In the MMO shooter Destiny , the patch continues to cause problems. Instead of certain weapons dealing 4% more damage, they are only dealing 0.04% more. Bungie refers to it as an extremely unfortunate typographical error.
Update: Clarification about the patch chaos was provided last Thursday night. Here is the link to our article about it.
For weeks, the changes to the weapon balance in Destiny have been clear. In a lengthy post, Bungie’s weapon designer Jon Weisnewski explained it. The changes mainly focused on the two primary weapon types: pulse rifles and auto rifles.
Auto rifles were supposed to deal between 3% and 7% more damage, according to the post back then – depending on the rate of fire. For pulse rifles, the damage was supposed to decrease by between 2% and 9% depending on the archetype. Quite significant changes that one would particularly notice in the Crucible.
The numbers could be read on November 20 in a lengthy article, which we summarized in German.
Community notices: Something might be wrong with the changes to auto and pulse rifles
These changes were actually supposed to be active since Tuesday evening. Then the patch came. But the community noticed: something doesn’t seem right. While pulse rifles deal less damage, auto rifles hardly deal more. Something is off.
Bungie has now retroactively changed the patch notes to display the “correct values,” and it suddenly read:
For auto rifles, the damage increased by 0.3% (slow fire rate), 0.7% (medium fire rate), and 0.04% (high fire rate). Far from the announced percentages: those were 3, 7, and 4%. So ten times or even a hundred times the actual amounts.
The same applies to pulse rifles: here the damage is said to decrease, according to the new patch notes, by only 0.9% (slow), 0.9% (medium), 0.9% (high), and 0.97% (highest fire rate). Values of 9%, 8%, 8%, and 2% had been intended.
The reduced damage “falloff” value for pulse rifles, which was supposed to come, is also found in the updated patch notes – they now do less damage at longer ranges than before, especially pulse rifles with low range.
Unfortunate typographical error, they only meant to implement these minimal changes in Destiny from the start
Weapon master Weisnewski talks about an “extremely unfortunate typographical error,” but the changes that have now occurred were always planned this way.
@DattosDestiny It was an extremely unfortunate typo, but the change was intentional. We’ll have more to say in the BWU.
— Jon Weisnewski (@sharkeatsman) December 9, 2015
Among the fans, this raises serious doubts: For 3 weeks we have been counting on these numbers – and now it is supposed to be a typographical error that no one noticed? And did you really intend to give one type of weapon 0.04% more damage from the start?
You can tell that to the fox.
“Please, mistakes happen, but don’t treat us like fools,” says a post on reddit that is gaining a lot of attention. “Tell us the truth. What’s wrong with you? What happened?”
Or are the new patch notes also incorrect?
Other Destiny players calculate: The “0.9%” less damage with pulse rifles doesn’t add up, as there is already more damage missing from the pulse rifles. We see that here in the numbers. These new values cannot be correct. No matter how we calculate, we cannot arrive at the values you have specified.
Weisnewski wants to comment on the matter again today in Bungie’s Weekly Update.
There seems to be a bug at Bungie. Just this morning they fixed a serious issue with the December patch.
Regarding pulse rifles, we recommend our pulse rifle guide for The Taken King.
