New Destiny 2 Problem, New Bungie Apology

It is exhausting, keeping track of all the controversies in Destiny 2 these days. But here we are again, with Bungie again taking flak from hardcore players who remain unsatisfied with the way the game is heading.

Last month I broke down the anatomy of a Destiny controversy, and as it turns out, we can repeat those same steps for this one:

1) The game is opaque about a feature.

This time, it’s Faction Rally, the regular event in which players rack up points for each of the game’s three teams, competing to win glory (and cheaper gear) by collecting tokens from the game’s various activities. When Faction Rally went live last week for the first time in 2018, something felt a little different. Something felt off.

2) Players wonder if something is wrong.

“There’s cooldown on lost sector faction tokens,” wrote one Redditor, referring to Destiny 2‘s Lost Sector treasures, which are sprinkled in hidden passages among the game’s various maps. “Ran some lost sectors, fast travelled between 2 locations repeatedly and on my 4th and 5th runs I received no tokens.”

3) With no real information, players make up their own tests to calculate that something is indeed wrong.

Players experimented and found that there was indeed a throttle on the number of tokens you could get from Lost Sectors

4) Bungie promises to look into it.

Wrote player support representative Dmg04: “We’re aware of player reports about Lost Sectors not granting rewards. There was a throttle added to address an issue in the previous Faction Rallies where players were earning 500 Tokens per hour.

The patchnote concerning this change has been updated to correctly state that all Lost Sector chests are subject to this throttle.”

5) Bungie apologizes and promises to be more transparent in the future.

From the Bungie blog this week:

There has been a lot of feedback on some of the changes made to Faction Rallies in Season 2. I’d like to take a moment to list some of the larger topics. There is an ongoing process at Bungie to assess how we want to change Destiny 2 in the weeks to come, and your voice is a crucial part of it.

There was an issue in the previous Faction Rallies where players were earning hundreds of Faction Tokens per hour without firing a single shot. In the recent December 12 update, Faction Token rewards were added to an existing system that was locking players out from Lost Sector Rewards. We have heard player feedback that this solution was too disruptive. We’re looking at a change that won’t make players feel forced to run to and from a single chest for hours while also not placing a hard stop on enjoying Lost Sectors. We want to ensure that every time you open a chest there is loot inside. We’ll share more details on this before the next Faction Rallies.

It never, ever, ever, ever, ever ends.