Bungie’s Destiny 2 has had various complaints leveled against it but none perhaps more significant than an anti-XP gain system that would reduce the amount of experience a player would earn if they completed activities together too quickly. Which wouldn’t seem like a big deal but filling up the XP bar in Destiny 2 earned you a Bright Engram containing cosmetics.
Bright Engrams can also be purchased for real money so of course this system was put in place to “motivate” players to skip the grind. Despite many Redditors bringing up this malicious practice about 22 days ago, Bungie has finally taken action after a number of other publications reported on their scummy practice.
In an official post, Bungie stated that, “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.”
The “watching and reviewing XP game data” part is interesting because it means that Bungie could change things back later. In the wake of controversy for games like Need for Speed Payback and Star Wars Battlefront 2, the latter which suffered a firestorm of controversy for its pay to win aspects and microtransactions, it’s likely Bungie will want to avoid similar backlash. Still, the fact that such a system was put in place and no apology or admission or wrong-doing was given by Bungie after it was removed is extremely telling.
