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Destiny 2 investigation reveals ‘hidden XP scaling’ system

It looks like Bungie may have a few questions to answer, as an investigation into Destiny 2's XP system has revealed some interesting tricks at play. This week, it has come to light that Destiny 2 may use a ‘dynamic XP' system, which means players may often be rewarded a lot less than they initially think.

Currently, once you hit the level 20 cap in Destiny 2, the game continues to give you experience points for playing. However, instead of leveling up, you will receive a ‘Bright Engram' each time you fill the XP bar all the way. These engrams are Destiny's loot drops and they can be bought for real money this time around, or you can keep grinding the end-game content to earn them through XP gathering.

Over on Reddit, user ‘EnergiserX' posted details of their investigation into the Destiny 2 XP system after you hit the level 20 cap. It seems that there is a “hidden scaling factor” that will impact how much XP you unlock in a short space of time. The more XP you try and gather in a short space of time, the less each point is worth. According to the post, this scaling factor can “increase at least to the point where you're only really earning four percent” of the XP you should be getting.

This system is activated in all parts of Destiny 2's end-game content. For instance, Public Events apparently activate a 50 percent reduction in XP earnings for players who have hit the level cap.

There is no cap on the amount of XP you can earn in Destiny 2. However, this investigation seems to show that you will face diminishing returns depending on how fast you try to earn it.

So far, Bungie has not commented on the report, but it is an interesting look at how the game works. Earning Bright Engrams is still easy enough to do and overall, Destiny 2 is a much more rewarding game compared to the original. However, it seems clear that if these tests are accurate, then Bungie has balanced things in such a way that paying for ‘Silver' currency will act as a shortcut to better loot.

KitGuru Says: I haven't felt the need to buy Bright Engrams in Destiny 2 yet, but there is definitely something sneaky about this hidden XP scaling system. It will be interesting to see how Bungie addresses this in the future.

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6 comments

  1. How is this not worse than what EA is doing with BFII?

  2. Because D2 doesn’t have powerups for sale that affect in-game performance. BF2 did. All the armour you can get from Bright Engrams drops at power level 10 and you have to infuse your current armour into it, putting it at the same power as what you had before.

    The key difference that makes this okay is that LITERALLY EVERYTHING from Bright Engrams is cosmetic. There is absolutely ZERO chance of getting something to give you an advantage.

  3. Brett Aaron Russell

    The loot mentioned in this has almost zero effect on the gameplay, it’s just cosmetic as far as I can tell.
    The end game grind isn’t to keep leveling up and unlocking the loot specified in the article, it’s to get good loot drops from the actual missions themselves, which you can’t purchase with real money.

    While it is a dirty play, it doesn’t really change anything, which makes me wonder why they bothered, obviously just to try and squeeze a few more pennies from paying players.

  4. These are cosmetic items. They have no bearing on the actual game play or progression.. There is a cap on the amount of tokens you can find in cache’s per planet and your restricted to participating in weekly milestones in order to upgrade your power rating after level 20 but that’s why it’s called a grind!

  5. because what you can get from lootbox in destiny 2 is purely cosmetic. there’s no such thing inside the lootbox that will give you an advantage over other player. bfII lootcard have everything that can give you an advantage over other player, new ships, new playable character, weapons, ships upgrades, weapons upgrades, character upgrades, and so on.

  6. Dirty practice is a dirty practice.