https://www.bungie.net/en/Explore/Detail/News/46494

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.

So the spinfoil hat theory was true: Bungie was intentionally throttling exp gains to incentivize real world purchases.

That's a dumb way to look at it. If anything, they were rewarding players who didn't play as long, while looking to balance XP gains across a multitude of systems, with certain game options more exploitable than others.

I can't remember if I submitted my Overwatch comparison, where a similar thing was happening, and the outcry led to Blizzard normalizing XP gains, which kind of screwed over the people who didn't play the game for hours every day.

At the end of the day, though. It was all for cosmetic stuff, so nothing of significance was lost.

This does not look good.

For the tinfoil hat-wearing armchair-dev neckbeards that cry about "slippery slopes", sure, it doesn't look good. For the people who enjoyed getting cosmetic loot without having to grind endlessly, they're at risk of losing their well-rested bonus just because some stupid streamers want more more more.

So the spinfoil hat theory was true: Bungie was intentionally throttling exp gains to incentivize real world purchases.

This does not look good.

Except they also throttled cR gain in Reach, and that had no MTs.

Yeah. Regardless of micro transactions, having the UI lie to players is just a bad idea in general. Throttling at all seems odd too. Crucible matches last a known maximum amount of time. Same with Public Events. Strikes can be sped through but even they can’t be that hard to give a “par time” to. Just balance xp awards against those times and set the per-kill xp award to something high enough to slowly move the needle then don’t worry if enterprising players find a way to exploit one of those systems.

Oh sweet, we don't even have to worry about microtransactions and we can STILL have an argument about this costing people extra money! :P

Amongst other things they might do "to try to make this right"
Seeing the Season 1 Bright Engram loot not go away on the 5th as planned and instead continue to appear in the Season 2 loot pool would be nice

(as far as I can tell they still have not even clearly communicated specifically each and every item that will be "going away forever" from Season 1 - and we are basically a week out from the day that these items are scheduled to be gone...)

There is an in game pop-up when you launch Destiny 2 today, since the weekly reset overnight.

"SEASONS
Season 1 Ending Soon

The current season ends in less than one week, on Dec. 5 at 10AM PST.

This means that Bright Engram contents and Clan progression will be refreshed for Season 2, beginning December 5. Work with your clan to reach maximum level and unlock this season's Clan Staff. Also, be sure to "earn" [quotes installed by me snarkastically] that Spicy Ramen emote while you can!

More information about Season 2 can be found on bungie.net"

Tess isn't even selling any of the items that we think/know will be going away forever, like the Spicy Ramen emote. We STILL don't even know, in total, exactly which items will be going away.

Do we have any confirmation that the 80k to 160k is a change as this article implies and not just improperly calculated information/speculation? Ihaven’t been able to find a definitive source for actual XP requirements per “level” gained. I know the general instinct is to judge for the worst but I’d rather judge solid data and not speculative measurements.

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2017/11/fan-analysis-forces-bungie-to-confirm-screwy-xp-math-in-destiny-2/

A patch went live on Sunday, and one data-hungry player soon confirmed that all of the XP-scaling systems they'd uncovered were now gone. Players would now be rewarded XP as advertised in the game, no matter what mode was played or for how long.

So #Kornywasright, and they normalized XP gains, ultimately slowing down the rate of Bright Engram acquirement across the board? Goodbye earning more XP from Strikes and Crucible? Welp.

But this patch introduced another unannounced change to the XP system. Bungie decided to tune the speed of XP gain by doubling the required XP needed to "level up," from 80,000 points to 160,000. Patch notes didn't mention this change; Bungie, once again, had to be questioned by its fanbase before confirming the exact amount of this XP-related change.

If the "Well-rested" bonus is gone tomorrow, I better hear some apologies (though it will probably benefit Bungie more to keep it in, since it used to be a neat perk, and now it's a proper incentive).

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2017/11/fan-analysis-forces-bungie-to-confirm-screwy-xp-math-in-destiny-2/

A patch went live on Sunday, and one data-hungry player soon confirmed that all of the XP-scaling systems they'd uncovered were now gone. Players would now be rewarded XP as advertised in the game, no matter what mode was played or for how long.

But this patch introduced another unannounced change to the XP system. Bungie decided to tune the speed of XP gain by doubling the required XP needed to "level up," from 80,000 points to 160,000. Patch notes didn't mention this change; Bungie, once again, had to be questioned by its fanbase before confirming the exact amount of this XP-related change.

These shared world economies are just toxic. I don't think many of the developers of these economies really have a grasp on what they're doing and to an extent I don't blame them. It's a still somewhat young concept with a lot of opportunity for mistakes and missteps, especially considering the (questionable) motivating factors behind the decisions being made.

At the end of the day, though, there are so many other games out there to play, that I want to play, and even already own just waiting for me. Destiny doesn't properly respect time investment; for a game that's about killing things and looking cool, looking cool isn't "technically" funded by your purchase of the game. That's a bit much to ask.

I'll come back to sample the content I've already paid for, and perhaps one day if D2 gets to a stable place I'll participate again. But it's honestly such a shame that the same type of experience can be had in plenty of other games (like Diablo) with so much less hassle.

People complain about the economy design through an aspect of the implementation, so they alter the implementation while attempting to minimize the effects on the economy design, in a way that exacerbates what people didn't like about the design. And it's done silently, which during a controversy is about the most effective strategy for making something look dishonest.

Is anybody steering this ship?

My assumption, as I have no data to go off of, was that experience scaling wasn’t tied to the activity alone but everything around tomhe activity, to include AI combatants. So from a programming standpoint having one referenced “Red Bar Dreg” experience value that is scaled up or down based on activities would make more sense than referencing a bunch of unique XP values.

But I think the actual inner workings of the system and code are way more complicated than that.

I can only think of 2 possible reasons for Bungie to clamp down on XP gains. It could be that Bungie thought that grinding Public Events would get players up to level 20 too quickly... but if that's the case, I would ask 2 things:
a) Really?
and b) then why hide the fact that XP gains were being reduced? Why not be transparent about it?

The other explanation I can think of does not look so good for Bungie. And that's the possibility that they didn't want players earning Bright Engrams so quickly that they'd never feel the need to buy any. So they artificially slowed down the progression towards earning them, and hid it from the player.

While either of those can be true, there's the possibility of a 3rd option: Bungie just honestly trying to steer players away from activities that can be completed too quickly for rewards to longer activities that might be more rewarding XP wise; which they did in Reach. Problem with that is though, Public Events are too rewarding regardless of how quickly they get done and every other activity is not as rewarding and subject to the token economy leaving most players who participate not feeling like their time was valued. But something like that's a whole other discussion.

I can only think of 2 possible reasons for Bungie to clamp down on XP gains.

Yes, but how many reasons can you think of for Bungie scaling them up? Because that was happening too, as per 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.

My guess is that the XP scaling was meant to do a few different things:

• Provide an even, measured progression as you unlocked skills and subclasses.
  
• Even out XP gains for those playing longer activities vs those bouncing between shorter events.
  
• Provide occasional rewards for just playing the game in the form of Bright Engrams.
  
• Prevent players from earning Bright Engrams too quickly so that purchasing them would remain a temptation.

I don’t like the game lying to us about xp gains and I’d bet keeping Bright Engrams a temptation was a part of the consideration for this whole xp system, but if the scaling up is also true, then shouldn’t that part of the system get a paragraph or two’s consideration as well?

I'd be lying if I said I really cared about this. It mostly doesn't affect me, due in no small part to not currently playing the game, but also because when I do play, I'm not just trying to grind out Bright Engrams. As always, the best way to play Destiny is by ignoring its economy and loot systems as motivation and just enjoying playing with friends.

And, as always, even when it is possible to play the game that way, it doesn't excuse Bungie's terrible economy and loot system designs. Maybe there are good reasons for doing what they're doing (besides the obvious "to sell loot boxes" reason, I mean), but, as always, Bungie's communication is abysmal and the way they go about changing things with no or vague information looks extremely shady and inspires absolutely no confidence.

Assuming the worse has worked more often than not for predicting Bungie's behavior in the Destiny era, unfortunately, and this whole situation is pretty par for that course.