Full weekly update can be found at Bungie.net
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The Couple That Plays Together
This February, in the world of the real, loving couples will descend upon crowded restaurants to exchange gifts and glance deeply into each other’s fluttering eyes. In the world of Destiny, the Guardians will be celebrating the rare variety of companionship that can only be found in the heat of battle. You’re invited to the Tower to partake in the real party, a ritual known by the brave as Crimson Days.
Love will be in the air, and it will last for one week, starting on February 9th.
Along with the other improvements and fixes you’ll receive in the upcoming February Update, we’re delivering a brand new 2v2 Crucible mode we’re calling Crimson Doubles. It features a special twist, born of new gameplay and mechanics that only battle-tested star-crossed lovers will appreciate.
I’ve already chosen my partner. To ensure my own personal domination, I’ll be pairing with Senior Designer Leif Johansen. Maybe he’ll even let me put a Bungie Bounty on his head. He should have some solid ideas for how to win, since he drove the creative process that led to the new combat mode. To give you and yours a fighting chance, we’ll team up in the next Weekly Update to share the details about the new game type, along with some pro-tips you can share with your own teammates.
Outside of that, it’s hands off. He’s mine. You’ll need your own date for Crimson Days – and, yes, you can choose more than one partner if that’s what your heart wants. Fan out and find some love. You’ll need it to survive.
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“You Have the Spark!”
Before you embark on your explosive date night, you’ll have Lord Saladin to keep you company. Iron Banner is coming back, and you’ve never played it quite like this.
Begins: Tuesday, January 26th, 10AM PST
Ends: Tuesday, February 2nd, 12AM PST
The game is RIFT!
If your team can carry the Spark, you’ll earn riches to make yourselves more powerful (assuming you’re less powerful than 320).
Fusion Rifles
Scout Rifles
Titan Armor
Hunter Armor
Warlock Armor
PlayStation Armor (timed exclusive)
Available from Lord Saladin:
• Rank 3: Class Item, PlayStation Class Item
• Rank 4: Chest Piece, Scout Rifle
• Rank 5: Fusion Rifle
Available as post-game drops:
• Rank 2: Boots
• Rank 3: Chest Piece, PlayStation Helmet, Scout Rifle
• Rank 4: Fusion Rifle
The Spark starts charging next week. See you in the midfield for the opening rush.
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Picking a Fight
With all this talk about finding teammates, let’s take a closer look at how we sort you with opponents. We’re talking, of course, about Matchmaking. Its alchemy is a storm of numbers that introduces the players of Destiny to each other, right before the bullets start to fly.
There’s been a lot of renewed conversation about how Guardians meet on the field of competition. If online chatter is to be believed, match ups have seemed more challenging lately. To press the issue,Design Lead Lars Bakken is here to speak for the mathematicians who pick our fights for us.
What’s going on? Rumor has it the Crucible has been pretty tense lately.
Lars: Yes, it has been getting a little… shall we say, sweaty? One of the bigger complaints we received during Year One was that you could get into very lopsided matches in the Crucible. The long term solution was always to retool the entire skill matching system under the hood so players would have much closer matches. As some stop-gap measures, we added systems like Blowout Prevention and the Mercy Rule until we could do the real stuff with Taken King.
So how exactly do you measure my skill?
Lars: We have super-secret mathematical systems that measure your performance and rate you as a potential combatant. It is constantly being re-evaluated after every match, and we even use different skill buckets depending on what playlist you’re in. For example: Iron Banner playlist skill ratings are not the same as normal Control.
When did you start doing this?
Lars: We launched The Taken King with an overhaul to the skill system that would let us gather information about how we can best prioritize a match. That work first began in October, beginning with the Control playlist. Over time, we’ve expanded the system to cover more activities in the Crucible. In December, we activated it in all playlists.
Why didn’t you tell me?
Lars: In order to really put it through the paces, we needed the raw, unbiased data. That gave us great results that allowed us to learn how to make it better.
Well, now that the cat is out the bag, it’s sure to be a topic of debate. Will you be doing this again?
Lars: We’re always going to be doing things to make the Crucible a better place for players, but we’re going to be more transparent about the changes when we make them.
Do you promise to tell me next time?
Lars: We promise. In fact, there are some new changes coming in the near future that are intended to help reduce what we call latency (what you call “lag”). We’re looking through all the new data now, and we’ll be taking measures to improve the experience.
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After February…
Very soon, we’ll have more to share about a second, larger game update that will arrive sometime after February. There are more stories about 2016 that remain to be told, and you’ll learn more as soon as I get my own anxious hands on the full and final details. Same goes for the rest of the February update. Until it’s ready to be scrutinized under the spotlight, it’s all a work in progress.