Bungie is no stranger to subtly changing the way things work behind the scenes in Destiny 2, without telling anyone what’s going on. This has already netted them one controversy back in November when it was revealed it had implemented a hidden XP scaling system, and now Bungie has been caught throttling Rally Tokens in its latest Faction Rally Events.
Faction Rally Events gather players who have committed themselves to one of the core three factions, tasking them to complete challenges and therefore earn Rally Tokens. These tokens are exchanged for engrams and earn more renown with your pledged faction. Unfortunately, they don’t work like they used to.
Previous Faction Rally Events would net players Rally Tokens once they completed Lost Sectors, hidden inside of a chest. This is no longer the case, as the amount of tokens upon completion of the given tasks net a drastically reduced amount by capping how many a player can earn per hour of gameplay.
Bungie has acknowledged that the cap does exist via an update and explained that it was “to address an issue in the previous Faction Rallies where players were earning 500 Tokens per hour,” an update to the Faction Rally maintenance notification explains.
“Right now if a player opens more than 2 Chests in a 10 minute period they will not receive additional rewards from Lost Sector chests for 10 minutes. This does not prevent players from completing milestones related to Lost Sector chests.”
Game Director Christopher Barret agrees with the outraged community, stating “The timer was meant to fix an exploit but it is way too penalizing right now. It’s being adjusted in the next patch but we likely need to adjust it further. ”
@Bungie Why should we get punished because me and a mate can complete Lost Sectors that YOU designed too quickly??? @DeeJ_BNG @Cozmo23 @cgbarrett
— shaun (@okbirchy) January 17, 2018
On top of these issues, reports have begun to crop up that Faction Rally weapons are also not dropping since the hotfix went live to make Season Two Faction Rally and Iron Banner weapons available to non-DLC owners. It turns out this is due to Bungie’s decision to distribute the weapons over the course of the entire season, not just the Faction Rally event period.
“In the first Faction Rally of Season 2 (this week), there is a new Auto Rifle available as the Winner’s Offering. No new Faction Weapons are available through Faction Engrams. In the second Faction Rally of the season, the Winner’s Offering is updated to a new weapon. Additionally, the previous Winner’s offering (Auto Rifles) and an additional weapon are added to Faction Engram rewards,” explained Bungie support representative, dmg04.
“The final Faction Rally of the season will follow this functionality: The Winners Offering will be updated to a final weapon that has yet to be featured. The previous Winner’s Offering will be added to the Faction Engram rewards, alongside an additional weapon. This brings the total to four weapons within the Faction Engram, and a final Winner’s Offering for factions to compete for over the course of the event.”
KitGuru Says: It seems like all of the decisions in the run up to Destiny 2’s release, minus not continuing the first installment for the reported 10 years, was a brilliant one, even resulting in a solid PC version. Unfortunately, almost every decision thereafter has left the community sorely disappointed. How do you feel about Bungie’s latest decisions?
This is at least the third time Bungie has tried to do something shady and get away with it, only to change it back as soon as they get caught in the process. I used to have so much respect for the company back in the Halo days. Fuck them now, they’re not the good guys for “realising their mistakes and fixing it for the community” (as they like to put it). Their reputation is beyond stained, whether that’s Activision’s fault alone or whether they both equally had a part in it.
I’ve actually given up on D2 now. I paid for Curse of Osiris and it was fun but there is just not enough going on to keep me coming back regularly and constant stories of Bungie’s shady coding doesn’t help. What happened to the amazing company that bought us Halo?! Sold out to Activision!!!