Destiny 2 Players are convinced that the game is secretly ripping them off. Although at first glance Bungie’s sci-fi shooter is an epic space opera about humanity’s confrontation with cosmic evil in a post-apocalyptic future, it is also one Pokémon-Collection marathon where players collect rare, ornate and powerful weapons instead of cute magical creatures. The latest “Weightgate” controversy in the game is a strangely convincing conspiracy theory that suggests that certain ideal weapon variants are much less likely to drop than junk variants, and it’s reigniting old debates about it Destiny 2Loot system and whether or not it’s actually fun.
If you’re a regular player, you can probably guess that I’m talking about advantage combos and god rolls, but if not, it’s important to know a thing or two about the basics in the heart of Destiny 2‘s prey hunt. Most of the weapons you can get in the game come with two random perks, ranging from increasing reload speed to more interesting things like adding elemental blasts to precision hits.
Some perk combinations are considered much, much better than others due to their synergy with underlying weapon stats and the broader meta that dictates character build at any given time. These combinations are called god rolls and determine whether the legendary find you just found is worth keeping or is junk that should be destroyed immediately. In theory, advantage combinations should be completely random and provide the same chance of a good roll as any other possible permutation. But a new conspiracy says it doesn’t really work that way, and players think they have the math to prove it.
At the center of this scandal is Determination Amateur Paul Tassi Forbes Is This is called possibly the greatest in the history of the gameis a new grenade launcher called VS Chill Inhibitor. It has just been added to the game Episode: Revenantthe second content update since then The final form Expansion in June as one of the legendary drops in the new Vesper’s Host dungeon. The God Roll perks are Envious Arsenal and Bait and Switch, which reload the weapon from reserves and increase damage, respectively. Both are activated by dealing damage with other weapons, making them an easy to use but extremely effective threat.
But players have farmed the first encounter in the Vesper’s Host dungeon ad nauseam and are fighting to achieve that special god roll more than seemingly anyone in recent memory. Shortly after the dungeon went live, theories immediately emerged that there must be a bug at Bungie that inadvertently caused the god to roll dice for “VS Chill Inhibitor” shockingly rarely. A player’s data Testing this hypothesis blew up so much over the weekend that Bungie decided to respond directly.
“Hello everyone, we had a conversation with our sandbox people about this this morning,” he said Determination Team Twitter account wrote on October 21st. “No perk weighting is active for the benefits of legendary weapons Destiny 2. We added a perk attunement for exotic class items in a recent update, but that’s a different system.” It seemed like an open-and-shut case, and the rejection left no room for alternative interpretations or theories. Days later, however, players have crunched the numbers further and are finding Bungie’s rebuttal even harder to believe.
Here’s the gist of the conspiracy as it takes shape this week: as articulated by T1Vendetta. It’s not that Bungie is intentionally making the most coveted weapon god rolls harder to get than other perk combinations, but rather that its RNG code happens to favor some combinations over others. Specifically, there is the idea that perks that are listed further apart in the tables for Bungie’s API should be taken into account Destiny 2 They are less likely to show up together, while those that are closer together are much more likely to show up together. Although these disparities occur all the time, players only notice them when a weapon’s divinity roll happens to combine two advantages that are unusually far apart in the table.
An analysis of YouTuber Skarrow9 walks players through the theory in more detail and presents anecdotal player data and crowdsourced research to back it up. Mistrust is growing in the community that this is actually due to a bug dating back to the release of The final formas evidenced by the unusual drop rates in perk distribution for a grenade launcher re-released in this expansion called Truthteller. “At this point it appears there is no ill intent toward or from Bungie, but the data is there,” one player wrote in the subreddit in one of the many popular threads discuss the topic. “Whether it’s a bug or a problem generating benefits, we just want answers or further investigation.”
There are already some players trying to figure out how a bug like this could creep into the game without Bungie noticing it. One guess is that this is due to a hidden bias somewhere in the RNG currently programmed for perk drops. Bungie hasn’t commented to clarify whether the community is still against Windmills or if there really is a deeper issue that’s keeping players from getting the God Roll they want. Whatever the actual truth of the matter, the whole ordeal leaves players with a much bigger question: Was Destiny hunting prey? always actually good?
The game has always tried to manage the balancing act of giving players what they want, when they want it, and making them strive for it until they get lucky. It would defeat the purpose of the game to make obtaining loot easy and straightforward, but at some point too much work and RNG can make the whole thing feel more like operating a slot machine than actually being fun. These trade-offs and how successfully Bungie balances them have been at the forefront this month, particularly as weapon manufacturing has been partially halted.
This system used to serve as a protection against bad luck and eventually allowed players to fake the exact god roll they wanted, regardless of whether it ever fell or not. However, it was a double-edged sword because it also eliminated the need for actual god rolls when players actually encountered them. Instead of tediously searching for crafting patterns to create their weapon of choice, players are now stuck doing the same activities over and over again and waiting for their luck. As someone who has returned to the Destiny 2 Loot mines this month, it definitely sucks.
“The benefit of making weapons will always be greater than mindlessly grinding weapons.” reads a post this got a lot of attention on the subreddit recently. User lordofabyss basically argues that managing multiple rolls for dozens of weapons is tedious and tedious because you don’t know which of them might unexpectedly become part of the future meta. It’s also a burden on those who, for whatever reason, never really get the “God Roll” they were looking for. Another big thread points this outregardless of craft, the overall level of rewards for more difficult activities in Destiny 2 I feel unnecessarily stingy. There’s nothing worse than doing dungeon or raid encounters for an hour and not getting anything useful.
A conversation on Twitter brought these long-standing issues to the forefront Destiny 2 in the context of MMOs in general, which Bungie’s game has slowly evolved into over the years. “RNG is RNG” tweeted CammyCakesYT. “Regardless of whether there is an unknown underlying error…Destiny 2 Grind feels bad compared to other games because it has always been missing: player trading, crafting system for complex modifications, cosmetics to use substitute currency.” Without diving deep into the weeds Destiny 2is a loot hunt compared to those in games like Final Fantasy XIV, Diablo IVor WarframeOne thing it’s clearly suffering from at the moment is the fact that God Rolls are essentially that only Thing to chase now.
Maybe that will change Next year is ambitious Codename: Border Planswhich Bungie said will borrow from metroidvanias and roguelikes to structure content in a way that potentially feels fresher and more satisfying. Right now the state of affairs is whether the bugged god rolls or not Destiny 2 seems a bit superficial to me. The new dungeon is excellent and this episode’s potion-based tonic system is a really cool idea, but the underlying grind feels weaker overall than it has in a long time.
Update 10/24/2024 7:20 p.m. ET: Bungie responded Destiny 2 Notes the ongoing community discussions regarding the alleged weighting of perks and confirms that it will continue its own investigation. It certainly sounds like there is more than a grain of truth to the “Weightgate” conspiracy theory.
“While we have confirmed that there is no intentional weapon perk weighting in our content setup, we are currently investigating a potential issue in our code regarding RNG perk generation,” the development team said tweeted. “Thank you to all players who contributed to data collection across the community. This data was tremendously helpful to our investigation and we are currently working on internal simulations to confirm your findings.”
