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    Destiny 2

    Game » consists of 4 releases. Released Sep 06, 2017

    The full-fledged follow-up to Bungie's sci-fi "looter shooter", streamlining much of the previous game's mechanics while featuring larger worlds and new abilities. It was later made free-to-play.

    Bungie found to throttling XP gain in Destiny 2 with a hidden system

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    Panfoot

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    #1  Edited By Panfoot

    https://kotaku.com/bungie-changes-destiny-2-xp-system-after-players-discov-1820728952

    The short version: People discovered that when doing certain activities, the game would lower your XP gained every time you completed the activity, but it would do so invisibly(IE the game would still display the same XP number, but you really only gained a portion of it). This wasn't just a glitch either, Bungie has put out a statement on it...

    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.

    Now, I've got no skin in the game for this one really, I haven't played either Destiny games, but I figured I would post this anyway since it seems very relevant in the wake of the backlash to Battlefront 2. I don't generally like systems like this that reduce XP, but I can't think of many off the top of my head(I know Payday 2 does it if you play the same heist over and over), but it's a totally valid design choice. Implementing this kind of system and making it hidden to the player though, seems rather poor. Now add in that system being interwoven with loot boxes that you can spend real money on is incredibly shady. Obviously I have no experience with these micro transactions, but even assuming they are the most benign loot boxes possible (which for comparison would probably be Overwatch's loot boxes) this is still 100% not okay.

    Has anyone here spent real money on loot in Destiny 2, or felt like they've run up against this system?

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    forteexe21

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    At least they didnt pretend its not true like before so progress?

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    HoboZero

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    It was really bad - like depending on the activity it scaled to you only receiving 5% of the shown XP gain. My favorite had to be the Public Events - the scaling seemed to be based on amount earned, and not the number of events completed, so it only took ONE public event to trigger 50% scaling. Meaning even if you logged in and just did one public event, the game was like "STOP LEVELING SO FAST!!!".

    I think it just speaks to their overall design philosophy - they present you a game with lots of options like Public Events, Strikes, Free Roam, PVP, etc., but ultimately they have decided how yous should be playing their game. If you deviate, you'll be punished, but never told you are wrong. Have more than one character the same class? They hobble the rewards you get on the second character. Open too many chests? No more chest rewards. It is the worst Carrot/Stick system I have ever seen - the Stick is invisible, and the Carrots don't exist.

    Also, don't forget they claim to have disabled scaling (jury is still out) but they also reduced XP rewards you receive. Some reports are also showing they reduced the 3x XP multiplier you get each week to 1.5x. Make no mistake, they are not going to put people in a position where they can earn Bright Engrams instead of buying them.

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    Girafro

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    Makes me long for the days when XP tables would be figured out or released so you'd know your steady progression needs

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    Fredz85

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    The shitty things companys are prepared to do to sell loot boxes in their 60$ games is disgusting

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    confideration

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    They didn't hide it from anyone... people were power leveling 1-20 on alts in about 90 minutes by min/maxing and Bungie didn't feel that was what they wanted to see going on. The change came with the announcement.

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    mike

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    #7  Edited By mike

    What does this mean for things like that double XP Pop Tart promotion? Did people who bought Pop Tarts to get double XP actually get double XP?

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    bigsocrates

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    #8 bigsocrates  Online

    @hobozero said:

    It is the worst Carrot/Stick system I have ever seen - the Stick is invisible, and the Carrots don't exist.

    I have not played Destiny 2, but this is consistent with my experience in Destiny 1.

    The shooting in those games is fantastic, but it just feels like the designers actively dislike the players. And they're total control freaks. Exploits are part of the fun of these games for some people, and this wasn't even an exploit. If you're going to nerf effective min-max strategies then you are actively sabotaging the fun of a large portion of your playerbase.

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    Efesell

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    I actually don't see much wrong with the idea of developers deciding they don't like how progression is being finessed like that but hiding it is rough and can only ever be a time bomb like this.

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    RenegadeDoppelganger

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    @mike said:

    What does this mean for things like that double XP Pop Tart promotion? Did people who bought Pop Tarts to get double XP actually get double XP?

    That's the big question at the moment. How did XP gain items like the pop tarts codes or the fireteam medallions work under this system. Did they compensate for the decreasing XP over time? Did their effects get reduced over time? Were they negated entirely? Seeing as these were items one had to pay real money in order to get, it would be pretty bad if they weren't doing what players expected.

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    xanadu

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    Havent read too much into it but I would say it would be more cause for uproar if it wasnt so easy to hit the level cap before you finish the main story, even if you play solo the whole time.

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    Ktargo

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    @xanadu said:

    Havent read too much into it but I would say it would be more cause for uproar if it wasnt so easy to hit the level cap before you finish the main story, even if you play solo the whole time.

    Well, after you hit 20, you can continue getting experience in order to unlock "Bright Engrams" (cosmetic loot boxes) which can also be purchased for real money. So what with the whole loot bot thing going on right now, eyes are on any scuzzy business surrounding them.

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    OpusOfTheMagnum

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    People are being paranlid. Everything in this game is designed to stop you from grinding for hours, this is obviously more of the same.

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    RenegadeDoppelganger

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    @panfoot said:

    I've got no skin in the game for this one really, I haven't played either Destiny games, but I figured I would post this anyway since it seems very relevant in the wake of the backlash to Battlefront 2. I don't generally like systems like this that reduce XP, but I can't think of many off the top of my head(I know Payday 2 does it if you play the same heist over and over), but it's a totally valid design choice. Implementing this kind of system and making it hidden to the player though, seems rather poor. Now add in that system being interwoven with loot boxes that you can spend real money on is incredibly shady. Obviously I have no experience with these micro transactions, but even assuming they are the most benign loot boxes possible (which for comparison would probably be Overwatch's loot boxes) this is still 100% not okay.

    Has anyone here spent real money on loot in Destiny 2, or felt like they've run up against this system?

    So FYI you get Bright engrams for levelling, but you can also buy them. Bright Engrams are filled with mostly vanity items. However there is a chance that you could receive bright dust (a currency) or rare mods. By themselves these items don't affect your power level whatsoever. However they are used as currency to obtain items that can. You can combine 3 identical rare mods for a legendary mod. Legendary mods boost the power a piece of gear by 5. Bright dust can be exchanged for a Fireteam Medallion which is a time-limited XP boost. More XP gets you more bright engrams which nets you more mods and more dust and so on.

    Now just because these boxes don't directly contain level enhancing items doesn't mean I think it's okay for Bungie to do this. Their XP system is still intentionally misleading. It still reads like they set up the levelling system to taper off your XP after a time so that buying engrams is a much quicker way to obtain these currencies. Another reading of this system is that it was designed so that players couldn't quickly farm bright engrams to obtain legendary mods quickly, optimize all their gear and drop off the game until the next expansion. If that was the case, why include these items in the engrams in the first place? Wouldn't it have been easier to remove them and have the bright engrams be 100% cosmetic. The only answer I can think of is removing those items from the engrams would've probably made them less attractive to potential buyers.

    Part of the fun for a lot of players in Destiny 2 is the sort of weird mystery around how you play the game. Many things are implied but never outright explained and a lot of the systems are hidden. Its left for the community to fill in the pieces. Austin Walker has written and talked a lot about his love for the weird esoteric lore in the first game and how a lot of that secretive attitude was reflected back in the design of the game. The raid encounters are a good example of how this sort of mystery can be used to surprise and challenge players. Unfortunately keeping all your mechanics and systems a mystery can also be used as a way to obfuscate how a lot of the way this game is structured is, well, not in good faith.

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    SSully

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    Honestly the worst part about this is they tried to hide it. It seems like a reasonable system (I.E. the more you do of a same activity, the less you get), but making it seem like people are getting something they actually aren't is shitty.

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    boatorious

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    #16  Edited By boatorious

    It was dumb of Bungie to throttle XP the way they did it, but people (not many here, mostly in the subreddit) are overreacting.

    Bright Engrams don't really matter. You occasionally get a useful ghost or a fast sparrow, but those are rare. Mostly they just provide cosmetic items. Real progression comes from weekly quests, clan rewards, nightfall, and raids.

    Also, every good MMORPG I've played had some sort of throttling. Daily quests, weekly quests, "rested XP" -- these are all throttling by another name (indeed, the "real progression" in D2 is explicitly throttled by week). Throttling is good because otherwise players will decide they need to shoot a loot cave for twenty hours straight to progress (etc.), and then get bored and quit. Players should be encouraged to try different things and discouraged from grinding, and throttling is a handy way to do that.

    Like I said though, I don't care for HOW Bungie chose to do their throttling -- secret, and hobbling XP when you are literally doing the public event quest the game asked you to do (i.e. not grinding). So hopefully they'll figure that out.

    But I don't think this is a huge deal, and there are a lot of other problems in Destiny 2 I'd rather see fixed first.

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    Aviont

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    I have no skin in this game, but man it is really weird to see most people do a 180° flip on this compared to Battlefront II. Yes, I get the differences, but essentially you still have two systems with paid money, and the problem is are these loot boxes like gambling and are the companies psychologically pushing you to purchase them. For me, it looks like both games are yes, pointing you to buying loot boxes. But one game has lied (Destiny 2) and one game has not (Battlefront 2). And this is where it gets weird, D2 = meh/kinda annoyed (reading here and Kotaku) and B2 = OMG EA ATE MY FIRST BORN CHILD FOR LOOT BOXES.

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    Lanechanger

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    I don't think this would have been bad if it was transparent and brought up upfront but hiding it for players to find out on their own is just a bad move. Now they gotta look into every system (loot drop RNG%?) to see what else is being hidden from players. This isn't the worst but isn't a good look following the whole PC banning debacle.

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    Hestilllives19

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    #19  Edited By Hestilllives19

    @aviont: The difference is Destiny's Loot Boxes have no effect on you in game. They are almost exclusively cosmetic. To those claiming that Rare Mods are a form of Pay to Win are insane. It takes 3 of the same type of Mod (of which there are more than 40 separate Mods) to create a Legendary with actual Power (only 5 for 1 slot, or 0.5 of 305 Power Level), and they drop pretty rarely from Bright Engrams. I'm not sure it could be further from pay to win if it tried. I put more time into Destiny 2 than most around here, and it is very unlikely I've even gotten 2 of the same Mods, much less 3 to get a Legendary Mod out of it. And even so, that represents 1/610th of my total Power, and that's if it is even a Mod I want to use. It's much more likely I am getting my Mods from the Gunsmith through normal gameplay. Now, when we compare this to Battlefront 2, those Loot Boxes were tied directly to your Skill Tree's. That would be like Destiny 2's Bright Engrams dropping Skill Points, and being the only place you could obtain them at all. Very much not the same thing.

    As far as this whole XP debacle goes, I agree that it was an extremely Shady system to implement. But here is the thing, we are almost 3 months into the game, and nobody really noticed this system until last weeks XP event Clarion Call. This XP Throttle didn't impact players who were leveling 1-20, where XP matters the most, and where both the Poptarts Motes of Light XP boosts and Fireteam Medallions are the most useful, or when your "Rested Bonus" was active for the first 3 Levels of the week. This basically meant that you got 3 easy Bright Engrams each week while doing your normal weekly activities after Level 20. Last week when the community noticed during Clarion Call, a Double XP while with Clan Event, that when they were getting 15k of 80k experience per Level after 20, that XP was only seemingly going up 1k XP or so, that's when this all came to a head. And within a week, likely due to the massive outrage over stuff like this at Dice/EA/Battlefront 2, Bungie removed this XP Throttle in question... kind of. They seem to have replaced it with a global 50% reduction in XP gains, at least for players over 20 (haven't seen this tested on new characters or any under Level 20, again, where XP matters the most). If it is indeed a 50% reduction before Level 20, this is a very bad change, and if not, it's a change that once again, probably won't matter much outside of Clarion Call, except that extended play will be more rewarding, while shorter play less so. I'm glad they addressed this so quickly, but at the same time, the reduction to 50% XP gains across the board seems like an odd move to do at the same time. Though I assume this is to prevent the double digit Bright Engrams people would have obtained ever hour or two during events like Clarion Call. I think this whole thing was blown a bit out of proportion, but I do wish Bungie was more Transparent about Destiny's systems, like having an actual XP bar with numbers in game like Datto talks about below.

    Loading Video...

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    Goboard

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    #20  Edited By Goboard

    The part that some seem to be missing when comparing this to MMO's or similar games is that the way D2 was communicating this change in XP is a flat out lie and there already exists ways in which they could have been very clear about it in-game. The amount of XP the game says you get for doing anything differed from the amount the bar was being filled up when compared at different times. The game already tells you when you have a boost to drop rates from a medallion or to XP for your first 3 levels each week. Having an XP penalty could have been communicated in the same place. They chose not to or were too ignorant of other games which they were trying to couch ideas from to do the obvious thing. Any comparison to MMO's that use rest XP to denote the change in gains ignores that those games are telling the player this directly. On top of that there shouldn't be an assumption that because Destiny takes inspiration from MMO's that all instances of similar systems carry over exactly the same and that players should operate on the assumption that the same ideas are at play. Not everyone who plays Destiny has played or should be expected to play an MMO to understand where it takes the barest of inspiration from. Destiny is MMO in artifice but not in function.

    @ssully: My problem with this is if the other activities in the game aren't interesting or fun for someone to do then they will be negatively impacted for trying to do those activities if they do them to get bright engrams. The people I played most of D2 with mostly did public events post level 20. They liked getting bright engrams for shaders that are more easily gained through them. This makes that time spent feel partially wasted. This is especially true if the XP earned is halved as @hobozero has mentioned when not even finishing a public event. Take into account the change to the shader system for no other reason than to encourage people to grind for them, this makes the XP situation for bright engrams look way worse. As it is 90% of the legendary shaders I've received in game have come from bright engrams or by purchase from the Eververse using bright dust from a storefront that changes whats available every week.

    @xanadu: Hitting the level cap through doing the story isn't an issue. I don't know if anyone has gone back and tested it yet, but if there is any XP throttling during the story it didn't seem to hurt my ability to hit level 18 by the time I finished it. The issue is how this ties into post game increases to the XP bar and it's part in players getting bright engrams through play vs. paying for them.

    @confideration: What announcement are you talking about and what change? Was there an announcement for when they put this XP penalty system in, or are you referring to this announcement where they say they are removing it? I can't find an announcement for the former and the latter is really obvious. If they did implement this system to discourage the 1-20 power leveling then why continue it post level 20 when people are then able to level for bright engrams instead? This is where most are finding the opaque nature of this systems implementation problematic because it's tied to their microtransaction system.

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    uhtaree

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    They probably should have nerfed XP but went about it the wrong way.

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    Wandrecanada

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    #22  Edited By Wandrecanada

    The bad part is that they sold xp boosters for money but didn't tell people their xp was being throttled. So someone might buy a booster thinking they are getting a 50% xp boost but in reality are getting far less xp due to the massive 95% xp penalty from farming repeating activities.

    Why don't they just make clear that xp from pub events are -50% and repeating events has a diminishing return up to -95%? Why hide that only PvP gives full XP towards bright engrams?

    Why do companies feel they always want to hide how their systems work?

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    BladeOfCreation

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    So people like me who would do all of the weekly public event quests in just one or two sessions really got fucked over, huh? Since the Bright Engrams only marginally/indirectly affect gameplay, and I never bought any (or spent real money on XP boosters), my reaction to this is largely, "That's shitty," but I'll be okay. (I also haven't played in a couple weeks anyways.)

    As others have mentioned, the way this affected people who spent real money on XP boost items is the real question. If this had any negative effect on them, that's EXTREMELY shady. I would go so far as to argue that it's WORSE than Battlefront 2, because at least the loot box system in Battlefront 2 was never a secret.

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    sravankb

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    Man, Bungie appears to be both incompetent and massively idiotic.

    I'm sorry, but if XP was being throttled, how did they think people wouldn't notice? On a game like Destiny? People spend their lives playing these types of games. Surely someone is going to notice.

    They're doing the same thing with planetary chests and materials. There's a timed cooldown on collecting these where opening too many chests in a row will result in no reward. What an ass-backwards way to implement a cooldown (which is fucking pointless in the first place). You could've just prevented the chests from spawning instead of us opening them and getting nothing.

    It's like they deliberately wanted to simulate disappointment.

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    ajamafalous

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    This would've been fine if they had just communicated the system clearly instead of trying to hide it; they wouldn't be the first MMO-style game to do something similar

    Pretty gross if this also affected people who spent money on experience boosts, though.

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    FacelessVixen

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    Compared to the comments I'm reading, I couldn't possibly be any more indifferent. I've gotten multiple characters to 20 pretty damn quickly, like, 10, 15 hours each give or take, and it's just fashion souls from then on since your power level becomes more important. So, good to know that XP tables will be adjusted but the current system is no extra hair off my balls.

    ...Cooldowns on chests, though. That system is kind of annoying, but I won't be hyperbolic about that and keep my pitchfork pointed at EA instead.

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    OurSin_360

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    As someone who hasnt played this one yet i can see scaling xp, but not surfacing that to the player is shady as hell. Especially if they sell xp boosts etc.

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    Hestilllives19

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    #28  Edited By Hestilllives19

    @sravankb: This isn't directly at you alone because I know several people here have said the same thing, but didn't players on Reddit disprove the "Chest Cooldowns" more than a month ago when we realized Loot Boxes seemingly didn't have a floor, and instead of there being no loot, it was falling under the world if you weren't standing close enough to the chests? I'm pretty sure there isn't a "Chest Cooldown" at all, as I've never once lost loot since I've made it a priority to stand right up next to Chest when opening them. But if you stand at the edge of the opening range the loot may fall through the ground and not end up at your post master either, thus appearing like an empty loot box. A bug for sure (and one that hopefully gets addressed), but a preventable one of the part of the player as it stands now.

    @ajamafalous: Same thing, not directed at you, but a lot of people have been asking this question. Both Motes of Light and Fireteam Medallions, were effected by this XP Throttle they were doing... that is if you used them under certain circumstances. To explain that, I first need to explain those XP Boosts. Motes of Light boost XP by 25% for 4 hours, and these were the Poptarts Promotion. Players very much paid for these XP Boosts when they purchased Poptarts (so depending on why you purchased Poptarts would vary player to player, I personally already buy Poptarts to take to work, so these were more or less Free XP Boosts for me, but others may not normally buy Poptarts, and either way, this promotion was a huge hassle, mainly due to how terribly Poptarts handled it on their end). Fireteam Medallions on the other hand, one is given to every character for reaching Level 20, and re-purchased for 40 Bright Dust (a currency easily obtainable for free through Bright Engrams, and the absolute cheapest thing in Eververse, for reference I generally carry 2-3k Bright Dust at any given time and haven't spent a dime on Destiny 2's Eververse). Fireteam Medallions also grant 25% bonus XP to your entire Fireteam and only 1 out of your entire Fireteam has to have one active for their 4 hour duration. Both XP boost stack with each other, and are only active in realtime for that 4 hours, on the character they are used on. As you can tell, one of these is not like the other, so right off the bat, the only players with any real right to complain would be those having used Motes of Light. Here is the other part of this, only players who used a Mote of Light on a player already Level 20, doing a repeated activity for the 3rd plus time, and whom had already gained 3 Levels that week would have been effected by the XP Throttle. And to be honest, if you didn't use your Motes of Light on a Character between Level 1-20 (whether it was your first, second, or third character, where there was zero XP Throttling going on in hindsight), you kind of wasted your Mote of Light anyways, regardless of XP Throttling, because saving time in the 1-20 Leveling Process is the only real reason for the Mote of Light.

    So the short and sweet version is, only Poptarts purchases could have any right to be upset, and even then, only if they used their XP Boosts in a nonsensical way. So no, this XP Throttling issue shouldn't have effected anyone who spent actual money on XP Boosts. Not to say I'm condoning what Bungie did or even their fix for this issue, because it was a pretty sleazy move, but it was also such a minor sleazy move, it took players almost 3 months to even notice it was a thing, and even then, it's only real effect was during the Clarion Call 2x XP Event last week, where if systems were working as they should have been players would have been able to obtain 10+ Bright Engrams per hour. So I guess I can understand Bungie's side of this when the best deal on Bright Engrams from Eververse is 5 Bright Engrams for $8 (which is why I've said from the beginning players are insane if they purchase Bright Engram packages for real money) or 3 for $5 (considering you can already obtain 3 Bright Engrams in your first couple hours each week just doing your normal weekly activities for free). So $16 worth of Bright Engrams per hour during Clarion Call would have been a bit outrageous, so I understand completely why XP Throttling happened, but like many have said, I do wish Bungie had been more clear on it happening and why beforehand.

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    John1912

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    I hate to say it but the lack of grinding may have lowered my interest in the game. I actually enjoyed the last one but felt ripped off vs what we were promised and what we got. Getting gear is way easier, I lost interest real quick. Franchise needs to die.

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    pyrodactyl

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    The worst part about this is how much I don't give a fuck about any of it.

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    Xeirus

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    #31  Edited By Xeirus

    @lanechanger said:

    I don't think this would have been bad if it was transparent and brought up upfront but hiding it for players to find out on their own is just a bad move. Now they gotta look into every system (loot drop RNG%?) to see what else is being hidden from players. This isn't the worst but isn't a good look following the whole PC banning debacle.

    This is the huge thing. They were straight up lying previously.
    The experience shown in the game wasn't what you were getting.

    The problem isn't the throttling, it's the lack of being up front about the system. Super shady.
    Like, if no one had noticed, I bet you anything they wouldn't have ever said anything.

    "Not happy with the results" my ass. More like, not happy we got found out.

    This is a good video about it:

    Loading Video...

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    Onemanarmyy

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    #32  Edited By Onemanarmyy

    It's telling that whenever something hidden like this gets noticed, the first response is that they don't like it neither and it will be changed. As if they were just coming to this conclusion, at the same time as the community found out about it. Despite the need to keep it hidden by listing wrong XP numbers since forever, almost like they know it's bullshit. Especially when XP boosters get sold. Turns out that certain companies do try to screw people over if you don't pay attention.

    If they just communicated this all, it wouldn't be that bad. Making sure that people go out and experience as much different content instead of sticking around to do 1 specific thing multiple times sounds pretty smart. But when you buy a booster that tells you that you level up 5x as fast as normal, you should know that you're getting the advertised product. When you sell that part of your game, you can't tweak the numbers without disclosing that you're doing that.

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    viking_funeral

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    @onemanarmyy: It's like how Android got called out recently for secretly tracking phones using cell towers when tracking services were off. It was an 'accident,' and they turned it off immediately. Sure. Accident.

    I have no stake in this game, but the fact that they hid it means they felt guitly, at least.

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    devise22

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    @viking_funeral said:

    @onemanarmyy: It's like how Android got called out recently for secretly tracking phones using cell towers when tracking services were off. It was an 'accident,' and they turned it off immediately. Sure. Accident.

    I have no stake in this game, but the fact that they hid it means they felt guitly, at least.

    While I agree this certainly wasn't put in there by accident, I have to disagree with you and the many others blatantly saying this system was put in as an effort to make money. I don't think it's necessarily that they felt "guilty" more that they realized surfacing this data upfront is absolutely a must for your users. Even looking past the "pay to win" versus "pay for cosmetics" aspect of this argument, underneath the hood Bungie wasn't nerfing ALL xp gains from activities. Just those that could be exploited for repeated gains. As they stated, the system was structured as such so doing the higher level end game activities again and again had zero XP drops, even XP gains. But doing the low level public event activities over and over again eventually reduced your gains. The fact that they hid this information is the issue. Not this information. Balancing your activities so that the higher level end game activities give you more XP gain than the lower level ones is absolutely one hundred percent within their realm, and there is nothing offensive about it.

    As a player of the game I'd of been offended if users could just grind out Public Events to get more XP with some sort of doubler or other reward system in play. This encourages and keeps late game players doing late game things, and allows them to boost or have higher XP rewards for public events and smaller tasks earlier on in your level system, without having end game users just take advantage of that.

    I think them coming out with this is just them realizing yes this type of information very much should be presented to the user in a ongoing live game like this. But that isn't honestly how it always has been, even for non MP games that have no progression. Lots of RPG's, older and newer, have under the hood XP tricks that they don't overtly state. I don't really think this having a cosmetics shop really changes that this is a common business practice, and one that in the modern internet era is likely to change just because eventually the userbase is going to find every single system and hidden thing that is going on.

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    Zevvion

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    There are two problems with the community outrage over this:

    1. The system actually makes sense. The way XP works is that it is awarded to you for doing anything and everything, with the purpose of awarding you XP for playing how you choose to play and what you choose to play, instead of forcing you to play something specific or in a specific way. With the way the game is built, Public Events are by far the easiest to complete if you know how to manipulate the system. You can do the same Public Event in one location as many as four times within 60 to 120 seconds. Then, because of randomness, there might be another Public Event happening in 10 seconds, which you can proceed to also do four times. By contrast, doing Public Events 'legit' means you only do them once and it seems fair to assume casual players don't know how to manipulate them. Then, the next Public Event could also be as much as 5 minutes out.

    The problem with all this is that it is highly random. You can't simply decrease the XP for Public Events because if you happen to be playing at a time where the latter is the case, you'll feel like you're getting barely any XP at all. So they created a bottleneck. If you somehow manage to complete many Public Events in a row, you earn less XP. If you complete a lot of Crucible matches you earn more XP. This prevented you from being forced to play and manipulate Public Events in order to gain XP. Because why would you grind something for longer than you have to? You could just play Crucible for XP. With the system turned off, you cannot anymore. Crucible doesn't award shit compared to stacking Public Events.

    2. XP doesn't even matter. All these people on Reddit who claim to have 500+ hours in D2 and are grinding XP for what exactly? Bright Engrams? I had everything there was to own from Eververse after 300 hours, before I even completed my Exotic weapon collection without paying a cent. You get them by the truckloads. If you honestly have been playing consistently, you never need to buy any Bright Engrams. You can just cash the ones you get and turn anything you don't want into Bright Dust and literally buy the specific items you want with that ingame currency.

    It was still an unoptimized system, but the blowback reaction to it on Reddit is absurd. The people claiming they need the XP are the same ones that simultaneously claim to have 500+ hours in the game and also that they stopped playing weeks ago after less than 80 hours because the game is bad and everything within it is meaningless. Which would of course explain why they'd need the Bright Engrams... ugh.

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    camelCase

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    @zevvion said:

    There are two problems with the community outrage over this:

    1. The system actually makes sense. The way XP works is that it is awarded to you for doing anything and everything, with the purpose of awarding you XP for playing how you choose to play and what you choose to play, instead of forcing you to play something specific or in a specific way. With the way the game is built, Public Events are by far the easiest to complete if you know how to manipulate the system. You can do the same Public Event in one location as many as four times within 60 to 120 seconds. Then, because of randomness, there might be another Public Event happening in 10 seconds, which you can proceed to also do four times. By contrast, doing Public Events 'legit' means you only do them once and it seems fair to assume casual players don't know how to manipulate them. Then, the next Public Event could also be as much as 5 minutes out.

    The problem with all this is that it is highly random. You can't simply decrease the XP for Public Events because if you happen to be playing at a time where the latter is the case, you'll feel like you're getting barely any XP at all. So they created a bottleneck. If you somehow manage to complete many Public Events in a row, you earn less XP. If you complete a lot of Crucible matches you earn more XP. This prevented you from being forced to play and manipulate Public Events in order to gain XP. Because why would you grind something for longer than you have to? You could just play Crucible for XP. With the system turned off, you cannot anymore. Crucible doesn't award shit compared to stacking Public Events.

    2. XP doesn't even matter. All these people on Reddit who claim to have 500+ hours in D2 and are grinding XP for what exactly? Bright Engrams? I had everything there was to own from Eververse after 300 hours, before I even completed my Exotic weapon collection without paying a cent. You get them by the truckloads. If you honestly have been playing consistently, you never need to buy any Bright Engrams. You can just cash the ones you get and turn anything you don't want into Bright Dust and literally buy the specific items you want with that ingame currency.

    It was still an unoptimized system, but the blowback reaction to it on Reddit is absurd. The people claiming they need the XP are the same ones that simultaneously claim to have 500+ hours in the game and also that they stopped playing weeks ago after less than 80 hours because the game is bad and everything within it is meaningless. Which would of course explain why they'd need the Bright Engrams... ugh.

    How is your career with the Bungie PR Team going? Benefits good?

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    Zevvion

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    @camelcase: I made constructive arguments that are rooted in facts and actual data, if you're going to dismiss them you should at least put more effort into it than showcasing you don't have any arguments to do so.

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    pyrodactyl

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    #38  Edited By pyrodactyl

    @zevvion: if you want to argue this is the least of Destiny's issues I will be right there with you. That's the problem though. The only reason this kind of deceitful strategy aimed at boosting micro transactions isn't a big deal is because the game is fucked up in 12 other ways that have a larger impact on my enjoyment. That doesn't make this shit fine or ok. In fact lying to players because you want to drive micro transactions is pretty repulsive and says a lot about how Bungie sees its own community.

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    Fezrock

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    @zevvion: The problem is the lie, not the system.

    There's nothing necessarily wrong with XP throttling to prevent some kinds of min-maxing. But other games that do this kind of thing, like MMOs sometimes, clearly communicate it. Bungie wasn't just not clearly communicating, they were straight up lying, having the game show XP gains that weren't actually occurring.

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    sweep

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    #40 sweep  Moderator

    I think the only real issue here is the lack of transparency. If they were open about it and explained that there was an XP hit for repeatedly grinding out the same task because they wanted to promote all the different aspects of endgame (pvp/raiding/public events/missions/etc) instead of just one, I don't think anyone would have an issue with that.

    There's a different discussion here about game design, and whether it's a good idea to nerf the rewards of one aspect of your game in order to encourage people to try something else. Surely it would be better to improve the less popular aspects of the game rather than detract from what's already successful?

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    foodmonster

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    It doesn’t matter if they have an effect on game, it is a slot machine designed to set off dopamine receptors that you can shortcut for real money. They significantly delay the pull on the slot machine at a chance to get a limited availability cosmetic item. It is only purely coincidence this is being changed just after governments around the world announced they are looking into lootboxes

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    deactivated-6050ef4074a17

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    One of my least favorite things some developers take it upon themselves to do is sort of "momming" their player base, actively pushing them away from playing "too much" either because they think there's some arbitrary limit on what a "proper" amount of daily/weekly playtime is, or because they don't want to allow more dedicated players to far outpace those that have less time/skill.

    I don't even agree with the idea of some in this thread that the biggest problem here is the lie - that is a problem they should own up to for sure, to be clear - but that they concocted this kind of system to begin with because they want to dictate simply how much people play their game. Some of the possible motivations for that just repulse me. Let people grind however the hell they want to.

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    devise22

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    @marokai said:

    One of my least favorite things some developers take it upon themselves to do is sort of "momming" their player base, actively pushing them away from playing "too much" either because they think there's some arbitrary limit on what a "proper" amount of daily/weekly playtime is, or because they don't want to allow more dedicated players to far outpace those that have less time/skill.

    I don't even agree with the idea of some in this thread that the biggest problem here is the lie - that is a problem they should own up to for sure, to be clear - but that they concocted this kind of system to begin with because they want to dictate simply how much people play their game. Some of the possible motivations for that just repulse me. Let people grind however the hell they want to.

    How are they dictating how much people play their game? They are trying to keep the XP gain for activities as balanced as possible, so that people more often than not play the end game content that they designed to be end game to grind XP. Repeating Public Events to gain more XP than you would be gaining by doing end game activities breaks that system. A system that I'll point they designed, for a game they developed. It is absolutely okay for them to tweak and change all this, provided they do it so that their playing community knows.

    Nowhere does it state that your getting actively pushed from playing too much. You can still grind out public events, you just won't get that much XP for it so it's not min-maxing. You can still play crucible for endless hours. You can still do strikes ad infinity too. Sure you max out at weekly rewards, as that is entirely apart of their overall balance system. But there is nothing preventing you from grinding as long as you want, doing whatever activity that pleases you.

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    Majkiboy

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    #44  Edited By Majkiboy

    @confideration: Expect that they really did. The XP earned shown to you was false. They litterally was lying with what xp you got. Say that 10000xp was the reward shown to you, what you actually got was as little as 5% of that.

    I see some people here are still not getting it.

    The problem wasnt that they were scaling it. The problem was that they were intentionally hiding it! Scaling has been widely used in other games before but not hidden like this. Scaling is not the problem, the lying is!

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    fnrslvr

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    I've never played Destiny 2 and I'm mostly here for the smug self-satisfaction, but I'm kinda surprised that nobody really seems to be deriding the system's incentivization of crucible in particular, given how much the Giant Bomb crew seem to hate that mode.

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    Teddie

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    #46  Edited By Teddie

    The fact they removed this immediately after they got caught should tell you all you need to know about this situation.

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    hassun

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    ll_Exile_ll

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    @fnrslvr said:

    I've never played Destiny 2 and I'm mostly here for the smug self-satisfaction, but I'm kinda surprised that nobody really seems to be deriding the system's incentivization of crucible in particular, given how much the Giant Bomb crew seem to hate that mode.

    It's not really about incentivizing crucible. Crucible has a fixed rate of XP gains because of the length of matches, so there's no way to rapidly farm it therefore there was no reason to throttle it. Even with public events being throttled and crucible and the raid being scaled up, public events were still the fastest way to earn XP.

    Also, the system wouldn't have incentivized crucible play anyway because Bungie kept the whole thing a secret, which is the reason for this whole controversy.

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    Rasrimra

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    #49  Edited By Rasrimra

    Disgusting.

    Disgusting. Shame.

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    cmblasko

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    Every few months I think to myself, "People seem to like Destiny, I should give it a try." Then I read something like this.

    This edit will also create new pages on Giant Bomb for:

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