One of the largest stories in the gaming community at the moment is Bungie’s handling of progression in Destiny 2 which has resulted in outrage from fans.
A few days ago, fans discovered that after reaching level 20, XP gain seemed to be limited depending on the amount of time they played. It was later confirmed that there was a system in place to decrease XP gain by up to 95% to prevent power-leveling. Naturally, this was never officially announced by Bungie and after fans discovered it, Bungie has now turned it off. But the story doesn’t end there.
A short while later, it was discovered, again by the community, that another change had been made. Instead of 80,000xp to gain levels in the late-game, it had now been increased to 160,000xp. It should come as no surprise at this point to learn that leveling provides players with a bright engram…which can also be purchased with real money. After players found this, Bungie once again commented:
The Destiny 2 API has yet to be adjusted to reflect the recent in game change to earned XP. We are working on an API update to address the discrepancy. The correct value to earn an additional level is 160,000 XP.
— Bungie Help (@BungieHelp) November 27, 2017
Our Take
In our opinion, this is extremely poor and it just goes to show how some of the larger publishers and developers are trying to take advantage of their playerbases. It could be a good thing that other major developers are working on Games as a Service as right now, Destiny holds a singular place in the industry. Once that changes, it won’t surprise us to see many players move on to other options. We’ll continue to follow this story as it develops.
