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Destiny 2's XP Scam
Nov. 27th, 2017 01:11 amI've seen this a few times lately, which is basically just another application of loot box scamming.
Glad I never cared for the Destiny series. :P But anyway, the gist of the issue is that once you hit the hard cap of lv20 in destiny 2, you continue to gain XP as normal. Then every time you hit a particular amount (I think 5000?) you get a 'bright emblem'. Essentially a randomized powerup or customization/etc which you have to activate at the game's in-game store... where you can also buy bright emblems with real money!
Basically bright emblems are loot boxes.
However, the unusual deal in Destiny 2, as Jim points out, is that if you earned XP "too fast" (faster than the game devs wanted you to.) then you wouldn't get as much xp as you were suppose to as indicated by your xp bar - however the game would continue to tell you you were getting the full amount.
IE: The game is programmed to lie to you.
After some gamers investigated this themselves and started rattling some cages over it, the devs quickly agreed that it wasn't doing what it was suppose to do and that they'd fix it. But note that given how long the game has been out and only now are making changes, the only thing they're sorry about it seems is about getting caught.
The XP scam basically encouraged the purchase of loot box/bright emblems because it would start feeling like it was taking longer than apparently necessary to earn the randomized rewards with normal gameplay/grinding. In worse case scenarios players would be actually earning only 4% of what they were being told they were earning.
So I guess we can add "lying to the gamer" as another technique devs use to tweak game mechanics to "encourage" the purchase of DLC/microtransactions.
Glad I never cared for the Destiny series. :P But anyway, the gist of the issue is that once you hit the hard cap of lv20 in destiny 2, you continue to gain XP as normal. Then every time you hit a particular amount (I think 5000?) you get a 'bright emblem'. Essentially a randomized powerup or customization/etc which you have to activate at the game's in-game store... where you can also buy bright emblems with real money!
Basically bright emblems are loot boxes.
However, the unusual deal in Destiny 2, as Jim points out, is that if you earned XP "too fast" (faster than the game devs wanted you to.) then you wouldn't get as much xp as you were suppose to as indicated by your xp bar - however the game would continue to tell you you were getting the full amount.
IE: The game is programmed to lie to you.
After some gamers investigated this themselves and started rattling some cages over it, the devs quickly agreed that it wasn't doing what it was suppose to do and that they'd fix it. But note that given how long the game has been out and only now are making changes, the only thing they're sorry about it seems is about getting caught.
The XP scam basically encouraged the purchase of loot box/bright emblems because it would start feeling like it was taking longer than apparently necessary to earn the randomized rewards with normal gameplay/grinding. In worse case scenarios players would be actually earning only 4% of what they were being told they were earning.
So I guess we can add "lying to the gamer" as another technique devs use to tweak game mechanics to "encourage" the purchase of DLC/microtransactions.
