As the Star Wars: Battlefront II saga thundered across the gaming world, snapping up all the headlines, Bungie manage to escape a lot of heat last week when users discovered the XP system in Destiny 2 was throttled during certain activities. It turned out that 100 XP earned in a Raid was actually worth less than 100 XP earned from an Public Event, simply because of the rate at which you could earn it.
Bungie have acknowledge this is the case and have removed the throttling, but have not explained why it existed in the first place. Here is their statement:
We’ve seen community discussion around XP gain in Destiny. After reviewing our data, we agree that the system is not performing the way we’d like it to. Today, we’d like to describe what’s going on under the hood, and talk about what you can expect going forward when it comes to earning XP in Destiny 2.
Currently, XP will scale up when playing longer or fixed duration activities like Crucible competitive multiplayer matches and the Leviathan Raid, and XP will scale down when playing activities that can be quickly, repeatedly chained, like grinding Public Events. We are not happy with the results, and we’ve heard the same from the community.
Effective immediately, we are deactivating this system.
As a result, players will see XP earn rates change for all activities across the board, but with all values being displayed consistently in the user interface. Over the course of the next week, we will be watching and reviewing XP game data to ensure that these changes meet our expectations, as well as yours. Any additional updates to this system will be communicated to you via our official channels.
Source: Bungie
zb100
I thinking “grinding public events” does kind of explain it – people could generate XP very easily, loot cave style by doing the same lost sectors etc repeatedly.
It has been removed however the XP has now been halved or the amount required for a bright engram doubled (according to the interwebs / original Reddit post). Apparently it was throttled to around 44% for select activities before whereas now it is 50% across the board.
zb100
://www.reddit.com/r/DestinyTheGame/comments/7fp3vz/here_is_whats_really_going_on_with_the_new_exp
zb100
Doh.
http://www.reddit.com/r/DestinyTheGame/comments/7fp3vz/here_is_whats_really_going_on_with_the_new_exp
Starman
Very odd statement. They too aren’t happy with the system they designed and implemented, and by sheer coincidence are scrapping it at the same time as players found out about it.
Nate
You can’t really debate with the salty maniacs on r/DTG, but I don’t see how this was was a notorious move. They reduced XP gains for quickly grinding simple events like Public Events to prevent abuse. I suppose their error was not making this reduction more clear.
Stefan L
But the only reason why people were grinding public events was because nothing else comes close to matching it in terms of rewards, which means it’s on Bungie for creating a system that is multi-faceted but very uneven. All that the XP goes toward is unlocking the Eververse packages anyway, and so that’s microtransactions. The “abuse” here doesn’t affect the game’s balance.
Nate
I’m not debating it wasn’t a foolish decision on Bungies end. True, the balance in general needs to be improved. Increased rewards for crucible and strikes instead of public events to encourage people to play this as well.
But this is the same mistake they made in the first game, I still don’t think it was a sinister move to push people towards microtransactions. This feels like people jumping on the bandwagon after Battlefront 2 to try and fuel outrage for issues they disagree with in a game.
(Not saying you guys are jumping on the bandwagon, this is being widely reported)