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Hey everyone! Today we’re updating everyone on where we’re at with getting Fireteam Finder to you.
Shipping features, but in Secret! (shhhhhh!)
Social features are difficult to prove at scale inside of a studio; you need hundreds of thousands of people to properly test them. Even our largest internal playtests will only reach a fraction of what the final player counts will be once the feature goes live. Typically, we’ll run a “Bungie Beta” for a social feature before it goes live to gain confidence in our releases.
In a Bungie Beta, we limit access to employees, with some aspects of the feature live in the public game for all Destiny 2 players so that we can test it out. In the past, we’ve done this for Cross Save, Bungie Friends list, and Cross Play. Famously, we may have let everyone in on our Cross Play Bungie Beta for a day or two, allegedly. Oops.
A Very Public Bungie Beta!
We’ve made a ton of progress on Fireteam Finder, including on many of the unexpected technical challenges, and have come to a fork in the road with a difficult choice to make:
- Push the release of Fireteam Finder even later, or
- have a much more public version of our Bungie Beta.
We’ve decided it’s better to bring you along for the ride rather than make you wait. We hope you agree.
Welcome to the party.
Fireteam Finder Beta Goals
- Prove that Fireteam Finder scales to millions of players.
- Protect the start of Season of the Wish.
- Protect the dungeon launch.
- Be nimble.
- Ex: Reserve the ability to accelerate or halt the beta test based on new information.
- Deliver a first-class Fireteam Finder for all activities by The Final Shape.
- Ex: Adhere to a schedule of multiple testing phases that progressively refine the new feature.
The Beta Plan
- Raids Stress Test: November 30, from 9 AM PST to 5 PM PST
- Beta Period: Begins December 6
- Full Release: Targeting late January
We will start our stress test on November 30, planned to run from 9 AM to 5 PM PST. For the Raids Stress Test, all raids you have access to are on the menu. We hope to keep the stress test open until 5 PM but this is where the “we haven’t had a Bungie Beta” in the live game disclaimers come into play. There are countless scenarios where we may have to end the test early, so we ask for your patience and hope you take it as an opportunity to give us early feedback as we work out the system’s gremlins.
We’re going to be monitoring the results of the initial Raids Stress Test closely and considering opening more activities as we progress with the end goal of having a Fireteam Finder option for every activity in the game.
We’ll keep the schedule above updated as we learn more and will also let you know in our Thursday TWIDs and our social media accounts.
Getting into the Fireteam Finder
There are two ways to access Fireteam Finder:
- From the Director using the Roster tab.
- Using the Fireteam Finder access point found on every activity’s launch screen.
In both cases, you’ll be able to search for a fireteam or create a listing using a series of listing options to specify the group you’re trying to build.
What You’ll See in the Stress Test vs. Beta vs. Launch
We’re already prepping content for a few updates to Fireteam Finder and you will see more things come online for Beta, and even more as we march toward full release. A perfect example of this process is the View Listings screen below. On the first one you can see the stress test version, and then on the second is our target for final release. (As you can see, we are releasing a very limited emoji set to describe your listings later in the beta phase. 😊🌼😊) These updates will flow throughout Season of the Wish’s launch and beyond to The Final Shape.
Existing Group Finding Systems
We’re also sure you have questions about what’s happening to the group finding systems that currently exist on our website and Companion app.
Both the website and Companion app will remain available until the new Fireteam Finder, both in-game and out-of-game, is ready. Yup, the Bungie.net team has been hard at work developing a new out-of-game Fireteam Finder that’s fully integrated with the in-game system. However, it’s not going to be available during the early beta period.
Stay tuned for more info on the Fireteam Finder beta as it rolls out. Pardon our dust as we get this feature up and running and thank you in advance for all your help. We’re excited to give you and your fellow Guardians the tools to tackle everything in Destiny 2 together.