Since Destiny's release in September of last year, Bungie has constantly been playing a careful game of 'balancing the weapons'. We've seen numerous updates address the issues, but as Destiny continues to evolve, so must Bungie. And in a new update coming this month, another round of weapon tweaks and balancing changes are incoming.
"This is the result of listening to feedback from the community, observation of players in the wild, poring over user research data, and regular internal playtests," sandbox designer Jon Weisnewski explained. Bungie has not only been looking at stats and figures, but they've also asked for your opinion. The feedback they've received is basically that Pulse Rifles suck. So they're changing that.
"Many of these changes are subtle. It may take a little while to feel the nuanced differences, or you may feel the changes immediately. It all depends on how you play. This is an opportunity to change up your combat strategy in new ways, and/or double down in the areas that still feel good to you."
While you can find the logic behind each incoming change, including fancy graphs and charts, over on the Bungie website, below are the goals and planned changes for each weapon in Destiny.
Heavy machine guns, rocket launchers, scout rifles and sniper rifles are largely untouched in this update; however, Weisnewski warns that any change to Destiny's arsenal may mean that even untouched weapons may seem different in side-by-side comparisons. "You may discover new reasons to start using some of these weapons as part of your combat strategy," he said.
As for why Bungie is introducing these "nerfs" in Destiny update 1.1.1, here's the answer (in typical PR lingo):
"We pay close attention to kill times in all game modes against all combatant types. If we brought up all the other weapons to account for lethality spikes that occur in specific situations, then our TTK (time to kill) would get faster with every patch. It is important to us to keep TTK values such that your arsenal feels lethal, but also both allows for some drama while you fight, and creates opportunities for counter-play when you’re being attacked."
Update 1.1.1 has not been given a specific date, but is expected to arrive sometime this month.
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