Bungie bringing original Destiny’s Iron Banner to Destiny 2

Destiny 2’s semi-regular Iron Banner event is going “old-school” this spring — the game’s next major update will make it so that Iron Banner matches work similarly to the way they did in the original Destiny, developer Bungie announced today.

Bungie previously said that it was working on six-versus-six Crucible matches for Destiny 2, after launching the game with a reduced player count of four-versus-four. Today, the studio provided more details on the revisions to Iron Banner that it is building into Destiny 2’s version 1.1.4 update, which is scheduled to be released March 27.

“Iron Banner will channel that old-school Crucible in the style of the Iron Lords,” said PvP design lead Derek Carroll. “We’ve made a number of tweaks to the gameplay besides increasing team sizes to 6v6.” Here’s the full list from Bungie:

• Match time limit is 12 minutes
• Score limit is 125 points
• Respawn time is 7 seconds
• All control zones start off neutral
• Control zones take slightly longer to capture by default
• Additional Guardians (max of 3) in a zone increases capture speed
• Guardians participating in a capture get more Super energy

To be clear, the defining element of the Iron Banner in the original Destiny — the fact that level advantages were enabled, so Guardians with a high Light level would do more damage to less powerful opponents — is not coming to Destiny 2’s Iron Banner. But some of these other tweaks bring the event much closer to its previous iteration.

Iron Banner often plays out with the Control gametype, in which players compete for possession of three zones on the map. “All control zones start off neutral” is the way Control worked in Destiny; Control matches in the sequel begin with each team owning either zone A or zone C, with only zone B up for grabs. And in Destiny 2, it doesn’t matter how many teammates stand in a zone — they won’t take control of it any faster than they would if there were just one of them capturing it. But in the first game, the capture meter filled up more quickly with multiple Guardians in the area.

Because Iron Banner isn’t always active — the event takes place about once a month — this strategy allows Bungie to try out these changes in Destiny 2 on a limited basis. It’s almost as if the studio is using Iron Banner as a trial run to see how the tweaks work, perhaps with an eye on expanding the changes to other Crucible playlists in the future.

Bungie is also bringing two other Crucible offerings from the original Destiny to Destiny 2 with the v1.1.4 update. Rumble will support eight players, up from six in the first game, and will feature very simple scoring: one point per kill, no points for assists. Mayhem is returning unchanged. Doubles, the two-on-two mode from the Valentine’s Day event known as Crimson Days, is coming at some point as well.

Outside of the Crucible, Bungie addressed some new bugs that cropped up with this week’s v1.1.3 update, as well as a pesky Leviathan issue that has existed ever since the raid launched in September. Sometimes, for no apparent reason, players will find that their fireteam doesn’t respawn, and Bungie explained today why it hasn’t been able to fix the problem just yet.

John Guesnier, raid test lead at Bungie, laid out two different types of solutions for bugs: a “content fix” and a “code fix.” The latter option is more challenging and time-intensive because it needs an engineer and “touches all systems” in the game, according to Guesnier. “The issue where players do not respawn in the ‘Leviathan’ raid is a memory issue due to the size and complexity of the activity, and it will require a code fix,” said Guesnier. “It is caused when a fireteam splits up across large distances while others remain back and swap out their gear.”

Guesnier noted that Bungie is still trying to figure out how to fix this problem, and suggested that, in the meantime, players do their best to avoid straying too far from each other.

“We realize that this is not an acceptable fix, but we wanted to give you info on how you can try to mitigate the issue while we work on it,” Guesnier continued. “If you do happen to hit this issue even following those steps, then reequipping the armor set you had when you spawned into the activity may return your Guardian to action.”

For information on further changes coming in Destiny 2 v1.1.4, check out our article on what Bungie is doing with exotic weapons and armor.