Bungie's Luke Smith Answers Destiny Questions From Twitter

Hey, guys.

I'm Luke Smith from Bungie,

and today, we're gonna talk about your questions

on this episode of Destiny Support.

(dramatic music)

The first one is from @mattbfc72gmail1,

which I'm a little worried that

that might be a password of his,

but let's get to his question.

I think bungle should reinstate a loot cave somewhere,

just for the hell of it.

You can see how many people

are willing to grind that shizz.

Well,

the loot cave was a pretty fun time in Destiny 1.

What it showed us was that the game that we shipped in 2014

was a game that people wanted to play

and that it also wasn't rewarding enough.

What we've tried to do with Destiny, and now Destiny 2,

is make the game feel pretty rewarding,

so that standing in front of a cave

shooting into it isn't the best way to play it.

The loot cave questions continue.

What if Bungie never patched out the loot cave?

Would we all still be sitting in front of that cave,

farming engrams?

Even though I hope not, there's like a little part of me

that thinks there would still be some people

standing in front of the loot cave, shooting into it

in hope that something amazing was gonna come out of it.

And so we did it, we did it to prevent that from happening.

Since the Black Garden is the requirement for carryover,

could The Stranger's Rifle be Destiny 1's remembrance piece

for original players?

I think what you're asking about here, @simcuwitz,

is how is Bungie going to remember that we played Destiny 1?

We have something we're planning.

We're not gonna talk about it.

I'm not gonna spoil it here.

But when the game comes out on September 6th,

you'll find out for yourself what I'm talking about.

Will there be any Destiny 2 perks for players of D1?

And will you need to buy it on the same platform

for them to work?

You're gonna enter the world a little differently

than people who didn't play D1.

Will you need to buy it

on the same platform for them to work?

The answer to that is yes.

If you're an Xbox player,

in Destiny 2 on Xbox, we will remember

and show you that we remember

when you boot up the game and enter the world.

Question, colon, Did the wizard really come from the moon

or was that just something you guys said

to get people interested?

We talked a lot about this one internally.

We think that the wizard did in fact come from the moon,

and what we didn't do a good job of

was communicating that the wizard came from the moon,

like giving it a different name, like Moon Wizard,

or Lunar Wizard, or something like that.

We'll try to do better.

Scathelocke auto rifle is the best gun

in the #deestiny2beta, that had two E's.

Yay or nay?

There were only a couple of auto rifles in the beta

and it was just a tease.

Scathelocke is a kinetic auto rifle,

which means it's gonna deal bonus damage

to players' weak spots, their critical zones, their heads.

If a player is just running around, not in their super,

Scathelocke might have been the best auto rifle in the beta.

But our energy weapons, we also had an auto rifle,

I believe in the beta, so if a player was in their super,

running around, like running around throwing shields,

like Captain America, then that auto rifle

probably would be better than Scathelocke.

The answer to this question really is about

the answer to how we think about the sandbox for Destiny.

I hope Scathelocke's amazing.

I hope it ships and it's an incredible weapon

and people love it,

but I hope it's got times when it's really great

and times when you wish you were using something else.

If the Awoken weren't created

until after the Darkness arrived,

why does an Awoken Guardian not know

what happened to The Traveler?

(sigh) This is a tricky question

because it sort of lays bare the timeline

and the questions that the timeline can create.

I'm gonna talk about one particular part of the timeline.

The Collapse.

We chose the word collapse at Bungie very specifically.

We were trying to indicate that

not only did society collapse

but it also sort of jet, jettisoned humanity

back into the equivalent of a sort of dark age.

Not much is actually remembered at all from this time

and it's very deliberate.

Why does the queen of the Awoken have my haircut?

If this picture is representative,

this individual's hair has since grown out,

since this question, so this might be a bit of a deep cut.

One of the ways we think about character creation is how,

how are we creating a character who can be

cosplayed by people who love our game?

Choosing those characters' hairstyles and their coloring

and the way their zippers have little things on them,

it's just humbling to see any character from our game world

that someone spent a bunch of time

to dress up and embody it.

It's always amazing and the team

gets super excited about it.

I wanna know how The Taken King and The Vex

play into the war against the Red Legion, mayne.

That is M-A-Y-N-E.

That's a word that I'm probably not allowed to say

'cause I'm too old.

But because it was in the question,

I read it and I committed to it.

While we were building The Taken King,

we had an idea about what was coming next,

and we knew it was going to be about the Cabal.

We had a mission where

you learned a little bit about the fact,

I believe the mission was called Outbound Signal,

and the outbound signal was in fact a signal.

I believe it was a signal from the Cabal ship

that crashed into the Hive Dreadnaught

that was beaming a signal out to the Cabal Empire.

With respect to The Vex,

The Vex don't play specifically a role

in the conflict between the Red Legion,

but while you're playing through Destiny 2

and while you're playing a bunch of the different content,

we are pointing at places we're gonna go next.

Part of the fun of making and playing games

is seeing that intention and knowing that it's all,

it's all going somewhere.

@FJM_Steward

asks @MyNameIsByf,

popular YouTuber and Lore Master,

What do you think about Cayde being on the Vex planet

in Destiny 2, stuck in a portal?

Lookin' for The Stranger or Maya Sundaresh?

I can answer this one.

Cayde is actually looking for neither of those things.

He's trying to figure out a way to solve this Ghaul problem.

In the opening of the game,

in the first mission, Homecoming,

which people played in the beta, Cayde talks about,

he's gonna go find the person who caused this

and it's gonna be a short date.

That didn't break well for Cayde.

He ended up heading to Nessus

to try to figure out another way to leverage technology

because he doesn't have his power anymore,

so that he can take on Ghaul.

It's not about The Stranger and it's not about Maya.

It's about Cayde doing the thing

that I don't think people expected him to do,

which was be a hero.

How does Destiny look so realistic?

The Destiny visual style is a testament to

the amazing team of artists that we have at the company.

We have a visual style for our worlds

that dates back to Destiny 1.

We describe it as nature ascending over humanity.

A bunch of awesome stuff happens,

like you have giant bosses

and you have characters throwing magic bombs

and you have those guys summoning golden magic pistols,

and so we want to have that, but at the same time,

we want things to be grounded.

I'll be frank.

Why should anyone get Destiny 2 on console

for anything but PlayStation 4?

Other than, quote, 'I don't own a PS4.'

I'm gonna be frank.

The best place to play Destiny 2 is in the place

where you can play it with people you wanna play games with.

Play wherever you want, but just play with people.

(clicking)

@Wise__,

I got a rogue Ikora here.

You know, and if she falls over, and people are gonna think

I like disrespected her or something,

so I'm not gonna hear the end of it,

so she's gotta stand up.

I'll fix it.

Yeah, fixed.

Any change to the player fantasy?

Do Titans feel like walking tanks,

Hunters like acrobats of death,

and Warlocks as floating butterflies?

Do you want a job?

That's what we try to do.

The Hunters, with the new subclass, the Arcstrider,

we tried to make an acrobat of death,

the Warlocks with Dawnblade are floating butterflies,

and the Titans, we hope, do feel like walking tanks.

If you want to feel fast on any class,

what you want to do is find armor that prioritizes mobility.

If you want to feel like a walking tank,

you're gonna want to find armor

that prioritizes resilience and recovery,

no matter what class you're on.

What we've done was, we've made the stat ranges

on these statistics in Destiny 2 matter more,

so people in the beta talked about,

My character doesn't feel as fast

as he or she felt in Destiny 1.

If you want to be like a racecar Warlock,

there's totally a build for that.

I'm not gonna tell you what the stuff is in it,

'cause I don't want to ruin the surprise,

but if you want to go fast, you can go fast.

This is still @Wise__Wolf.

I'm just doing two at once.

Any word on recovery, armor, or agility?

Did they throw that out or refine it so that it matters?

Could we just run the same answer I just gave

and just run it twice?

That would be awesome.

How do you think having power weapons

instead of both special and heavy

affect the PVE endgame?

Definitely affects the PVE endgame.

One of the changes we've made is,

we have, now, characters where

previously, we've called them Majors,

which is a word we never wanted you

to have to understand as a player.

But any character you're fighting

whose health bar is not the boring, simple, red version,

like the baseline version of the unit,

any one of those characters that fight

is gonna just drop power ammo for you.

Suddenly, that creates an interesting game

that creates a prioritization game

when you're playing in something like a strike.

By adding the sort of deterministic way of getting ammo,

it lets us design experiences.

We do hope that when you're playing the game this fall,

you can see that intention.

I think, ultimately, it's gonna be,

it's gonna be super fun for players.

The elemental mods on the elemental weapons

makes me think we'll be able to change damage type?

Yes, it does.

It doesn't mean that you'll be able

to change all the damage colors, like for your exotics.

It does mean that you will be able

to look at a hand canon that you love

and be like, Aw man, I'm gonna,

I'm gonna change this to solar

because I know that this week,

the Cabal strike and the Nightfall playlist

has a bunch of guys with red shields.

I don't think this was in the beta,

but when you pop the shields and they match in,

in the shipping game,

so if you're shooting a red shield with a red gun,

it creates this pretty large AoE explosion that deals damage

not only to the character whose shield you just popped,

so they take sort of double damage on a shield pop,

but also stuns the character,

so they, pfft, freeze and you just can keep shooting him,

but the AoE will also blow up

a bunch of the creatures around him,

so that damage match game

becomes more important and more fun.

Next one.

Can we hope to have private matches on Destiny 2

in the first few updates after launch?

What we're gonna be doing when the game comes out is,

we have an internal-- (figurine crashing)

I'll fix it.

We're already thinking about (mumbles) the game.

We have like, it's like a list of features.

Then the game comes out, and the best laid plans

(mimics explosion) explode,

so it's really hard for me to say right now,

Yes, yes, private matches are coming

in the first few updates after launch,

because the plan is gonna be modified.

The deal is gonna be altered.

Sometime after September 6th

when y'all out there get your hands on our game.

#Destiny2 thought, colon,

Do you think Bungie possibly begins utilizing

something like PTR on PC to test updates

with players before they go live?

PTR, for those of you who aren't,

aren't attuned to the Blizzard language,

means patch test realm.

It's where we go and play the latest content

or we play sort of a future update,

and we're putting the game through its paces.

We have talked a lot internally about the possibility

of opening something like this up to,

to player groups,

and honestly, I like the idea of players not totally knowing

everything that's there before the game comes out.

While I think the test realm,

and private test beta, if we expanded that,

would be amazing for a bunch of things like stability,

I'm still interested in challenging us to do

our best job without having to expose it to the public.

I wouldn't say never but I wouldn't say yes.

I don't know how to get that down to 140 characters.

It's tough.

I'm liking the look of #Destiny2 but come on @Bungie,

why remove the grimoire?

Two steps forward and one step back, winky face.

Now, @stubbbbs, I think you and I both know

that's a passive aggressive winky face.

I believe it was at DRE where this first thing leaked,

this notion of a lore tab on a bunch of weapons.

That's one of the elements.

That's our version of how do we replace,

how do we replace the thing players love about the grimoire?

What I think the thing that players love about the grimoire

is it's extending the universe of Destiny.

It's giving it more teeth.

It's giving you more to grab onto.

We don't feel like it was necessarily taking something away

but rather reprioritizing the time that we would spend

on doing something out of the game to put it in the game,

rather than just the subset of people who go to our website.

We like lore too, and the best way

for players to experience lore

is for them to experience it in the game client.

I think the Titan is the best class in the beta so far.

Multiple slams is OP!

Who is your favorite and why?

My friends and I played a bunch of competitive.

We played a bunch of countdown in the beta.

For me, in a mode with objectives,

it was hard for me to have more fun

than dropping big walls while I'm playing.

The Titan class ability,

I think it's like, Towering Barricade is what it's called,

but that's a mouthful, so I just call it Big Wall.

But there's a path in the Gunslinger tree

that I think is pretty much the best we've ever seen

for Hunters in PVE.

It's called The Way of the Sharpshooter.

The way that it works, each hit of your Golden Gun

can now do precision damage.

You can critical hit with Golden Gun.

Successive precision hits of Golden Gun deal more damage.

It doesn't have to be on the same target,

so you could hit something with Power A,

and then A plus one, and A plus two.

Now, the next thing that it does is,

each precision hit creates orbs for your allies.

If you're a good Golden Gun shot

and you pride yourself on precision,

The Way of the Sharpshooter

is the highest orb generation class

that I've seen in the game to date.

Now, I'm not gonna just ignore the Warlock either.

There's a Path for the Voidwalker

that I just call the Devour Path.

This is a path where the Voidwalker

gets to put him or herself into a state.

It's called Devour, and when Devour is active,

which I can do two ways.

I can do it by (crunching) consuming my grenade.

I can eat a grenade.

Or with a melee kill, where you just bop a guy and kill him.

Either of those things will set you into the Devour state.

Then, any kill will start to heal you,

and of course, when you're super is full,

you get to throw the Nova Bomb

and this Nova Bomb on the bottom tree

travels much faster than the Nova Bomb in the top tree

that was in the beta,

that I affectionately call Slowva Bomb,

but I believe the game calls Cataclysm.

Can't buy talent.

I kind of take the coward's way out on this one.

I honestly don't really have a favorite.

I sort of move between the characters based on my mood.

But for me, I'm gonna have a couple of day ones

because I'm gonna have the console day one in September

and then, of course,

I'm gonna have the PC day one in October,

and the thing I will promise you is,

I will play two different characters

on each of those day ones,

but I bet you by the time the PC comes out,

I'll have leveled all three of the characters already.

'Cause I play a lot of the game, can't you tell?

@Sooo_Sweaty,

If the Dawnblade can kill a Hunter

in Golden Gun with one strike,

why can't the Hunter do the same

with one Golden Gun shot?

Dawnblade has a travel time, which means it's dodgeable.

When you throw the flaming sword, it moves,

and it can be avoided.

It's not a, it's not an instant hit projectile from rage.

Golden Gun is.

I believe this is probably just going off of the beta,

and so this is just looking at the Six Shooter talent,

a precision hit with Golden Gun

would probably kill the Dawnblade Warlock,

so you might be looking for The Way of the Sharpshooter.

What is the best power weapon in the Destiny 2 beta?

He's linked a YouTube clip here,

and I bet you it's just someone

doing unfair things with some power weapon.

If I was to guess without watching the clip,

without making it play behind me,

it might be a Fusion Rifle.

The Fusion Rifles were a little hot.

They were a bit strong, and so we are gonna,

we're gonna tune them down just a smidge

to bring them in line with the other power weapons.

We've looked at things like sniper flinch and sniper sway

and have tried to reduce that.

We've done things like

increase rocket launcher damage against the monsters.

We hope there isn't a best when the game ships.

I mean, the one, this one over here is pretty good.

It's called the Wardif Coil,

so no more Dubious Volley.

It's a power weapon, you call it the Wardif Coil.

That's its name.

I don't think I understand

what a power weapon is in the Destiny 2 beta.

Is it a heavy, is it a secondary?

Capital W-T-H is it?

A power weapon in the beta is

a weapon that has no ammo when you spawn

and all the ammo for it is located around the map.

Now, in the PVP game, these weapons

are all pretty much one-hit kill weapons.

Very effective, they're super lethal,

and you don't have access to them all the time.

We want to make combat engagements be more like gunfights

rather than what they've been in the past

because we are an action game and we're a shooter.

What a power weapon is, is it's an opportunity to win.

It's a big opportunity to win.

It's a temporal advantage.

It's like a power play in hockey, in a bunch of ways.

Like you have the advantage.

Titans have mobile Fist of Havoc

and Hunters have Golden Guns.

Why don't we have a mobile Nova Bomb for Warlocks?

Like three to four smaller bombs.

Like three to four smaller bombs made of fire?

Like swords, could that work?

'Cause you have that, could we, could we call that good?

Let's call that good.

What weapon are you guys gonna miss the most in Destiny 2?

Double question mark, hashtag #Destiny2.

I'm not gonna speak for the whole team.

I will only speak for myself.

It's a weapon that I wanted

from the moment that we created it.

It was a weapon that, when I got it,

I stood up in my living room

and let out a yelp and a fist pump

and my golden retriever looked at me like I was a lunatic.

It is a weapon that was found

in Destiny's first raid, The Vault of Glass,

and that came from the Templar Raid boss,

and its tooltip is, Delivering the inevitable

one trigger pull at a time,

and its name was Fate Bringer,

and I will miss it forever.

Legitimate question, can Cayde-6 even eat ramen?

Do Exos even eat?

I didn't ask a version of this question internally,

but I did ask another question about Exos capabilities

because I did wonder, it's a robot, like is it,

is it all, is it all robotic?

I, like, how do,

the answer is indexed for fun,

and so of course, yeah, Cayde of course can eat ramen.

Of course, he can.

Cayde can eat anything that you can eat,

and I guess he really likes the spicy ramen.

I, fun fact, I don't like spicy things

because it gives me heartburn.

It makes me upset, it makes me grumpy.

Will Cayde-6 have a bigger role in Destiny 2?

In the context of how big the game is,

Cayde has a part and he shares that part

with the two other members of The Vanguard,

because we wanted to give each of them

their own sort of arcs in the game.

In terms of objective, does he have more stuff to do

in this game than any Destiny game previously, he does,

and it goes further because Cayde,

just like the other members of The Vanguard,

has a little role that they play in the cyclical game,

which is the game you play after the campaign.

If Ghaul listened to music,

what type of music would he listen to?

True story.

I actually got some folks from the team together

to talk to them about this question

because I wanted to know the truth.

The answer was, Music that would make him feel superior.

Suggestions included things like jazz,

prog rock from the '60s or '70s.

Like maybe Ghaul is really into Rush.

Although, in my head, if I were Ghaul,

I think I might listen to some of that stuff from Moana.

I really do.

Moana's good stuff, you should check it out.

Quick question for Destiny lore people.

Why does Lord Shaxx have the Raze Lighter sword

instead of the Guardian in canon?

Well, in canon, you and your ghost were not at the tower

at the time of the attack.

Shaxx just has his all the time.

And also, it's a glowing, flaming sword.

You want to look at the guy and be like,

Yep, what's the coolest thing we could give him?

Well, we're not allowed to give him a light saber,

so what's the next coolest thing?

A sword that's on fire, let's do that.

It looks sweet.

You didn't have yours, yours was in your vault,

along with all the rest of your stuff

that the guy listening to smooth jazz blew up.

We're sorry.

Well, I mean, he is.

Hello, Luke, you did a really good job.

I think I could have done a better job.

I don't know, I think you did really good.

(sigh) I tried.

I'll see you with a whole bunch more this fall in Destiny 2.

Thanks for watching this episode of Destiny Support.