I'm going to make this a follow up post for all those who are saying "your top concerns will be addressed in the final game." That may very well be true, but I believe you are making an assumption and just taking bungie's word for it - and Bungie may have just issued the statement in order to try to sooth the heat that they're taking right now. First, lets look at their excuse: [quote]The PVE game tuning has changed pretty significantly since the Beta build was deployed. The nature of a Beta of this scale requires that it’s based off a build of the game that is now months old. So, in many cases, your feedback is helping us validate changes that were previously made based on internal feedback and playtesting. For example, we too felt that ammo (especially power ammo) was too scarce in PvE. In addition to retuning the drop rates, we built a system that guarantees power ammo drops for you and your Fireteam from certain enemies, giving power weapons a more reliable and predictable role in your arsenal. Other areas where we’ve made significant tuning changes include grenade effectiveness in PvE, Boss vitality, and weapon damage against non-player combatants.[/quote] I'm going to take this excuse point by point: 1. What can you learn by product testing an obsolete version of the game? It's like Apple product-testing the Iphone 4S right now when they offer several superior products. It doesn't make sense. The comparative value is so low that it literally makes no sense to product test an obsolete version of the game when a superior version is presumably available. 2. IF a superior version was available, then wouldn't it make sense to product-test THAT version so that if there is any additional fine-tuning they need to do, they can be well prepared to issue a hotfix patch before launch so that you deliver a far superior, more refined product? I think that makes complete sense - and that is why most companies don't product test OLD, OBSOLETE versions of their products. IMO, this excuse just doesn't fly. 3. Even if they didn't want to use the final tunes for the release of the game, they presumably had the tunes from the reveal available, and the game was far better received during the reveal. Even players who are unhappy with the settings now, players like RWG and Lost Sols, reported that the beta was NOT reflective of their experience with the reveal. They could have easily used those settings for the beta, and the beta may have been more well received. 4. They said themselves that they released the beta with poor tuning for the purpose of confirming their own thoughts on the matter, but this is just hogwash. Why purposely release a bad product for the purposes of confirming that it is bad? That doesn't make sense, especially when Bungie knew from the outset prior to the beta that there were a LOT of skeptics regarding many of the changes they're making to the game. Why give MORE fuel to add to the fire so close to launch, especially when that fuel is likely to increase negative feedback and reduce overall sales? After all, Bungie is in the business to sell videogames, so putting a bad product out there doesn't even make logical sense. 5. This is a beta, but it is NOT [u]JUST[/u] a beta. Given all the skeptics out there, Bungie knows that this beta will be a crucial point for the success or failure of D2. They used it as a marketing tool to try to boost pre-orders, and they know that the beta period is a time when they should be cementing pre-orders, winning over skeptics, and increasing pre-launch sales. So it makes absolutely NO business sense to NOT put your best foot forward in an attempt to do so. After all, Bungie is a business, and we can expect that a business would act in its own best interest to further its own goals (sell more games). Given all of these arguments, and Bungie's poor reputation for being honest and transparent, the fact that they came out and said "all these issues will be fixed in the final release" tends to fall on deaf ears. I don't think Bungie is stupid enough to purposely release a bad version of the game for the beta when they know it is a crucial moment for the game. I think it is FAR more likely that Bungie saw this tuning and did not see any problems with it. I do think they will try certain bandaids to try to make the game more palatable, but I don't think they will be anything but quick-fix temporary solutions. There is only so much they can do since they won't tune PVE separately from PVP. So while they can decrease ability recharge times, they can't decrease it too much because not having access to abilities is a pillar of their PVP-first approach. This is ALSO the reason why armor can only do so much to impact the ability regen times. Ammo drops? They can always increase those, but it doesn't address the issue that PVE players just plain don't like whittling away at strong bosses with weak weapons. There's nothing engaging or exciting about it, and that kind of play DECREASES rather than INCREASES replayability. The TL;DR- I don't buy that Bungie was testing an old, obsolete product. I think it FAR more likely that they simply don't respect PVE players - as has been their pattern of behavior over the last 3 years. I don't trust them at all to implement a solution that does anything more than the bare minimum to shut PVE players up, but I don't believe they will actually give us anything to make us happy. THAT kind of effort will be reserve for the PVP crowd.