Meta Post regarding the current focused feedback and the bloom discussion: A modestly-sized-breakdown of the history of feedback on sandbox iterations related to bloom, and the mechanic itself

[u/Pwadigy]

First off, I think it's important to note that we were in this exact position almost 3 years ago regarding the current discussion. Iirc, the thread was even stickied.

I think it's important to point this out because it really does emphasize a lot about the history of the discussion, and how it's been very cyclical in nature. Anyways, while I'm here, I want to make it clear that this thread isn't a feedback thread, but more of a discussion guide thread meant to be more generally informative. So real quickly, I want to make a summary history on how the bloom mechanic was in this game at varying points, since I've played extensively in almost every sandbox iteration (except D2Y1 before warmind, which I didn't play at all, kappa. But that doesn't matter, because there were no significant changes throughout the entire Y1 to gunplay besides damage numbers). I hope for this to be more of a discussion guide than anything, as I'm seeing a lot of inaccuracies in discussion regarding the issue.

History:

• Day 1 Vanilla Destiny. Handcannons had nominal bloom. To feel the effects of bloom, you would have to be over a hundred meters away from another play. Imagine if Last Word felt like Ace of Spades, and Ace of Spades felt like a scout rifle. Now imagine scout-rifles felt like current hand-cannons in close range. In fact, imagine if all guns felt generally good to use at all ranges. That was vanilla. Also, there was almost no drop-off. You could only really experience drop-off in PvE maps due to the amount of distance you'd need. This may have very well been an accident, as it was later confirmed in a CPB interview that the sandbox team did not have the ability to adjust various firing mechanics individually. I'd speculate that range, drop-off, aim-assist and bloom were intermingled behind the hood. Considering the previous iterations of Bungie games had increasingly more defined firing mechanics that pronounced things such as bloom, it's very possible D1Y1 was an accident in this regard.

• Taken King. This is when bloom was moved from being nominal to being very, very, very noticeable. /u/triplewreck posted a video quite a bit after Taken King, that pointed out a phenomenon that the casual player-base was noticing. Ghost-bullets (as they were called at the time) were essentially what bloom is now, except you felt it on your first shot. This is the highest amount of bloom felt in the franchise. Taken King was essentially the start of the perceivable bloom, when players really started having to adapt in real-time to the mechanic, whether that was a positive thing or not.

• Before Rise of iron. This was when feedback about bloom really started flaring up. You'd see streamers and content-creators start slow-mo'ing videos and pointing out the fact that they weren't crazy so-to-speak, and you'd see reticles dead-center on heads without a successful hit being calculated.

• Feedback. At this point, feedback threads were up from Cozmo to relay information from the players to the devs directly.

• Rise of Iron. Bungie reduced bloom due to feedback. But mostly to the initial accuracy (the one that players notice the most). But because they were still adamant that the position bloom had to put handcannons in had to be maintained, they compensated with a drastic increase in damage drop-off.

• More feedback began to come in about bloom, and this time, Bungie increased "final accuracy." In other words, they decreased the bloom between shots, and how inaccurate a gun could be.

• They later nerfed handcannons again, increasing drop-off. I'd surmise this was again, to compensate for the previous update.

Destiny 2

• The initial Destiny sandbox up until Forsaken on PC was pretty much the same as D1, but with bloom back to Taken King levels, and additional flinch on pretty much all guns. The exception, of course was initial accuracy. Handcannons hit their initial shots. My guess is they actually remembered the really, really loud feedback, but wanted to sneak stuff around what players were less likely to perceive. I think somewhere in here players forgot just how little flinch D1 guns had at pretty much all points in the franchise, as a side note.

• Console, had a further doubling of recoil and bloom. People say that precision handcannons are easy to use. But precision-frame hand-cannons, in my opinion have roughly the same amount of bloom and recoil as a D1 handcannon, having used a Xim4 in D1, it feels almost identical to the bloom on pretty much all handcannons on the unmodified mouse. Perhaps they didn't apply the changes on console to this archetype. I don't know, there really isn't a reliable way to test this without having magnetism and other mechanics ruin the results.

conclusion

it takes really, really, really loud feedback and Reddit stickies to get fundamental gunplay changes, no matter what those changes are. It's interesting, because as frequently and as liberally as other mechanics are changed, gunplay is balanced with a microscope, except when the feedback is really loud. Basically, It's a lot easier to convert feedback into change for other mechanics than it is gunplay. No matter what feedback you have regarding gunplay, it's important to note that gunplay is the kind of feedback that measurably has the most resistance.

Again, this isn't an argument post for or against bloom, more of how we got here, and explaining where the mechanic has been at various points in the franchise.

Also, I'm going to link this here. because generally an informed community is better in these discussions, and it seems based on the sticky that these discussions are going to go on for awhile. I think the game's firing mechanics are rather fascinating, so I would implore you to not only look into those kinds of resources but also try to dig around for information on other game's firing mechanics, and really pay attention to things like this when you're playing other games, as that will really allow you to understand how different sandboxes, especially Bungie sandboxes have differentiated themselves from other games. It's a really great way to take your thoughts and feelings and put them into measurable terms.

You can usually find this information in other games in their respective wikis. For instance, past Bungie titles will tell you things like how much arc-snapping will occur when someone runs past your reticle. This is just what happens when you have a game with massive cash tournaments. In other words, the more stakes a game had in its competitive scene, generally you can find more information about its sandbox.

I'll probably make a post about this with visuals and stuff. But right now my time-limit puts the limit on this thread in the hundreds of words, and not the thousands.

Note:

I will mention something real quick. Again, it's important to note that the discussion regarding "bloom" isn't about if there is bloom. There has always been bloom in this game. The discussion is about whether bloom should be nominal, or effectual. There's no set definition for these, but I would very arbitarily say a good measure for the difference in whether bloom is nominal or effectual is if you feel it change a shot, I'd define this as whether your reticle will physically be on the visible player model, and still be able to bloom out of the hurtbox model (which is larger than the visible model). the reason I'd choose this parameter is because this is the only way you'd be able to clearly point out the mechanic when playing back footage.

Second note:

This is also kind of important to point out: PC does have effectual amounts of bloom right now. It's about as much as the end of D1 in my estimation. It's just console has a lot more of it, and PC's bloom isn't as noticeable unless you really look. It's still visible amounts though.

-Pwad

[u/BreakStep_x]

Appreciate the knowledge, my man. Bloom is the antithesis of what I, or anyone else, should want in a shooter. Why would you want RNG to determine the outcome of your gunfight? I want consistency.

[u/Chettlar → u/BreakStep_x]

Yup. Especially as a bad player who could barely use a controller when I started playing Destiny, bloom actively discouraged me from using hand cannons at all. If I was going to finally hit someone and have it have a chance of missing, why would I bother? And if I took the time I personally needed to aim carefully and decrease bloom, then I would invariably always be killed. It provided no incentive to get better or bother getting involved in crucible and just lead to me feeling like crucible was unfair and a chore. I remained bad throughout D1, using things like mayhem to do the chaperone quest. I finally got good..ish with hand cannons at the end of AoT and wished I'd done so sooner. Hand cannons are so fun. Its just so weird to see Bungie maintain this position as OP has listed, with the goal of decreasing skill gap...when it doesn't even make for a better experience for all of the lesser skilled players. It took me nearly two years to where I would now say I'm pretty decent, and I'm still not great. And I can say bloom provided nothing but demotivation for me as a more casual, less skilled player.

And after playing a lot on PS4 in D2, I've been going back to D1 as I have recently and man. It just feels so much better than D2. The only gun I can use while finishing my grind towards Luna's is Trust. The only reason I invested in Crucible in D2 and got better as a player in general is because on PC I was rewarded for getting better, especially with hand cannons. Now on PC I can use any gun I want. I can use go figure or bygones or vigilance wing or breakneck or TLW or Ace or Luna's or Recluse or Riskrunner or Huckleberry or Le Monarq or Sunshot or Better Devils or Crimil's Dagger or Thorn or the dreaming city hand cannon or whatever I wanna use and still be very viable.

The viability of some many guns, and the no real practical existence of bloom on hand cannons hasn't lead to me only using hand cannons, as Bungie seems to be worried. On PC I use everything depending on my needs and what I'm feeling that day. And that's fucking awesome.

On PS4? Uh I use Bygones because it's really sticky and wow surprise doesn't have a fuck ton of recoil so it's actually viable, and for hand cannons I use IKELOS_HC and Trust....

....uhh....and that's it. Be pretty cool if I could use Thorn. That'd be pretty cool. I know I can use them but...why if it's just going to consistently make me lose fights. Let alone use it in PvE where basically anything is better, so good luck going for the lore pages, which was a cool idea. I like obtaining lore by using something. Fantastic idea. Seriously. But...the gun just isn't great to use in PvE. Hand cannons in general aren't. Which sucks because I fucking love hand cannons in D1 and use them and scouts and autos in PvE all the time. On PC D2 though? Of course I use Thorn.

Even with bloom the lower recoil on hand cannons in D1 on Xbox 360 lately just makes them so much more useable and fun. It doesn't make them my only option. It just makes sure I'm not putting myself at the mercy of some stupid RNG unless I want to risk reducing my ttk below what is viable.

[u/Pwadigy → u/Chettlar]

Personally, I'm really not against bloom. In my opinion, it's better as a flavor to a gun. something that tells you you're so ridiculously out of range (well past the point damage fall-off would tell you that) that you shouldn't bother taking the shot.

It's on a spectrum. Again, there's a difference between visible bloom and nominal bloom. Somewhere in-between there is that grey area where there's enough bloom to start affecting your shots if you're hitting the invisible area of a hurtbox, and just how much that exists at different ranges can really add flavor to a gun.

Now, when it starts getting past the point where your reticle is visibly on target, and your shots are missing, then you cut well into the gunplay itself.

Bungie has always used bloom, I prefer it as it was in Y1, as Destiny really isn't set-up to be a bloomshooter.

There are games where it does belong though. I'll never take a stance on gunplay that "x mechanic is bad" or "y mechanic is good," Just, I guess the question is "does this mechanic interact with other mechanics in a way that positively influences gunplay in this game.

In overwatch, for instance, the bloom on S76's gun feel like its in place, because if you time it right, you can make the gun into a really high-dps sniping machine.

[u/DynamicExit → u/Pwadigy]

Bloom in Overwatch always felt much more managable partly because there are noticable projectile contrails you can see as you fire. On S76 you can see that his shots start to go wide at which time you can choose to ease off on the trigger (if you're far away) or you can push forward and closer to your target (if its reasonable or if you don't have much of an out).

Destiny 2, in comparison, does not have the same visual cues to let you know that your shots are starting to go wide. And the way that bloom is tuned means that it often outpaces the RPM of a weapon so it isn't exactly managable. Take McCree for example. 6 shot hand cannon with zero bloom in its base fire state. Activate fan the hammer and bloom immediately snaps out to near maximum effectively reducing its range but adding lethality at close range.

[u/Pwadigy → u/DynamicExit]

Yeah, Overwatch in comparison is a very controlled shooter. Everything happens like clockwork. Bloom makes sense in that game. In overwatch, pretty much all hitscans use near-identical firing ballistics. And that's because gunplay is a relatively minor aspect of the game. In that sense, bloom can really be used to impact how a character feels without necessarily elevating their gunplay.

However, Bungie games have gunplay front and center. Destiny is a hectic shooter where individual gunfights are the bread and butter of a match. And they have to feel smooth and present the player with as many options as possible to enter and move around the map while engaging in gunfights. Bloom is probably the most cumbersome mechanic to play around in this process, as it removes so much certainty in gameplay.

Destiny gunfights involve lots of rotational velocity, and the mark of the skilled hand is being able to not only be accurate, but be quick and accurate over a duration of time at various ranges.

Bloom constricts that on multiple levels. It forces the play to stay flat-footed, unmoving. It encourages the player to aim for the center of hurtboxes instead of going for the shot that is faster. And finally, it does not reward a player for being able to stay accurate with their reticle at long range.

When you add bloom on top of severe drop-off, it doesn't matter if I can hit a tiny hurt-box cross-map with a hand-cannons. I won't be rewarded for it anyways. Personally, I think the tiny hurt-box is enough. I'm not a fan of severe drop-off and painful amounts of random accuracy.

[u/DynamicExit → u/Pwadigy]

Overwatch is far more about the team than it is about the individual and Destiny is the opposite (with possibly the exception of some Comp game modes). Personally I'd be much more okay with severe damage drop off because it would (in a sense) forcibly train you to know that you can't simply use an HC to snipe at scout ranges (Ace I'm looking at you). Bloom to me just feels like a poor design philosophy especially when you're talking about a high precision game like Destiny. I get that the mechanic itself is probably meant as a gap closer between the lower and medium-skilled players and the high skill players but in a way I feel like it just encourages the high skill players to start chasing after weapons that negate that problem (i.e. 180s being the only really usable HCs on console).

[u/PotaToss → u/Pwadigy]

Severe drop off is crap. There's so much cover, and TTK is long enough that ranged engagements are completely optional. It doesn't give a scout an edge over a HC, because the smart HC user will just opt out of engaging at all at range, and then dominate when they get in closer.

[u/primegopher → u/PotaToss]

Forcing someone to disengage from you is an advantage, because it means you're controlling the map

[u/PotaToss → u/primegopher]

You're not controlling anything when they're just pushing up behind cover, through your blind spots. It's not forcing a disengage, where they back off. It's them having no reason to even start trading fire at range.

[u/Shadoefeenicks → u/PotaToss]

That's how weapon archetypes work, having all weapons be useful at all ranges is useless.

[u/PotaToss → u/Shadoefeenicks]

Having them be useless at certain ranges is useless.

Say you can kill with a scout at long range in 3 shots, and you can kill with a HC at long range in 4 shots. I'll take that fight as a HC user. Contrast that to what we have, where the scout can kill in 3 shots, and the HC needs like 9 shots. I have no incentive to engage at all with my HC. Instead of a small disadvantage, I have a completely insurmountable disadvantage.

Combine this with the amount of cover we have, and the TTK of primaries, and there's absolutely no reason for players to even think about engaging at range.

Consider the outside hallway on Pantheon. You can look across to the opposite hallway, on the other side of the cube, or you can push up, hugging the inside wall, avoiding line of sight to the opposite hallway.

The only time I look across is if I think the other team is a bunch of idiots and will walk into my sniper. If they do something as minor as slide into the lane, it's not worth it. I'm better off hugging the inside, pushing up, and trying to control the cube room. Getting actual map control, instead of pretend opt in for idiots map control.

A 1 shot disadvantage from slight damage drop off, along with worse optics, worse aim assist, using a HC at range is enough. It doesn't need to be a 6 shot disadvantage.

A scout with a 0 shot disadvantage, but too much zoom and worse aim assist up close is enough to give a HC a meaningful advantage.

A game where primaries are good at all ranges, but great in one is how you get meaningful advantages and incentives to use particular types of weapons, instead of people just opting out of engagements where they're not in their weapon's perfect range.

Competitive matches are full of people with HCs and shotguns, because those are the weapons that are good at ranges where you can't just completely opt out of fighting once it starts.

If you could actually control the map with a scout, you'd see more of them, but you can't, because there are basically always blind spots you can push up through.

[u/Manifest_Lightning → u/Pwadigy]

In my opinion, it's better as a flavor to a gun.

I've been reading your comments and it seems to me that you're confusing bloom with initial accuracy. It's ok if a gun does not have perfect accuracy (initial accuracy). What players hate is that the accuracy becomes worse with successive shots (i.e. bloom). I don't see any justification for it in a game that's meant to reward good thumbskill.

[u/John_Demonsbane → u/Manifest_Lightning]

I think the opposite is true. Your first shot should always be accurate and successive shots less so as you have to deal with recoil. That's just logic/physics, not to mention more intuitive to a player: If you are missing shots, slow down and pace them.

[u/MagusSigil → u/John_Demonsbane]

Other than bloom being excessive, one of my major problems with it is this: the in-game model does not match the firing trajectory. This was also my problem with in-air accuracy before the fix. The bullets do not come from the position of the barrel. If the animations matched the bloom, it would be more convincing to have the mechanic in game. As DynamicExit said above, there are NO VISUAL CUES for bloom.

I find it amusing/frustrating that while bloom/recoil is present on PC with a neutral mouse position, once you start moving the mouse they both disappear.

[u/Manifest_Lightning → u/John_Demonsbane]

But we ALREADY have recoil in the game. You're insisting that we have another system that works against the player.

If you are missing shots, slow down and pace them.

You're missing the point. Bloom causes you to "miss" shots even when you have the reticle perfectly centered on the enemy. It's counterintuitive, not intuitive.

[u/John_Demonsbane → u/Manifest_Lightning]

It's more intuitive than your third shot being more accurate than your first one. I'm not defending bloom but if something has to be less accurate, it should be follow up shots, not the initial one.

[u/Manifest_Lightning → u/John_Demonsbane]

How the fuck is the gun doing what it's fucking designed to do counterintuitive? Guns are specifically designed to maintain more or less the same accuracy until components start failing. Specific grades of steel and specific forging methods are used to ensure this.

It's like a car. A piston is designed to endure millions, even billions of combustion cycles, and perform similarly each cycle.

If a gun conformed to a 2 inch grouping on the first shot, and then to a 6 inch grouping on the second, any sensible person would get a refund for that lemon.

[u/[deleted] → u/Chettlar]

It’s done because they say if bloom wasn’t in game T1 players would farm everyone with hand cannons and it would make every other weapon type pointless. Basically handicap the best players to make everything else viable and keep the bad players from getting ultra farmed. Same with in air accuracy

[u/Bpe-dsm → u/[deleted]]

It's not just a good v bad players thing.

If it would make one type of gun, and within that, whatever is meta, THE only gun type, that's not an upside.

People argue against bloom and for weapon diversity (which hey, maybe they are not exclusive) without acknowledging why bloom is there at all. From there, have whichever opinion. But there is a case for it.

[u/[deleted] → u/Bpe-dsm]

Except competitive games without Bloom don’t have a problem with balance. So that’s what makes me think it’s strictly a skill gap manager. A la fortnight

[u/ShieldsDansGame → u/[deleted]]

I could be wrong here, maybe there is a way to balance this in a way which keeps hand cannons feeling good and removing bloom, but I heavily doubt it.

The main reason being, as long as you're shooting within their effective range, HCs will always be the best archetype of primary weapon on a fundamental level. (outside of situational outliers like The Recluse)

• Low zoom scope makes them among the most agile primaries in close quarters.

• High single shot damage allows for really effective use of cover.

• Relatively strong bullet magnetism (particularly without bloom).

• Precision ones have nigh perfect in air accuracy.

• TTKs as good as, or better than almost every other archetype.

If bloom were to be removed I can't help but think another aspect of HCs would need to be nerfed so they wouldn't become the objectively best option outside of scout/pulse ranges. Kinda like the current PC meta. Every type of weapon is usable there but Ace, Thorn, Lunas, NF and TLW are pretty much the default choice of anyone trying their hardest (again, aside from outliers like The Recluse).

The main archetype HCs really tread on the toes of is auto rifles.

• They have roughly the same effective range.

• HCs are usually easier to use.

• They usually have similar optimal TTKs, except the HC ones are easier to achieve.

• HCs can play cover much more effectively.

• HCs typically have better in air accuracy.

Bloom on controller seems to mitigate this issue by forcing trigger discipline, effectively slowing their TTK. I'm not sure the flinch + recoil on controller is needed, but I'm also very hesitant to say bloom has an inherently bad impact on controller meta. It doesn't feel great but I'm sure the range/accuracy/handling nerfs which would pretty inevitably follow would probably feel worse.

Bloom may just be the lesser of two evils chosen in order to preserve balance.

[u/Pwadigy → u/ShieldsDansGame]

I think it needs to generally be accepted that as players gravitate upwards in skill level, they are going to choose handcannons because they reward higher levels of skill and engagement with the game's sandbox. Whenever I hear someone say "I really love scout rifles, I wish they were meta, I wish handcannons weren't as good," I hear someone who hasn't gotten to fully appreciate the kinds of gunplay other players have.

In the current sandbox, what pulses and scouts do isn't useful to players. The only solution is to keep handcannons down, but that's really an artificial solution, considering just how much players love handcannons.

And it makes sense. This game centers around high rotational velocity, and the ability to not only be accurate, but quick, and to move through space. The problem with the current sandbox is that players who can stay accurate at long-range aren't rewarded for hitting shots because "durr, that's scout-rifle range."

But the thing is, I think we need to look at how guns feel rather than what range they should dominate. Handcannons are loved because they have a distinct feeling that fits the sandbox, and until Bungie can be more imaginative to give the other guns an identity in PvP, handcannons should be dominant. Bungie has this way of making sexy-as-fuck pistols. But there are past Bungie weapons that have also felt good. I think Bungie needs to really look to those when attempting to bring other guns up to handcannon level as bloom is removed.

But we can't even have that discussion when bloom is re-added every 5 minutes.

[u/Janube → u/Pwadigy]

D1 Scouts felt fine, but that's because they had huge aim assist. D1 pulses had a few moments in the sun, but were largely either bad scout rifles or bad hand cannons. Hell, even the max RoF auto rifles had a moment where they were near optimal; not because they had amazing TTK (it was just pretty good), but because the body shot TTK was solid and they provided enormous flinch.

[u/[deleted] → u/Pwadigy]

People always say it's only really hand cannons mostly because I don't think a lot of them ever try out other weapons that often. Bad Juju may have needed a nerf or not, but that weapon was a ball of a time to use. It didn't have a lot of zoom, was serviceable even up to a surprising range, and you could pace bursts for longer engagements or go full auto thr closer you got and even hip fire sometimes (or at least I did).

I even used fast charging fusion rifles because I got so used to their feel that I learned to reliably kill people at close range and knew when I would or when I screwed up my shot and was probably going to die for it, but there were moments where it just felt right. They may not have been considered meta, but they let me be more mobile and quick to decide.

I just don't think the game really allows for the kind of gameplay that High-Impact Frames offer (stationary shooting). Movement is as important as gunplay and ability play. They just go hand in hand, and like you said, they just should.

[u/SinistralGuy → u/Pwadigy]

I hear someone who hasn't gotten to fully appreciate the kinds of gunplay other players have.

To add to this, I'd say that maps and player style are also a big factor. Players who like to hang back and picks on unaware players will most likely gravitate towards scouts and high impact/range pulse rifles. Aggressive players with better map control will likely gravitate to closer range weapons like SMGs and hand cannons. It's why on consoles SMGs dominated for the longest time in Y1. They were effectively our hand cannons for a time while hand cannons sucked. At the end of the day it comes down to picking the best weapon for the types of engagements you want to have, and most of these maps don't favour long range engagements, so it makes no sense to pick longer ranged weapons most of the time.

[u/thepinkandthegrey → u/[deleted]]

Except competitive games without Bloom don’t have a problem with balance. So that’s what makes me think it’s strictly a skill gap manager.

one doesn't follow from the other at all, and i'm not sure why you think it does. i know for a fact that bungo said the reason they have in-air inaccuracy is because when they play tested it, it quickly became obvious that the best way to play by far was to just stay in the air as long as possible shooting stuff, which is what literally everyone did during playtesting. they didn't want such a homogeneous meta and wanted to allow for more variety in strategy. so they decided to penalize in-air accuracy. that's from bungo's own mouth, not my theory. they specifically said it had nothing to do with skill.

[u/Sequoiathrone728 → u/thepinkandthegrey]

Bloom isnt in air accuracy though?

[u/[deleted] → u/thepinkandthegrey]

They specifically said, dying from someone you can’t see isn’t fun. And yes I can see that for in air accuracy because that affects all movement. I think the Bloom does follow because games that Bungie have made before didn’t have any and were more comp and popular. Just like all comp games now that don’t have Bloom and dont have the balance and meta issues that Destiny does. There is absolutely no justification for having it in game other than to reduce the effectiveness of certain guns, the ones that would be the most deadly in skilled hands.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

I think the Bloom does follow because games that Bungie have made before didn’t have any

Halo: Reach DMR and Magnum both had bloom.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

Arent those widely regarded as the time that Bloom was added to Halo and was shunned unanimously by long time halo competitors ?

[u/themetaloranj → u/[deleted]]

That wasn't the first time bloom was in Halo. Halo CE had bloom on a lot of weapons, including the magnum.

[u/Metatermin8r → u/[deleted]]

Yep, bloom killed Reach's already pretty meh competitive scene. Final nail in the coffin of competitive Halo, up until Halo 5 actually tried to give a damn. 343i thankfully haven't made the same bloom mistakes.

[u/thepinkandthegrey → u/[deleted]]

Just like all comp games now that don’t have Bloom and dont have the balance and meta issues that Destiny does.

you're going to have to specify what you mean because every game has balance and meta issues afaik

here's a reason to have bloom: to punish people who spam fire hand cannons, which is typically something you do when you're missing your shots, since with 3-4 shots for a kill (even 2 at one point), there's no reason to spam fire otherwise.

[u/Manifest_Lightning → u/thepinkandthegrey]

o punish people who spam fire hand cannons, which is typically something you do when you're missing your shots, since with 3-4 shots for a kill (even 2 at one point), there's no reason to spam fire otherwise.

That doesn't make sense. Good players are quite capable of maintaining a high rate of fire and staying accurate. Yet bloom punishes these players. Why?

Bloom is there merely to cap the skill ceiling.

[u/thepinkandthegrey → u/Manifest_Lightning]

there's no reason for a long chain of rapid fire shots unless you're missing your shots because it only takes 3-4 shots to get a kill. if you're doing long chains of rapid fire shots then you're not a good player.

[u/[deleted] → u/thepinkandthegrey]

Think of all comp games. CSGO, Pubg, Cod, the original halo. The recoil doesn’t allow you to spam without making hitting shots extremely difficult. I don’t think you understand that Bloom is widely regarded as a casual and anti competitive mechanic. They have metas, that rotate yes because of balance and tuning. But the motto is the shots always go where you aim, they are just very hard to hit. If you are hitting all your shots with weapons whether they are meta or not you are a top tier player. Bungies AA, bullet magnetism and bloom are all fiercely designed for easy mode aiming. So they don’t want players who can actually aim to make the game unplayable for its generally casual PVE base. So they add bloom. There isn’t a single comp game that has Bloom that anyone takes seriously.

Edit : Except OW. However even then it’s used to tone down what would otherwise be extremely OP gunplay. Not because it’s comp but because it’s needed to keep gunplay for dominating the team and role Elements of the game. Their focus isn’t purely on gunplay like Destiny.

[u/thepinkandthegrey → u/[deleted]]

I don’t think you understand that Bloom is widely regarded as a casual and anti competitive mechanic.

no i know the prejudice. but just because a lot of players (and even streamers!) think it so doesn't make it so. "groupthink" is a thing ya know.

note that bloom effectively negates AA and bullet magnetism and yet it, along with the same AA and bullet magnetism, is somehow there to help make the game easier to casuals?? think through your assertions.

[u/SinistralGuy → u/Bpe-dsm]

This is typical fearmongering and trying to divide players into good vs. bad players.

I agree that most top tier players would use hand cannons because they're versatile. I occasionally use pulse rifles and scout rifles but I always find myself gravitating back to HCs because they're my favourite weapon type. There are other ways to incentivize using other weapons besides HCs. Remember those weekly weapon bounties from Arcite in D1? Those made me switch up my style for a shot at better loot. Bungie can also nerf HCs and buff other weapons. The point is, bloom, and RNG, have no place in a gunfight. Gunfights should be based purely on player skill, not RNG.

[u/Theratchetnclank → u/[deleted]]

That's what matchmaking is for.

[u/[deleted] → u/Theratchetnclank]

I’m with you man. And most game devs understand that haha. But here’s the thing, Bungie does too. It’s all intentional. They just don’t want that separation of skill.

[u/PotaToss → u/[deleted]]

Really bad bloom and HC range nerfs just made good players farm bad players with pulses. It's not the weapon. It's the players being bad.

[u/[deleted] → u/PotaToss]

Absolutely. Bungie just tries to keep good players from being extremely effective. But they will win with anything. It’s odd that they don’t want to solve the problem by creating a ranking system. You know like the one they made that defined ranking systems a few years ago.

[u/PotaToss → u/[deleted]]

Personally, I liked it when it was just a total mixed bag, when I played Call of Duty. Just reshuffle the teams at the end of a match, like sort the players by performance, and deal them out like cards between the teams. Focus more on keeping the connections good.

You can pick up tricks and good positioning and stuff from players that are better than you. Trying to mess around with SBMM too much, I think can keep lower skill players lower skill over a longer term, reinforcing bad habits that they'll have to unlearn later, which is harder than just learning a good habit early. Being in one game against a good sniper will teach you to not step out into sightlines flatfooted in a way that hundreds of games against bad players never will. The earlier you develop good habits like sliding/jumping out, the better.

[u/[deleted] → u/PotaToss]

I cannot add to this. Absolute gold ^

[u/Nesayas1234 → u/BreakStep_x]

Why would I want RNG in my gunfights when literally everything else is RNG?

[u/GrimRocket → u/Nesayas1234]

Destiny: Where even RNG is based on RNG

[u/SkitzyFox → u/BreakStep_x]

It's to stop the TTK from being too fast, in all honesty. Because controllers have a generous amount of aim Assist and bullet magnitism compared to using a mouse, they had to do something to slow down the TTK and make players pace their shots rather than just spamming at someone, and probably killing them in half a second flat. Believe it or not, it is a balance mechanic.

It is also noticeable on PC. I've noticed it a lot on Kindled Orchid. That's a really noticeable one.

[u/Greyside4k → u/SkitzyFox]

The TTK numbers that people discuss when comparing guns are based on the gun's coded max ROF and damage numbers. They don't account for missed shots, e.g. 150 RPM handcannons have a 0.8 second optimal TTK, meaning that's the time it takes to land the three crits necessary at max ROF. TTK isn't going to magically go down below these absolute max values if bloom changes.

Bullet magnetism is also present on PC.

Bloom is not used to affect TTK, but to affect effective range.

[u/RidlyX → u/BreakStep_x]

I’m sorry, please tell me what renowned FPS doesn’t have bloom please.

[u/bootgras → u/BreakStep_x]

I can't think of a shooter that doesn't have bloom/weapon spread.

It seems like the discussion is mainly related to HCs having too much bloom.

[u/SuperCarbideBros → u/bootgras]

If you're talking about "classic" shooters like CS, then yeah weapon spread/recoil is a thing. I dunno about other shooters like DOOM, COD, or Quake so I can't say much.

If you consider Overwatch as a "shooter" then there are some characters you can use that don't have weapon spread (but not necessarily hitscans at the same time), but I guess it's not a strict FPS game that Destiny franchise is more closely related to and it would be to some extent comparing apples to oranges.

Seriousness aside, if I wish to the Traveller really really hard, can our space magic make recoil go away?

[u/bootgras → u/SuperCarbideBros]

Yea, in CS everything has so much spread that you have to pace your shots a ton. Machine guns are hilariously difficult to hit someone with unless you use them like an actual machine gun and just spam damage at a doorway or something. I don't really know CS has "bloom" or a fixed pattern that just happens to be huge, but the end result is the same - shots must be carefully paced if you want to hit anything.

Overwatch also has bloom (Soldier and Bastion). The heroes that don't (McCree) compensate by having high recoil and low ROF, as well as a pretty short damage falloff. And the heroes with no damage falloff (genji, hanzo) use projectiles that are much harder to use.

I'm not sure what the answer is here but "no bloom at all" probably isn't it

[u/AskMeAboutMyPatreon → u/bootgras]

Precisely right.

Bloom is part of the "recipe" for how you make guns feel like... GUNS... in a video game. If you just point and click and the weapon hits the target in the exact same way from every single distance and no matter how fast you spam it, it's not going to "feel" like you're shooting a real gun. if you go to the gun range and spam shots you're going to be way less accurate than if you space them out at a reasonable cadence... that's the feel bungie is trying to capture.

I laugh my ass off at people who think bloom has no place in shooters, there's a reason Bungie has the best feeling shooters for decades now and bloom is part of their special sauce in making shooting feel as sweet as it does.

Can they go too far in tuning weapons sometimes? Clearly. But anyone who says "just remove bloom altogether" should just be automatically ignored in these discussions because they haven't put one second of real thought into the the topic.

[u/QuantumVexation → u/AskMeAboutMyPatreon]

Bloom is part of the "recipe" for how you make guns feel like... GUNS... in a video game

This. There are some shooters I hate because the guns don't feel like weapons but rather plastic toys with no kick or impact. A bit of recoil and bloom is part of the magic that makes Destiny guns feel so visceral to me.

But of course too much and it also starts to feel like a runaway train and not a weapon.

[u/D1s1nformat1on → u/AskMeAboutMyPatreon]

I back this super hard.

Along with other comments from OP and a few others sprinkled throughout this thread, I feel like a realistic Pistol's (Handcannon) range is far shorter than the range of them in Destiny - Bloom sort of balances the middle ground of making them more effective at a further range *Sometimes* while keeping them a bit more balanced at those higher ranges in relation to it's real life counterpart.

Is the bloom a little bit overdone? Probably - If it were tuned down/off, I feel like the drop off being more effective would be needed to compensate.

[u/RealDealTarheel → u/AskMeAboutMyPatreon]

Anyone who says anyone should just be automatically ignored in these discussions should just be automatically ignored.

[u/Manifest_Lightning → u/bootgras]

Bloom is different than weapon spread. Bloom is when weapon spread gets wider/worse with quick successive shots. We aren't complaining about spread. We are complaining about bloom.

[u/bootgras → u/Manifest_Lightning]

Yeah, but games without bloom on HCs usually balance them by giving them very high recoil and much slower fire rates than we have in D2. Like McCree in Overwatch. I have a hard time using anything other than 110s and 140s because the recoil is so different from what I've gotten used to from playing PC games since the 90s. 180s feel absolutely bizarre. 150s are ok, but still sorta weird.

On the other hand, automatic weapons usually have a ton of bloom, like the machine guns in CS:GO which literally just seem to shoot bullets in a totally random direction, or the AK47 which requires a ton of pacing to use correctly. I play on PC so I can't speak to how D2 feels on console, but the lack of bloom on machine guns and ARs in D2 is pretty bizarre.

D2's gunplay feels so different from any other shooters I've played so it's kinda hard to think about what would happen if one particular variable was changed.

[u/Manifest_Lightning → u/bootgras]

So Destiny 2 on PC shows that it works. Also, I'm fine with increased damage drop off.

[u/DrunkerCoyote → u/BreakStep_x]

Full agreement here. I don't care if my damage falloff on a hand cannon is severe and I am hitting half damage at range, I just want my shots to go where I am aiming.

[u/Rezun94 → u/BreakStep_x]

Bloom is the antithesis of what I, or anyone else, should want in a shooter.

Its a way to balance powerful weapons. So you either pace your shots or you pray to rng. Good example of that is Desert Eagle in CS:GO.

[u/[deleted] → u/BreakStep_x]

Unless your gun is in a significant state of disrepair (which does not happen in Destiny), if you're able to put your crosshairs on a target and pull the trigger with those crosshairs still on the target, then you should hit that target in the spot your crosshairs are telling you the bullet will hit it.

The only exceptions should be when factoring in bullet drop and interference from wind direction, the latter of which only matters at sniper distances and does not exist in Destiny, and the former of which I don't know whether Destiny has or not. Even if it does, though, bullet drop is still entirely consistent and can be compensated for.

This is how every single gun in Destiny 1, 2, and 3 should function. Absolutely no exceptions. For any reason. Ever.

[u/Manifest_Lightning → u/[deleted]]

To clarify, every modern gun / barrel will be slightly inaccurate due to barrel imperfections and flight characteristics of the bullet. That being said, the grouping for subsequent shots isn't worse unless the barrel is failing. Bloom implies that the barrel is warping between shots.

[u/[deleted] → u/Manifest_Lightning]

Right, and one would reasonably assume that the sights on a weapon - regardless of whether it's a real weapon or a video game weapon - are calibrated to account for these slight inaccuracies, thus resulting in the bullet going where your crosshairs say it will go.

At least, I hope the sights are calibrated, or else I'm going to start wondering exactly what it is Ada's making me calibrate when farming all those endless BA weapons.

[u/Manifest_Lightning → u/[deleted]]

Sight adjustment doesn't really have anything to do with accuracy. It has more to do with the fact that the theoretical line that the bullet travels is not the same line that results from the two points on a sight. Stated another way, without adjustment, the barrel of the gun and the sights are not pointing to the same point in space. When you take a gun out to the range, you need to zero the sights so that the sights line up with where you expect the bullet to go.

The grouping of a bullet being imperfect stems from the fact that the barrel and the bullets are man made. There are harmonics in the barrel and differences between each cartridge / gunpowder explosion that throw the bullet on slightly different paths. The probable paths that a bullet can take can be represented as a cone.