Api: Cross Save Testing, and How It May affect you

[vthornheart-bng]

Folks have been wondering about how cross save will affect their apps - we can't share everything yet, but this document is an attempt to share as much as I am allowed to at the present time, in preparation for testing that will begin in the upcoming weeks.

Take a look, and see how it might affect you. Know that there will be more information coming in the lead up to Cross Save launch, but this is as much as I can discuss for the time being.

https://github.com/Bungie-net/api/wiki/FAQ:-Cross-Save-pre-launch-testing,-and-how-it-may-affect-you

[TorKallon]

Thanks for this. We all greatly appreciate you keeping us as informed as
possible.

One big question I have after reading this is: will there be a way to tell
what platform the a game was played on from the PGCR? Or will we need to
make an extra API call for each PGCR in other to track that?

On Fri, Jul 5, 2019 at 12:09 PM Vendal Thornheart [e-mail]
wrote:

Folks have been wondering about how cross save will affect their apps - we
can't share everything yet, but this document is an attempt to share as
much as I am allowed to at the present time, in preparation for testing
that will begin in the upcoming weeks.

Take a look, and see how it might affect you. Know that there will be more
information coming in the lead up to Cross Save launch, but this is as much
as I can discuss for the time being.

https://github.com/Bungie-net/api/wiki/FAQ:-Cross-Save-pre-launch-testing,-and-how-it-may-affect-you

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[vthornheart-bng]

Yes, so at the end of the document I mention adding membershipType to DestinyHistoricalStatsActivity - fortunately, this will be something that, once we add it in the next release, should start coming down for both PGCRs and for the ActivityHistory endpoints!

(With any luck, the BNet release next week will have it start coming down - but it's coming in hot, so I can't 100% guarantee it'll make it to next week's release boat)

[bhollis]

You mention that Destiny2Services.GetLinkedProfiles will return the proper Platform Memberships. Will UserService.GetMembershipDataById also include that info? I'm wondering if we need to switch over.

[vthornheart-bng]

Yes, you'll want to switch over - GetMembershipDataById is something you can still use for Destiny 1 info if you happen to need it, but for Destiny 2 you'll want to switch to GetLinkedProfiles if possible.

[vthornheart-bng]

I'll add that to the docs, as I didn't think about the fact that people might still be using GetMembershipDataById!

[bhollis]

Another question - will there be a way to see the "last played" platform type for a profile? This would be useful for the code we have which filters vendor items based on exclusivity (though I think I heard all exclusivity will go away?). This would also be helpful for our user reviews system, which lets people filter by platform.

[vthornheart-bng]

Hmm, good question - I'll look into that and see if that can be returned!

I will ask about if I can talk on the subject of exclusivity, but I can't say anything one way or the other about that aspect yet until I get a thumbs up.

[bhollis]

And a point of clarification, just so I completely understand what you wrote - a platform membership is one-to-one with a Destiny profile, right? Meaning given a platform membership ID, I can uniquely identify a user's profile and its (max 3) characters? In DIM we have a lot of code that uniquely identifies things based on a [platform membership ID, platform ID] tuple. But if I'm reading your doc correctly, it seems like we only need to key things on platform membership ID, since the same platform membership can't have multiple profiles.

[vthornheart-bng]

Yes - the Platform Membership ID will always be One-To-Zero-Or-One with a Destiny Profile, and the two cannot be separated once the Destiny Profile data is created for a Membership ID.

[bhollis]

Very useful! I thought of one more you may not be able to answer right now. Today we have the Blizzard platform type, but users will be automatically transitions to Steam. Will that result in a new Platform Membership ID with a new profile? Or will Steam be added to the originally-on-Blizzard profile?

[vthornheart-bng]

Ooh, very good question - unfortunately indeed I can't answer that one either right now, but there is a plan in the works that I think will work well for everyone, and hopefully we can share it soon.

[vthornheart-bng]

On the question of exclusivity, I was told it was indeed okay to mention what's up:

There will be no more exclusive weapons, armor, maps, or activities in Destiny 2 as of Shadowkeep launch. So if you have any exclusivity-related features for what vendors are giving out, you'll be able to retire those!

[floatingatoll]

To those of you viewing this issue that aren’t currently API developers, please keep in mind that this disclosure is extraordinarily unusual and this GitHub does not generally accept “what does the future hold?” requests — and even in this instance, it’s only because it’s an API-reared question. Please be kind to the API team here; there’s, like, 2 of them total.

On Jul 5, 2019, at 13:58, Vendal Thornheart [e-mail] wrote:

On the question of exclusivity, I was told it was indeed okay to mention what's up:

There will be no more exclusive weapons, armor, maps, or activities in Destiny 2 as of Shadowkeep launch. So if you have any exclusivity-related features, you'll be able to retire those!

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[ArkahnX]

This is fantastic information! I'm glad you were able to get a thumbs up for some of this information before it went live.

On the topic of returning the platform that the user last played on (Or is currently playing on for instance) in the API there is currently three spots (Destiny.Responses.DestinyProfileUserInfoCard, Destiny.Entities.Profiles.DestinyProfileComponent, Destiny.Entities.Characters.DestinyCharacterComponent) which return a "dateLastPlayed" property.
I think adding one or both of a "currentlyActivePlatform" and "lastPlayedPlatform" property to those responses would work?

[floatingatoll]

I have a couple of clarifying questions here (I’m not Bungie):

If I have accounts linked for Xbox, PS4, and PC, then what would you want to be returned for my “current” platform? Is your question focused solely on “which PC platform is this user bound to”?

For “last played platform”, that would be available from their latest PGCR, if it doesn’t end up being added to their account statistics board by Thorn before launch. What feature in an API client would depend on this data — when that client isn’t _already_ parsing every PGCR for statistics?

On Jul 5, 2019, at 16:22, Christopher Hall [e-mail] wrote:

This is fantastic information! I'm glad you were able to get a thumbs up for some of this information before it went live.

On the topic of returning the platform that the user last played on (Or is currently playing on for instance) in the API there is currently three spots (Destiny.Responses.DestinyProfileUserInfoCard, Destiny.Entities.Profiles.DestinyProfileComponent, Destiny.Entities.Characters.DestinyCharacterComponent) which return a "dateLastPlayed" property.
I think adding one or both of a "currentlyActivePlatform" and "lastPlayedPlatform" property to those responses would work?

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[vthornheart-bng]

That would be great, I dig that suggestion as long as we can get it back! I'm 95% sure we can get that info back.

[vthornheart-bng]

With last played platform, I think that'd be more for current info is my guess as to how it'd be useful, like a "where are your friends playing right now" situation. I was combining the idea of a current and a last played in my head for this purpose - and if we're talking live data, indeed they'd have to be. If you are actively playing, I'm pretty certain we can get back that data - and I"m fairly certain we can get the last one you played on if you're not playing. But what I couldn't get is the platform you played on in your previous session if you're currently playing. It'd just be "whatever we saw last" essentially.

But all of this depends on whether we can get it back - I'm pretty sure we can get "current". I'm feeling less confident about "last".

[floatingatoll]

In essence, “Most recently observed platform from the most recent PGCR” would probably be doable, but anything depending on data older than the most recent PGCR not?

On Jul 5, 2019, at 16:36, Vendal Thornheart [e-mail] wrote:

With last played platform, I think that'd be more for current info is my guess as to how it'd be useful, like a "where are your friends playing right now" situation. I was combining the idea of a current and a last played in my head for this purpose - and if we're talking live data, indeed they'd have to be. If you are actively playing, I'm pretty certain we can get back that data - and I"m fairly certain we can get the last one you played on if you're not playing. But what I couldn't get is the platform you played on in your previous session if you're currently playing. It'd just be "whatever we saw last" essentially.

But all of this depends on whether we can get it back - I'm pretty sure we can get "current". I'm feeling less confident about "last".

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[vthornheart-bng]

Yes, in theory we could go back and do that - but that'd require us to hit PGCRs every time someone requested live Destiny data, so we won't do that. If there's some highly specialized apps that really, REALLY want to know what you've been playing historically, they could go for that!

[cowgod]

I have a couple of clarifying questions here (I’m not Bungie): If I have accounts linked for Xbox, PS4, and PC, then what would you want to be returned for my “current” platform? Is your question focused solely on “which PC platform is this user bound to”? For “last played platform”, that would be available from their latest PGCR, if it doesn’t end up being added to their account statistics board by Thorn before launch. What feature in an API client would depend on this data — when that client isn’t _already_ parsing every PGCR for statistics?

My application would be an example of one that would need to know "last played platform" but isn't concerned with PGCR's -- my "GunsmithBot" Slack/Discord bot lets users show off the roll on a piece of gear they have equipped. They can specify the platform, but as a convenience, if they leave it off, it'll load the platform they played on most recently. So that feature would be very useful for me.

[vthornheart-bng]

Ah, okay - so in your case, if we can return you whatever they're currently playing or the last thing we saw them play, that'd work for you? I will put it on the list of things to look into, thank you!

[cowgod]

Yep, that'd be very helpful. Of course I can always make a separate API call to load their most recent PGCR, but this would help avoid that.

[floatingatoll]

Thorn — I really meant "last thing we saw them play" by my thing, so your
phrasing is better :) Thanks for fielding my weird questions, both!

On Fri, Jul 5, 2019 at 4:45 PM Dan McCormack [e-mail]
wrote:

Yep, that'd be very helpful. Of course I can always make a separate API
call to load their most recent PGCR, but this would help avoid that.

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[vthornheart-bng]

Ah, sweet! <3 They're always good clarifying questions, I appreciate them!

[ArkahnX]

My thoughts on the "active" platform is the same as cowgod, for instance certain weapons are more desirable on PC vs console (PS4 XBOX), so if a player in a post cross save world uses their PS4 account to primarily play PC, itd be nice to show them PC related stuff rather than console

To edit after some re-reading: last played platform would certainly only be useful when "not" actively playing, so I think just presenting a single property "lastActivePlatform" or something, and you can check the "dateLastPlayed" / "currentActivityHash" properties to see if they are active or not

[ckhicks]

Just dropping in to say thank you for all this, Thorn. So very appreciated. I was going to ask several of the previously mentioned questions around "currently playing" and so forth, so this has been super helpful already.

Edit: @vthornheart-bng are you allowed to say a little more about how Cross Save will impact Clan affiliation for accounts that aren't the primary save? Will there be any way to see the status of those accounts so we can clean up and make room for more members, etc.? (Shot in the dark: any chance the 100-member limit will be lifted?! 😄 🙏 🤞)

[vthornheart-bng]

Excellent, I'm glad this is helpful!

With the non-active accounts, they aren't going to be removed automatically from Clans (as there are some logistical problems on our side with this, along with the potential concern that someone might want to still participate in a clan as a member for social reasons even if their account isn't active: we didn't want to make a judgment call about whether or not someone should still belong to the social aspects of the clan just because they might not play Destiny with that account anymore). but we're actively working on determining what we can return in the Clan call in case . That's all still TBD at the moment, but it is actively in progress.

As a workaround until then, you'll be able to make a call to GetLinkedProfiles if you are looking to do something like show users as having inactive accounts, auto-drop inactive accounts, etc...

[vthornheart-bng]

@ArkahnX Aye, I'll look into the feasibility of that! I get the feeling we may be able to provide it, but I don't have a firm answer to that right at the moment.

[ghost]

Will there be query parameters for stats endpoints and the main activity endpoint to only pull data for a specific platform?

Weapons perform differently when using m/k so someone's console KD may be drastically different than their PC KD. If someone wanted to get someone's KD for games play on PC only, it'd be more efficient if they didn't need to grab someone's entire crucible play history and crunch the numbers themselves.

[vthornheart-bng]

Good question! The stats endpoints that accept membership IDs as parameters are all keyed off of that membership ID - the membership type are performed. Unfortunately, we won't be able to split the cross saved users' aggregate stats up per platform.

If you're using PGCRs or GetActivityHistory, you will have access to the membershipType for the game that was played, and so will be able to decide if those are relevant for your use case.

[ghost]

Ok. I'll need to make a loader for non-clan members in my server then. It'd be way too many API calls to calculate 5000 people's PC only KDs twice a day.

[floatingatoll]

Does this also mean that in-game K/D emblems will show a consistent single value for all play on a given cross-save account, regardless of what platform most recently played it?

(I ask only because that K/D value on emblems - for example - is exposed in the API, and so if it will fluctuate each time someone switches platforms, that’s important to know. This would apply to “X matches won” or any other emblem counter too.)

[vthornheart-bng]

It'll be a single value and won't change per platform.

[mistahj67]

I believe those emblem based stats are not obtainable via the API post Forsaken / Collections.

[vthornheart-bng]

Oh, as in you can't get them unless you have an actual instance of the emblem? That is something I've been meaning to look into, but Cross Save and other work has been taking priority. I do feel that'd be useful to provide if possible. I just can't guarantee that it is unfortunately (both due to time and technical constraints)

[floatingatoll]

If you could open a TFS for “let us see those stats in collections”, that would remove a lot of the need for stats from the API team.

But, I only meant “for a single emblem that is in the character’s inventory before and after a platform transfer”.

[vthornheart-bng]

I dig that - I get the feeling that it's in the backlog, though I don't have time immediately to check on it.

Oh yeah, unfortunately on that front I don't think I'm able to speak on that at the moment. That's one of those things that I think the Community Team and Player Support will have to talk about before I'm allowed to talk about it - about what happens with numbers like that during the actual act of cross saving.

[floatingatoll]

Yep, not expecting a reply so much as “make sure you and they look into it before launch” :) cheers and good luck!

[vthornheart-bng]

Aye, thanks!

[ckhicks]

@vthornheart-bng Can you clarify how the Activity History will work once we select a primary platform for our Bungie.Net Membership/Account?

For example: user selects their D2 account but also had D1 history on a different Platform Account. Let's also say that they had both properly linked to their existing Bungie.Net Membership/Account since the beginning.

Does the record within their Bungie.Net Membership/Account show the age of their account as dating back to D1, or does it only use the selected Platform Account and say they have been around since D2?

[floatingatoll]

Are you trying to determine whether a given D2 character was imported from D1?

And/or

Are you trying to confirm if a given D2 account also played D1?

[ckhicks]

The latter - mainly wanting to understand how a membership account will or will not reflect the history of platform account(s). 🤔

[vthornheart-bng]

Whatever the account you select is showing for the account age today, it will continue to show that after cross-save. Whatever Destiny Profile you chose as your primary, the age and activity history it had before you chose it will remain as the age and activity history it will have after the choice is made.

[kramrm]

Is it just me, or is the wiki not working for this repository?
EDIT: I'm having errors on other repositories as well. Maybe a GitHub issue?

[vthornheart-bng]

Oh, as in you can't access it?

[floatingatoll]

Re: Wiki — there was a GitHub outage this morning — not specific to this repo, all better now.

[kramrm]

Thanks. Wiki here is working now. As soon as I saw other repos giving odd errors I figured it was a larger outage.

[cowgod]

@vthornheart-bng Just checking in, since a few weeks ago you said you hoped that soon you could share more about how the move to Steam will be handled. Is there anything more you can share at this point? I'm very interested to start wrapping my head around those changes, like how will users be uniquely identified, since Steam usernames aren't unique. Any info you're authorized to share would be welcome

[vthornheart-bng]

Totally a good question - let me check with folks and see what I can say at this point!

[vthornheart-bng]

Okay, nothing I can report just yet. Stay tuned!

[vthornheart-bng]

Finally got the thumbs up to give more info:

https://github.com/Bungie-net/api/wiki/Blizzard-to-Steam-Migration,-how-it-will-affect-the-API

[ghost]

I assume the games played on steam will show a 3 as the membership type in the activity endpoints. Will the games played on pc before the steam move show a membership type of a 4 or will they be converted to 3s too?

Any news on the naming of players yet? Like, is it going to use the steam nickname in game or will we be picking something unique on bungie.net so we have more accountability for what people say and do in game?

When figuring out what game versions people have on each platform, do we just make a getprofile call with each membership type or is that in the getlinked profiles call? (I haven't used that one much since it doesn't contain battletags)

[vthornheart-bng]

Ah, very good question! I had to do a little digging on that, but it looks like the way we acquire membership type information is such that they will be converted to 3's (for better or worse).

[vthornheart-bng]

In terms of the account naming, there is unfortunately going to have to be a cleansing of characters that we don't support and possibly certain disallowed words or phrases. TBD on that, I will try to get you more info on that soon: but there will definitely be a difference between a player's name in Steam and how we display that name in Bungie.net, and players won't be able to directly control the name mangling that will occur.

For game versions, that question is still something I can't talk about just yet, other than that the existing game version property has to be deprecated. I will keep you all posted when I can talk on the subject!

[vthornheart-bng]

Okay, I got the info - here’s the scoop on Steam display names!

We recognize that Steam display names can have some “unique qualities” (unprintable characters, profanity, unusually long names etc…) that our system does not support.

For most people, Steam display name lookup will work fine. For a limited number of users, it won't: especially if they have characters we can't print on the web site or profanity. This is a known limitation for a small subset of users. You will still be able to locate users directly via mechanisms that use their Membership ID (for instance, finding them through a PGCR of a match they played, their Clan membership, or through a name search for their Bungie.net profile rather than a platform name lookup).

[ghost]

Unfortunately this is leading to a lot more questions...

Is it just going to be the steam nickname and nothing else? Will there be a discriminator after it like Blizzard and discord do?

If not, someone can change their name on steam from "Mike" to "Charles", yell racist slurs in the in game clan chat, then change it back to "Mike" with no tractability whatsoever. Even with the discriminator, I'd need to constantly be polling and storing what my clan member's names are if they can change their steam nickname every 5 seconds.

Something I guarantee will happen is... an entire team of people queuing for PVP can change their names to the same thing, then queue up together. If one of them is being extremely toxic, how will a player know which one they should report?

Are the bungie.net profile names going to become unique? If we want to send a clan invite to someone with a bungie.net profile name of "Mike", how do we find the right one? There's got to be tens of thousands of them.

How will you look up a steam user on sites like destinytracker or raid.report?

[Yogarine]

I’d almost opt to not display the Steam username at al, and use the Bungie.net username instead. If the player is new to Destiny 2 / Bungie.net, have him choose a new Bungie.net username before he starts playing.

[ghost]

Something I mentioned months ago was... the only way I could think of to make this work is to copy what other companies do. Have a person's name be picked and stored on bungie's side. Make it unique (like PSN or XBL) or add a discriminator to it (like blizzard). Then charge money to change it.

Not only does that fix the problem, but it's a new revenue stream.

[floatingatoll]

This _may_ already be a finalized decision, given that they’ve already turned up the migration processes live and shipped game code for this.

On Aug 5, 2019, at 12:33, Akumati [e-mail] wrote:

Something I mentioned months ago was... the only way I could think of to make this work is to copy what other companies do. Have a person's name be picked and stored on bungie's side. Make it unique (like PSN or XBL) or add a discriminator to it (like blizzard). Then charge money to change it.

Not only does that fix the problem, but it's a new revenue stream.

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[ghost]

@floatingatoll this is precisely why I brought up this concern 2 months ago...

[Achronos-BNG]

@Akumati1435 Bringing it up two months ago was still too late, even if we hadn't already been through the problem already. The Accounts system does not work like this - we're not going to build an entirely new one just for one Platform, especially considering that the vast majority of users won't even be affected by this problem. Only users who have Steam Persona Names with profanity and unprintable characters in them will not be easily searchable, and they can easily change them to something else if so.

As for changing names, all platform display names can be easily changed. That has always been true (yes, even PSN names). Steam does not materially change that. If you have not already accounted for that in your project, well, I guess now you have a good excuse to do so. Maybe you can require users to enter a unique name for themselves. We ask for one our web site for users who want to engage more than just playing the game. Indeed, we have two - an infinitely changeable display name, and a unique name that is only changeable once a week and is prefilled will a value at creation time so most users don't even know about it unless they go to their settings screen. You may have to do something similar if you are providing social interactions with your users.

I cannot really provide advice about your hypothetical scenario involving reporting in your clan chat, as that doesn't really seem to be a problem with the API. Our systems use Display Name just as a label attached to content, but operate on the Destiny Membership Id since that is immutable. If you have built something relying on the platform display name not changing, well, that's likely always been exploitable.

[ghost]

Can you describe the process for which we are to look up the stats of a different steam user on a website like destinytracker.com or raid.report? For this example, please assume their bungie.net display name and steam display name is "Mike". I feel like I have to be missing something here... This question is why all of this is pertinent to the API. If they have an easy way to do it, so would I.

[Yogarine]

@vthornheart-bng @Achronos-BNG

I think what @Akumati1435 is on to is that Steam display names are not unique. So if you try and search a Steam player by his display name you'll get many duplicate results, without an easy way to determine what the actual correct membership is you're looking for.

[Yogarine]

@vthornheart-bng @Achronos-BNG

Another interesting point @as-com brought up on Discord, how is /invite going to work when there is no unique display name?

[floatingatoll]

How does Steam, using a mouse and the overlay, handle game invitations today — do you have to be friends to send an invitation?

On Aug 5, 2019, at 16:58, Alwin Garside [e-mail] wrote:

@vthornheart-bng @Achronos-BNG

Another interesting point @as-com brought up on Discord, how is /invite going to work when there is no unique display name?

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[Achronos-BNG]

@Akumati1435 The bungie.net profile name has a field called "unique name" that is unique (though it can be changed every 7 days). It is usually equally to the user's bungie.net membership id, though users can change it if they want. You can use that to get the user's destiny memberships (assuming they are publically linked). On Steam, that's more complicated. Even in steam itself, it is not a primary use case to find people by name with a raw search. Usually you are referenced elsewhere, be it a posted profile url, a generated invite email, etc.

You'll have to examine your use case as to what to do, especially remembering that bungie.net will not expose the Steam ID to you (it is considered private information). You'll either have to build your own system, or have some sort of proxy like the bungie.net names, telling your users to make sure their steam links are public so you can see their account information. Maybe in the future we can do something to allow an app to be granted permission to see a user's private link state so a user doesn't have to expose their links to all to see in order for that to work. We may also look into providing a way for you to resolve steam profile vanity urls into destiny membership ids directly. But for now, bungie.net names and their public links are probalby your best bet.

I have no information for you on how in-game inviting works, that is outside the scope of this forum.

[Yogarine]

@Achronos-BNG

it is not a primary use case to find people by name with a raw search.

Just wanted to mention that there are a few sites that use this case. Destiny Tracker comes to mind for one.

Two questions:
Will it be possible to see a persons "unique name" in-game?
Does this also mean that in Destiny 2 on Steam I could hypothetically fill up a fireteam with 6 identically named players?

[cowgod]

@Akumati1435 Thanks for that clarification. I hadn't realized it's a conscious design decision to not show a bungie.net user's associated battle.net tag etc. That certainly makes it harder to find people, but I can understand the thinking behind the decision.

I second the other comments that being able to look people up is pretty core functionality for quite a few third-party apps, including mine, so I hope some of those possibilities you listed will be given consideration in the future. Thanks to both of you as always for the open communication!

[ghost]

So you're saying the unique name is something we can search on right? If so then...

Idea - If a user hasn't set their unique name when they go to transfer their bungie account to steam, set it to the person's battletag when the transfer to steam happens. When a person adds a steam account to bungie, default it to their gamertag/psn name. If someone new comes along, force them to set that field. You'd probably need to add slight variations to it because some will be taken.

Make that field very visible to the users somehow (like displaying it in game perhaps). If everyone knows what their unique identifier is, then people will know how to find their stats on sites like destinytracker.com.

I don't think you understand how much work you're putting on us. I don't think you understand the implications this will have on your end users that use all these 3rd party websites. This will even have financial impacts on those who run ads on their 3rd party sites because no one on steam will be able to use them... This is very basic functionality and you've chosen to leave it out.

[floatingatoll]

It’s worth considering what that core functionality breaks down into:

1. Look up ‘my account’ (could be more than one)

2. Look up ‘someone in my current instance’ (trials, etc)

3. Look up ‘someone in a previous instance’ (elo rankings)

4. Look up ‘someone else who uses this third-party tool’ (lfg)

All four of those options will continue working as they already do today, as they do not depend on “platform character name” because they all have access to the underlying Bungie membershipID and can perform their job without it.

1. Look up ‘someone by handle directly’ (?)

This use case partially broke with Battle.net and will break in different ways with Steam. However, it exposes an interesting question that I’m not sure anyone has asked, so micro-survey time!

For each of you that want to look up players by handle directly:

a) What are your use cases for looking up someone by handle directly?

b) Could they be met by options 1-4 if your application asked the user to sign in via OAuth?

[floatingatoll]

Forgot one, let’s called it zero:

1. Look up ‘someone I know’
   a. (Bungie clanmates)
   b. (Fireteam members)
   b. (Platform friends)
   c. (Platform party chat)

[ghost]

Honestly, I think what this boils down to is that it's core functionality for the majority of 3rd party developers, but not for Bungie. They don't need it so they skipped it, but we do to keep websites we've made (for free) fully operational. Supporting us and giving us what we need provides bungie with free labor. If they can keep us productive it's less work for them in the end.

1 to 3 should be mostly solvable with oauth.

I dont think # 4 is covered by adding OAUTH. The human element is dependent on a platform character name so they can find the people they want to play with. Otherwise they'll have to keep DMing people their steam profile page to get anything going. It's far from ideal and would discourage people from trying to group up with people in other divisions.

number 5 is the problem i'm focusing on because that is the main use case me and so many other third party developers need.

[floatingatoll]

Wouldn’t your LFG users all be registered with your site, so that you have their platform names, Bungie names, and Bungie membership IDs all available in your LFG database to search for and show the few (or one) matching results for a name search?

LFG sites seem to widely prefer/require a ‘registration’ step where you prove ownership of a given handle by logging in to the API, so if you’re running an LFG system that avoids that — then, yes, you might have to implement that to make sense of the PC user base.

On Aug 5, 2019, at 18:25, Akumati [e-mail] wrote:

Honestly, I think what this boils down to is that it's core functionality for the majority of 3rd party developers, but not for Bungie. They don't need it so they skipped it, but we do to keep websites we've made (for free) fully operational. Supporting us and giving us what we need provides bungie with free labor. If they can keep us productive it's less work for them in the end.

1 to 3 should be mostly solvable with oauth.

I dont think # 4 is covered by adding OAUTH. The human element is dependent on a platform character name so they can find the people they want to play with. Otherwise they'll have to keep DMing people their steam profile page to get anything going. It's far from ideal and would discourage people from trying to group up with people in other divisions.

5 is the problem i'm focusing on because that is the main use case me and so many other third party developers need.

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[Achronos-BNG]

@Achronos-BNG

it is not a primary use case to find people by name with a raw search.

Just wanted to mention that there are a few sites that use this case. Destiny Tracker comes to mind for one.

Two questions:
Will it be possible to see a persons "unique name" in-game?
Does this also mean that in Destiny 2 on Steam I could hypothetically fill up a fireteam with 6 identically named players?

I was referring to Steam - if you try to do a name search on Steam (use the Add Friend input) - you'll get back tons of results. Not a lot we can do about that immediately. But, like I've said, there are alternatives. The bungie.net unique name is one. Though you can't see the bungie.net profile name in game. You'll only see their processed Steam name (i.e., remove of profanity, bad characters, possibly truncated for length, and this processing might appear different in the API due to various technical reasons that are not important).

And yes, it does mean a fireteam could have identical player display names in it, though they will of course have different Destiny Membership Ids (and, if present, different bungie.net unique names). How you display them is a problem that you will have to solve. Cross Save causes similar problems on a smaller scale (the person with the name "Achronos" on PSN is not necessarily the same person as "Achronos" on Xbox... but they could be).

[bladefist]

Regarding the "Unique ID" which is able to be setup in bungie.net, it would be awesome if one could set this up and view it in-game. That'd be the rug that tied the whole room together. My fear of this being on the website only means out of sight out of mind.

[ArkahnX]

The biggest problem I see brought to light by this steam issue, is the lack of being able to search for what would effectively be a random person. This isn't as much of an issue on PS4 or Xbox, as their usernames are unique enough. But you run into it on PC where you need the persons unique #, but those are not displayed.

For endpoints, currently all we have access to for this functionality is User.SearchUsers which returns Bungie.net users (including partial matches)
and Destiny2.SearchDestinyPlayer which requires a membershipType (which will be murky once cross save comes out) and only returns exact matches. Once cross save is released, you would have to search all platforms for a given username since the account could originate from anywhere.

This is definitely an app developer problem, I think the least bad solution would be to run User.SearchUsers in addition to Destiny2.SearchDestinyPlayer when searching for a player by name, and presenting the results to the app user.

The benefits of User.SearchUsers is that the results include psn/xbox/blizzard/other display names, however the downside is that the bungie.net username may be completely different than the platform displaynames, and they may not even have a bungie.net account.

I suppose we'll have to wait until october to see what the results of a Destiny2.SearchDestinyPlayer call for the steam platform will look like

[ghost]

@floatingatoll Sure, LFG websites can. LFG discords don't have quite the same customizability. On website, you can do what you said... you can store their information and have the users simply click a link to get to each person's steam info. On discord, we generally rely on platform character names because we can't just stick a link in our username. There's a character limit. The closest we can do is require everyone to link their steam accounts, which you cannot automatically check for (according to some mild internet research... bots dont have access here), then train 6000 people to right click someones profile to find a link to people's steam names. Without being able to automatically check for steam account linkage it becomes a management problem. From the user's standpoint, it's a couple extra steps and there are a lot of people on discord who really don't know how to use the platform well.

[ghost]

@ArkahnX That goes back to my previous question. If someone's name is "Mike", how can a bungie api developer provide a way for a user to figure out which "Mike" is the "Mike" their end user is looking for? You cannot expect people to sift through thousands of results to find the right one. How would they even differentiate between the different Mike's?

The fact that you described your solution as the "least bad solution" means that you already know this is not a reasonable request.

[floatingatoll]

I notice that https://discordbots.org/bot/456329748214185985 apparently is a thing, so it should be possible for the bot to take their (Steam) profile url one-time and give them back a numeric (Steam) ID to store in their profile. And then you could do the same for a Bungie Profile URL — or even do a temporary OAuth sign-in flow and throw away the token when you’re done! — to make it as easy as possible to get people’s discord ID bound to their destiny ID. (And I bet a lot of Destiny discords would praise your name for the bot code to do this, if they aren’t already implementing it now.)

On Aug 5, 2019, at 19:03, Akumati [e-mail] wrote:

@floatingatoll Sure, LFG websites can. LFG discords don't have quite the same customizability. On website, you can do what you said... you can store their information and have the users simply click a link to get to each person's steam info. On discord, we generally rely on platform character names because we can't just stick a link in our username. There's a character limit. The closest we can do is require everyone to link their steam accounts, which you cannot automatically check for (according to some mild internet research... bots dont have access here), then train 6000 people to right click someones profile to find a link to people's steam names. Without being able to automatically check for steam account linkage it becomes a management problem. From the user's standpoint, it's a couple extra steps and there are a lot of people on discord who really don't know how to use the platform well.

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[floatingatoll]

If the user is looking for their own “Mike”, that’s solvable.

If the user is looking for a complete stranger Mike, with which they’ve never played and that hasn’t registered themselves in an LFG-type database, that’s already impossible _today_ on Battle.net — and will remain impossible on PC.

If the user is looking for “Mike#16362” because Mike told them that, then in the Steam case they’ll have to provide the ID from their profile URL (which is a long string of numbers), or their Steam ID (which is 1:0:2736294748). That’s just how Steam works, and has worked for all Steam integrations for the past ten years. Bungie can’t overcome a limitation of Steam itself here.

On Aug 5, 2019, at 19:10, Akumati [e-mail] wrote:

@ArkahnX That goes back to my previous question. If someone's name is "Mike", how can a bungie api developer provide a way for a user to figure out which "Mike" is the "Mike" their end user is looking for? You cannot expect people to sift through thousands of results to find the right one. How would they even differentiate between the different Mike's?

The fact that you described your solution as the "least bad solution" means that you already know this is not a reasonable request.

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[ghost]

The bot thing to spit out a steam make is my current plan. It's still extra steps to get to the same place we were before but it works.

For the Mike thing, the entire point of this is that today you wouldn't need to search for "Mike" because you'd have the unique ID for that Mike in a human readable way as the full battletag. It's intuitive from a user's standpoint. That steam ID though? Do you honestly think Grandpa Jack is going to know what to do with "1:0:2736294748"? And they absolutely can overcome the limitations of steam here. They just need their own unique id in bungie land to associate to that steam id.

and this is only one of the problems I'm going to have as a big server admin. accountability for our members will be the death of us.

[floatingatoll]

I empathize from my Steam API experiences from back in the day (disco beat down 4 ever), but Steam won’t help you convert “Mike” definitively, and you’re on the right track making accommodations for that to the best of my knowledge.

On Aug 5, 2019, at 19:24, Akumati [e-mail] wrote:

The bot thing to spit out a steam make is my current plan. It's still extra steps to get to the same place we were before but it works.

For the Mike thing, the entire point of this is that today you wouldn't need to search for "Mike" because you'd have the unique ID for that Mike in a human readable way as the full battletag. It's intuitive from a user's standpoint. That steam ID though? Do you honestly think Grandpa Jack is going to know what to do with "1:0:2736294748"? And they absolutely can overcome the limitations of steam here. They just need their own unique id in bungie land to associate to that steam id.

and this is only one of the problems I'm going to have as a big server admin. accountability for our members will be the death of us.

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[TorKallon]

I appreciate the amazing functionality that the API provides and the
lengths Bungie has gone to in order to make all of this data available.

If you are concerned about clan management challenges, try using
Charlemagne. All of your clan members can register there and you'll have
the ability to easily view their stats.

On Mon, Aug 5, 2019 at 7:24 PM Akumati [e-mail] wrote:

The bot thing to spit out a steam make is my current plan. It's still
extra steps to get to the same place we were before but it works.

For the Mike thing, the entire point of this is that today you wouldn't
need to search for "Mike" because you'd have the unique ID for that Mike in
a human readable way as the full battletag. It's intuitive from a
user's standpoint. That steam ID though? Do you honestly think Grandpa Jack
is going to know what to do with "1:0:2736294748"? And they absolutely can
overcome the limitations of steam here. They just need their own unique id
in bungie land to associate to that steam id.

and this is only one of the problems I'm going to have as a big server
admin. accountability for our members will be the death of us.

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[ghost]

If I do I'll have to ping you and see if you can support some of the weird stuff we prefer. It's nice being in complete control over everything, but it's too much work for just me...

[kramrm]

Apologies if I've missed this in the conversation, but when setting a profile to be cross save, does that profile get locked in, or will users be able to change their active cross save profile at will?

[vthornheart-bng]

Unfortunately that part is more of a question for the Community folks, like DeeJ - I'm only allowed to talk strictly about how Cross Save will impact the API. Whether it locks a person in or if they can change the profile at will, the info above will still apply (the consistency of the membership ID tied to the characters being used, for example)

[floatingatoll]

When cross-save has been used on an account linked to 2+ platforms to migrate save data to a given platform, will it be possible to perform read API calls and/or write API calls against other platforms than the one targeted by Cross Save?

For example, if I link my Steam and PS4 accounts to my Bungie account, and then I perform a “Cross Save” from PS4 to Steam, will the API afterwards still permit me to GetProfile and/or EquipItem on the PS4 account?

On Aug 7, 2019, at 16:51, Vendal Thornheart [e-mail] wrote:

Unfortunately that part is more of a question for the Community folks, like DeeJ - I'm only allowed to talk strictly about how Cross Save will impact in the API. Whether it locks a person in or if they can change the profile at will, the info above will still apply (the consistency of the membership ID tied to the characters being used, for example)

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[vthornheart-bng]

Yes, you will still be able to perform those actions!

[kramrm]

I would assume we can still access the individual platforms as the
membership IDs won’t change. I read somewhere that none of the accounts go
away, but aren’t sure how relevant the other accounts will be (except for
historical stats) if the cross save profile gets locked in.

TWAB for 2019-08-08 has clarified my questions. https://www.bungie.net/7/en/CrossSave

On Wed, Aug 7, 2019 at 5:06 PM floatingatoll [e-mail]
wrote:

When cross-save has been used on an account linked to 2+ platforms to
migrate save data to a given platform, will it be possible to perform read
API calls and/or write API calls against other platforms than the one
targeted by Cross Save?

For example, if I link my Steam and PS4 accounts to my Bungie account, and
then I perform a “Cross Save” from PS4 to Steam, will the API afterwards
still permit me to GetProfile and/or EquipItem on the PS4 account?

On Aug 7, 2019, at 16:51, Vendal Thornheart [e-mail]
wrote:

Unfortunately that part is more of a question for the Community folks,
like DeeJ - I'm only allowed to talk strictly about how Cross Save will
impact in the API. Whether it locks a person in or if they can change the
profile at will, the info above will still apply (the consistency of the
membership ID tied to the characters being used, for example)

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[Achronos-BNG]

On the subject of steam display names and such - I am considering the possibility of adding an API call that will take as input a Steam ID and output a destiny membership id that maps to it. That would allow you (for example) to use Steam's own Community API to turn a user's profile URL into a Steam ID, and from there look up their Destiny Account. I could even make it deal with the cross save mapping for you (optionally) so that you wouldn't have to make an additional call if you just wanted the active cross account.

I cannot promise such an API call would be available by 10/1, but would that be useful in giving you some extra flexibility to solve some of these name problems? Steam's limitations are beyond our control, but this is one way we can help.

[cowgod]

That would be an incredible help. Yes please!

[mistahj67]

I second this motion.

[ghost]

Would you be able to get their steam link from the bungie API too?

What I'd like is the ability to make a bot command that would allow people already registered with my bot (through bungie.net auth) to type !me and it'd spit out their steam link. That or maybe a !steam @akumati# 0001 kinda thing too so we can go from a discord account to a steam link easily. I bet charlemagne people would like this too for their discord based LFG stuff.

With the current setup, and i think with the setup you were suggesting, I'd need hard links between a discord account and a bungie account for most things, but also a discord account to a steam account. It's a bit much to ask people to sign into bungie and steam if they want to be in my clan.

This doesn't solve either of the two big issues I see with your plan though.

1) accountability for what people say and do in game
2) reliable name based searches for players on sites like destinytracker.com that don't require someone to find and set the hidden unique ID field on their profile or know their account number (aka, the "Mike" example I used in previous posts).

Also, on a side note, I put together a discord server with the top brass from all the major PC clans to tell then what you're proposing here (# 1 and # 2 above) and they are all pretty worried. There is a lot of "bungie wouldnt do that to us" kind of comments, but directly quoting you guys says otherwise. DM me on discord (Akumati# 0001) if you want to join it. It'd potentially make them all feel better about this (or worse). I'm sitting here hoping I misread something.

[ArkahnX]

I think this new endpoint that would allow us to put a steam ID and translate that to either a profile or name would be a great addition. This would allow easier searching for steam guardians (particularily friends) than by name.

I for one think this endpoint addition is excellent and probably as good as Bungie can do to help with the non-unique name system steam uses (Thats a steam problem, not a bungie problem)

[ghost]

Reading this over and over again is pretty triggering if I'm being honest. Bungie chose to use Steam's nickname field. They didn't have to go that route... It is fully within their control to store a unique name a person wants to use in their database. That unique name can be used in the game and as a searchable value for third party sites.

How you ask?
For current battle.net users: When porting to steam, ask them what name they want to use. Check its availability and store it in the UNIQUE ID field on their profile page.
For new accounts: When they start the game, it asks if you want to enter an email address to keep up to date on news and such. Instead of asking for the email address, require it. They're already on a PC so it will only add couple minutes to the process. The second they enter an email address, create a 254 account for them. Default the UNIQUE ID field to their steam name, but with the preprocessing and add some numbers to the end of it if it isn't already unique. If they follow through and register their account, after clicking the confirmation link in the email ask them what they want their id to be. If you rename the unique id field to something more intuitive for users, it won't be so hidden to everyone.
For cross save people coming from another platform: If they are already registered, make a unique ID for them based off their psn name, xbl name, or steam name. On first log in, send them an email telling them how to change their in game nickname. If they aren't registered, use the "For new accounts" flow.

[bladefist]

@Achronos-BNG that would be very useful, thank you.

[cowgod]

@Akumati1435 please try to remember we’re incredibly lucky to have such an extensive API at all, much less an API team taking time out of their day to share information with us and engage in dialogue to help us better understand how to effectively use what they’ve built.

So few other games have APIs at all, much less ones as extensive as Destiny’s. I think it’s easy to take it for granted, but that’s a mistake.

Of course Bungie is not making design choices with the intention of making things difficult for us. Implementing a feature such as cross save in an existing, incredibly complex game system surely involves countless design compromises due to the reality of the way disparate systems, run by completely different companies, are built.

I’m sure Bungie has done everything they can to build a usable system within the constraints of engineering, development time, UI/UX, etc that they’re working with, and I think we need to “play the ball where it lays” more, and learn to work with what they’ve generously provided for us, and not imagine they bear some obligation to accommodate our wishes.

[TorKallon]

+1

Everything he said.

On Aug 10, 2019, at 11:39 PM, Dan McCormack [e-mail] wrote:

@Akumati1435 https://github.com/Akumati1435 please try to remember we’re incredibly lucky to have such an extensive API at all, much less an API team taking time out of their day to share information with us and engage in dialogue to help us better understand how to effectively use what they’ve built.

So few other games have APIs at all, much less ones as extensive as Destiny’s. I think it’s easy to take it for granted, but that’s a mistake.

Of course Bungie is not making design choices with the intention of making things difficult for us. Implementing a feature such as cross save in an existing, incredibly complex game system surely involves countless design compromises due to the reality of the way disparate systems, run by completely different companies, are built.

I’m sure Bungie has done everything they can to build a usable system within the constraints of engineering, development time, UI/UX, etc that they’re working with, and I think we need to “play the ball where it lays” more, and learn to work with what they’ve generously provided for us, and not imagine they bear some obligation to accommodate our wishes.

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[ghost]

@cowgod Trust me, I know how lucky we have been. I have 6000 people in my discord server and 1000 clan members. I have WAY more activity per member than any other major clan system in this game (https://www.apx.gg/pictures/Recruitment/bungiemonth.png) because I've utilized the API to find the people who aren't participating in it. My community is THE most active multi-clan community in this game. I have automated nearly everything in my discord myself. I have built an entire layer on top of what Bungie gave us so my staff can act on any division as if they were in it. I am discord partnered for the effort I've put into making my community as successful as it is.

So think about it like this. I am saying these things and acting this way because I care about the community I've spent 4000 to 5000 hours building. I don't want to have to close it down because some immature kids decide to have a field day when they realize we can't hold them accountable for being racist twats. It isn't a question of if it's going to happen. It's a matter of how soon. Think about it... if you saw your in game clan chat being spammed with the N word every day what would you do? It literally takes 1 person to ruin the other 99 clan member's fun and if you can't figure out who that person is, people are going to leave.

I've said what the problems are repeatedly here. No one will even acknowledge this is a problem that will occur or suggest how to work around it. Bungie flat out said that because this only affects one platform, they aren't going to bother fixing it.

we're not going to build an entirely new one [account system] just for one Platform

Put yourself in my shoes. They didn't say "Yea, I can see this being a problem. We can try to figure something out in the future to help with this". They flat out said they aren't going to fix it. If Bungie could just say they see this non-unique ID issue I've been harping about as being a problem and for a second not blaming steam for it would be nice. This is completely within their power to fix. It'd just take some of their higher ups to see it as a problem and re-prioritize peoples deliverable.

[floatingatoll]

accountability for what people say and do in game

Bungie uses in-game and PGCR reports to deliver this accountability, both for behaviors that are listed in the "Report a player" list and through generic video reporting for the worst case unusual events via the Bungie feedback forums. They have absolute knowledge of "in-game player X" is "steam account Y" because they have complete control.

if you saw your in game clan chat being spammed

Then you would evict that person from your clan and refuse to let them back in if they request an invite. Steam players can't change their Bungie membership ID more than once or twice every 90 days, so they'd have to start a new alt every time and put in all the work necessary to make it plausible.

I have 6000 people in my discord server and 1000 clan members

Are you _friends_ with the 1000 clan members? Do you know them and chat with them when you see them online? Would you have a meetup in a pizzeria with them if you all were in the same area of the world?

No one will even acknowledge this is a problem that will occur or suggest how to work around it.

They flat out said they aren't going to fix it.

These two statements contradict each other. Either Bungie is _unaware_ of your requests, or Bungie has _denied_ your requests.

It'd just take some of their higher ups to see it as a problem and re-prioritize

Or, their highers ups disagree with you that the issues you've encountered are of interest to them to solve. Bungie's game designers built the clan system for friends and acquaintances. You built the clan system for anonymous strangers. Your needs openly contradict in-game and out-of-game messaging.

Put yourself in my shoes.

Put yourself in Bungie's shoes. They built a clan system for acquaintances and friends, people who enjoy playing Destiny together, and you built an entire LFG anonymous matchmaking system for _complete strangers_ on top of it that uses API endpoints to force people to play every week _or else_.

My community is THE most active multi-clan community in this game.

We're not going to rally around your cry. Bungie disagrees with you. Rabble-rousing will go nowhere here, and puts us all at risk of losing this wonderful resource we have that is _so_ tenuous and _barely_ exists at all. You are putting your community, and our communities, at risk.

It literally takes 1 person to ruin the other 99 clan member's fun

You're at risk of becoming the 1 in 100 to _Bungie_ that you yourself worry about affecting _your own_ regimented system.

Bungie is our superior officer with respect to all things Destiny. While I've never served, I regardless encourage you to consider the lessons of "disagreeing with a superior officer" here. You can object, you can disagree, but in a military scenario, when a superior officer says "I acknowledge your objections and we will proceed as ordered", pressing the issue further risks your career – and trying to rabble-rouse can results of charges of _mutiny_.

I, for one, will not be joining your mutiny. I'm very sorry. What you've built is due respect, but this community is more important to me than _any_ single use any of us have of it.

[mattybeard]

Well said @floatingatoll.

I’m not sure I’ve ever heard anyone sound quite so narcissistic before in a GitHub thread.

You don’t solely bring Bungie financial game. You don’t solely bring people to Destiny and it’s franchise. What makes your needs so special over the needs of others? I could have 100+ things I’d like in the API that aren’t there currently - I occasionally post them here and if I’m told they won’t be coming any time soon, I do the grown up thing and respectfully deal with that.

Be thankful for what we have before we lose it entirely, try to show some respect and also, start building a workaround instead of a wall of text that we all know isn’t going to change anyone’s decision.

You are in the minority and whether your actual point is valid or not, surely by now you know it’s far too late. Cross Save releases in 10 days!

[ghost]

accountability for what people say and do in game

Bungie uses in-game and PGCR reports to deliver this accountability, both for behaviors that are listed in the "Report a player" list and through generic video reporting for the worst case unusual events via the Bungie feedback forums. They have absolute knowledge of "in-game player X" is "steam account Y" because they have complete control.

This does not help the large communities. We aren't bungie. We have hundreds or thousands of people under us that we need to keep in line so everyone can have fun. You also cannot right click a players name in clan chat and report a specific person for yelling racial slurs.

if you saw your in game clan chat being spammed

Then you would evict that person from your clan and refuse to let them back in if they request an invite. Steam players can't change their Bungie membership ID more than once or twice every 90 days, so they'd have to start a new alt every time and put in all the work necessary to make it plausible.

You did not read what I said. With the current plan, we will not be able to find that person if they changed their steam nickname before doing it. They can change their in game name for free every 5 seconds if they choose to.

I have 6000 people in my discord server and 1000 clan members

Are you _friends_ with the 1000 clan members? Do you know them and chat with them when you see them online? Would you have a meetup in a pizzeria with them if you all were in the same area of the world?

What does this have to do with anything.

No one will even acknowledge this is a problem that will occur or suggest how to work around it.

They flat out said they aren't going to fix it.

These two statements contradict each other. Either Bungie is _unaware_ of your requests, or Bungie has _denied_ your requests.

They won't acknowledge that being able to change nicknames every 5 seconds will cause problems for us. They flat out said they aren't going to make a new account system to fix the problem.

It'd just take some of their higher ups to see it as a problem and re-prioritize

Or, their highers ups disagree with you that the issues you've encountered are of interest to them to solve. Bungie's game designers built the clan system for friends and acquaintances. You built the clan system for anonymous strangers. Your needs openly contradict in-game and out-of-game messaging.

Put yourself in my shoes.

Put yourself in Bungie's shoes. They built a clan system for acquaintances and friends, people who enjoy playing Destiny together, and you built an entire LFG anonymous matchmaking system for _complete strangers_ on top of it that uses API endpoints to force people to play every week _or else_.

They may disagree with me... but no one can deny this game is more fun with other people. Clans like mine bring people together and make the game more enjoyable. Debating how I run my clan with you is pointless.

My community is THE most active multi-clan community in this game.

We're not going to rally around your cry. Bungie disagrees with you. Rabble-rousing will go nowhere here, and puts us all at risk of losing this wonderful resource we have that is _so_ tenuous and _barely_ exists at all. You are putting your community, and our communities, at risk.

If you have read anything I've written, you'd know that my community is already at risk. I really don't care.

It literally takes 1 person to ruin the other 99 clan member's fun

You're at risk of becoming the 1 in 100 to _Bungie_ that you yourself worry about affecting _your own_ regimented system.

Bungie is our superior officer with respect to all things Destiny. While I've never served, I regardless encourage you to consider the lessons of "disagreeing with a superior officer" here. You can object, you can disagree, but in a military scenario, when a superior officer says "I acknowledge your objections and we will proceed as ordered", pressing the issue further risks your career – and trying to rabble-rouse can results of charges of _mutiny_.

I, for one, will not be joining your mutiny. I'm very sorry. What you've built is due respect, but this community is more important to me than _any_ single use any of us have of it.

I'm fighting this so hard because what they are giving us is going to have a large effect on the PC community as a whole. It's like they don't understand the ramifications of this or just don't care. They aren't stupid so they have to understand what they are doing... so that leaves us with me not understanding how they can not care about this. They've neglected to even think about very basic things websites and communities need to continue running. You can't even find someone named "Mike" for gods sake.

[Achronos-BNG]

@Akumati1435 Every Destiny player has a unique identity already: the 64-bit Destiny Membership Id. It has _always been the design for all platforms_ that display names are treated as non-unique and infinitely changeable. The only difference Steam brings is that the barrier for change is lower than other platforms. And even there, the steam ID and profile URL are still things that exist. Expecting us to account for your flawed design (that display names are unique/unchanging) or specific use cases seems incredibly entitled. (I mean, you asked us to create a new Account system just for you! That sounds like something you could do for yourself.) Using the API is privilege, not a right. Instead, I suggest thinking of the limitations as a challenge to overcome and work the problem. That's how we've approached it for our own security systems.

[ghost]

WOW. MY FLAWED DESIGN? That's rich. It's like you haven't read or understood a word I've said.

My own code is fine. My own code has hard links between bungie accounts and discord accounts so the bulk of my own automation will not skip a beat come the steam change. This has absolutely nothing to do with my own automation so please stop blaming me and steam for your own design flaws.

I have not said you should do this for _me_. I've said you should do this for the _ENTIRE PC player base_ so we have the same functionality we currently have.

On PSN, you have a unique name present for all people to see in game. you have accountability there. You can also put that into destinytracker/other websites to look up a user.

For xbl, you have a unique name present for all people to see in the game. you have accountability there. You can also put that into destinytracker/other websites to look up a user.

For battle.net, if you view a persons profile in the game, you can normally see a person's full battletag. you have some accountability there. You can also put that human readable unique id into destinytracker/other websites to look up a user. Most people know their battletags.

Now the steam change comes... In game it's just a non-unique nickname displayed with no way to identify who they are. Now if you were to stick the steam ID where the battle.net tag is you'd have limited accountability for your members and we'd probably be able to make due. This is under the assumption that the person reporting the offender inspects the offender and takes a screenshot of their steam ID before sending it our way. This covers the main use case, but there are still edge cases which we'd be unable to gain accountability for what people do in game.

[justrealmilk]

@Akumati1435 you've lost your mind dude. Your behaviour is just incredible. Sit the fuck down and consider carefully how you're conducting yourself in this public space.

[ghost]

i see, so he's allowed to insult my stuff but i'm not allowed to do the same?

honestly it doesnt matter anymore. i'm done with the whole clan thing. I am not going to wait and deal with the headaches this is going to cause.

[MACK12902]

lets not just pick convinient times to slide into the insilting game and find a way to talk again. escelating this isn't going to help us understand each other.

[GigFledge]

I just kind of wanted to weigh in on this issue, it seems to be kind of a heated debate. I understand that there are ways to get unique id's on the backend, but is there anything user-facing that we'd be able to see a la a battle tag, and then search players by? Or are there no plans for that at all? If we had something like that, it would make a lot of the arguing in this thread moot, and be a lot more helpful, at least for the average user. I think that may have been what Akumati was going for. Cause, sure, the experience for the developer is going to change, but they'll still (hopefully) be able to work around the system. For the average user, at least on PC, there's going to be no guaranteed way for people to search up a certain player on steam, or to find someone on raid.report or destiny tracker. At least that's my understanding of it, correct me if I'm wrong. I can't really give good criticism as this isn't really my field of expertise, but that seems kind of counterintuitive and.. well, it's just a step backwards and doesn't show a lot of care towards one of your platforms. The move to steam is a good move, I'm just concerned about how it's being handled

[justrealmilk]

I don’t really know what’s going on anymore at this point. Maybe steam users may be harder to find using _some_ endpoints but at the end of the day, this is a best case scenario.

All things considered, moving to steam is a lot of work.

Setting up some sort of authority to handle usernames to mitigate this issue doesn’t add up when weighed against the costs.

Building in UI to the game for 1/3 platforms to handle usernames would be a huge undertaking. Asking users to go to bungie.bet before playing - not a great way to induct new Guardians.

My intention isn’t to call out Akumati and his friends but when clans were designed I don’t think the intention was to support groups in the thousands. The smaller the group, the easier to... regulate. Clans shouldn’t need this kind of rigorous oversight - it’s supposed to be about friendship.

[ArkahnX]

@GigFledge Akronos posted a bit ago about a potential new endpoint that could be used to input a steam ID and get a bungie account back in this comment. Understandably burried

[floatingatoll]

@GigFledge To point out something interesting as well —

I understand that there are ways to get unique id's on the backend, but is there anything user-facing that we'd be able to see a la a battle tag, and then search players by?

I believe that Battle.net _forbids_ Bungie from returning non-exact search matches for battle tags. If you have only the search string 'Atoll' and not the exact battle tag 'Atoll#12345', then Bungie _must not_ return 'Atoll#12345' (or _any_ Atoll#) in the results of a search.

I have no data on whether Steam _forbids_ Bungie in the same manner, but it may help make more sense of why Akronos is considering a 'SteamID lookup' endpoint: for Battle.net, your 'Atoll#12345' is your SteamID, and they use the # to indicate that it's an ID lookup.

Akronos, this also permits an interesting option for you: accepting #1:0:123457456 in all places where a Battle.net tag would be accepted today might be a good fit for the codebase.

[Achronos-BNG]

Most likely the way it would work is that you would get the Steam ID of a user from either the user inputting it directly or using the Steam community web api (ISteamUser - GetPlayerSummaries). I think there is also a method called ResolveVanityUrl that you can turn the user's profile url into a steam id. Anyway, once you have that'd, you'd call the bungie.net platform - it will probably be called something like GetMembershipFromHardlinkedCredential. That would return a membership id given the steam id. It would only work for Steam, as other platforms do not want the equivalent identifier for a user exposed in that manner. I'm not sure of the format of the Steam ID - I think it is actually just a ulong, the stuff before the second colon doesn't matter.

So, with such an API, you have a way of searching for a particular steam account, just not on the display name. It remains true that you cannot easily do a display name search because they aren't unique. That is a challenge that will have to be solved by each app creator. Some don't have to worry about, others it matters a great deal.

Adding new platforms is always tough. We're doing it again later this year when we add Stadia. They'll have their own rules too. And Cross Save makes display names even more interesting.

[bladefist]

@Achronos-BNG Any chance of this GetMembershipFromHardlinkedCredential endpoint coming soon? Would be really handy :)