Again, it is the legend (Destiny)

by MacAddictXIV , Seattle WA, Friday, July 10, 2020, 12:55 (1379 days ago) @ Claude Errera

Due to an issue where the Festering Core Nightfall: The Ordeal strike was not reflecting the correct difficulty level at the Master tier, we have changed the Nightfall: The Ordeal strike to The Pyramidion for the rest of the week.

— Bungie Help (@BungieHelp) July 8, 2020

Bungie lives up to the legend. Almost anything that is buggy or bad takes ages to fix. Any glitch considered good or fun is patched ASAP.

I mean, technically they didn't fix the issue. Yet. They just swapped the map which is a server side change. Rose tinted glasses and all that.

The fact that they even did that is the issue, though.

Was there a problem that could be exploited for high-value in-game currency? Yes. Would it break anything to allow it to run for the week? Well, I guess we'll never really know, but I'd be shocked to find out that any serious damage could have been done.

I ran the Festering Core (bugged) NF with a couple of high-light, high-hours Destiny players. It took us 37 minutes to finish. I saw reports on Reddit that suggested the average was closer to an hour for people who knew what they were doing, and plenty of people tried and gave up.

If you were a streamer, maybe you could devote 10 hours a day to this for the full week, doing nothing else. Maybe you could get it down to half an hour (or even less!), let's be generous and say 25 runs per 10-hour session. Let's be even more generous and suggest that 50% of your runs result in a golf ball (Ascendant Shard).

That's not even 100 shards.

And that's for someone who devotes 70 hours over the week to the endeavor.

For the vast, vast majority of us, it MIGHT give us 1-5 extra shards, if it had been left up for the week. (I'd probably have run it a few more times, though I bet after the second or third run I'd have considered bagging, because while the first run was a fun challenge, doing it over and over wouldn't be - Famine makes Nightfalls unfun.)

So: a tiny minority would be able to earn enough golf balls that masterworking armor would cease to be something they were striving for. (Let's be serious, though - anyone with that kind of time to play Destiny has ALREADY masterworked all the armor they use regularly.) A larger group (but still a pretty small minority) would be able to augment their average earning enough to notice a difference. The remainder wouldn't even make it to the end, even with the bugged light levels.

BUT THE GOODWILL GENERATED BY THE CHANCE AT EXTRA MATERIALS WOULD HAVE FAR OUTWEIGHED ANY IMBALANCE.

I cannot for the LIFE of me understand why they didn't just let this one play out. Take the loss ("our bad, it's bugged, go wild") and bask in the happy Destiny feelings.

Yeah, I agree with all this. I just didn't agree with the statement I replied to. I will say that there is a certain level of urgency when bugs like this do come up where it could have been that maybe people were easily farming 100 golf balls. They don't really know that until it's too late. And they aren't going to take them back after the fact.

And currency in a game is one of the things that can kinda screw over the meta. Where as the Prometheus Lens debacle isn't doing that. It is just dumbing down the crucible experience in a fun way. And they made it an even playing field by selling the lens as well, unlike the infinite shadowshot incident.

I'm not saying they did the right thing, I'm just pointing out the difficulties of snapshot decisions when it comes the the economy and balance of the game.

Now I'll wait to get railed on for my comments :D