The loot patch is live!

Here are the changes:

Summary:

With this patch, we address some widely-discussed concerns with how Engrams are earned and claimed. Strikes have become more rewarding, and the rewards gained from them are more predictable. Also affected is the rotation of maps that appear in the Crucible.

Cryptarch

• Legendary (purple) engrams will always produce a Legendary quality item or higher
  
  • Note: Legendary engrams that exist in your inventory will change to Rare quality items when the patch is applied. However, decoding these engrams will still produce the same results as before
• Rare (blue) engrams will always produce a Rare quality item or higher
  
  • Chance for Legendary gear increased
• Materials: Ascendant Shards and Ascendant Energy promoted to Legendary quality (from Rare quality)

Rewards

• Rare (Blue) and Legendary (Purple) Engram drops added to the potential rewards for:
  
  • Vanguard: Tiger Strike Playlist
  • Daily Heroic Missions (first time per day)
  • Weekly Heroic Missions (first time per week)
• Known issues
  
  • When selecting a higher difficulty for daily missions, XP Bonus not show in the reward display
  • You will still get the XP bonus, you just won't see it in the UI

Crucible

• Reduced time limit on Bastion and First Light in Control and Clash from 15 to 12 minutes, bringing them in line with non-vehicle maps in those playlists
• Lowered weighting on Bastion and First Light in Control and Clash so they appear less often in those playlists

Next stop: weapon rebalancing. Can't wait for that thorn buff...

Upcoming changes:

Bad Juju and thorn buffs

Rebalancing of the whole scout rifle/pulse rifle/assault rifle dynamic to make the assault rifle not as over powered particularly in PvP.

Nice. Now the weapon vendor just needs to sell some blue fusion rifles again. Need me the Pocket Infinity

Isn't that the description from last week's patch preview?

I think the patch notes from today have some more specifics.

Here are the patch notes:

Summary:

With this patch, we address some widely-discussed concerns with how Engrams are earned and claimed. Strikes have become more rewarding, and the rewards gained from them are more predictable. Also affected is the rotation of maps that appear in the Crucible.

Cryptarch

• Legendary (purple) engrams will always produce a Legendary quality item or higher
  
  • Note: Legendary engrams that exist in your inventory will change to Rare quality items when the patch is applied. However, decoding these engrams will still produce the same results as before
• Rare (blue) engrams will always produce a Rare quality item or higher
  
  • Chance for Legendary gear increased
• Materials: Ascendant Shards and Ascendant Energy promoted to Legendary quality (from Rare quality)

Rewards

• Rare (Blue) and Legendary (Purple) Engram drops added to the potential rewards for:
  
  • Vanguard: Tiger Strike Playlist
  • Daily Heroic Missions (first time per day)
  • Weekly Heroic Missions (first time per week)
• Known issues
  
  • When selecting a higher difficulty for daily missions, XP Bonus not show in the reward display
  • You will still get the XP bonus, you just won't see it in the UI

Crucible

• Reduced time limit on Bastion and First Light in Control and Clash from 15 to 12 minutes, bringing them in line with non-vehicle maps in those playlists
• Lowered weighting on Bastion and First Light in Control and Clash so they appear less often in those playlists

I hope they make scout rifles better, I like them but they feel really underpowered, plus they are utterly worthless on pvp.

@onarum: They definitely called out scout rifles as something they'll tweak. Just not sure when it'll happen though.

neeeeeeeed more purps

@ll_exile_ll: thanks

The patch is weirdly not downloaded/ding for me. I have the whole download while on stand-by thing on my PS4, yet nothing. Starting the game doesn't prompt me either. The update history says it's still on 1.0.1.3.

It's weird, because you'd expect an always online game to require the patch to play.

It doesn't download with the system patch infrastructure. It downloads when you go to sign in after the "press x to play."

@ll_exile_ll: Yeah I just noticed the weekly strike and daily mission now has "cryptarch engram" in the rewards. I guess it's all good. Thanks.

Sounds good. I'm actually pretty psyched that Bastion will be coming up less in control. It's easily my least favourite map but I played it and First Light (which I enjoy) all the damn time.

What? Bastion is so much better than First Light. That moon map is like the worst one.

@zeik: I respectfully disagree, but hey, we both get a drop in the likelyhood of our least favourite map showing up in the rotation so whatever.

Bastions ok, but it felt like I was getting it 50% of the time. I had a streak of 4 Bastion maps in a row once, so it's great news that it's getting less frequent!

Got exotic titan gauntlets from the legendary engram I just got from the daily. Awesome.

you cant have my gauntlets you jerk!

I played this morning before the patch went live thinking it already was and got 2 purple drops. When I went to get them decoded they turned into blues. I turned the game off in my frustration and when I returned about an hour the patch went live. Such a waste.

@azrailx: Hah! That's the one I got actually!

I'm pretty much done with this game for the time being. I'll probably revisit it in a while to see how it feels with all the changes. But stuff like this is a step in the right direction.

@theht: but now im not a unique butterfly anymore! you've ruined the game for me you big meanie!!!!!!

jokes =)

Played last night post-patch and still had two instances of green items from blue engrams. Just a heads up for everyone. Seems it's not entirely fixed yet.

@mariachimacabre: Were they items you found before the patch? It's only a guarantee if you found the items post patch, as I'm pretty sure engrams are decided when they drop, not when they are decrypted. (Which is probably why they made all purple engrams blue, because they couldn't guarantee legendaries if they were found pre-patch.)

@zeik: Nope. Got them doing the weekly heroic last night. I was unpleasantly surprised.

I like how you now get Cryptarch rewards for several missions.

Also, I actually got a Legendary out of a Decoherent engram. Seems like that increased Legendary chance works.