Bungie admits EXP gain scaling in Destiny 2

Fyra Frost - 26-Nov-2017, 1:13 pm

Destiny 2 developer Bungie has acknowledged issues with their experience gain system in the game. It seems that after the ruckus created by the complaints about Star Wars Battlefront 2 microtransactions, and all the controversy that's been going on lately about loot boxes being a form of gambling or not, some companies seem to be starting to care about what their customers say about their games. This is the case with Bungie, that seems to have been caught red-handed manipulating the amount of exp players gain when participating in certain events. To sum it up, if you were grinding exp like mad in events like Public Events, you have been gaining less and less exp every time. That got proved in a lengthy analysis by Reddit user EnergiserX, and it has led to the developers admitting it and claiming it's stopped now through a statement that reads: "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." You may be wondering what's the deal with all this. Well, it turns out that gaining additional experience past level 20 in Destiny 2 contributes towards earning "Bright Engrams", a sort of loot boxes that contain cosmetic items for your character that you can also buy with real cash. Now, we all know companies create games to earn money, and all those kind of practices may seem legit on their side, but if they are, why are they so fast on changing or cutting them down so fast once they are uncovered? Are they so short-sighted to realize that something like that could have a big negative impact on their sales or is it that publicity is always welcome, even if it's because of things like this?