Bungie Can’t Catch W: Instead of Increasing the Drop Rate of Destiny 2’s Most Coveted Exotics, the Latest Patch Has Nerfed Them to Their Limits

It turns out that if you lay off a significant portion of your QA staff, the game you make will tend to suffer from quality issues. I’m not saying that the problems with Destiny 2’s latest patch are a direct result of Bungie’s drastic staff cuts last week, but it probably won’t aid.

Yesterday’s weekly reset also included the implementation update 8.0.5which included a ton of fixes and balance changes. The most requested one was a buff to the Prismatic exotic item drop rate. According to the patch notes:

• Adjusted the drop chances for Exotic tier items from chests to be more generous.
• Increased progression of chances to get chests.
• Removed progression of chances to obtain chests in the world.
• World Chests may still contain items, but they will not escalate the chance of them dropping in future Chests.

The above wording is quite messy. The actual change that was announced in This Week in Bungie Post July 25 clearly states that the buff applies to chests found in Overthrow activity. It read:

• When you open the chests connected [to] Discuss the actions and your chances will escalate.
• Higher level chests give you a better chance of obtaining them.
• This should reduce the time it takes (on average) to obtain an Exotic item, but we’ll be closely monitoring player feedback and making further changes as needed.

Yesterday the reviews started pouring in quickly and they weren’t good. r/DestinyTheGame They were many Threads complaining that instead of being buffed, the drop rate was now worse. “Good job, Bungie,” wrote the author of the top-voted post. Players reported that it took them five or more full runs to find an exotic class item, whereas in my experience before the patch — and I was grinding plot Overthrow – It normally takes two or three rounds before one of these succeeds.

Of course, volatility and bad luck could have been a factor behind these threads, even if the number of replies agreeing with the issue suggested otherwise. But any doubts were put to rest today with a post from the Bungie Team X account confirming that yes, there was a glitch.

So not only do the final Overthrow Chests not contribute to the “mercy time” before receiving an exotic class item, but exotic class items can actually they don’t fall out of these crates at all anymore. That’s quite the bummer considering how highly coveted they are, and chasing after the perfect combination of perks that fits your playstyle is one of the main carrots after completing The Final Shape.

I was very excited about the exotic class items when I got them revealed in Aprilso much so that I wrote “Destiny 2 is back!” (Oh, sweet summer child, how little I knew.) I was right about their power level and desirability, though. These items combine slightly watered-down versions of the unique perks found on two other pieces of Exotic armor, meaning the perfect pairing can really supercharge your build.

However, currently the only way to get exotic class items is either a very compact chance from chests in Pale Heart (now even smaller thanks to this bug) or by doing Dual Destiny missions with a friend. This mission at least guarantees a drop, but despite its excellence, repeating it ad nauseam has become tedious for many players, especially with 64 different perk combinations and zero protection against duplication. The result: something that should have been one of the main points of excitement in this excellent expansion has become a bit of a mess.

In a follow-up, the Bungie team promised that a fix shouldn’t take too long, with the added hint that we might be able to reduce the amount of RNG in the future: “We’re currently working on a fix, with a goal of a near-term fix. We’re also considering allowing players to chase specific perks in a future update. More details as plans solidify.”

That’s all well and good, but I have to agree with content creator and avid PC Gamer reader Fallout Plays who responded:

Honestly, Bungie is often its own worst enemy when it comes to how rewards are calculated. At times, the economy team seems to have an almost pathological aversion to making its own players ecstatic. By far the most popular activities in the game—think Menagerie, The Coil, Grandmaster Nightfalls with double rewards, etc.—are the ones that drop loot on players.

Considering how bad the music is in Destiny 2, everyone could benefit from a boost, and no one would blame Bungie for making W simple by raising drop rates to the extreme. Yes, it could hurt retention, but keeping enough players unhappy that they stay doesn’t seem like a intelligent long-term solution either.

It’s not worth touching Overthrow for now. It’s much better to do Dual Destiny once on each character, since yesterday’s patch effectively introduced a modern challenge, meaning the first completion of each week will reward two exotic class items instead of one. I’ll be praying for Inmost Light+Star Eater and cursing the entire Pete Parsons line when I inevitably get Filaments+Claw again.