Lot 2 players are convinced the game is secretly ripping them off. While on the surface it’s an epic space opera about humanity confronting cosmic evil in a post-apocalyptic future, Bungie’s sci-fi shooter is also a Pokemon-like collectathon where, instead of cute magical creatures, players conquer rare, graceful and powerful weapons. The game’s latest “weightgate” controversy is a strangely convincing conspiracy theory that proposes that certain ideal weapon variants are disappearing into the market at much lower rates than junk variants, and it is rekindling old debates about Lot 2‘s loot system and whether it’s actually fun or not.
If you’re a casual player, you can probably guess that I’m talking about perk combos and god rolls, but if you’re not, it’s important to know a thing or two about the basics. in the heart of Lot 2‘s loot hunt. Most of the weapons you can get in the game come with two random perks that do everything from increasing reload speed to more interesting things like adding elemental explosions to precision hits.
Some perk combinations are considered much, much better than others, based on their synergy with the weapon’s underlying stats and the broader meta-dominant character build at any given time. These combinations are called god rolls and determine whether the legendary drop you just found is worth keeping or if it’s junk that needs to be destroyed immediately. In theory, perk combinations should be completely random, offering an equal chance of getting a god roll as any other possible permutation. But a new conspiracy says this doesn’t really work, and players think they have the math to prove it.
The core of this scandal, that Destination enthusiast Paul Tassi Forbes is potentially 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 shape 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 yet highly effective threat.
But players have had the first encounter in the Vesper’s Host dungeon ad nauseum and have had more trouble scoring this particular god scroll than seemingly any other in recent history. Shortly after the dungeon went live, theories emerged that there must be some sort of bug on Bungie’s side that is inadvertently making the god roll for VS Chill Inhibitor shockingly rare. One player’s data test this hypothesis blew up over the weekend, so much so that Bungie decided to respond immediately.
“Hey everyone, we had a conversation with our Sandbox people about this this morning,” says the Destination team Twitter account wrote on October 21. “There is no additional weighting active for legendary weapon benefits Lot 2. We added additional tuning for exotic class items in a recent update, but that’s a different system. It seemed like an open and shut case, with the denial leaving no room for alternative interpretations or theories. Days later, however, players have continued to crunch the numbers and find Bungie’s rebuttal even harder to believe.
Here’s the gist of the conspiracy as it took shape this week: as expressed by T1Vendetta. It’s not that Bungie is deliberately making the most desirable god rolls for weapons harder to make than other perk combinations, but rather that the RNG code arbitrarily favors some combinations over others. Specifically, there is an idea that benefits that are further apart in the tables for Bungie’s API for Lot 2 They are less likely to appear together, while those closer together are much more likely to congregate. So while these differences actually occur all the time, players only notice them when a weapon’s god roll combines two perks that are unusually far apart on the table.
An analysis of YouTuber Skarrow9 walks players through the theory in more detail and shows anecdotal player data and crowdsourced research to back it up. There is a growing distrust in the community that this is actually due to a bug dating back to the release of The final shapeas evidenced by the unusual perk distribution drop rates for a grenade launcher reissued in that expansion Called a truth teller. “At this time it appears there is no malice directed at or from Bungie, but the data is there,” one player wrote on the subreddit in one of the many popular topics discussing the issue. “Whether it’s a bug or an issue with the way benefits are generated, we just want answers or further research.”
There are already some players trying to figure out how such a bug could sneak into the game without Bungie noticing, with one guess being that it’s due to a hidden bias somewhere in the RNG, but it’s currently programmed for perks. Bungie hasn’t stepped in again to clarify whether the community is still leaning against windmills or if there really is a deeper problem at hand that’s keeping players from getting the god role they want. Whatever the actual truth turns out to be, the whole ordeal leaves players grappling with a much bigger question: was Destiny’s loot hunt? ever actually good?
The game has always tried to strike a balance between giving players what they want, when they want it, and letting them grind for it until they get lucky. Making the loot easy and simple to obtain would defeat the purpose of the game, but at a certain point too much busywork and RNG can make the whole thing feel more like operating a slot machine than actual fun to have. These tradeoffs, and how successfully Bungie balances them, were at the forefront this month, especially since weapon creation was semi-retired.
That system used to work as a source of protection against bad luck, ultimately allowing players to forge exactly the god scroll they wanted, whether it fell or not. It was a double-edged sword, however, as it also eliminated the need for actual god throws when players encountered them. Instead of messing around with unlocking crafting patterns to craft their favorite weapon, players are now back to toiling through the same activities over and over again, waiting for luck. As someone who returned to the Lot 2 loot mines this month, it absolutely sucks.
“The benefit of making weapons will always be superior to mindlessly grinding weapons,” reads one message which recently received a lot of attention on the subreddit. In fact, user Lordofabyss argues that managing multiple roles across dozens of weapons because you don’t know which one will unexpectedly become part of the future meta is inconvenient and a mess. It’s also a grind for those who, for whatever reason, never get the god role they were looking for. Another big thread points to thisregardless of crafting, the overall reward level for more difficult activities in Lot 2 feel unnecessarily stingy. There’s nothing worse than running dungeon or raid encounters for an hour and not getting anything useful.
One conversation on Twitter brought up these long-standing issues Lot 2 in the context of MMOs in general, which is what Bungie’s game has slowly become over the years. “RNG is RNG,” tweeted CammyCakesYT. “Regardless of whether there is an unknown underlying bug…Lot 2 grind feels bad compared to other games because it was always missing: player trading, crafting system for complex customization, cosmetics to use spare money for. Without delving deep into the weeds Lot 2‘s loot hunt compared to that in games like Final Fantasy XIV, Diablo IVor War frameOne thing it’s clearly suffering from at the moment is the fact that god roles are essentially the only something to chase now.
Maybe that will change ambitious next year Code name: Frontier planswhich Bungie has said will borrow from metroidvanias and roguelikes to structure the content in a way that may feel fresher and more satisfying. For now, bugged god, or not, the state of Lot 2 feels a bit superficial. The new dungeon is excellent and this episode’s potion-based tonic system is a very cool idea, but the underlying grind that holds the whole thing together feels weaker than it has in a long time.
Update 10/24/2024 7:20 PM ET: Bungie has responded to the Lot 2 community’s ongoing discussions about the alleged weighting of perks and confirms that it will renew its own investigation. It definitely sounds like there’s more than a grain of truth to the “weightgate” conspiracy theory after all.
“While we have confirmed that there are no intentional perks on weapons within our content configuration, we are now investigating a potential issue in our code regarding the way RNG perks are generated,” the development team said. tweeted. “Thank you to all the players who contributed to collecting data across the community. This data has been extremely helpful in our research and we are currently working on internal simulations to confirm your findings.”
