In Destiny 2, the level cap is currently 20- however, even after you hit Level 20, you continue to gain XP. Once you hit enough XP that you would have leveled up had you not been at the cap, you nevertheless still get loads of Bright Engrams- Bright Engrams are Destiny 2‘s version of loot boxes. You can either pay for them, or, as mentioned here, you get them by gaining XP.
I give you this context, because apparently, Destiny 2 is not playing fair with how it hands players out XP at all- meaning they are ultimately getting less free Bright Engrams than they otherwise would (in turn pushing them to buy them if they want them quicker). According to a thread on Destiny’s subreddit, Destiny 2 starts holding back on your XP gains if you are playing and earning it too quickly.
“There is a hidden scaling factor that ramps up as you earn XP more quickly,” user EnergiserX explained. “The scaling factor will increase at least to the point where you’re only really earning four per cent of what you should.
“Public Events will only ever earn you 50 per cent of what they say, as the end of event XP alone is enough to trigger a 50 per cent scaling factor.
“To get one thing clear: there is no cap to XP. You can keep earning XP as fast as you want, and you will always be making progress towards that next Bright Engram. You will just face dramatically diminishing returns the faster you go.
“If you earn XP slow, the in-game display is correct,” EnergiserX reported. “If you play normally, the game drops some XP (~50 per cent). If you power-grind XP the game will drop most of your XP (in testing, I managed to lose ~95 per cent of the XP during an ‘enemies moving against each other’ event).”
Owing to some really meticulous pixel counting and calculations done by EnergiserX, he was able to calculate that he was duped out of at least 33% of the Bright Engrams he should have earned over a three hour period- and wouldn’t you know, if you feel you aren’t earning Bright Engrams quick enough, you’ll probably think to yourself, “hey, why not just spend a few bucks and buy them?”
It’s scummy as hell- and I am glad that more and more of these exploitative practices are beginning to come to light.