‘Tis the season for holiday events and just last week I covered Destiny 2 and their upcoming holiday extravaganza The Dawning. The event began on the 19th and unfortunately, it has all been downhill from there for Bungie.
The first revelation was a major glitch in the new Crucible mode Mayhem. The point of this game type is faster, more chaotic play. Power ammo spawns more often and special attacks recharge more quickly than they usually would.
Unfortunately, one class type has benefited more than the others. Users on Reddit discovered a glitch that allowed Warlocks running the Voidwalker sub-class unlimited access to their special ability, Nova Bomb. This is a serious balancing issue for these matches and unfair to anyone running a different class who can’t spam their super over and over again.
Bungie is aware of the issue, but has revealed that it won’t be fixed before the end of The Dawning on January 9th. They also announced that players will not be banned for exploiting this glitch. It looks like Guardians will just have to cope with an extra level of Mayhem in their matches until the new year.
Super powered Warlocks are not the only issue with Bungie’s newest event. The most recent target of fan vitriol is The Eververse Trading Company. This in game store run by vendor Tess Everis is where players can come to purchase event exclusive gear and items.
Before the event Bungie announced that all items would be available for purchase with Bright Dust, a currency that is collected within the game. However the items are incredibly expensive, making it hard for players to earn enough to buy them all within the limited time frame of this short event.
Players can also earn or purchase Dawning Engrams, which are essentially loot boxes. They can be earned daily from events throughout the solar system, but once again, given the random nature of loot boxes, it may be hard to collect enough to actually get what you’re looking for.
Of course, there is another way: silver. Silver is the currency in the game that can be purchased using real money. And silver can be used to purchase Dawning Engrams. It would appear that the best way to get this new loot is to simply purchase as many Dawning Engrams as it takes. Some fans feel like this makes the whole thing look like a poorly disguised way to push microtransactions on players.
The backlash has been so strong it has thrown the Bungie forums into turmoil. Right now the pages are flooded with threads calling for the removal of the Eververse store, but there is even more discord within those threads. Some players are outraged at what they see as a soulless cash grab, but others are defending Bungie, telling people that if they don’t like it, they don’t have to spend their money on the new loot, which is largely cosmetic in nature.
Bungie game director Christpher Barrett spoke out about these issues in a series of tweets yesterday. He had the following to say about the Eververse controversy:
These days it seems like Bungie can’t release a single update without a mountain of backlash from their players. It is encouraging that they are acknowledging the problems and working towards solutions. Hopefully 2018 will be a better year for Destiny 2 fans.