Bungie has shared its plan for releasing Destiny 2’s Fireteam Finder feature, which will have a beta launch for testing. Originally meant for Season 22, this in-game LFG system will now come out during the Season of the Wish due to delays.

In an official post, Bungie said Destiny 2’s Fireteam Finder will have a Raid Stress Test on November 30, followed by a public beta in December based on the test. Bungie is cautious to not disrupt Season of the Wish and its new Dungeon launch. The post explains how Fireteam Finder works—letting players create listings for activities with specific tags and details. It will be accessible through the Roster tab and on any activity’s launch screen. After the beta, Fireteam Finder will fully launch in late January 2024.

DESTINY 2 DEV INSIGHTS: FIRETEAM FINDER BETA FIRST LOOK

SHIPPING FEATURES, BUT IN SECRET! (SHHHHHH!)

Social features are difficult to prove at scale inside of a studio; you need hundreds of thousands of people to properly test them. Even our largest internal playtests will only reach a fraction of what the final player counts will be once the feature goes live. Typically, we’ll run a “Bungie Beta” for a social feature before it goes live to gain confidence in our releases.

In a Bungie Beta, we limit access to employees, with some aspects of the feature live in the public game for all Destiny 2 players so that we can test it out. In the past, we’ve done this for Cross Save, Bungie Friends list, and Cross Play. Famously, we may have let everyone in on our Cross Play Bungie Beta for a day or two, allegedly. Oops.

A VERY PUBLIC BUNGIE BETA!

We’ve made a ton of progress on Fireteam Finder, including on many of the unexpected technical challenges, and have come to a fork in the road with a difficult choice to make:

1. Push the release of Fireteam Finder even later, or
2. have a much more public version of our Bungie Beta.

We’ve decided it’s better to bring you along for the ride rather than make you wait. We hope you agree.

Welcome to the party.

GETTING INTO THE FIRETEAM FINDER

There are two ways to access Fireteam Finder:

1. From the Director using the Roster tab.
2. Using the Fireteam Finder access point found on every activity’s launch screen.

In both cases, you’ll be able to search for a fireteam or create a listing using a series of listing options to specify the group you’re trying to build.

WHAT YOU’LL SEE IN THE STRESS TEST VS. BETA VS. LAUNCH

We’re already prepping content for a few updates to Fireteam Finder and you will see more things come online for Beta, and even more as we march toward full release. A perfect example of this process is the View Listings screen below. On the first one you can see the stress test version, and then on the second is our target for final release. (As you can see, we are releasing a very limited emoji set to describe your listings later in the beta phase. 😊🌼😊) These updates will flow throughout Season of the Wish’s launch and beyond to The Final Shape.

EXISTING GROUP FINDING SYSTEMS

We’re also sure you have questions about what’s happening to the group finding systems that currently exist on our website and Companion app.

Both the website and Companion app will remain available until the new Fireteam Finder, both in-game and out-of-game, is ready. Yup, the Bungie.net team has been hard at work developing a new out-of-game Fireteam Finder that’s fully integrated with the in-game system. However, it’s not going to be available during the early beta period.

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