Destiny 2 Update News: Sandbox Changes, Movement Feedback & Shoulder Charge
The latest “This Week at Bungie” blog post features plenty of Destiny 2 update news, including sandbox changes, tweaks to movement, and more.
Bungie’s “dmg04” player support member introduced the post, before handing things over to Design Lead Josh Hamrick.
Here’s what Hamrick had to say about Destiny 2 upcoming changes:
Hello again! We’ve been promising more details about our work on the Destiny 2 Sandbox, so here we are.
Before we get started I want to lend some context. The Sandbox Team is currently working on lots of updates for Destiny 2. Over the next several months, as those various delivery dates approach, there will be many visits from me or one of my teammates. Know that we’ll be chatting with you again and again to share more details with you as we acquire them. This meal will span many courses. Here’s the first…
We’ve begun playtesting a series of changes that you will have in your hands in the next few months. Sandbox is lovingly begun to refer to this series of changes as the “Go Fast Update.” These are the changes we are currently playtesting. They’re not guaranteed to ship, but the outlook is good at this point.
Our goals for this round are to provide individual players with more hero moments by increasing overall speed and mobility, increasing the amount of supers you charge to demolish your enemies, and increasing the frequency and impact of our most montage worthy power weapons, especially in the Crucible.
Here’s what we’re doing:
All three glides plus Catapult and Strafe Lift have been retuned and buffed to make them more unique and faster.
The mobility stat has had its range expanded and been completely retuned as well. In short, everyone gets faster and the high end is higher.
The players’ ground speed cap has been increased, allowing for faster total movement speed, regardless of how you may get there.
Arcstrider, Sentinel, and Striker all move faster, and at the same speed as one another, while in their Supers.
Arcstrider, as a whole, is performing well in PvP but mostly due to its neutral game perks. We’ve made the following changes in an effort to get the Super to be a more competitive option:
Faster Attack Animations.
Faster Dodge Animations.
Increased range of all attacks.
Supers recharge faster for everyone!
We’ve buffed several weapon archetypes (including, but not limited to, Hand Cannons, Pulse Rifles, Sniper Rifles, and Shotguns) and a few specific perks, as well.
A key goal here is to make Shotguns, Snipers, and Fusion rifles more prevalent in the game.
We’ve also been working side-by-side with our friends on PvP to increase the pace of PvP combat and the frequency of power play. Here’s a sneak peek at their hard work:
Player respawn times for all Quickplay modes have been decreased.
Power Ammo respawn timers for all Quickplay modes have been reduced ~30%.
Power Ammo respawn timers in Survival have been reduced ~40%.
Power Ammo respawn timers in Countdown have been reduced ~25%.
Ammo counts have been adjusted in relation to these timers, and in relation to weapon type.
Enemy players now drop their power ammo on death.
The dropped brick is available to anyone until picked up or 30 seconds have passed.
Finally, the Shoulder Charge changes that went in a couple of months ago have been fully reverted. Shoulder Charge’s movement utility was perceived as more valuable than its damage utility, which made it feel bad to actually hit someone with Shoulder Charge. The movement was effectively a “free” dodge.
The goal of the untargeted distance nerf was to discourage using the ability as a movement mode by making it only effective when using it against enemies. In retrospect, we think this change was a mistake and we’ve heard you all say the same. We believe there are a number of gameplay atoms like this that perform or are used differently than we expected but are thoroughly enjoyed nonetheless. In the future, we want to embrace the state of gameplay atoms like that and balance around it, not against it.
One final note that will be important to all the snipers out there. Many of you have rightfully complained that Snipers flinch too hard when you’re taking hits, especially as they are now power weapons. We have dug into this and found that somewhere along the way towards shipping D2, we acquired a bug that is preventing us from being able to successfully tune this to the values that we would all like. While the current batch of changes we are playtesting go a long way to bringing snipers back to where they should be, this bug will still prevent them from feeling perfect. That bug, which we are actively working on fixing, requires some deep changes to the art of each of the individual snipers in the game. That will take us a while to stomp out. We’ll get it fixed and pushed out to you as soon as we possibly can.
Like I mentioned, this is the first part in a series of Sandbox Updates that we hope you come to enjoy. As these changes continue to solidify, we’ll have more to say. The next items on our agenda after these changes include the mod system rework (which we plan to use to buff ability cooldowns) and the Exotic balance pass. We’re also continuing to evaluate Destiny 2’s weapon slot system and how all the different types of weapons in Destiny fit into the game, how they are being played, and what we can do to improve that experience. Expect to hear more from us about that in a future update.
Until next time,
-Hamrick
I’m sure players appreciate Bungie going into detail about upcoming changes, with the developers putting in the effort to explain the process. It’s certainly great to see this level of transparency.
In other Destiny 2 news, several top Destiny YouTubers have lessened their support of the game, Bungie is hiring a new community manager, and the developer explains the faction rewards throttle and incoming adjustments. It also appears that the Destiny 2 Gods of Mars expansion has leaked (again)!
Source: Bungie.net
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