“Players will exceed our expectations” – Bungie on the art of Destiny 2’s weapon balancing

Believe it or not, Destiny 2 is seven years old. To put that into perspective, the PS5 and Xbox Series X/S didn’t exist. And if you were playing on PC, you were likely still rocking an Nvidia 1000 Series or AMD equivalent, But there’s still plenty of life in the old dog, with Bungie releasing regular updates that help to keep its loyal playerbase engaged.

With the launch of Act 3 of Destiny 2: Echoes, fans will get their hands on brand new firepower, in the form of a Solar Machine Gun Speleologist and Void Trace Rifle Chronophage.

How does Bungie balance Destiny 2?

Introducing new weapons, especially in an established gameplay environment like Destiny 2 brings with it some challenges, especially when it comes to balancing.

“On the Sandbox team, we first internally balance weapons and abilities against each other, in an abstract way,” Chris Proctor, Sandbox Craft Lead told us at Gamescom. “Then, we work with designers on other teams, in this case the Raids and Dungeons team (RAD), to identify possible player build outliers.”

Raids are obviously a huge part of where balancing mechanics are stress-tested. Thankfully, as Brian Frank, Raid Design Lead explains, ” Mixed into the process is knowing that players will exceed our expectations”. He explains: “We have targets for the number of phases for a fireteam to complete as well as damage contribution for individual players given different tiers of buildcrafting and on-meta weapon choices. For example, a highly coordinated team with multiple highly buildcrafted individuals can one-phase. We test those assumptions with a cross-discipline group of Bungie experts and tune boss vitality and outlier damage sources accordingly. Mixed into the process is knowing that players will exceed our expectations.” 

So, how does a seven-year-old game keep the barrier to entry low enough for new players without alienating the established vateran fan base?

“For balance between beginners and veterans, we intentionally have some fairly strong weapons accessible to newer players, and usable without extensive build-crafting and raiding experience, but we also want the weapons with the highest potential to require build-crafting and high skill,” Proctor explains.

“As an example, the Microcosm trace rifle outputs solid damage without requiring 100% precision, but if you want to maximize your DPS potential you have to go for something harder to use that ties into your build.”

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.

Additional reporting from Antony Terrence and Amaar Chowdhury.