Bungie Addresses Destiny Melee Attack Issues

Bungie aims to fix a bug that's been affecting melee attacks in sci-fi shooter, Destiny, but you won't see results for around a couple of weeks yet.

"Ever thrown a punch – we’re only talking about Destiny here – that seemed to land (you heard it and you felt it) but it didn’t deal any damage?" asks community manager, DeeJ, on this week's Bungie update. "Yeah, us too."

Sandbox engineer Jon Cable explains what's happened, and how the developer intends to put it right

"When a melee attack seems like it connects, but it doesn’t do any damage, this is usually a networking problem. Most commonly, it occurs when there is an issue communicating your position to the other machines in the game, or if your would-be victim is having a similar problem. I’ve tweaked some networking logic related to player positions during melee attacks which should help address these issues.

"I’ve fixed a bug where we were starting the target search from an incorrect position. Normally, we begin searching for targets from the perspective of the attacker’s head. This bug would result in the target search falling short. If the melee lunge didn’t get you close enough to the target, or if the target was moving away from you, your melee would not connect.

"The new fix should make Arc Blade and Shoulder Charge much more reliable," Cable adds. "There are still situations – especially when the target is moving away from you – where you will not connect."

If you want an immediate fix, however, brace yourself - the fix will not go live with Update 2.2.0.2. Instead it will be rolled out "nice and slow" to avoid "wreaking havoc on the fabric of virtual reality". When the update deploys on May 3, 2016, stability will be monitored over the weekend, with a view of rolling out the new melee code a week later, on Tuesday, May 10.

Concerned the proposed fix may negatively impact your Crucible performance? Worry not. Bungie is ready to roll back broken fixes immediately if something goes awry, so if you "see something weird, say something weird".

Bungie may be up to its old tricks with a Destiny augmented reality game. Bungie.net users recently received cryptic messages from an Absense Vigil, who's thought to be connected to the mysterious Rezyl Azzir profile.