It is exhausting, keeping track of all the controversies in Destiny 2 these days. But here we are again, with Bungie again taking flak from hardcore players who remain unsatisfied with the way the game is heading.
Last month I broke down the anatomy of a Destiny controversy, and as it turns out, we can repeat those same steps for this one:
1) The game is opaque about a feature.
This time, it’s Faction Rally, the regular event in which players rack up points for each of the game’s three teams, competing to win glory (and cheaper gear) by collecting tokens from the game’s various activities. When Faction Rally went live last week for the first time in 2018, something felt a little different. Something felt off.
2) Players wonder if something is wrong.
“There’s cooldown on lost sector faction tokens,” wrote one Redditor, referring to Destiny 2‘s Lost Sector treasures, which are sprinkled in hidden passages among the game’s various maps. “Ran some lost sectors, fast travelled between 2 locations repeatedly and on my 4th and 5th runs I received no tokens.”
3) With no real information, players make up their own tests to calculate that something is indeed wrong.
Players experimented and found that there was indeed a throttle on the number of tokens you could get from Lost Sectors.
4) Bungie promises to look into it.
Wrote player support representative Dmg04: “We’re aware of player reports about Lost Sectors not granting rewards. There was a throttle added to address an issue in the previous Faction Rallies where players were earning 500 Tokens per hour.
The patchnote concerning this change has been updated to correctly state that all Lost Sector chests are subject to this throttle.”
5) Bungie apologises and promises to be more transparent in the future.
From the Bungie blog this week:
There has been a lot of feedback on some of the changes made to Faction Rallies in Season 2. I’d like to take a moment to list some of the larger topics. There is an ongoing process at Bungie to assess how we want to change Destiny 2 in the weeks to come, and your voice is a crucial part of it.
There was an issue in the previous Faction Rallies where players were earning hundreds of Faction Tokens per hour without firing a single shot. In the recent December 12 update, Faction Token rewards were added to an existing system that was locking players out from Lost Sector Rewards. We have heard player feedback that this solution was too disruptive. We’re looking at a change that won’t make players feel forced to run to and from a single chest for hours while also not placing a hard stop on enjoying Lost Sectors. We want to ensure that every time you open a chest there is loot inside. We’ll share more details on this before the next Faction Rallies.
It never, ever, ever, ever, ever ends.
Comments
40 responses to “New Destiny 2 Problem, New Bungie Apology”
Destiny 2 is such a clusterfuck. Its beyond saving at this point.
Rubbish.
Not rubbish if the ignorantly blissfully unawares or worse, Ppl in the know continue to support this rubbish.
The problem is what some people think is a problem, is actually Bungie choosing to do something the player doesn’t like. That doesn’t necessarily mean they are wrong.
Yes there are real issues but this is one of those examples where the players are just taking the p-.
Yes it is a clusterfuck. But no real changes/attempts to save it will roll in until the first real paid expansion (that isnt part of the initial season pass) is released just like in the first Destiny.
I had mad love for this game all the way through D1. But they have refused to learn from their mistakes and it actually hurts to play D2 at this point, unfortunately.
Pretty much this… The fact they’re making mistakes they made with the first game is beyond ridiculous.
They are either so incredibly and collectively stupid it is hard to comprehend, or they’re intentionally ignoring things people had issue with in the first game until AFTER people say, “Hey you’re doing this shit again… Stop.” and that is just so much worse.
Maybe they looked at the sales of the first one and said, yeah why not do it again.
They’re probably just taking in the feedback they want to hear and ignoring the rest. I feel bad for the people in the company that know better but can’t/won’t speak up for fear of losing their jobs and livelihoods.
I give up on this game. Stuff bungie.
Bro, go to The Division. Its pretty awesome now!
Agree & disagree only so much as I enjoy the fluid combat and control unlike any other and the idea of their universe but despise their handling of story-driven content and communication. I want & hope it gets better.
What a shame a developer as storied as Bungle (not a typo) have fallen to this absolute low.
They deserve the hate they are getting. It’s like they don’t even care.
To be fair I don’t think its all their fault. Activision and their influence on Bungie with whatever contract they have for Destiny has probably forced a few questionable business decisions into the game directly or indirectly.
Still its a shame as otherwise Destiny 2 isn’t a bad game just all the other crap pulls it down and stops it from being a great game.
Understandable to throw some blame at Activision for things like Eververse but the amount of issues like this that are purely design based (why would Activision honestly care about Lost Sector tokens?), shows that it’s Bungie who keep screwing up.
Sorry, but Bungie are wholly complicit in this. The ‘maybe it’s Activision’ apologists may have had a case back in D1 – I was one of them – but the buck has to stop with Bungie now. They are, at the end of the day, designing the shallow experiences. No new enemies in D2, not to mention they haven’t even bothered to add a new class. How can there be NO new class after 7-8 years of development of this franchise. Laziness through and through.
The eververse microtransaction stuff were pitched by Bungie to Activision, previous EXP issue they have already said they will be more transparent, which again hidden tweak to “nerf” stuff somehow broke the game again and now they promise to be more transparent again.
Clearly they are not going to do it and just trying to make it sounds like “we are doing this for you” instead of “we secretly changed something and used players as the beta tester”
They have no reason to care, Ppl are idiots & will buy anything, Bungle (not a typo) Will come back from this or won’t & will begin the cycle anew with another franchise .
You either die a hero (or bought out and stripped of all your reasources by EA). Or live long enough to see yourself become the Activision.
Thought this was another reposted article for a second.
It just proves that, as always, you can’t please everyone most of the time, but you can, if you try hard enough, piss off everyone all of the time.
Brilliant.
This article was first published in….
By this stage I just play the game, ignore all the politics. The community sickens me beyond belief and the Devs even when they are trying to good keep finding ways to screw up.some things are laughable like this, others less By this stage both sides are equally terrible. But I know two things: even with all the rubbish the game still pays for it, and I know it is just a game, no game should be getting people this upset. It’s just not healthy. It’s not like the industry isn’t full of other choices.
Stop hitting yourself….. stop hitting yourself……. stop hitting yourself…… stop hitting yourself….. stop hitting yourself. No really, stop hitting yourself people.
Holy shot people are still playing this piece is shit? Duck did no one learn from the first destiny? Bungee cannot make games anymore I mean fuck they basically recycled the entire game and made it worse. And fuck they still can’t understand what their players want despite he fact that hey are obviously vocal about it. God damned I though this game would be finished by now shame on the people still playing this horse shit and still calling it a game.
Never played this type of game but it seems like no matter what Bungie did, the player base would carry on like entitled kids.
The developer is actively updating and trying to make a better game. Which is far more than most games get.
>Never played this type of game
You don’t understand then. This kind of thing has been happening since D2’s release, and despite Bungies promises to listen to the community and do better at communicating with us and changing things, they haven’t done that.
It’s not about “acting like entitled kids”. We just want the same level of competency from the studio that they displayed in years 2 and 3 of Destiny 1.
You literally didn’t read the story……the subject on which you commented on.
Ah screw it, why not, I mean lets just ignore the context of the story and the consistent track record and history to take a swing a faceless nothing that is only given legitimacy so you can fight it.
Previous comments by arnna include calling PC owners of Batman Arkham knight “Entitled Children” for complaining about the game.
If you don’t like a game don’t play it or spend money on it.
The way modern games work is that you can purchase one product and then 3 months down the line its completely different.
One of the things people complained about with this very game was the fact that Bungie put content that you were previously able to do behind a paywall. They purposely reduced the quality of the product you had already purchased.
People complained and they relented.
1. Bungie does something dodgy and hopes no one notices, but really hopes someone notices.
2. Someone notices, uproar is made.
3. Bungie apologizes, thanks players for bringing it to their attention, without the players blah blah blah.
4. Players feel good about themselves for noticing it, getting Bungie to change it.
5. Profit.
6. Bungie waits to rinse and repeat.
Can’t wait until Anthem comes out. Maybe Bioware can get this formula right.
Typical! Hence, why I have returned to New York and I am enjoying the new 1.8 update of Tom Clancy’s The Division and a little bit of Borderlands 2 on the side.
I just hope that Bungo only releases those two so-called expansions, included in the expansion pass and then just forget about Destiny 2 and move on.
Worse that people can still defend this type of practice with insane strawman fallacies.
Oh but at least they are trying…to repeatedly screw you over.
At least give them a chance…..50th times the charm right?
Oh it’s not the misleading of consumers, the degradation of quality to facilite admittedly uneeded revenue streams, no!!
The real reason Destiny and Bungie are spiralling down the toilet is because xxXLeetProMomSmasherGaming2005Xxx wrote a mean tweet or reddit post.
Its like the worlds lamest version of Stockholm syndrome for false sense of moral satisfaction.
Save us, Anthem! (:O
i finished the campaign in a weekend after release, spent another 2 weeks on and off playing with friends to get high power level, dont think i have played it since then.
Honestly there was just not enough content to be a fun game
Last faction rally there were a couple of Lost Sectors where you were able to sneak half way out the back passage far enough to leave the zone (but not) and then walk straight back in to a resealed (unlocked) chest and no enemies.
Instead of throttling all Lost sector chests for EVERYONE maybe fix the glitch that allowed people to continue abusing that one chest.
People will want to grind the lost sectors, especially if the task you have given them directly involves grinding lost sectors.
If people want to Grind, let them, as long as they do it through the front door.. if people are abusing an exploit FIX THE EXPLOIT!! instead of breaking the game for people trying to do the right thing. (Suggestion: set a counter that expects them to have killed one elite NPC before they can open another Lost Sector chest, reset counter once chest is looted)
If you don’t want people to grind, throttling their loot for grinding that one activity IS NOT THE ANSWER! Either lower the loot available for that activity to match the playability of that activity so that people will see it as less valuable and play the more valuable content or DONT TOUCH IT AT ALL!
No matter what you do, people who want to grind will try to grind and they will cycle through the content that gets them the loot that they want at the fastest rate.
Yes people complained that Destiny 1 was grindy (which it wasn’t once the expansions were out) but actively trying to block grinding isn’t the answer. If you put all that focus into creating more valuable content you could actually design a decent game. if people ignore it and grind LET THEM!! they miss out.
I treated Destiny 2 like a campaign game – i finished the main story, did some side quests, played some pvp and then stopped playing it. It’s a fine game if your are looking to play 10-15 hrs of fun but it’s just not a game i would ever have as a daily goto as it’s endgame content is boring and i really don’t want to do this rinse and repeat bs every damn day just to get another light level higher for no apparent reason. I honestly dont know how people play the same damn raids and strikes day after day.
I feel like the main issue here is people who play it as a hobby.
i got into D1 at Taken King, so I have no idea how much of a mess launch was, but as of Taken King, it was a really fun game. i played it and probably got 60+ hours out of it. Destiny 2 came out, I picked it up in the first round of sales and I’m enjoying it just as much. When I’m done, I’ll leave it until the final DLC is out, buy the pack, play another 30ish hours, and be happy with it.
I kinda feel like most players fit a similar profile to me. The people complaining are people who smash all the content out of a new DLC in 2 days and then complain that there’s no endgame content. Then when there’s endgame content, they complain that it’s grindy.
Bungie are no doubt being weirdly stupid about this whole thing, but I feel like the majority of the playerbase is probably having a good time because they never thought that grinding the same two lost sectors for hours on end was worth doing.