EPISODE LINK HERE: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zTzroJU-wog (link goes to YouTube video; you can also find our podcast on most Podcast providers)

Some of you may know me by my comprehensive breakdown posts here on Reddit, others by my spreadsheets, but did you know I also co-host a PvE-centric Podcast? Podcast Versus Enemies - a Massive Breakdowns show - had the fantastic opportunity recently of hosting not one but two Destiny Developers: Vivian Becks (Weapons Designer) and Chris Proctor (Weapon Features Lead). This was also our very first Bungie Interview/Q&A episode!

Many of you will know Chris from his multi-appearances on the Massive Breakdown Podcast, other Destiny Podcast Interviews/Q&As, and TWABs, but this time he is joined by Vivian Becks - her first Destiny Podcast appearance: she's created many features including Legendary Perks such as Voltshot, Incandescent, Repulsor Brace, and Exotic Weapons like Heartshadow and Delicate Tomb. Notice a trend? Yep! She's worked on bridging the gap between Weapons and Destiny's Damage Types and Elemental Subclasses. She joins us to give her expertise and insight into this particular philosophy and what makes Destiny feel good and how Destiny communicates to the player.

We also chat to Chris about Bungie's philosophy on Origin Traits and Adept Weapons - both sub-systems he has creatively lead. Origin Traits have existed in the game for 9 months at this point and through 3 Seasons across multiple activities; has it helped to differentiate and avoid homogenization between same-type archetypes? Has their view of Origin Traits changed? We know that Adept Weapons are an ongoing focus - Bungie have stated that even they aren't thrilled with their positioning in the Sandbox versus Craftable Weapons - so what can we expect to change with them?

Vivian and Chris also joined us for a Community Q&A through a variety of PvE-focused questions from the Massive Breakdowns Community (via Patrons). This post is our abridged version of the official show notes for those that want to reference back to anything discussed and answered in the future. You can also find our full episode transcript on the Massive Breakdowns website.

Massive Breakdowns: Podcast Versus Enemies Overview

As mentioned I co-host PVE with two other amazing Guardians. The format of our podcast - posted weekly - is breaking down and discussing Weapons, Exotics, Armor, Activities, and much more from the perspective of the PvE sandbox. While we may overlap into Crucible and Gambit, make no mistake the three of us are talkin' purely Combatants, Raids, GMs, Game Systems, etc.

The three of us? Let me introduce ourselves:

• Impetus (Warlock)
  • Expertise in Weapon Stats, Perk Combinations, and encyclopaedic knowledge of Weapons-at-large
• Saint Kabr (Titan)
  • Admin for D2 Clan Truth, the highly respected Destiny Clan for all players, and very recently finished his stint at Bungie as a Contract Gameplay Specialist. Specialist in small-group Raid Challenges, Flawless Activities, and the best LFG sherpa you can find
• Court (Hunter)
  • Hi, that's me! Destiny Scientist/Tester/Reverse Engineer-er. Damage Stacking, Combatant, and Elemental Sandbox Guru - very recently tested all Subclass Verbs such as Blind, Suppression, Scorch, etc to be featured in a series of upcoming comprehensive breakdowns here on Reddit

I also want to shout out MisterSudden: he is our great Podcast Audio Engineer and Editor. We frequently bury him with 2h+ episodes, but this episode was a mammoth task so we are incredibly appreciative of his work. If you're looking for someone who has vast audio knowledge and has worked with many Destiny Content Creators slide right into his DMs!

Looking for PvP? Check out our sibling Podcast hosted by Kyt Kutcha: the original Massive Breakdowns Podcast. Yep: the alumni of Mercules who now works at Bungie as an Associate Weapons Designer!

Destiny Massive Breakdowns Network:

• Website
• Twitter
• Discord

Bungie Interview/Q&A Episode Show Notes

Alright, with introductions out of the way here's the meat and potatoes of this Reddit post. Impetus wrote the show notes - send all your praise his way. Oh also, just to highlight that we recorded this episode on the 26th October (before the 27th October TWAB that featured DSC getting a Weapons refresh).

These are of course some abridged show notes - if you want full context then our official show notes can be seen here.

Vivian Interview

Elemental Sandbox Perks (ESP for short; referring to Incandescent, Voltshot, etc) Overview

• Weapon Perks that use 3.0 Verbs are "one and the same", except where duration of a Verb's effect may be tweaked for balance reasons (e.g. different in PvP and PvE sandboxes)
• Abilities Team designs verbs as they are the foundation of 3.0 Subclasses; Weapons Team "riff" on these Verbs once they get their hands on them
• Collaboration is a huge part of the ESPs design
• ESP aren't strict power upgrades in the same way that traditional damage perks can be; requires extra "playtesting, iteration and discussion across the whole Sandbox Team"
• Weapons Team like ESPs because they "help characterize a weapon's damage type beyond what modifiers and shield is this [weapon] really good for"; and that they help define a weapon's "character"

General Philosophy / Capitalization of ESPs with Light 3.0 Reworks

• "We've always wanted weapons and abilities to marry together as a cohesive whole"
• Stasis and Light 3.0 system was the turning point for this goal with 3.0 Verbs serving as "gameplay grammar" that "works the same across the whole game"
• Verbs allow Weapons Team to give damage types "deeper identities" and "facilitate deeper learning” as once a player learns what a Verb does in their abilities they can expect the same behaviour from their corresponding weapon perk
• Light 3.0 allows Weapons Team to make "more complicated-feeling stuff with necessarily having a lot of special cases"

Chris Interview

How are Bungie Feeling re: Origin Traits (OTs for short) / General Philosophy

• "Origin Traits have succeeded beyond what we thought they were originally going to"
• Weapons Team wanted players to care about the source of a weapon AND to chase new weapons as they come out
• Philosophy has changed over time; in the beginning Weapons Team didn't have a solid idea on how strong OTs should be - were expecting OTs to be "half the strength of a regular perk"
• Witch Queen shipped with a bunch of OTs to match different sources, but also to test different styles of OTs "to see what players would grab onto"
• Chris cites Gambit OT (Invader Tracker) as an OT designed to be specific to an activity but was too specific at launch, hence the rework to Gun and Run
• "Hyper-specific" OTs are being looked at and reworked accordingly; while many OTs are popular, the Weapons Team is staffed to look at and tweak underperforming OTs as needed (nothing specifically mentioned)

"Foundry Traits" / Returning to Existing Weapon Groups for Origin Traits

• Note: Court lists Black Armory, Cassoid, Crux/Lomar, Daito, Tex Mechanica as community-driven suggestions for more Foundry representation as Traits
• Origin Traits were originally called "Foundry Traits" because they were only going to appear on the four Major Foundries (Hakke, Omolon, SUROS, and Veist); later in development this system was expanded to include activities across the broad spectrum
• Foundry Traits are still a priority for the team as they can add them to Weapons that already have an activity Origin Trait for more player choice
  • "In the next few Seasons, we're going to see a couple of new Foundry Traits coming out"
• re: bringing back sets of Weapons - this is dependent on the story beats with a specific character/arc
  • "The moment there is a Black Armory story beat or an Ada story beat, you can expect Black Armory Weapons to come back"
  • "Or if there's a really strong Saint beat... or Rasputin" referring to Dawn and Worthy Seasonal Weapons
• re: Raid Weapons (specifically DSC) - these will return with an Origin Trait and new perk pools (and are craftable) as announced in this TWAB (episode recorded before this went live)
  • "We're going to start doing that with those types of chunks of content every Season, or every other Season [...] old Raid weapons, maybe Dungeon weapons, maybe other sources"
• DSC is first on the list because it has already has a Raid Vendor (the Boss raid chess) and that makes it easy to purchase red-bordered weapons

Adept Weapons Uplift

• Chris comments the main problem (Adept Weapons viability) lies in the tension between Craftable (Raid) Weapons and Adept Versions of those same Weapons
  • "A crafted version with Enhanced perks is just better than the Adept version as it stands"
• Starting with the Lightfall Raid you're going to be able to acquire Adept Weapons with Enhanced Perks; these [Adept] Weapons will not be craftable like their normal version counterparts
• There will be a chase to them, but more details in the future
• re: Adept Weapons from Trials/Nightfalls - the goal is to make those weapons "extra spicy"
• GMs, Trials, and Raid Weapons break the stat and perk column rules; Kings Fall have double damage perks but the perks have different activators as a way to prevent weapons from completely dominating the competition - KF Weapons may be "a little spicier than we intended" though they are keeping an eye on it as per this TWAB question
• Kindled Orchid mentioned; Chris comments it would keep its "Rampage/Kill Clip" if it ever returned as that's an "iconic" roll

Craftable Weapons vs Adept Weapons

• Question asked if team could turn back time to remove/to not put Enhanced Traits on Crafted Weapons when the system launched so only Adept Weapons could get them to make them more desirable
• Chris answers saying Enhanced Traits are core to the Crafting system; to give incentive to the system-at-large
  • "There's definitely power creep in the Crafting system ... 5-10% in the outliers which we're definitely comfortable with"
• Ultimately not that different from Adept Weapons which are "2-5%" stronger than regular versions
  • Community is "way more attached to Adept Weapons than we were expecting"
• Adepts were originally meant to be cosmetic variants of the base weapon, but Weapons Team decided to add small tweaks thinking it wouldn't make that big of a difference, though community cares a lot about those tweaks
• Long-term goal (post-Lightfall) is to revamp the Weapon Mod system; will probably accept the "small amount of power creep that is Adept Weapons with Enhanced Traits"

Host Questions

Impetus Question - Debuff Exotics Overview

• Depending on the type of Debuff, said Weapons have specific playtesting processes that involve a lot collaboration in order to gather the necessary feedback and data
• Raid and Dungeon Team is involved almost immediately, there’s generally a specific use case in mind from the get go but most of the testing and iteration occurs once a large-scale playtest is performed (i.e. entire fireteams optimized around using the Debuff exotic to its fullest extent)
• Additional collaboration is done with the Combatants Team to ensure that the Debuff weapon “meaningfully helps you… but doesn’t completely bull over your obstacles”
• Once a season a bunch of teams meet to hear what the Weapons team is publishing (new weapons, perks, buffs, nerfs) and provide concerns and feedback so that the Weapons team can get ahead of problems. Other teams have playtests where a representative from the Weapons team will gather feedback to share with the rest of the department. Establishes “a point of contact” to transmit questions

Impetus Question - When did you start making Debuff Weapons (Tractor Cannon, Divinty)?

• Tractor Cannon was created by folks who are no longer working in the Weapons Team/at Bungie
• Divinity's creation: the Weapons Team worked quite closely with the Combatants Team to ensure that it worked correctly and they continued to work with Combatants for the tuning to Divinity
  • "A lot of content in the game is built assuming that players have easy access to a 30% Debuff/Weaken" and while that is still the case the Activities Team is quite interested to see how the Divinity changes affect player loadouts

Court Question - Divinity Stacking/Interaction with other Debuffs

• Note: Court directly asked if Divinity, after its 30% to 15% reduction, will still work in tandem with higher active Debuffs like Tether - because in the past Divinity has had a tendency to override or be overridden by other Debuffs. This question was also to make a clear definition if Divinity working in tandem with Tether/etc will be intended"
• Yes: Divinity's Precision Cage will still work in tandem with a higher active Debuff effect
• Divinity is also receiving some QOL fixes so its Precision Cage can interact with Rewind Rounds and Cloudstrike

Court Question - What about other Divinity change suggestions?

• Note: Court asked about if any other suggestions from the community-at-large or what Bungie were perhaps willing to do with Divinity before landing on the 15% Debuff; Court saw suggestions such as Divinity applying a 0% Debuff effect that would override other Debuffs, an Alternate Firing Mode that you'd swap between Precision Cage OR 30% Debuff, Reduced Magazine/Ammo Count, etc
• Chris comments lots of changes were discussed within the team but the strength that they wanted to preserve was Divinity's ability "consistently output damage"; Team decided to touch its "all-up ability" where its always the option for most activities - current change addresses "the core issue and is much more straightforward"
• Says its usage in GMs was "40% [in certain Nightfalls] ... which is distressing"
• One trial change was a small Debuff that only applied to Arc Damage but stacked with other sources but this "ended up being too fiddly" (reference to the original Tractor Cannon functionality where it amplified Void damage over other Elements)
• Chris also comments that an Alternate Firing Mode on Divinity is an interesting idea but "more fertile ground for a brand new Exotic"

Court Question - Damage Stacking Overview/General

• Multiplicative Damage Stacking is "an enormous pain in the ass … a big and very complex problem"
• Cites the old meta where all Buffs and Debuffs stacked together which needed to be condensed into categories that don’t stack anymore
• There are several ideas being tossed around like a damage multiplier cap
  • Chris’ personal favourite is switching from multiplicative to additive so that players can optimize to their hearts’ content without putting so much strain on the endgame difficulty curve
• Reiterates that Damage Stacking is a large problem space and that will need adjusted in the short-term before overhauling Damage Stacking-at-large over a much longer period of time
  • "Some of the bigger multipliers … will have to come down a little bit"

Saint Question - Exotics without Elemental Sandbox Perks

• Note: Saint asked what is their philosophy around going back to older Exotics and adding in Elemental Verbs/Interactions and is there any concern about communicating "Burn" vs "Scorch" to newer players"
  • "Elemental Verbs are a great way to tie in Weapon Damage ... to your Subclass, any [Exotic Weapon] strongly aligned with those themes is a great candidate to get folded into the system moving forward"
• Not ever Exotic Weapons needs to be added to this system or into its damage type; Bungie want different ways to buildcraft
• Acknowledges that "Burn" and "Scorch" are confusing, but Scorch is more powerful than Burn

Saint Question - Are "Burn" and "Scorch" functionally different?

• "Yes and no" - damage application is identical but Scorch has additional properties (and synergy with the Solar Subclass Sandbox)
• There are edge cases like Overshield: Turnabout applies a 'vanilla Overshield' while Repulsor Brace gives you a Void Overshield with all the properties that come with that Verb
• Weapons team agree that Scorch and Burn need to be standardized

Saint Question - What happened to Enhanced Incandescent?

• Note: for context, Enhanced Incandescent previously had a significantly larger effect when Enhanced - this was changed in this Update here
• Change to perk was a "confluence of factors"; Enhanced Incandescent was far better than regular Incandescent in some circumstances but worse in others - also triggered unintended bugs
• Perk is more consistent now and is a small buff in that it chanegs the number of defeated enemies needed to trigger an Ignition

Community Question Highlights

For the sake of brevity and lack of character space, I'm going to very quickly list some highlights from our Community Questions segment. Lots of varied questions asked so I would advise listening for further context and more questions, or viewing our official show notes.

Kinetic "Element" Uplift

• Goal is for Kinetic to be a "proper, valid damage type for Weapons ... something that can have its own place in the Sandbox
• Will be adjusting the damage type across weapons come Lightfall
• Quicksilver Storm's Rocket (the one that shoots out when firing, not the launched Grenade Alt Fire) being Arc-damage is not intended and is a bug

Repulsor Brace Potency / Are all Verbs on the table for Weapon Perks?

• Requires a "higher baseline level of buildcrafting" versus Incandescent, Voltshot, etc
• Very few PvE activities require an Overshield instead of better damage
• As more Void Perks come out, more synergies will emerge - major factor is easy of use versus potency
• Many Verbs are frequently potent which leads to hesitancy but if there's a cool and interesting way to put a Verb on a weapon, the team will try - "I wouldn't write anything off"
• Some Verbs would need "very tight constraints" - an Incandescent-like Perk that Void Suppresses enemies would be "very toxic in PvP"

Exotic Gun & Armor Interactions (e.g. Lumina-Boots of the Assembler)

• No plans but "vigilant for opportunities"
• Gave an example that an Armor Designer wanted to incorporate Lumina's Noble Rounds into an Exotic Armor piece so the Weapons Team helped them set that up
• Both Teams are onboard, but nobody's trying to force an interaction from the outset

More "Support" Weapons like Lumina

• Chris comments they are very excited by the space for support weapons
• Will be devoting resources and time to exploring that in the future, particularly with Subclass Verbs and Strand

Random Roll Exotics vs Craftable Exotics

• Hawkmoon was a trial run for random rolled Exotics
• Crafting system put customization in the hands of the players completely
• "I doubt we'll do more random rolled Exotics, but we're definitely going to do more Craftable Exotics"

Niche "Shield" Perks like Under Over, Turnabout, Adaptive Munitions, etc

• Team have been conservative in the column placement of some of these perks, but have plans to change that to make the more appetising
• Outside of that, the Team are largely happy in terms of their viability

Designing/Balancing Weapons and their Technical Limitations splitting the changes between PvP/PvE Sandboxes

• Both design and technical challenges in this regard; Team wants to preserve the same identity and feel in more game modes as a way to help new players learn and reinforce gameplay habits in experienced players
  • "Most weapon tuning depends on what target you're trying to hit, not what activity you're in"

Designing Exotic Weapons - do Archetypal/Elemental/Ammo Type Vacancies play a role?

• Vacancies are a good starting point; team wants to give players options
• Design approaches vary widely, with two examples:
  • Top Down Design: start with flavour and mechanical fantasy first, then build everything around that
  • Bottom Up Design: start with a problem and fix it, then a theme emerges along the way

Other Highlights

• Delicate Tomb was not designed initially for the Season 19 narrative, but was gradually roped into the Nezerac Theme
• One Thousand Voices is currently being tweaked with Solar Verbs in mind right now, but no specifics were given
• As of Podcast recording: 27 Exotic Weapons are being changed (some large, some small, some buffs, some nerfs) in Season 19
• Team is tracking underused Exotics and wants to bring underperforming cases up as inspiration strikes

And that's a wrap! The fastest 90 minutes I've ever had. We had an absolute blast chatting with Vivian and Chris, and thank you Bungie for this amazing opportunity. Getting a glimpse behind the curtain and to hear Developers provide their philosophies as to the whys, whats, whens, and hows is always appreciated. We'll happily have y'all (and any other devs) back on again!

If you would like to join the Massive Breakdowns community - of which Patrons had the opportunity to directly ask questions for this Q&A - then head over to our Discord. It's the bastion of Destiny information, data, science, breakdowns, LFG, Star Wars, and much more.

EPISODE LINK HERE: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zTzroJU-wog (link goes to YouTube video; you can also find our podcast on most Podcast providers)

Cheers <3

- Court, Impetus, Saint, Kyt, and the Destiny Massive Breakdowns Community

External link →