Destiny: Rise of Iron 9.20.16

Power Matters (More!)
The goal for Level Advantages in PVP had been to create relatively small advantages that would suffice only to tilt the balance between players of equal skill towards the player of greater achievement, expressed in terms of his gear. But we now believe we have been too conservative, and that small tilts failed to meet anyone?s expectations.

In the next Iron Banner, we will debut a much more dramatic difference between players of wide variation in Level. We will detail the changes in an article of its own to come as soon as we settle on some of the numbers.

Because of this, the next Iron Banner will also require a Fireteam leader to be Level 20 to enter. While lower Level players may join in with their Level 20+ chaperone, they will find it very challenging.

Quitting
The goal of Iron Banner was to create a PVP playlist where players would push their game and their equipment harder than ever. To do so, the emphasis is on winning. But that meant players who found themselves losing would be inclined to leave.

The Iron Lords respect perseverance and tenacity. In the next Iron Banner, players will receive a Medallion of Iron on a loss. Upon their next win, each Medallion they carry will convert into a reputation gain almost equal to a win.


Armor and Weapons
The goal for Iron Banner gear was to provide Armor powerful enough to interest most players after a few weeks of gearing up, and aesthetically appealing to all players. But for very advanced characters, wearing Exotics and Raid gear, the equipment was not powerful enough to consider.

In the next Iron Banner, new exclusive reward Armor will be bumped to Level 30, but will still only be available in two slots. For advanced players, this will make them viable functional or visual sidegrades.

Iron Banner Weapons were already viable sidegrades for all but the most advanced players, but we would like to expand the options available. In the next Iron Banner, the weapon types available will go from two to four, divided between drops on match victory, and purchase from Lord Saladin in the Tower.

Bounties
The goal of Bounties in the Iron Banner is to push players to prove themselves in new ways, while also ensuring that straight-up combat was always valuable to move you towards a higher rank. But some of the Bounties required too much, and were mutually exclusive in a way that made this worse.

In the next Iron Banner, several of these Bounties have been tuned down quite a bit, and overall the value of Bounties has been bumped up. Also, they have been moved onto Lord Saladin, who was getting a little lonely back there with only his gong and dinosaur drawings.

New Feature: Reforging
Timur's Lash (the Hand Cannon available on match victory) was exciting to us because it was able to re-roll its upgrades on each drop, resulting in some unique and excellent configurations. But due to other issues, this was inaccessible to most players.

In the next Iron Banner, Lord Saladin will offer players the option of Reforging any Iron Banner weapon (including those from the last event.) This will re-roll all of the upgrades, but will also reset any progression. The cost for each Reforge will be a small number of Motes of Light, so set some aside next time Xur arrives in the Tower.

New Feature: Tempered
With Iron Banner lasting one week, some players with working schedules found themselves unable to even consider reaching a higher rank.

In the next Iron Banner, Lord Saladin will offer a 12-hour buff called Tempered, which will boost Iron Banner reputation gains. As the week goes forward, this boost will be increasingly potent, to help players starting later in the week to catch up. In Iron Banners after the next, we expect that we will further tune these bonuses by increasing their potency, but limiting their effect to lower Ranks.

Iron Banner Reputation Reset
If your eyes just snapped open, relax: Iron Banner reputation isn't resetting. The goal of Iron Banner events is to bring everyone together to play PVP for a week, and our plan had been to reset reputation each event. But this was poorly communicated, and (for reasons listed above) reaching higher ranks took longer than intended.

In the next Iron Banner, you will still have the Rank achieved in the last. But we still want players to come together for at least a few nights of team PVP, including veterans of the last event, so the Iron Banner ranks have been increased to 5. Some of the adjustments above will help players ascend more quickly through these and existing ranks.

In future Iron Banners, we will change over from Reputation to an Event Standing model where ranks are reset, but only after we better tune the effort required to reach the higher ranks.

Disclaimer of Ultimate Dodge
Some of the above changes are still undergoing internal testing, and we may encounter critical issues that force us to postpone a change. We?ll keep you posted.