It was a busy week for Bungie and Destiny, with the huge 2.44GB update going live, the Iron Banner event returning, and Expansion Pass owners getting a free Sparrow.
For the EV-30 Tumbler Sparrow, Game Designer Bill Gross said the desire for self-expression led to its creation:
Players’ desire for self-expression was the driving force behind the creation of the Sparrow. I’ve watched dozens of community Sparrow trick videos and was blown away by the creativity. I wanted to unlock that trick potential for all players.
Early in October, the Tumbler was created. Two days after a demo video was sent to the studio, Gross was asked to finish it.
If you’re still unsure of who can receive the special Sparrow, Bungie revealed that anyone who owns these products is eligible:
- Destiny Ghost Edition
- Destiny Limited Edition
- Destiny Digital Guardian Edition
- Destiny Expansion Pass
- Destiny Expansion The Dark Below (The Sparrow becomes available as part of this specific offer on December 9th, 2014)
When update 1.0.3 went live in Destiny, Bungie admits that Thorn’s capacity to inflict Damage Over Time with its Mark of the Devourer perk was weakened by two points (from 5 to 3). Commenting on this nerf, Sandbox Designer Josh Hamrick said, “Soon, Thorn will be restored to its former glory… And then some.”
Bungie then talked about Exotics:
We’re about to give you more reasons to covet almost all of the Exotics in the Grimoire deck. With the last update behind us, we can start to telegraph the next. Exotics are about to come off the workbench. We’ll be shuffling the cards before The Dark Below launches. Just in time for fresh targets. We know you’ve been waiting and asking while we’ve been working.
The economy of war in the City is being updated along with the rarest and most unique guns on your rack. Even the marks you’ve earned will have new buyers who hold what your arsenal craves. I’m saving the numbers for the notes that are being written up right now.
Turning to Strikes, Bungie noticed people were kicking their friends to improve the changes of survival, prompting Designer James Tsai to talk about their plans for Strikes going forward:
We were looking over the data from Strikes and found that some unintentional damage scaling was occurring based on team size. The larger the Fireteam, the more damage an enemy shot would inflict upon its members.
We made a couple of changes. First, we tuned the damage to be a little easier overall so that we’d see higher survival rates in 3-player fireteams. Then, we normalized these damage values across all group sizes so that players wouldn’t feel that additional Guardians joining their Strike made things harder. Players can now be certain that people joining their team are helping their progress, not hindering it.
The side effect of this change is that playing Strikes solo has indeed become a little harder. We acknowledge that this is undesirable for many players and we are considering different ways to solve these problems.
Bungie adds that they’ll have conversations about how to support the solo player long-term, but right now, they’re focused on your feedback about the Raid.
To finish up the Weekly Update, there was some good news for those who were banned after exploting the Heavy ammunition glitch. As the exploit no longer exists as of the latest patch, Bungie has removed some of the bans:
We have begun lifting bans and giving players another chance to compete in the Crucible. That said, the Banhammer is always watching. Should you stray from the path of fair play, judgment will be swift.
Take special notice of that last part! The team that can see you when you’re encountering errors in orbit also knows when you’re a cheat. They don’t even need to see it. Righteous science is hard at work to keep our streets clean of unauthorized ammunition.
Have you tried out the new Sparrow?
[Source: Bungie]
