Destiny 2 has been systemically throttling the amount of XP awarded to certain players, while displaying the ‘full’ rewards on-screen. Bungie have made a statement today saying the system will be deactivated “effective immediately,” but only after the hidden mechanic was exposed by diligent community testing.
Specifically, one user of the Destiny subreddit (‘EnergiserX’) devoted a week of his life to tracking and recording what was going on. You can read the results of his study here, which make it pretty plain that the actual earned XP in Destiny 2 can be radically different to the XP the game says it’s giving to you. In short, the more players were ‘grinding’ in Destiny 2, the more extensively the game was throttling actual XP rewards.
The natural result of this was to slow player progress towards items that can, of course, be purchased with real money in an in-game store. Shocker.
Bungie’s own characterisation of the XP system, from today’s statement, is as follows: “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.” No mention, there, that nobody actually knew this was the case because it was basically hidden behind incorrect XP reward figures.
From now on, Destiny 2 players “will see XP earn rates change for all activities across the board, but with all values being displayed consistently in the user interface.” How kind.
