Destiny 2
The Destiny 2 Saga
(My First Industry Job)
What I have been working on
I was hired to test for Bungie, specifically Destiny 2 in August of 2020 and I have touched so many things in the game and some stuff upcoming (that I sadly cant talk about.... yet). Lets start with my first major project I worked on, Presage!
The Ghost Ship (Pressage)
I had worked at Bungie for a couple of weeks, learning the basics of how to use their bugging tools and systems before I was assigned to work on Presage in its earliest white-box phase. It was pretty intense early on in the project since there was a lot of different kinds of bugs from AI pathing to z-fighting and I frankly didn't know how to properly write a bug when I first started working at Bungie. My lead tester working on the project showed me the ropes for running a thorough test pass and the ringer for bug logging.
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After several Months of testing and working with the Lead Designer and Tester we had a mission that felt like a gem, watching streamers and clan mates play through it the first time was something I don't think I will forget for the rest of my life. I then, after Presage went live, I was then assigned to help support season 14 - Season of the Splicer's vendor.
Season 14 - The Vendor
While Presage was a big and extensive job that I was able to invest nearly half a year in. Season 14 - Season of the Splicer I had a much different task and timeframe. The season had already been in development for several months because of the rotating seasonal release teams that Bungie has set up. So I was coming in on a relatively set structure. There were some similarities from the past season, as no matter what there will always be world art bugs to log. I was assigned to support the team working on the seasonal vendor, which at that time had already been through several itterations of seasonal upgrades and bounties.
My job then was helping the Designers work on fine tuning, so verifying that upgrades and bounties did what they were supposed to and see if they could use some tweaking. I heavily focused on ability kill bounties as they are always my least favorite. I am always in favor of slightly less ability and super kills on bounties, because sometimes they can be incredibly frustrating to complete.
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When Season 14 was mostly complete and moving into RC in a bit I was then moved into Release Test where I have been for about 7-8 months.
Release Test Team (RTT)
RTT is the team I have worked the longest for at Bungie, and the best way I can describe it is that highlighted number in the picture above. That's the live version number of Destiny 2, every time that number changes you can bet I have tested nearly every single release candidate build which is sometimes only five or six, and sometimes as many as twenty (well maybe not twenty but one of the releases needed a lot more than the usual). RTT is about the very basics of the game, can the player log in, can they do a strike, are they able to go to tower? There is more like testing crossplay and the anti-cheat, but the priority is making sure players are able to have a consistent experience when logging in after each release goes live.
RTT tests the overall stability of each release making sure the player base gets a consistent experience each update. Though sometimes we are tasked with more than that. Recently with the introduction of Battleye and crossplay in Destiny 2 we were tasked with more than the standard test passes. I worked in tandem with programmers and release managers to test the Battleye implementation for Steam and MsStore running test passes and verifying fixes on the environment level. I also participated in group tests for crossplay as well as ran high priority test passes to verify that build stability was maintained with the transition to crossplay. My final main task was to help provide live support for each release in a war room, ready to provide repro support with the live build to verify bugs and check the solutions to those bugs.
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Finally, I had the opportunity to participate in larger playtests for currently released content such as a two week early experience playthrough of Witch Queen. A group of about 15 people did a full playthrough of the Witch Queen campaign and the grind up until the raid. We gave general feedback of game feel and systems such as weapon crafting, deepsight mechanics, and puzzles.
Hopefully, I will be able to talk about other in studio playtests, but that's still covered under NDA ;).