House Of Wolves DLC Will Be ‘Intense’ And Dark Days Ahead For Guardians

Some news for you Guardians still amongst us that are surely beginning to feel a little bit bored waiting on the House of Wolves to drop. Kirsten Potter, Voice Over Actress that worked on Destiny power leveling, has taken to Twitter to both inform and disappoint. She said, “Just recorded some cool stuff with Team Bungie. House of Wolves shaping up to be pretty intense. There are dark days ahead, Guardian!”

This of course points towards the DLC still not being quite complete. Which is a bit of a kick in the teeth especially given the fact that the release date is right around the corner. However, it will surely be interesting to see what these “dark days” will be, especially if the Queen of the Reef is warning you about them.

 

Now might be a good time to grind out some better armour, just to be on the safe side. Destiny is now available on the PS3, Ps4, Xbox One, Xbox 360 and hopefully one day on the PC. For more on Destiny check out our hub page here.

Destiny Share How Bungie Goes About Improving The Game Every Week

The video game industry moves fast. A game everyone’s talking about today can become a foggy memory in just a matter of weeks. The best chance most games have at success happens right around launch. One game, however, is bucking that trend: Destiny.

Built by Halo developer Bungie, Destiny came out in September 2014 to massive hype from shooter fans and the gaming press alike. But despite Bungie’s pedigree and the game’s positive pre-release press, many players’ initial reactions when it came out were surprisingly lukewarm.

For most games, this would be a death sentence; just look at what happened with the similarly-hyped but under-delivering Titanfall. But that’s not how Destiny has played out. In February — five full months after the game’s release — Destiny was the fifth most searched game on Google, well ahead of more recent major releases like Evolve and Resident Evil Revelations 2. So why is Destiny thriving while other games struggle to maintain the spotlight? It’s due in large part to the game’s weekly updates.

In the months since launch, Bungie has done a lot to improve Destiny’s gameplay experience, which pleases dedicated players and brings new ones into the fold.

The weekly updates keep the gameplay balanced and as bug-free as possible while Bungie works on the larger content updates it releases sporadically. As the developer writes on its blog:

We’ve said many times that Destiny is never finished. We’ll keep updating it, polishing it, revising it, and pushing its boundaries until you pry it from our cold, dead… You get the idea.

Bungie decides what to change in its weekly updates by listening to the fans, finding bugs, and searching its data to minimize pain points and things that frustrate players unnecessarily.

Since Destiny is an online game, it’s easy to find things to fix. The developers can look at just about everything people do in the game, which helps them identify things like which missions are too easy or difficult to complete, which guns are over- or under-powered, and exploits players have discovered.

To keep players up to speed on what’s happening in Destiny, Bungie hosts a news page. It shows an incredible amount of transparency between the game’s developers and the players. Each weekly update is accompanied by a post that explains what has changed and why. The game’s designers are quoted at length, discussing any challenges or concessions they had to make when designing the update.

Destiny’s most recent weekly update offers a telling look into how Bungie goes about improving the game from week to week. The developer found that a small number of players would chronically sit idle during raids, letting other people do the fighting, but reaping the rewards once the raid was complete. The new update puts temporary restrictions on the accounts of people who exploit the game regularly.

Bungie also looked at the statistics for its missions and found that two missions had very low completion rates, with average completion times that were excessive. According to production engineer Brenton Woodrow:

Our goal was to ease the difficulty for the least-completed strikes. In order to do this, we focused on the final boss encounters, which were fairly lengthy on higher tiers. We addressed this by reducing the strength for several of the major combatants. We also felt that the bosses themselves could use some tweaking. We reduced Valus Ta’Aurc’s health by a third and reduced the Psion Flayers’ shields by about 15%. We locked these changes after several playtests with the designers and feel that they bring these encounters in line with the rest of the Strikes.

It’s exactly this kind of attention to detail week after week that has improved the experience of playing Destiny since its September launch. There’s a right way and a wrong way to approach a game that doesn’t click with players immediately. With Destiny, Bungie is showing everyone else how it should be done.

Destiny 2 Release Date, News, and Rumors, Expansion House of Wolves

The popular game Destiny has had a lot of success with their initial release and their expansion of The Dark Below.  They will have another expansion this summer with House of Wolves, not to mention the high anticipation of Destiny 2.  Here is what we know of the release date, news, and rumors.

 While word of Destiny 2 is scarce at best, there is word about Destiny next expansion, House of Wolves.  According to Gamespot, a Bungie Weekly Update blog post has revealed that “this month, there will come a day when we’ll reveal a release date for the trials that await you, with a whole reef of details soon to follow-but it is not this day”.

However, Gamespot also reports that there is already a massive leak saying that House of Wolves will launch on May 19th, but the official word that House of Wolves will probably launch by the end of June.

The new expansion pack is a follow-up to last December’s The Dark Below.  House of Wolves plans to contain three new Crucible maps, a new Fallen Strike, a new Awoken storyline plus an exclusive raid, as well as hundreds of new weapons, armor, and gear.

“Most of the time, this is awesome. When someone is willing to put in the time as a Raid sherpa, a clan leader, or a forum moderator, we all benefit and Destiny comes a little bit closer to its potential as a shared world.”

Community Manager David Dague also announced that fans are set to find out the release date of House of Wolves later this month.

Destiny: The Newb’s Guide to Being a Hero

Are you new to Destiny? Don’t know what any of this means? Good news! There’s a Destiny wiki that’s packed with information. Click on through for details on what Strikes are, and how Nightfall differs from Weekly Heroic challenges.

It’s that wonderful time when Bungie’s regular offering of high-reward Weekly Heroic and Nightfall Strike missions are rebooted (along with any raid progress made in the previous week), giving everyone a fresh chance at scoring some of the game’s sweetest and rarest loot.

This week’s chosen Strike is the hated Cerberus Vae III mission, in which up to three players hunt down a Cabal general on the sandy surface of Mars. It’s among the lengthier Strikes in Destiny, and it’s also — as Bungie revealed in its April 2 update — one of the most frequently unfinished. So much so that the developer is planning to ease the difficulty in an imminent update.

Sadly, that update hasn’t yet arrived, which means we’re stuck with the same super-challenging gauntlet. Here’s the top-line details for this week, if you just want to know what the modifiers are:

Nightfall

  • Epic – This is a standard Nightfall modifier. It just means there are more enemies to fight, and a greater number of Majors (the yellow health bar dudes) on the field.
  • Nightfall – Another standard Nightfall modifier. This one boots the entire Fireteam back to orbit if everyone is downed inside one of the revive-only respawn Darkness Zones.
  • Lightswitch – Enemy melee attacks do mega-damage. Keep your distance at all times.
  • Angry – Headshots (and high-impact weapons) don’t stagger enemies.
  • Juggler – Ammo only drops for the weapons that you’re not actively using.

Weekly Heroic

  • Heroic
  • Lightswitch

Them’s the basics. But what does it all mean?

This week’s Nightfall is, frankly, a waste. There’s no elemental “burn” modifier like there usually is, meaning you don’t get any damage buffs from your Arc, Solar, and Void weapons. You also don’t take the increased damage from those elements without the burn. That’s nice, but the Strike is still too long and the final boss fight, too tedious.

House of Wolves Release Date Coming Soon from Destiny

The latest weekly update on the Bungie blog indicates gamers won’t have to wait much longer for information, with news regarding a release date expected before the end of the month.

Since “The Dark Below” was released in December, “Destiny” gamers have played and replayed content a thousand different ways. The patient wait for the game’s next major DLC pack, “House of Wolves” continues, but at least fans now know when they can expect more news.

As noted by Gamespot, “The House of Wolves” is believed to launch with a new storyline focusing on the Awoken, an exclusive raid, three new Crucible maps, a new Fallen Strike and new weapons, armour and gear. Gamers who purchased the “Destiny” Expansion Pass will be able to access “House of Wolves” without paying anything extra, while the DLC is available to purchase separately for $20.

“The next expansion for Destiny is something we’re really looking forward to talking about. This month, there will come a day when we’ll reveal a release date for the trials that await you, with a whole reef of details soon to follow – but it is not this day,” read the blog post, by Bungie community manager, Deej.

The tease may seem cruel, but at least gamers will still have the weekly Heroic and Nightfall Strikes to keep them busy. Regular “Destiny” data-miner, Megamanexe4 has spilled the beans on Reddit, indicating gamers are set for a level 24 Heroic Strike mission to the Mars Median Bay for a showdown with Cabal Colossus Ultra; Valus Ta’aurc. Heroic and Lightswitch modifiers will be active, meaning hordes of enemies dealing greater damaged with increased aggression will be the order of the day.

The Weekly Nightfall offers up an even sterner challenge, with a level 30 Very Hard mission featuring Nightfall, Lightswitch, Angry and Juggler modifiers. Destiny power leveling make you upgrade more easy. As always, Nighftall means if the entire fireteam dies, players get kicked back to orbit, Angry sees enemies that don’t flinch even in the face of massive damage, while Juggler means enemies don’t drop ammo for currently equipped weapons.

Players looking for a leg up on Valus Ta’aurc can check out a video hosted on the DPJ – Daily Destiny Videos YouTube channel, which shows Guardians of all classes how to cheese the boss. Players will need to make their way up to a hidden spot in the battle arena, from where they can headshot Ta’aurc with ease, whilst staying behind cover.

That said, experienced players may have no need of the cheese. As noted by Polygon, Destiny aim to make some raid bosses, including Valus Ta’aurc a little easier in the near future. Finally, the developer is also planning on temporarily banning a small number of toxic players from matchmaking. Bungie said the offenders are chronic idlers who who sit idle in competitive and cooperative multiplayer, damaging the experience for others.

Destiny share Bungie devilishly trapped its players

On forums and in other community venues, both hardcore and casual players will attest to that sentiment, yet somehow, both fan bases still chug along, min-maxing their stats, grinding out faction reputation for a chance at extremely rare cosmetic items, or chasing that one elusive gun. Normally, that would sound like we players are making our own decisions about grinding extra hard for minimal returns, but really, we’ve fallen prey to Bungie’s grand designs.

Once you hit the soft level cap — something a robot has managed — you can play through four weekly events (currently two raids and two strikes) per character until the reset seven days later allows you to get loot from those events once again. In an effort to gain extra chances on dropping specific desired loot, players created extra characters (a maximum of three slots), which not only extends their playtime, but grants them access to the game’s most enjoyable content extra times per reset. At GDC this year, head of User Research at Bungie, John Hopson, revealed the tricks and strategies Bungie employed to keep us coming back for more — even if certain players are able to uncover what’s coming down the pipeline.

Three years before Destiny released, Bungie had test groups regularly playing game builds and documenting almost every response elicited during gameplay. The developer split players up into five categories: short and long campaigners, short and long omnivores, and specialists. Campaigners would play the campaign, omnivores would partake in activities from every category — PvE, PvP, and anything else — and specialists would focus on one specific activity. Wanting players to get the most out of its game, Bungie focused on the omnivores.

Bungie employed eye-tracking technology to document where players looked, they recorded what players said — explicit or otherwise — and gave players a button to press when they felt something in the game worked. So, while Bungie employs dastardly tricks like time-gating the game’s most fun content or requiring a slog of a faction reputation grind, the developer’s real trick is it psychoanalyzed — and recorded — players to find out what works best.

Destiny Share Update Sees Raid Fixes, Strike Improvements and More

Bungie recently released some important details for the “Destiny” upcoming Patch 1.1.2. Slated to be released alongside the game’s upcoming second expansion, House of Wolves, the said update will see changes on raids, Destiny power leveling make you upgrade easy, strikes and improvements on player usage.

As pointed out in the studio’s official update blog site, the next upgrade will bring in the needed fixes for the Atheon and Crota Raid bugs.

“In 1.1.2, we have an opportunity to make some targeted fixes. We prioritized a list of items based on community feedback and tried to hit the ones that have been the most important to players. In particular, we wanted to improve the Atheon and Crota boss encounters. They’re challenging enough without the game getting in your way,” senior designer Gavin Irby told Bungie.net.

More details about the Raid bug fixes will be provided when the Update Notes for Patch 1.1.2 is released, the site said.

The upgrade will also bring some Strike fixes which is said to improve the strikes gameplay. The blog cited User Research Lead, John Hopson particularly addressing the Cerberus Vae III Strike which, as he said, is “arguably the longest and hardest Strike in the Game.”

To answer the problem, production engineer Brenton Woodrow said that their goal now is to “ease up” on the difficulty of the strike.

“Our goal was to ease the difficulty for the least-completed strikes. In order to do this, we focused on the final boss encounters, which were fairly lengthy on higher tiers. We addressed this by reducing the strength for several of the major combatants,” Woodrow said.

Bungie will also begin handing out punishments to players who idle around during matchmaking activities.

“Sitting idle in Strikes and PvP has been on our radar for a while now, but it’s become clear that a small number of the worst idlers are responsible for damaging the experiences of thousands of other players,” Hopson said.

The site clarified the premise of the punishment by saying that only those “truly dedicated idlers” are to be reprimanded by “temporarily banning” them from the multiplayer activities.

Destiny Share Skip Confluxes in Vault of Glass Raid

Thanks to Isaac356 on the Destiny subreddit, a new strategy has been uncovered that lets players bypass the time-consuming Conflux section of Vault of Glass. Now, this isn’t a particularly challenging section, especially for level 32 Destiny players, Destiny power leveling make you upgrade more easy, but it does take a while to get through. Some might even call it boring.

However, most of these “cheeses” have been regularly patched out of Destiny in an attempt to keep players on the straight and narrow path. For example, many Vault of Glass raiders preferred to push the Templar off the map in Vault of Glass, rather than actually fight him the correct way.

Once the Templar exploit was patched out, however, players found far fewer ways to exploit the raid as a whole. That isn’t to say the experience got more difficult, but it became a hefty time commitment. While some can run through the Crota’s End raid in under 30 minutes, the average Vault of Glass run can take close to an hour, and there’s really no way to speed it up…until now.

Getting past this section is fairly simple, although it’s unclear if the skip can be done with a full fireteam. In Isaac356’s example, he does it with a single teammate.

Here’s how it’s done. The first player stays in the Trials of Kabr section of the raid, waiting as early on as possible. The second player then descends to the Conflux area, triggers the section, and then returns to orbit. With nobody there to guard the Confluxes, but no player within the Darkness Zone, Destiny seemingly freaks out and keeps the Confluxes protected.

Ultimately, there’s still a lot more of the Vault of Glass to complete, including the Oracle phase, fighting the Templar, the Gorgon Maze, the Gatekeeper section, and then beating Atheon. But, even just a small skip is worth highlighting for players who regularly run this raid. Not to mention, this is one of the longer timed sections.

Yes, we know the loot isn’t great, but the shot at exotic weapons is still there, and the Fatebringer and Vision of Confluence are still really great Destiny weapons. Also, we highly doubt Bungie will patch this out; they’re too busy focusing on future content.

Destiny: April Fools’ Day Prank Is an Epic Dance Party

Who wants to dance? Your Destiny character does, that’s who. As part of Bungie’s April Fools’ Day prank, your Destiny character is locked into a constant state of dancing on Bungie.net.

Visit the “Legend” tab on the website to see your character get down. It’s even funnier if you have multiple characters, as YouTube user moreuse shows us in the video above.

Does Bungie have a dedicated dance choreographer on staff? They must, because some of these moves are pretty excellent.

Destiny is just one of the many games celebrating April Fools’ Day today. Check out our roundup here to see what other games are doing to mark the occasion.

Destiny Share Will Bungie keep fans until House of Wolves

The House of Wolves was originally set to hit download markets in March, but was postponed by Bungie and has yet to be given a set release date.

An arrival window has been set between April 1 and June 30, which could mean the release could be set for this month.

However, Other leaks in the past year have suggested that House of Wolves could be released on May 19, and will feature an array of new missions, strikes and Crucible levels.

 

“All we ask is that you leave your mind open to the evolutions that are inevitable,” community manager David Dague wrote back in February.

“What you see here are very old ghosts from our pre-launch database.

“Aside from giving it a name, Bungie has yet to reveal the House of Wolves. That means that anything you know about it can change.”

The game’s last expansion, The Dark Below, launched on December 9 and a wait until May would certainly leave the title rather barren of new content for gamers.

“I’m glad Iron banner is coming but even what it offers isn’t really worth participating in if you are 32 already. I hope Bungie introduces something new soon.

“I don’t understand why they don’t just add all the story missions to the random strike generator, that would mix things up at least a little. Also a friendly fire option.”

Halo: The Master Chief Collection is another option for fans, now that the matchmaking problems seems to have been put to bed and multiplayer can be enjoyed to its fullest again.

Battlefield Hardline is another option, while GTA 5’s Online Heists could appear as a tempting prospect with those with enough friends and a lot of patience.

House of Wolves meanwhile is reportedly set to include:

  • New Awoken storyline with Raid
  • 3 new Crucible maps and a new Fallen Strike
  • a big range of new weapons, armour and gear

Switching games now for something like Call of Duty may appear to pricey for some gamers, and having put in so many hours into Destiny it would seem certain that the core support are set to stay for the wait.

One fan wrote: “As much as I would like it to come out last week if they take their time and do it right I will be Happy as long as it’s better then the Dark Below.”