Destiny 2 developer Bungie have issued an update to the game in response to criticism from its community, with players having uncovered “hidden XP scaling” that saw them earning less XP after reaching level 20.
A post on the Destiny 2 subreddit last week highlighted a problem with the game’s XP, with it rewarding players less XP after reaching level 20, though not reflecting this decrease in-game. Though level 20 is the cap in Destiny 2, when players fill up their XP meters they are rewarded with a Bright Engram, the game’s equivalent to loot boxes. As such, many pointed out that it had seemingly made garnering XP more difficult in order to encourage players to spend money on Bright Engrams, rather than play the game in order to unlock them.
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Bungie stated that, effectively immediately, the system would be deactivated. “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,” the statement from the company read.
However, a new controversy has now been sparked from this change. Tweeting from the developer’s official support account, Bungie posted the following:
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
Previously, the XP required to level up was reportedly capped at around 80,000. Now, the cost to unlock a Bright Engram is set to 160,000. Bungie’s statement would seem to indicate that 160,000 XP was always the correct value, but that it was incorrectly displayed as 80,000 in-game, though players are claiming that it now seems to take around the same amount of time to level up as it did prior to the update.
“Around 18 Heroic PEs per level with 3x buff and 54 heroic PEs without,” Destiny 2 Reddit user OOpiumBear wrote. “In my post I did 10 events for a total of 60.000 exp and iirc got the remaining EXP over the next 4 or 5 events. Keeping the same speed that would trigger the cooldown makes the new system effectively slower… Correct me if I’m wrong but before we had a chance of 100% exp, but by doubling the required amount of EXP they effectively put us at a permanent 50% earning rate… This feels more like a twist on their EXP system compared to turning it off.”
However, some have noted how this new system does appear to be a slight improvement, even if it isn’t as dramatic as many players hoped. “According to the people who went and did the math, under the old system your average expected value for exp was ~44% of what was shown,” user ItsMeCaptainMurphy wrote. “Under the new system the average expected value is 50% of what was shown. So it’s a slight benefit, but it’s clear they put this change in place to basically keep things like they were (which is also an indication that the original system was working exactly as intended, they just got caught and are trying to save face).
“Now, that’s on average. Turns out some parts of the game weren’t effected that badly by the original system, mostly pvp. So anyone who plays primarily pvp and does very little pve just got screwed. As did anyone who actually only logged in very infrequently and played for short bursts. But for most people it’s a minor net benefit and at the very least it’s a far less confusing system.”
Bungie has yet to state when the changes to Destiny 2‘s API will come into effect, but judging from the early reaction to the update, it seems that not much has changed with the game after its controversial XP scaling was uncovered by its players.
