Fate 2
Bungie
“Rewards for completing ritual activities at the beginning of the Season of Desire will include additional ritual engrams (Vanguard, Crucible, Gambit). This influx of engrams will allow players to focus more often than Seasons past and present.”
Remember that? How is it going?
If you’ve played Destiny 2 at all this season, you know that what Bungie said in TWAB above just didn’t happen. Engrams are sparse, focus is very expensive, and it feels like we’re getting less loot, not more. Yes, there is data to support this.
Commander Pika he took information from many ritual activities, calculated engram drops and figured out what was wrong here. Here are the excerpts:
- All ritual playlists such as Vanguard Strikes, Crucible, and Gambit have an average vendor engram drop rate of around 30% or slightly less.
- While this is not a bit lower, it is very close to what past data on ritual playlist drop rate suggests, suggesting no increase in engram drop rate in general.
- Crucible can be slightly higher if you win in a row, Iron Banner is noticeably higher, almost a 75% win chance with a 50% drop rate.
- Given the increased cost to focus weapons, which now cost three grams, this means players will get 50% fewer weapons through focusing. PvP players will get 20-30% less instead if you win a good amount.
- The mathematical solution offered by Commander Pika is that Bungie would have to both double the engram drop rate and reduce the focus cost by 2 to offset the new costs. this makes the math a bit worse.
Fate 2
Bungie
The general point is that the engram drop rate, if improved at all, was not improved as meaningfully as promised from ritual activities. In turn, increased attentional costs mean less total loot. If you’ve dealt with this system at all, math aside, at least you know this feels is correct and here is the data to prove it.
Given Destiny’s current state, it wouldn’t surprise me if they just… increased the drop rate, which they either forgot or thought they did, but some tech issue prevented that from happening. But because it wasn’t a glaring error, it wasn’t investigated for a month into the season.
The easiest answer is to reduce the focus cost, which is the biggest problem most people have with the current system, although of course it would be nice if they made the drop rates what they actually should be. Regardless of what’s going on, the system doesn’t work and is somehow less useful than before. Adjustments need to be made.
Commander Pika also made a long video about it and it’s worth watching:
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