Bungie Details Destiny 2’s Pantheon Mode and HUD Changes

While most players are enjoying Destiny 2: Into the Light, which released earlier this week, Bungie is already detailing the upcoming Pantheon mode, HUD changes, and more.

On Apr. 30 players will be able to try and overcome the latest, and greatest challenge, Pantheon. In this mode players will need to overcome a gauntlet of raid boss encounters that grow increasingly difficult. The initial set will have four, with the final eight boss version landing on May 21. Each will have rotating modifiers, and a negative power delta that eventually hits contest mode levels.

While Bungie did not reveal the encounters, or their “twists,” they were leaked through the API. To avoid spoilers we will not post the full list, though those interested can see the information here.

Those who manage to overcome these obstacles will earn adept raid weapons, Deepsight versions, and even exotic weapons. There will also be four emblems, which were also leaked, and the awesome title of Godslayer.

With Destiny 2: The Final Shape the HUD will be changed to make it easier to understand which buffs/debuffs are currently active. The current system either shows nothing, outside of visual cues like behavior, or color, and four active buffs on the left. The latter is somewhat problematic, as players had a number of negative experiences with Warlord’s Ruin not showing buffs. This made it hard to get the rotation right, which this hopes to resolve.

Detailed information about both can be found below.

Destiny 2’s Pantheon Mode Overview

We have already shared some details about Pantheon, the new PvE challenge that will start on April 30. It involves not only a gauntlet of raid boss encounters currently available in the game, but also a few twists on how to approach them. We are keeping some details close to the chest, including the list of enemies that you will face, but since you are all eager to know more about it…

The goal of Pantheon is to relive those incredible and heroic moments that raids always deliver, while also changing what you expect from some of the encounters many of you already know so well. Prepare to be nimble, adapt your strategies (or throw them out of the window), and your fireteam will find success.

Pantheon will increase in scale and difficulty each week, starting with four bosses in the first one and growing up to eight in a row on May 21. Each time a new boss is added, the active modifiers will rotate,  and the Power cap will change, starting with players at 5 Power below all the way up to contest mode equivalent of 20 Power below.

As difficulty goes up, so does the pool of available rewards. You can get Adept raid weapons, Deepsight versions of raid weapons, and even Exotic weapons. Some rewards are weekly and others are linked to pursuits or Triumphs (like the four new emblems), but many will also depend on your performance. We challenge you to complete each encounter before the bonus timer expires to get a Platinum score and the greatest rewards.

When April 30 arrives, we hope you have trained and prepared yourselves, Guardians. Shaxx will have the quest you’ll need to start your journey to become a Godslayer. Yeah, that’s the title waiting for the champions that conquer Pantheon.

UPDATING THE HUD

Today we also have some news to share about the HUD update coming with The Final Shape. To that end, we leave you in the capable hands of our UI and UX team.

Destiny 2 has over 2,000 player-facing buffs and debuffs in the game that can appear on the HUD. These include things like subclass verbs, Armor Charge, Pervading Darkness, or text to help you triangulate a signal on Neomuna.

Prior to The Final Shape, only four buffs could be displayed at once, meaning important buffs were continually being pushed off the screen. With this system, we were asking players to constantly juggle a lot of information in their head. In the worst cases, this limitation would cause players to miss feedback about important activity mechanics that lead to teams being wiped. (Unstable Light, anyone?)

That’s why, as part of the many quality-of-life improvements coming with The Final Shape, we set out with two goals to improve the HUD experience:

• Visually prioritize important buffs. We promote buffs that matter in the moment and add new locations where they can be spotted more easily.
• Increase the number of buffs that can be shown. New locations for buffs to appear means more buffs on screen, while not being overly intrusive.

NEW BUFF CHANNELS

In The Final Shape, we’ve created two new areas on the HUD where modifiers can appear:

• Critical info channel (top center)
• Weapon channel (above the Super meter)

Here’s a visual of how these are organized on screen, in addition to the existing channel where all other buffs get shown on the left:

Let’s take a deeper dive into what appears on each of these channels.

CRITICAL INFO

The modifiers that appear here are important for successfully completing the current activity. This includes things like wipe mechanics, roles (e.g., Deep Stone Crypt’s Operator role), or other special mechanics in the activity that are beneficial for you to notice.

You’ll see this channel appear in prime real estate underneath your health and shields. Since we want players to focus on only the most important modifiers here, this channel will not display more than two modifiers at a time.

WEAPONS

You’ll find weapon-related modifiers showing up in the space above the Super meter, conveniently close to where weapon information appears. Given the high up-time on a lot of these buffs, we wanted to split them out from competing for space with everything else.

The space here is restricted, so only the two most important weapon modifiers will show up here.

PRIORITIZATION

As part of these changes, we’ve made a prioritization pass to help the most relevant buffs and debuffs in the moment stay visible on screen, even when there is a lot going on. Higher-priority buffs will push lower-priority buffs out of the HUD display. Previously, it was very unpredictable which buffs would get knocked out of your HUD display as more buffs would get added.

You’ll find buffs generally prioritized within all channels as follows:

• (Highest) activity information – These are buffs that guide your play in the activity. We want to make sure players always have this information available.
  • Note that dangerous or otherwise critical activity information will always be shown in the critical info channel.
• Second-to-second gameplay choices – These are buffs that are required to play your build effectively (such as Armor Charge) or ability cooldowns (like Tangle Cooldown).
• Short- to –medium-term gameplay choices – Subclass verbs (like Amplified), weapon damage buffs, or temporary ability bonuses such as those from Aspects and Fragments are prioritized this way.
• Passive buffs useful for learning or confirming intuition – Includes ability regeneration buffs and temporary stat boosting buffs.

UPDATES TO BUFF APPEARANCE

In addition to setting up two new channels on the HUD, the team also took a pass at the readability of our buffs and debuffs.

All of our green buffs and red debuffs now have a thick line weight on the top or bottom respectively to make them easier for colorblind players to read. Subclass-related buffs and debuffs maintain their diamond shape, but they more clearly indicate whether they are a buff or debuff in nature.

Also, timers now display on the left side of the buff icon. Previously, it was displayed after the buff name. This should make it easier to know when a buff or debuff will expire, no matter how long its description might be.

FUTURE CONSIDERATIONS

As many of you noticed, some footage shown on our April 9 The Final Shape Developer Gameplay Preview showed an in-development HUD channel that was on the right side of the screen. During development, we got a lot of feedback that this was pulling players’ eyes to unfamiliar parts of the screen and that it was too much of a change all at once.

That’s why we refocused the display in The Final Shape and will evaluate adding another channel in upcoming releases, after we have learned more about how players react to the changes announced today. What do you think? What would you want to see on that channel, or moved into it? As always, your feedback is invaluable to us, and we want to hear it all.

This week In Destiny

Finally, Bungie commented on the ongoing Edge Transit grind. For those unaware, the newly released Onslaught mode gives double weapon perks in the event players get one with the limited-edition ornament attached. One perk combo for Edge Transit is Cascade, and Envious Assassin. What makes this powerful is the ability to swap from Envious to Cascade, without losing the additional magazine size granted by Envious.

The incredibly rare combo has become something of a talking point in the community. Reddit user PM_SHORT_STORY_IDEAS calculated the chance of getting the desired roll is 1.36 percent, on top of these weapons being incredibly rare to begin with. In response to this thread, Destiny 2 Team mentioned it might not be worth the hassle.

We saw this discussion and wanted to let you know that we’re currently evaluating the interactions of this combo. While we don’t have a specific change currently planned yet, we wanted to give a heads up before anyone grinded too hard for this rare perk combo that its likely to be altered in the future.

Reddit

Even if the combo is changed, Onslaught is a fantastic addition that is worth checking out if you haven’t already.