‘Destiny 2’ is on the brink of the biggest scandal in history

I’ve seen a lot of bugs, a lot of player complaints, and a lot of drama in the history of Destiny as a series. But when it comes out, what happened behind the scenes in Destiny 2 regarding loot will diminish yearswould possibly be the biggest scandal the game has ever seen. And I don’t just say that.

This is an old problem, players believe that certain advantages outweigh others on weapons. Every time this happens, Bungie says, “No, we checked, it doesn’t.” This happened again with the US Chill Inhibitor, a heavy grenade launcher from the Vesper’s Host raid. Players said the “god roll” combination of Envious Arsenal and Bait and Switch was almost impossible to get. A few players did some data analysis that seemed to indicate something was wrong here.

Bungie has looked at it, responded and said that the surprise, no, the benefits are still not taken into account. However, something else seems to be going on.

This idea was first put forward by T1Vendetta, who came up with the ‘proximity’ theory of droplets. Basically, the claim is that the way the perk columns are displayed in the API, which can be seen on light.gg, perks closest to each other drop the most often. As in, that looks like this (via Mossy Max):

In this example, followed by drop analysis, the most common drops are those with zero or one space between them, the yellow lines, which is a 1 in 24 chance of that particular combo. But then you move on to a distance of two, which is instead a 1 in 49 chance, twice as rare.

It gets crazy when you get to benefits that are three boxes apart (the list of benefits goes from top to bottom in this analysis). And those totals? They arrive at a 1 in 454 chance of getting that role.

The theory sounds crazy at first glance, but is demonstrated very clearly with a graph like this, where the light gray/white squares with the most drops are the closest advantage distance, and the black squares, with hardly any drops, are. the three distance advantage pairs. You can even test this yourself if you have a lot of Echoes engrams saved. Use them on the Season of Dawn weapons and catalog the perk pairs in those drops, comparing them to here.

I can’t emphasize enough how wild this is. This is no longer just conspiracy theories. Yes, it’s ‘fan analysis’, but there are… a lot of smart Destiny fans and many with a background in statistics running these numbers. And as an outside observer who doesn’t personally track these numbers, this statement makes sense because it explains so many aspects of this:

• It explains why even with RNG, where all these perk combinations should theoretically have an equal chance of being linked, it can seem impossible to go for a specific roll.
• It explains why it feels like you’re getting the same perks over and over again in a way that seems unlikely compared to the one you’re actually going for. Have you ever been given the same value pair three times in a row and said, “What the heck?” I think every player in the game has probably done that. This would indicate that it is more than just crazy RNG.
• It explains why Bungie says that when they look at it, individual benefits are not taken into account. Because they are watching individually benefits, but not so weighed combination idea.
• It indicates that Bungie is simply missing this rather than doing it on purpose to make it harder to chase God. Yes, the VS Chill Inhibitor throw is one of these super rare rolls, but if we do this analysis for all weapons, the range idea is perk agnostic, meaning a terrible roll can also be super rare. Of course, yes, sometimes this will be the best throw, but that’s not the case designed this way. Bungie does not appear to be lying, even though many may claim so. Still, it’s terrible.

I’m sold. I’ve seen enough at this point. Not only does the data here make sense, it also explains why Bungie is missing this by checking the wrong thing, and even anecdotally how RNG drops in the game have felt for years. And this is allowed again to have This has been going on for years, but we simply don’t know when it started.

If Bungie investigates this and admits that this is indeed happening, players will be furious. In this case they would be absolutely right. This is tens or even hundreds of hours per player if they were farming for one of these impossible rolls because it got messed up with a system that potentially weighs every drop in the game. Even if this wasn’t a lie or trick on Bungie’s part, it’s still absolutely inexcusable and it shouldn’t have been up to the players to discover this.

I can’t wait to see what Bungie says about this, and saying “we’ve checked it’s not true” isn’t going to work this time. At least not for me.

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