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Destiny |OT27| Nerf Herders

R

ReignofSparrows

Member
Xur, you beautiful son of a bitch. Thanks to you, I finally caught them all.

Screen_Shot_2015_08_07_at_3_14_27_PM.png
 
L

Lnkn52

Member
http://www.gameinformer.com/b/featu...c-designing-gjallarhorns-new-competition.aspx

SleeperSimulant-610.jpg



The Life Of A Destiny Exotic: Designing Gjallarhorn’s New Competition
feature
by Ben Reeves on August 07, 2015 at 02:00 PM 2,541 Views
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For the Taken King, Destiny is crafting a suite of new exotic weapons for players to fawn over and collect. However, not all of these will be acquired randomly; some truly powerful tools will require work to unlock. The journey Bungie took to create Sleeper Simulant, however, is nearly as interesting as the path players will take to unlock it. We spoke with a few of Destiny's weapon smiths to get the rundown on how Bungie designs an exotic weapon from scratch, and then we took the weapon for a test drive ourselves.

The Sleeper Simulant is a fusion rifle that will sit in your heavy weapons slot, so you know it packs a punch, since it needs to compete with weapons like rocket launchers and machine guns for your attention and use. Unlike most fusion rifles, its charged up blast can penetrate through multiple enemies and will ricochet off walls up to five times when fully upgraded. Think hand-held rail gun, and you're on the right track.

However, in order to unlock the gun, players first have to collect relics of the Golden Age which have been scattered across the various locations of Destiny. After players bring these pieces back to Banshee-44 (the Tower's gunsmith), the ancient artifacts trigger a memory in the ancient Exo gunsmith, and he will invite players on an odyssey to repair and reactivate one of the Taken King's most striking exotics. Bungie doesn't want to spoil the story content of this mission, but it did say that there will be unique tasks and objectives required for completion, which might even include puzzles that are too hard for any one player to figure out on their own.

We asked Bungie to walk us through the process of creating this powerful weapon, and these are the answers the team provided:



Finding Inspiration:
"We wanted to design a gun that matched the theme of cutting edge technology that was still in its infancy, but bears the hallmarks of a prototype that is not ready for mass distribution," says concept artist Jesse van Dijk. "One of the designs that exemplifies this concept to me is the prototype of the first stealth fighter. I remember seeing it for the first time and thinking it didn't look like a plane. In almost every conceivable way, it was a much more advanced version of what came before and yet it looked so much simpler. It had all these incredibly primitive geometric shapes, so it had that dichotomy of being super advanced on one end and being incredibly visually simple on the other. We latched onto that theme for the Sleeper Simulant, and also looked at images from NASA, such as the Mars rover."



Breaking The Rules:
"When it comes to exotics, anything goes," says gameplay designer Jon Weisnewski. "We have a joke in the design pod that we spend all this time building all these rules for how combat works, and then, when we make an exotic, we pick a rule to break. For the Sleeper Simulant our idea was to take a weapon archetype and move it out of its current role as a primary weapon and make it a heavy. We wondered how could we turn something like a fusion riffle into a heavy hitter. The creation of the Sleeper Simulant was a happy high-five. We said we wanted to make a laser that bounced off walls, and the art team showed us this image and we were like, 'Sweet, let's make these things kiss.'"



Finding The Fantasy:
"We try to hit two fantasies for every weapon," Weisnewski says. "One is the emotional fantasy that the player has just by owning the weapon. How do you feel when you get this weapon? That's all dependent on how it looks, what it's called, its lore, what it sound like when it shoots, and just how devastating it feels to use. Our second fantasy is the gameplay fantasy, which is more like the water cooler line that someone will give you the next day after using it. For something like the Red Death it might be, 'That's the gun that heals me when I shoot.' For the Sleeper Simulant we're thinking it's, 'the laser that bounces off walls and kills a lot of guys."



Fine Tuning In First-Person:
"The design of a weapon is constantly changing through development, and it's critical for every weapon that it gets proven to work in first person," van Dijk says. "The perspective you have on a gun is so different when you hold it up close to your eyes. The field of view creates distortions that you might not even think of when looking at a weapon from the side view. What does the gun's heads-up display looks like? How well does it perform in a combat scenario? Can you actually see what you're shooting at, or is the weapon in the way? All this fine tuning generally takes a while to sort out. At this point, we never assume that a gun's design is final until we put it in the game and see how it looks down the barrel."



Putting It In The Game:
"We went back and forth on depth of view with this gun," Weisnewski says. "The nature of the gun is that you want players to take it into a base and fire it off and watch it ping-pong around environment and hit multiple guys. But in actual play, players kept wanting to use it like a precision weapon, and they would charge up their shots and try to take out their targets from a distance and continually miss. So we started playing with the zoom, and trying to dial that in so we could help them out a bit. Charge time was another issue. We wanted the gun to feel really heavy and feel powerful, but at first it was too slow and took a long time to charge up, so players didn't want to use it."


See an unleveled Sleeper Simulant in action as we shoot it for the first time in one of The Taken King's missions

Path To Glory

Here's a look at Sleeper Simulant's upgrade path, charting how the gun grows as you level it up. Like all new exotics, Sleeper Simulant has an intrinsic property that is unlocked immediately upon acquisition, helping to make it stand out right from the start.

Intrinsic properties:
Projectile over-penetrates enemies and will ricochet once. Projectile capable of dealing precision damage
Barrel column upgrades:
CQB Ballistics - Bonus to Stability
Linear Compensator - Bonus to Range, straighter recoil, bonus to Impact. Reduced Stability.
Accurized Ballistics - Bonus to Range, bonus to Impact. Better Target Acquisition. Reduced Stability.
Support Perk:
Just a Scratch - Reduces aim deflection on incoming rounds while you're aiming with the weapon. Helps the wielder stay on target during the long charge up.
Stat upgrades:
Speed Reload - faster reload speed
Perfect Balance - Better Stability
Single Point Sling - Ready the weapon faster, and faster move speed while aiming.
Exotic Perk:
[Final name TBD] - Increases bounce count of projectile to 5.


That's our look at the creation of the Sleeper Simulant, but you can get more details about Destiny's The Taken King expansion in our cover story hub. We recently posted an interview with creative director Luke Smith where we asked more than 100 questions about the game, but you can also look forward to more developer interviews as well as a look at why now might be the best time to return to Destiny.
Click to expand...
 
R

Robdraggoo

Member
Liquidsnake said:
So I have a 34 hunter and a 15 Tatian. When I hit 20 with my Titan, can I use my hunter to help buy armor for my Titan? Im really worried about how to take my Titan beyond 20.

Any advice? (Yes I did read the OP)
Click to expand...

you will not be able to buy legendary gear from the tower with your hunter for your titan. best bet, use your hunter to gather mad engrams and store them in the vault. then when your titan hits twenty, decode them. they will decode to your level. so if your titan is level 20, you will get light 5-10 gear. equip those get to level 22-23, then decode some more, to get higher, rinse and repeat. get high enough to run level 26 strikes to get marks and more engrams.

thats robdraggoo's quick leveling tip of the week
 
D

darthbob

Member
Hmm, not sure how I feel about the Sleeper Simulant. Doesn't look particularly useful for PvE or PvP but I hope I'm wrong.

Also, what's the appeal of ricochet rounds for Bungie? Hard Light is just... awful, and skip rounds are a joke.
 
O

ocean

Banned
TheAquaticApe said:
It...felt...so...sloooooowwwwwwww.

The bouncing off the walls sounds cool at least...if it actually hits anything. The design is sexy however.
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Bouncing on a weapon with over penetration sounds super fun. I'd love to see one fully leveled. So close.

Can't feel excited until the 1.x exotics thing is cleared up though.
 
P

purg3

slept with Malkin
TheAquaticApe said:
All I could think when I watched the video, "Wow...it's taking forever to kill that ogre with this gun. I wonder how fast the gjallahorn would kill it. Hmmm."
Click to expand...

Yeah haha, damage output on higher tier enemies didn't seem too great. Love the design though.
 
L

LTWood12

Member
Lnkn52 said:
Anything with the word "exotic" today is getting no love. lol
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xVaalbarAx said:
They did say it was unleveled. But I want Lasers in my life.
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I'm not sure the additional bounces off of surfaces would have done any more to that Ogre. Seems like it'll be useful for taking out groups of enemies. But a singular tank target isn't it's strong suit. Of course, they haven't even named the exotic perk yet, so it could change.
 
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Ophelion

Member
darthbob said:
Hmm, not sure how I feel about the Sleeper Simulant. Doesn't look particularly useful for PvE or PvP but I hope I'm wrong.

Also, what's the appeal of ricochet rounds for Bungie? Hard Light is just... awful, and skip rounds are a joke.
Click to expand...

If the ricochet bent to the angle of the nearest enemy, then we'd be cooking with gas. That would be something that could clean up trash mobs like no ones business.
 
P

purg3

slept with Malkin
Souldestroyer Reborn said:
How come the Blacksmith shader is being given away?

I know how but I want one. What do I need to do?
Click to expand...

Jump on a plan to Gamescom


E92 M3 said:
Part of their new philosophy for making weapons average.
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That's my worry going forward with bungie and their weapon designs, especially exotics. They know how straight up broken year one exotics could be and with "fixing" them, I can see the newer exotics not being very stand out weapons in terms of power. Unique perks, sure but the days of super powered exotics are over.
 
T

TheAquaticApe

Member
E92 M3 said:
Part of their new philosophy for making weapons average.
Click to expand...

Yeah, it didn't really seem "cool" in the video. Hopefully it's a monster for mobs when fully leveled up. That could make it a very fun gun to use. Also, since the Dreadnaught is a ship, I'm hopeful there's dozens of corridors where it makes the perk very worthwhile.
 
G

gutter_trash

Banned
so, could you guys confirm please,
to upgrade future exotics: you need to sacrifice one in the same weapon slow (primaries) to be able to upgrade another primary exotic?
 
O

Ophelion

Member
gutter_trash said:
so, could you guys confirm please,
to upgrade future exotics: you need to sacrifice one in the same weapon slow (primaries) to be able to upgrade another primary exotic?
Click to expand...

We don't know. No one knows yet. We probably won't know anything for sure until the Bungie guys get back from Gamescom and release something.

Axoman said:
Yeah, that quote is coming from the guy that balances weapons...
Click to expand...

He probably just misspoke. Cut a dude a break.
 
S

Souldestroyer Reborn

Banned
Well why don't the make the final perk interchangeable?

You can either:

- Have it ricochet 5 times. (Beneficial for groups of enemies)

Or

- Have it ricochet once for more damage (equivalent of 2/3 shots) but less range.
 
P

PrivateWHudson

Member
Axoman said:
Yeah, that quote is coming from the guy that balances weapons...
Click to expand...

Uh oh...Top of page. Spoilered the hate comment since I'm really just laughing, not hating.

Must be the guy that came up with a Rocket Launcher with a Shank burn perk that replaces useful perks like tracking and shoes/grenades.
 
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