?

Jon: There are a lot of weapon and armor perks in the game. Changing the order of how they are applied has a huge impact. It would have required a large restructuring of the way the game works to even accomplish this, because the armor perks can’t take effect until the weapon is created anyway. The application of armor perks would have to be inserted in between weapon creation and the rest of the weapon setup code.
So, what’s the ultimate solution?

Jon: In the end, I came up with a surgical change that fixes the main issue and minimizes the chances that a new problem would be introduced. I do not think I can overstate the complexity of these systems – it took me several tries to come up with a fix that did not cause other problems.
Fixing bugs can be tricky business. Promising and dating fixes can be just as challenging. For this particular bug, we’ll be sure to update you once the new math is on the way to your box. Until then, if you catch a distraught Guardian lamenting their lost rounds, please point them to this conversation.

http://www.reddit.com/r/DestinyTheGame/comments/2u4v6c/bungie_weekly_update_01292015/

 

[ps3ud0]

Believe it or not, Bungie does actually know better than you the levels of glimmer and amount of vault space that people are using! There are reasons why these things are set the way they are....and yes, sometimes those reasons will be that they need to keep their daily active users metric at X number, which means they are gonna make you grind. Economics is a necessary evil in game design.

Why would a relaxation of the caps lead to affecting the grind required or the economics of the game? It seems thats what you are trying to infer...

ps3ud0

 

[krisboats]

I'd imagine people would still moan if they did this, as its not really fixing anything, just pushing aside for a bit, maybe the armour perks are applied differently to the weapons, I don't know.

Personally, I like the perk as its very useful carrying more ammo (especially in the raids). Just frustrating when you lose 1-2 rockets per death, cutscene, or whatever else. I think we've all been a siuation where we just used an ammo pack only for something to go wrong and wipe again, losing the ammo we just gained!

Do find it funny with people saying "it's not that hard", "just do x, y, and z and it will work" etc, etc. They must know more about how their game works than the people who actually built it.

It's only two rockets though, 3 quick wipes at crota and you've got like 1 rocket left before even firing one. I'd much rather find more ammo, consistently, and not lose it than be able to hold two more in reserve and risk losing them at any point. Especially when rocking a shoot to loot rifle. One box dropping would fill you up completely!

Taking off ammo perk armour takes an awful lot of hassle out of the game, going back to do atheon with level 31 boots that don't lose ammo on death was lovely the other night compared to all the times we tried it with the VoG armour on, losing ammo all the time.

 

[mid_gen]

If the glimmer cap and vault space doesn't affect the game, why are you concerned about changing it? It does affect the way people play the game.

Shared loot banks in games are usually quite limited in space. The problem with having a large vault is that after a certain amount of time, every player is going to have every weapon stashed, and the player base is going to become very uniform. By restricting vault space, you force churn in player's gear collections, people will get rid of gear that they may end up needing in later content, meaning they will still have stuff to grind for.

Edit: this is just one reason off the top of my head. I am not a designer, but I see the work that goes into managing MMO economies....it is way, WAY more complicated than players think.

Why is the glimmer cap an issue for people btw? I never hit the cap these days as there is plenty to spend it on.

 

[krisboats]

Why is the glimmer cap an issue for people btw? I never hit the cap these days as there is plenty to spend it on.

The glimmer one not so much, but vault space and vanguard/crucible caps should be increased. I've currently nothing to buy from the vanguard, so am sitting at a full 200 marks. On the flip-side to your argument everything i do now is just wasting marks that i could be earning past the 200 cap, so makes the events rather pointless to complete. The vault space is just damn annoying, if i want to swap a bunch of weapons to redo something on an alt character i'm at a point where i have to unload a couple of guns at a time into the vault, then take some out that i won't be using so they can be stored on my character, just so i can put a few more in that i want to transfer across. This then happens on the other character for taking them back out. It's tedious, annoying and unnecessary.

 

[ps3ud0]

If the glimmer cap and vault space doesn't affect the game, why are you concerned about changing it? It does affect the way people play the game.

Shared loot banks in games are usually quite limited in space. The problem with having a large vault is that after a certain amount of time, every player is going to have every weapon stashed, and the player base is going to become very uniform. By restricting vault space, you force churn in player's gear collections, people will get rid of gear that they may end up needing in later content, meaning they will still have stuff to grind for.

Edit: this is just one reason off the top of my head. I am not a designer, but I see the work that goes into managing MMO economies....it is way, WAY more complicated than players think.

Why is the glimmer cap an issue for people btw? I never hit the cap these days as there is plenty to spend it on.

The glimmer cap isnt now but in hindsight I would have been far more prepared for the new upgrade system TDB brought with it.

What you said is plausible, just seems a really poor way to deal with it, somehow restricting vault space wouldnt mean everyone rocking the best weapons and disregarding the other ones leading to loadout uniformity? Seems a poorer situation than allowing people to keep a plethora of weapons that they can use as they please.

I cant see myself suffering with the situation as it is so very unlikely to spend money post HoW. Id be far more wary of the sequels and likely to completely disregard them - I dont think Im in their target audience as Im just not willing to throw away effort because of what feels like arbitary restrictions.

The glimmer one not so much, but vault space and vanguard/crucible caps should be increased. I've currently nothing to buy from the vanguard, so am sitting at a full 200 marks. On the flip-side to your argument everything i do now is just wasting marks that i could be earning past the 200 cap, so makes the events rather pointless to complete. The vault space is just damn annoying, if i want to swap a bunch of weapons to redo something on an alt character i'm at a point where i have to unload a couple of guns at a time into the vault, then take some out that i won't be using so they can be stored on my character, just so i can put a few more in that i want to transfer across. This then happens on the other character for taking them back out. It's tedious, annoying and unnecessary.

Ive been like that for months and all I have is all the exotics, most of the raid weapons and unlike some here I dont keep duplicates of guns (because I do raid and rank up XP via bounties, I do get a lot of weapon drops so have a fair few weapons to upgrade - I just cant afford to most of the time). It can take me 10mins+ to sort out my alts because of the amount of times I have to reswap characters just to juggle weapons in the character/vault slots. Ive actually stopped playing the game as its just become too much of an issue and try to bulk load activities so I get them done in one sitting...

ps3ud0

 

[R0B75]

The cynical part of me thinks Bungie knows how to fix the heavy ammo bug and has the fix ready now, but are delaying the roll out so people will return to playing the game just before HoW drops. I just don't buy most of what they've said in the weekly update.

 

[mid_gen]

If people could just keep stockpiling vanguard marks and glimmer (for instance)....then the designers have a problem when it comes to the next level cap raise.

If they make it purchasable for marks, everyone is going to be straight into new gear the instant the DLC drops. The cap is there to ensure that there is a predictable flow to the progression of a player. Everything in the game is designed this way, to make sure it takes X number of weeks for the average player to get through the content. Really concerned/dedicated players can make some shortcuts (second chars), but those aren't the people the game is designed for.

Events and strikes are still being used by a huge volume of casual players to get their level to 31.

 

[thor]

If the glimmer cap and vault space doesn't affect the game, why are you concerned about changing it? It does affect the way people play the game.

Shared loot banks in games are usually quite limited in space. The problem with having a large vault is that after a certain amount of time, every player is going to have every weapon stashed, and the player base is going to become very uniform. By restricting vault space, you force churn in player's gear collections, people will get rid of gear that they may end up needing in later content, meaning they will still have stuff to grind for.

Edit: this is just one reason off the top of my head. I am not a designer, but I see the work that goes into managing MMO economies....it is way, WAY more complicated than players think.

Why is the glimmer cap an issue for people btw? I never hit the cap these days as there is plenty to spend it on.

I would've thought that everyone having all the loot would result in less uniformity, not more. As it is, everyone sticks to the same top end weapons as they don't have room for storing other weapons that aren't top end, but might be fun to play with.

Last night I had to bite the bullet and dismantle all the legendary shotguns I had stored in my vault. I don't use shotguns, but I was keeping some in case I decided to have a play about with them in the future. I did the same with The Devil You Don't handcannon and a rare scout rifle with the shoot to loot perk - I was keeping them to maybe try out one day, but I needed the space. What I don't need is Ascendant Energy, but that's what I got.

I don't work in the games industry, but I am a software developer, and if I kept my customers in the dark about everything right up until a few days before release, or ignored all their requests for fixes, I wouldn't have many customers for long. Bugs are inevitable, but completely ignoring them and the people complaining about them is unforgivable in my opinion. If you're saying that, in the games industry, that's the way it should be done then I think it needs a bit of a shake up.

Bungie are perfectly able to fix glitches and defects that are of benefit to the player, yet defects which are detrimental to the gamer's experience are left for months on end with most not even being acknowledged. If there's a glitch which means you can cheese a raid boss, you better believe your ass it's going to get a fix. If there's a glitch that means that raid boss can cheese you (Crota instantly standing up and slamming the swordman springs to mind), there's next to no chance of a fix coming out.

All that said.. Bugs don't bother me. How long it takes to fix doesn't really bother me. The fact that Bungie will barely even acknowledge the issues and requests from their community, not say a word about changes which have a huge effect on the player until a few days before release (even when they've been working on them for months)... These are the sorts of things that frustrate me. They don't trust their community enough to communicate their ideas and plans with them, so why should the community blindly follow them?

I love Destiny. It's one of my favourite ever games, but that's despite Bungie and their community management and not because of it in any way.