With everybody (rightfully) hot and bothered about cipher decoder drop rates, I wanted to use this opportunity to validate some of our frustrations with some numbers that a lot of you are definitely already aware of, but some people don't seem to be. I love Destiny, and sadly, I may just keep on playing it no matter how bad it gets. Right now, there is a perfectly valid reason that things are this way (Covid combined with most resources being poured into Beyond Light), but I think the most frustrating part about what we're experiencing is being talked to like children. Bungie's approach to loot has been better at some times than it has at others, but one thing they ALWAYS do is come out and hit us with the "here's all the ways we're being generous enough to let you get the loot you want." They put exclamation points at the end of their sentences, and just generally tend to try to talk us into being excited. They do some good things (always props for double nightfall rewards... now if only I had a place to put all those prisms), but I want to specifically talk about God Rolls and how the cipher decoder shortage is creating unparalleled depression in this respect. Here's the math: On the new Braytech auto, there are 9 possible barrels, 8 possible magazines, 6 perks in the 3rd slot, and 6 in the final slot. There are 4 possible masterwork options. Because you can get 2 barrels and 2 magazines, there are 36 unique combinations of barrels and 28 unique combinations of magazines available. One thing I don't think people realize is how fast these numbers grow when we're talking about unique weapon combinations. For this gun, there are 36 x 28 x 6 x 6 x 4 completely unique rolls, or... 145,152. If you cared about both barrels (you probably only care about one) and both magazines (same, but you could make an argument that it would be cool to have, say, extended mag for PvE and ricochet rounds for PvP, or whatever you're into), that number is how many unique ways the gun could show up. 1 in 145,152. More practically, let's say you only value one barrel and one magazine in your chase for your God Roll. In those 36 possible combinations of barrels, yours, whatever it is, shows up in 8 of them (or, paired once each with the 8 other available barrels). You have a 8/36, or 2/9, chance to see the barrel you're looking for. Similarly, your magazine will show up 7 times in the 28 possible mag combinations (a 1 in 4 chance of getting the mag you want). Your more realistic equation, as you're rewarded for your flexibility, is significantly more manageable, but still startling... 2/9 x 1/4 x 1/6 x 1/6 x 1/4, or a 1 in 2,592. This number can be cut down depending on how flexible you are... fine with either Dynamic Sway or Mulligan? Congratulations, you've doubled your chances to 1 in 1,296. That's... if you get the gun in the first place. Most of us can make a good number of these guns work for us, but it's really depressing to think about these numbers if you truly love a gun and want to chase that specific roll. For example, I am closing in on Season Rank 500 (I'm not proud of this... be gentle), and I have spent the ENTIRE season looking for a very specific Gnawing Hunger at the Prismatic Recaster (or really anywhere I can get them). I have gotten an awful lot of really good Gnawing Hungers... I mean, 600 autos could probably be dominant without ANY perks right now... but I have not gotten the specific combination that I'm most interested in. This is true despite the fact that I will reliably get dozens of Gnawing Hungers a week between my 3 characters. Which brings me to this current event. I'm not the first to express disappointment about the drop rates for ciphers. I'm probably not in the first 10,000 to express that. But when you pair it with this really fun but completely futile idea of chasing these God Rolls... this is a really, REALLY depressing event. I played 8 gambit prime matches this morning... zero ciphers. Yesterday I ran Nightmare Hunts for 2 hours with a friend at about 3 minutes per run (call it 5 with load times and affording for any small breaks we took). That's 24 rewardable activity completions. He got 2 (happy for him), and I got... zero. After getting 2 early yesterday and being kind of excited, I am now on hour 7 of cipher-less gameplay. Worst of all... this is more time that we have to spend OUTSIDE of the Haunted Forest (you know, the overrated but hey at least slightly different activity SPECIFIC TO THIS EVENT) doing all the things we are completely sick of already just to go in to get... oh, neat... a chance at one of these two underpowered 450 rpm auto rifles that we can at least enjoy in PvE and hope they see the meta someday in PvP. When the chances of you getting your God Roll are 1 in 2,592, these drop rates are inexcusable. I am willing to bet that Bungie, after hearing how upset we are, will come out and say "Wow, these were totally supposed to be higher, we will fix that small error right away." But I'm not buying it. Our history with them, to me, says that they hope people don't do this sort of math, and just kinda keep on trying. Sadly, I concede that the game itself, even at its absolute worst, is still one of the best games out there, and will keep me coming back because it's just that good. I'm excited for the new season, but also completely aware that it probably won't be long before we encounter more of these completely avoidable slaps to the face from Bungie. My biggest question to them is this: What are you afraid of? That more of us will get the guns we love? I'm anticipating a drop rate buff in the coming days, and optimistically counting on seeing somewhere between 25 and 100 of these auto rifles during this event. At the absolute high end of that spectrum, that's about a 4% chance I'll see the roll I have outlined on Light.gg. What are you afraid of, Bungie? That I'll get the gun I want? Why?