Free To Play Annual Event

Three week limited time event themed around a midsummer festival to celebrate the heroic deeds of Destiny’s player characters

Centered around a quest involving powering up an ornate suit of event themed player armor, eventually allowing players to earn and imbue it with flashy elemental glows. Featured a bespoke activity, currency and economy, and item and cosmetic rewards

I worked with other members of the Events Team to design and implement the core event progression systems, balance the economy, upkeep and maintain the event, and lead the implementation of the event activity

Directly contributed to three annual iterations of this event

Lighting The Fires Of Progress

Solstice of Heroes was the new Events Team’s second shot at creating a massive update for an event, and we went big with this one. For our first new iteration of solstice in 2022, we introduced a massive systemic reworks to the very framework of destiny events that would go on to become the new systemic paradigm for all events going forward. This new systemic structure was known as the Event Card, and it essentially made events into miniature Destiny Seasons. The card functioned as the hub for the event, and had a special spot it occupied in the game’s quest menu. It had a suite of challenges players could complete over the event’s three week duration to earn a variety of rewards, including event weapons, cosmetic items, and currencies. The challenges also awarded tickets that could be redeemed to claim a special suite of premium event themed cosmetics if players purchased an Event Pass for real money, which helped make events a revenue driver as well as an engagement driver. The challenges had objectives designed to encourage players to participate in the event and the wider game world, and were tuned to be easily completable within the three week time window. If a player completed all the challenges, they would unlock the event seal, which would give them a special event themed title to display to the rest of the community.

As the first event to receive an event card, Solstice got a ton of systemic updates. The only element of the event that didn’t get reworked was its core: the Solstice armor. The event had always been centered around players going on a quest to earn a powerful set of golden-trimmed armor pieces that could be upgraded to feature a flashy glow. This armor could be kept after the event ended, and served as an enticing and accessible potent power boost for players returning to the game. Our 2022 events team iteration took this quest and its rewards to the next level. We created a new currency, Silver Leaves, which players could earn as an end of activity reward all throughout the rest of Destiny 2’s main ritual activities. We also introduced an all new event activity called Bonfire Bash, in which players would battle waves of enemies to gather fuel to stoke a mystical bonfire at the center of the map as high as they could (more on that later). Players could then burn their Silver Leaves in the bonfire to turn them to a second currency, Silver Ash. Players could then spend this Silver Ash currency, alongside an additional currency earned from Solstice Event Challenges, in the new Solstice Armor Forge system to unlock the five pieces of swanky new solstice armor, improve and reroll their stats, and eventually unlock the glow effect. The Tower social space also got a fresh set of solstice decorations, including lush green grass, white stone carvings, and a permanent golden afternoon time of day. I implemented system that temporarily forced the time of day to the afternoon during the event, and I remember it being surprisingly challenging to find the proper setting in Bungie’s proprietary engine to override the game’s natural day/night cycle and getting it to do so in a way that would only override during the event!