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Someone once told me, “It’s not how you start that’s important, but how you finish”. For a seven-year-old game with a loyal fan base, The Final Shape concluded the epic Light and Darkness saga – a journey that spanned console generations, expansions, and controversies as players fought to defeat the villainous The Witness. But creating the perfect ending takes time, thought and, as the team at Bungie tells us, a lot of data.
“We’ve been watching for an opportunity to ship something that explores wild combinations in a similar way,” Chris Proctor, Sandbox Craft Lead told us. “During The Craftening (a bug that allowed players to craft weapons with intrinsics and perks that aren’t normally allowed), the Weapons Team watched how players interacted with bugs in the crafting system across Reddit and YouTube.
“One of the big additions we made to The Final Shape was the Ergo Sum exotic sword, which is Craftening-like in how it allows mixing parts of a weapon that are normally completely unique and bespoke: weapon frame, damage type, and exotic trait.
We’ve been watching for an opportunity to ship something that explores wild combinations
Chris Proctor, Sandbox Craft Lead
“We made some other adjustments to The Final Shape based on how Season of the Wish and Destiny 2: Into the Light were received too, including creating the Aggressive Frame Machine Gun subfamily and changing some standard Sidearms into Rocket-Assisted Frame Sidearms.”
The key to making The Final Shape ring true with fans was to keep zooming out, and never assuming what the community wants. “You sometimes go into this phase so zeroed in on what you THINK is the most important item, only to realize that wasn’t the case at all, and The Final Shape was no exception!,” said Ryan Paradis, Design Director.
“With our activity content, the team was able to sit in with our community members, watch them experience the content first-hand, and hear directly what they loved and sometimes hated. This was key for seeing where things were clicking and where they weren’t, and allocating our time and focus where necessary.”
He continued: “This is especially true with the post-campaign content, ensuring that the end of the campaign was really just the beginning of a whole new – and just as beefy – set of adventures. We were able to hone our efforts on key experiences, be that Micah-10 and her story, or in bringing the band together for a satisfying conclusion in Excision, and even adding the twist onto Dual Destiny.
“This was key for seeing where things were clicking and where they weren’t, and allocating our time and focus where necessary.”
Ryan Paradis, Design Director
“Additionally, we heard the feedback that players truly wanted the ultimate showdown with the Witness with incredible stakes. This helped us push forward with Grandmaster Excision and try to meet those desires, stakes, and reward moments.
“We also directly solicit feedback and discuss sentiment trends with representatives from the Community and Player Support teams. Guidance from those sources influences a range of work from bug prioritization, tuning of current systems, to iteration on the design of new features.”
Act 3 of Destiny 2: Echoes is out now. For more information on the new weapons, updated artifact mods, and a full recap of the story in Act 1 and 2 of Echoes, check out last week’s This Week in Destiny blog. We also chatted to the team about Destiny 2’s weapon balancing, should you want to take a look.
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