Why Gjallarhorn Is Overpowered, And The Tricks To Balancing Destiny's Weapons

Weapon balancing is a delicate operation. While some players might hate the fact that another player's weapon outclasses their own, that other player might be happy to exploit an overpowered weapon. Some fans cry foul whenever a company rebalances its game after release, but balancing is an important element for a thriving game community, but did you know that you can overpower a weapon just by fine-tuning the audio?

Last month, Bungie announced that they would be rebalancing some of Destiny's most powerful weapons, such as Gjallarhorn, Thorn, and Ice Breaker. Some of Destiny's fan base went into an uproar, but Bungie didn't decide to rebalance these weapons to irritate their fans.

"It's funny, there's an interesting reaction, which is the opposite of what we wanted, because we're actually trying to create more viable options so you have more choices to pick from," says senior designer Sage Merrill. "There was a bug late in the development of Destiny where the trails didn't appear for the sub-munitions of Gjallarhorn, so you couldn't see what it was doing and it wasn't this spectacular display that it is now. However, the bug didn't get logged as, 'This doesn't look awesome." It got logged as 'isn't powerful enough.'"

This fun story gives us some insight into one of the reasons that Gjallarhorn might have become a dominating force among the Destiny community. Merrill went on to describe the intricacies of weapon balancing and why developers find it so tricky. A designer can't always trust the cold math that dictates a weapon's DPS, because our own human perceptions tinker with how a game feels balanced.  

"I can overpower a gun just by adjusting the audio," says Merrill. "People will say, 'this gun is useless,' but then we change the audio to give at this huge sniper boom and the next day people will say, 'this gun is completely broken and overpowered.'" All we did was change the audio. It doesn't matter if guns are really balanced, it matters if they are perceived as being balanced. I could have a gun that is completely underpowered, but if everybody assumed it was really strong because it felt badass, we would probably still have to do some balancing to it."

At least for now, Gjallarhorn remains very powerful, and you can pick it up from Xur this weekend. If you're wondering how Bungie is offering new competition for Gjallarhorn in the heavy weapon slot, check out our sneak peak of a brand new exotic found in The Taken King. And check out more Taken King content in our month of cover updates.