Destiny to Reduce Special Ammo in 3v3 Matches, Damage Referee Discussed

Bungie will be introducing a number of changes to Destiny‘s multiplayer in a new update. This update will change quite a bit – for instance, during certain 3v3 game types like Skirmish, Trials of Osiris and so on, teams will no longer spawn with special ammo aka sniper and shotgun fuel.

Senior designer Derek Carroll stated in the latest post from the developer that, “After the update, players will start certain matches without Special Ammo. Once the match has begun, those green Special crates will behave in the same ways you’re used to (although you may be looking for them a bit more).

“The PvP team wanted to increase the use of Primary weapons, especially at match-start. Sniper rifles and shotguns, in particular, inspire great happiness or sadness depending on which end of the weapon you find yourself. We wanted to somewhat delay that gratification (and sadification).” This change won’t be effective in modes like Control and Clash with 6v6 players because apparently snipers aren’t as prevalent.

There will also be a new feature to limit terrible connections. Dubbed “Damage Referee”, networking engineer Paul Lewellen says that, “The connection bars we show in-game are designed to give you a moment-to-moment idea of how good or bad each player’s connection is to all other players in the game (not to our servers). There are many factors that go into determining your color on the coded scale.

“Even if your own connection is the best it can be, terrible performance elsewhere on the Internet can still compromise your experience. When you see a red or yellow bar next to somebody’s name, it indicates problems with their average connection to other players (and usually to you, too).

Thoughts on these changes? Let us know in the comments.