Update: Ask and it seems ye shall sometimes received. Bungie appears to have come up with a solution to the stuttering bug which occurred during extended Destiny 2 play sessions, and which users deduced was being caused by issues with displaying the clan roster. As a result the game will be taken offline on November 2 in order to implement hotfix 1.0.6.1.
Full details are here, but this is the expected schedule:
- 8 am PT/11 am ET: Server maintenance scheduled to begin. Players will no longer be able to log in to the game.
- 9 am PT/12 pm ET: Players still in the game will be kicked to the title screen.
- 10 am PT/1 pm ET: Update 1.0.6 will be available to download for all platforms; 1.0.6.1 hotfix will be available for the PC. You may need to manually check for an update to get things moving.
- 12 pm PT/3 pm ET: Server maintenance scheduled to end.
The patch notes haven't been published yet, but when they are you'll be able to find them here. But the big thing, as we noted in the original post, is that this should fix the issue with screen stuttering that a large number of players. You could, I suppose, just not play for so damn long, but who am I kidding?
One potentially very important point to be aware of: The hotfix is set to hit the day after the Leviathan raid goes live on PC—that's the "six-person, hours-long, tough-as-nails activity" we looked at back in September. Given the amount of time required to complete it, especially if you're new (which many of us are), and the fact that this stuttering bug kicks in during long gameplay sessions, you might want to hold off tackling it until the patch is released.
Original story:
This morning, Destiny 2 fans got their first look at the renegade warlock Osiris, the star of the game’s first expansion, which lands on 5 December. He’ll be the one in the Egyptian bird hat. Meanwhile, Bungie was busy in the background rolling out a hotfix that enables owners of AMD Phenom II processors to be able to actually play the game in the first place.
Players with those CPUs had encountered serious crash issues, which Bungie identified as being due to the Supplemental Streaming SIMD Extensions 3 (SSSE3) instruction set, which the Phenom II doesn’t support. Last week Bungie wrote: “We are investigating the issue and will attempt to fix the crash, but these CPUs are below minimum spec and are not officially supported.”
That investigation must have been a success, because hotfix 1.5.1 is now live, and it removes the SSSE3 requirement. We’ve yet to test the fix ourselves, so if you’re a Phenom II-owning Destiny 2 player let us know in the comments if you’re now a happy hunter.
Bungie is also working on a separate performance issue, which seems to be affecting a broader spectrum of players. The problem occurs after several hours of playtime, at which point a screen stutter develops, even though the framerate counter will often remain high. Restarting the application fixes the issues, but obviously it’s irritating. The developer acknowledged the problem last Friday:
We're investigating performance drops after playing on PC for extended periods. Relaunching Destiny 2 can work around this issue.October 27, 2017
Curiously, a workaround may have already been found by fans, who’ve identified that being part of a clan seems to be the problem. Sure enough, the ingame clan page does seem to be bugged (it’s perpetually searching for and not displaying members, even if they’re online), and quitting your clan appears to alleviate the issue entirely. That course of action will also remove your access to the free weekly loot that comes with playing as part of an active clan, so isn’t ideal long term.
I’ve also seen others suggest that switching regions between Americas and Europe can help, but I found the problem still occurred for me, possibly because the PC Gamer clan has members from all over the world so region hopping doesn’t stop the call from happening.
I’ve reached out to Bungie to find out what the ETA on a fix for this is, and whether clan membership has been confirmed as the culprit. While we’re waiting on that, why not bone up on who Osiris was with our comprehensive lore guide. Or check out our review, to see if the game is even for you in the first place.
