Aztecross - Summary of Bungie Dev Interview

Cross did a TL;DR for a recent interview with Bungie devs about the state of the sandbox. Some Highlights:

• Double Special PVE meta is NOT intended and getting adjusted. Trace Rifles and guns that straddle primary/special like Forerunner seem okay in Bungie's eyes. Fusion Rifle + GLs is not.
• Snipers and Scouts in PVE are hard to balance because they make encounters too safe. Points to many instances in D1 where we would sit in the back with Icebreaker.
• Snipers are underperforming and will be getting adjusted again after Season 22.
• Ammo reserves stat not likely getting shown in the game for a while because of how it's calculated.
• Testing a 10-15% PVE buff for Pulse Rifles for Season 23
• "Hand cannons will never one-tap in GMs"
• The baseline for weapon power is Heroic strikes and Legendary Campaign.
• Adept weapons should be 5-10% more effective than the non-adept.
• Weapons that don't have great stats try to make up for it with powerful perk combos.
• 150 HCs likely not coming back.
• New lightweight sidearm in Season 22.

PVP TTK Values:

• TTK is low because of a number of factors:
  • Destiny is a fast game. Higher TTK would allow players to just run away if they were shot first.
  • Special weapon uptime means that primaries need to have a low TTK to compete.
  • There are a lot of abilities that increase or grant health. Fast TTK ensures they don't get too oppressive.
• Primary TTK likely won't go up by much without adjustments to Special Weapon ammo economy.
• The sweet spot for TTK that the devs aim for is around .8 seconds and they try not to go lower than .67 seconds.
• Damage buffs that lower TTK are determined by how easy it is to get the buff.
• The Resistance value they try to aim for when optimizing TTKs for a weapon is 60 (Tier 6).
• New PVP gametype or modifier coming called "Checkmate" that increases the TTK value and modifies ability cooldowns.

PVP Weapon Use and Balance:

• Weapons are not balanced solely on usage. Usage is considered but it is lower on the pole than other things like community feedback and playtesting data.
• Bungie consideres 140 HCs as the baseline when balancing weapons.
• Bungie tends to look at high skill lobbies first when balancing weapons that are out of band. If they see the same stats reflected across all skill levels then it's an indicator that the weapon is overperforming.
• HCs seem to be used less now because of SBMM. Higher skill players are matching against each other and therefore playing more conservatively with PRs.
• 5 of the the top 10 most effective weapons are HCs in the current meta.
• The Immortal is 7th most effective but is the most used.
• The Immortal is not in the top 10 most OP weapons.
• Hard Light once had 30% of all weapon kills.
• HCs used to have more primary weapon kills than all other primaries combined.
• Felwinter's+HCs once had more kills than all other weapons combined in PVP.
• Only 3 SMGs in top 25 used weapons. 2 of them are Immortal and it's Adept.
• Immortal should be affected by the upcoming range changes and has had other direct nerfs to bring it in line.
• Mercules thinks that Shayura's is a more effective SMG than Immortal.
• Top 50 Primaries:
  • 17 HCs
  • 12 PRs
  • 7 SMGs
  • 5 AR
  • 6 Scouts
  • 3 sidearms
  • 1 Bow
  • (These numbers add up to 51. Not sure where the error is)
• High Rate of Fire weapons are hard to balance. Small changes have huge impacts. 360 ARs and 180 HCs mentioned specifically.
• These guns should benefit from the range changes.
• Bungie does not want a 360 AR meta.
• Glaive tuning coming for PVP. Looking at letting the shield auto recharge when the weapon is out but have the shield grant less DR.
• Bungie does not want Glaives to be the close range meta.
• Fusion rifles at the high end are overperforming.
• Nerfs coming to Under Pressure in Season 22. Kickstart might get a nerf later.
• Cloudstrike explosion radius getting reduced by 2m (5m down to 3m),
• Some bugs on Bows are getting adjusted. Reload speed and projectile velocity are getting adjusted.