Big changes are coming to Destiny’s next Iron Banner event

By Stephany Nunneley

Bungie incorporating quite a few changes to Destiny’s next Iron Banner event thanks to player feedback.

In the latest Bungie update, lead designer Tyson Green said the development was able to “move forward quickly” with implementing player feedback into the next Iron Banner event.

“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,” wrote Green. “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. 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.”

More big changes are afoot as well such has handing out a Medallion of Iron on a loss, which Bungie feels will encourage players to continue playing instead of leaving upon losing. Upon the next win, each medallion carried will “convert into a reputation gain almost equal to a win.”

Another change is to armor and weapons for advanced characters who found that when wearing Exotics and Raid gear, their equipment wasn’t “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,” Green continued. “For advanced players, this will make them viable functional or visual sidegrades.

“Weapons were already viable sidegrades for all but the most advanced players. 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.”

Also touched upon were changes to Bounties (several are being “tuned down quite a bit”), and Rank. With the latter, Rank achieved in the last event will still be present,but to encourage participation, ranks have been increased to five.

Future Iron Banner events will see Reputation switched out for Event Standing model, which means ranks will be reset, but only after Bungie “better tunes the effort required to reach the higher ranks.”

New features are also being added to the event: the option to reforge any Iron Banner weapon by spending a :small number of Motes of Light”; and the other is a 12-hour buff called Tempered which boosts reputation gains- which will become “increasingly potent” as the week goes on.

Green noted that many of the aforementioned changes are still in testing and all finalized changes made will be posted once Bungie settles “on some of the numbers.”

Finally, the issue where European players were unable to connect “should now be solved,” but the teams will continue to monitor any connection hitches “as they may occur.”

The occurrence of the ZEBRA and CATERPILLAR error codes from earlier in the week are still being investigated, and Xbox 360 users who encountered STINGRAY errors should know the issue has been resolved.

Quite a lot of information there, and you can read up on more of the changes through the link.

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