Bungie has finally addressed one of the most vocal concerns from the community i.e. Exotic gear drop rates. They’ve decided to alter the drop rates so that players have a higher chance of getting an exotic. Although the announcement was met with mixed reactions, it’s an overall change for the better.
The problem with exotics in Destiny 2’s year 1
There was a problem with Destiny 2 that perhaps its predecessor didn’t have. The sequel tends to draw in more casual players especially when the game is free to play for PS Plus members. Therefore, the game has two types of players, one is the seasoned veteran, who’s played Destiny 1 before and knows the grind aspect of the game. The other is the casual player who doesn’t play as often and only plays in their free time for fun.
There’s a conflict of interest here. In order to appeal to the casuals more, Bungie made it really easy to get exotics in the first year of Destiny 2. Exotic quests were easy and even getting exotic loot to drop randomly was pretty easy. They even handed out an exotic weapon (a good one) for free as a pre-order bonus for the base game. As a result, the ‘hardcore’ or older players were a bit annoyed because, for them, it takes away the “grinding” aspect of the game they loved.
Whichever side you may have been on, this was without a doubt one of the reasons for the game’s failure in its first year. Due to the game handing out everything to its players, it was too easy to get everything. Within a month or two, players had everything the game could offer and there was no other reason to play the game anymore. The DLCs didn’t help to fix this and things looked bad for the game.
The problem now
After listening to a lot of criticism from fans, Bungie brought a lot of changes with the newest DLC Forsaken. The new DLC has so far been really good. It hasn’t disappointed and it keeps on bringing in new things. It seems that Bungie has taken a different approach this time, hopefully, that works out better than the previous.
Of the many changes brought by the developers, one of them was to reduce the drop rate for exotics. Many exotic weapons were put into quests that weren’t as easy as you would expect. For example, there are some parts of the Ace of Spade’s quest that require you to get hand cannon kills in the crucible. For PvE players, this quest step is a nightmare, but it makes the game challenging. Earning the exotic through hard work instead of it getting handed to you feels a lot better. On that front, Bungie has done a good job.
However, what fans don’t appreciate are the extremely rare exotic engram drops. Players did ask for this, but perhaps they didn’t ask for the drop rate to go too down. Players have gone days, even weeks without seeing an engram drop. What makes things more frustrating is that Bungie has a system in place where every exotic gear drop is random. So even if you do get an exotic engram, there’s a high chance you might get something you already have.
That annoys a lot of players because not only is it hard to get exotics but then you get something you already had. Bungie has finally addressed this by altering the drop rate a little. They’ve also made it so that you have a higher chance of obtaining an exotic that you don’t have instead of a duplicate. This is what their team had to say:
“Exotics are intended to be meaningful long-term chases,”.
“Finding an Exotic should be rare but impactful. Right now we are falling short of the ‘impactful’ part of our goal. There’s nothing exciting or powerful about getting your fourth Fighting Lion when all you really want is a Two-Tailed Fox. We plan to increase the chance for Exotics to drop something you don’t already have.”
Is it a good change?
Some players have argued that Bungie has yet again leaned towards the casual players. However, the drop rate for exotics even in Destiny 1 wasn’t this bad. In fact, you had the three of coins in the previous games which would increase the chance of getting an exotic every time you didn’t get one. Therefore, by the time you had killed around 7 bosses, you were almost guaranteed an exotic. Here, that’s not the case.
Instead, they’ve actually removed three of coins from Forsaken. Therefore, the change was much needed alongside the masterwork update. Masterwork cores were introduced in D2 year 1 for something else but quickly became an infusion material in Forsaken. Naturally, as the name suggests, they’re not that easy to get. However, since they’re a part of infusion now, which is something people often do, that change is also a welcome one.
All the changes being made to Destiny right now are a step in the right direction. The game truly feels rejuvenated thanks to Forsaken, here’s to hoping Bungie keeps the momentum up.