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Edited by sKiZoMoNki:
11/7/2024 8:21:45 AM
28
Player Retention Over Player Enjoyment? A Look at Bungie's RNG
It’s time to get real about Bungie’s priorities. The main metric Bungie and its shareholders use to measure success isn’t player satisfaction or game balance—it’s player retention time. Keep this in mind!
1. Perk Weighing: The "Bug" That Isn’t a Bug
Recently, Bungie sort of admitted to weighing perks. They called it a “bug,” naturally. But here’s the thing: when a bug conveniently impacts players' drop rates in ways that keep them grinding, can we really call it a bug? The more obvious question: who on the dev team let this “bug” go public? Maybe someone forgot to cover their tracks, or maybe they didn’t expect players to notice this weighing so clearly. Either way, Bungie wants us to drop the issue as quickly as possible. But why should we?
For years, the Bungie Defender Squad has called this a “tin-foil theory,” dismissing anyone who dared question Destiny’s RNG. And they’d still be calling it that if the evidence hadn’t become so painfully obvious. Fanboys need to stop treating Bungie like a scrappy garage business run by a few lucky gamers who just happened to create an awesome game. Bungie is a multi-billion dollar corporation with shareholders to answer to. So, wake up.
Yes, bugs happen, even to big companies. But this one is a little too convenient—and it’s very much in their favor.
2. RNG Decline: The Curse of Consistent Play
Ever noticed how the longer you play, the worse your RNG gets? It’s like Destiny’s RNG system punishes commitment. New players log in and get higher drop rates right out of the gate, feeding them a dopamine fix that keeps them coming back for more. It’s an effective strategy to hook new players, while slowing down the reward rates for veterans keeps things “balanced.” After all, Bungie’s top priority is maintaining a level playing field—even if it means manipulating RNG to do so.
While other games celebrate top-tier players as living legends, Bungie seems determined to make sure that everyone stays on relatively even footing. They’ll go so far as to add mechanics that ensure even the least-skilled players don’t feel left behind. We’ve seen this across the board in Destiny’s history: skill-based matchmaking in PvP, SRL racing in Destiny 1 where gates narrowed for skilled players while giving wider gates to less skilled ones, XP throttling, and the point debacle in Gambit that kept the traveling team from ever feeling too far behind. Each of these “features” ended up being blatant attempts to flatten the playing field and keep everyone (read: new or casual players) in the game as long as possible.
So, sure, the dopamine fix works wonders to hook newcomers. But veterans? They’re stuck in a grind designed to keep them chasing a prize just out of reach. And as the game goes on, the more obvious it becomes that Destiny’s RNG isn’t just bad luck—it’s engineered retention.
3. Pinnacle Drops: The "Same-Category" Phenomenon
And then there’s the suspicious habit of pinnacle drops stacking up in the same category. My own recent experience says it all: three heavy weapon drops in a row, four class items the week before, and to top it off, four Roses—all with the same perk lineup of Accurized Rounds. I don’t know about you, but that doesn’t scream “random” to me.
Sure, occasionally you’ll have a stroke of luck and see multiple drops that work in your favor. But when RNG keeps delivering identical items over and over, it stops feeling like luck and starts feeling like weighting. Destiny’s RNG could easily be defined as a random generator… that’s been “guided” to keep you grinding.
4. Time for Transparency: Acknowledge the Weighing
If Bungie is using weighting to keep us grinding, they should just own it. Other games have been upfront about similar systems. There’s no need to act as if the player base won’t notice or won’t care. In fact, acknowledging the use of weighted drops would at least demonstrate some respect for the community’s intelligence.
The truth is, Bungie’s retention-based RNG is hardly a mystery. At this point, denying it only leads to resentment. When players feel manipulated, they check out. For a game that relies on its loyal player base, treating that loyalty as just another metric to exploit is risky.
So here we are, locked in a cycle of grind, weighted RNG, and so-called “bugs” that just so happen to keep us coming back for more. Bungie, if player retention is your holy grail, that’s fine—just admit it. We’re not asking for a miracle, just a little transparency.
Because let’s be real: Destiny is supposed to be about fun, challenge, and community, not a never-ending loop of manipulated RNG drops. And as more players become aware of how Destiny’s systems work, it might be time for Bungie to give us the transparency we deserve.
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1 ReplyEdited by xbroggiex: 11/7/2024 9:24:03 PMI think the most obvious thing that kind of compounds this thinking from Bungie is Transmog. When it was first implemented Synthstrand the green material was timegated to drop so no matter how well you did in the game with kills it would always drop the same amount within the same amount of time everytime. Eventually they removed this -blam!- currency since you needed like 150 strands to get 1 bounty and it took a good while to earn 150 strands. But even then there is other major issues with the system. Transmog bounty cap is redundant due to time commitment to unlock everything that its just not justifiable to have a cap on the bounties as the people buying eververse synthweaves are people not doing the bounties. You are capped on how many synthweaves you can carry which would make sense if there was no bounty cap but no we have both a synthweave cap and a bounty cap. Oh and there is the glaringly obvious time waster of having to go to the tower to deposit synthcord instead of the game just giving you synthweave on bounty completion. There is so many small changes Bungie could make to Destiny to make it an overall more enjoyable experience but they just don't unless the community unanimously screams at them to do it, they rarely if ever make changes that actually benefit the players without the outcry for it. Like the recent announcements to compensate the RNG debacle... you are telling me they can double the drops of a dungeon just like that with a single update..... but its not even a permanent thing or even being made a permanent thing for new/featured dungeons? That just shows how inept, out of touch or at worst intentionally stingy they are.
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Agreed, well said.
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I just stopped grinding rng
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Bungie have been doing all these types of tricks forever haha. Did you really think they were different 😂
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Bungies not sorry about perk weighting, they're sorry they got caught. Remember when they slowed exp gains towards eververse engrams and got caught. Not to be a basement dwelling tinfoil hat conspiracist, but it's kinda what bungie does
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2 RepliesIt's definitely not a bug and I strongly doubt it's limited to just one dungeon. They insisted there was no weighting, then Reddit proved it unequivocally, only then did they admit it. And no coincidence this happened during the same season they removed crafting and brought back the pinnacle grind, all in the name of "engagement." Of course this was done on purpose and has probably been around for a lot longer than we think.
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[quote]It’s time to get real about Bungie’s priorities. The main metric Bungie and its shareholders use to measure success isn’t player satisfaction or game balance—it’s player retention time. Keep this in mind! 1. Perk Weighing: The "Bug" That Isn’t a Bug Recently, Bungie sort of admitted to weighing perks. They called it a “bug,” naturally. But here’s the thing: when a bug conveniently impacts players' drop rates in ways that keep them grinding, can we really call it a bug? The more obvious question: who on the dev team let this “bug” go public? Maybe someone forgot to cover their tracks, or maybe they didn’t expect players to notice this weighing so clearly. Either way, Bungie wants us to drop the issue as quickly as possible. But why should we? For years, the Bungie Defender Squad has called this a “tin-foil theory,” dismissing anyone who dared question Destiny’s RNG. And they’d still be calling it that if the evidence hadn’t become so painfully obvious. Fanboys need to stop treating Bungie like a scrappy garage business run by a few lucky gamers who just happened to create an awesome game. Bungie is a multi-billion dollar corporation with shareholders to answer to. So, wake up. Yes, bugs happen, even to big companies. But this one is a little too convenient—and it’s very much in their favor. 2. RNG Decline: The Curse of Consistent Play Ever noticed how the longer you play, the worse your RNG gets? It’s like Destiny’s RNG system punishes commitment. New players log in and get higher drop rates right out of the gate, feeding them a dopamine fix that keeps them coming back for more. It’s an effective strategy to hook new players, while slowing down the reward rates for veterans keeps things “balanced.” After all, Bungie’s top priority is maintaining a level playing field—even if it means manipulating RNG to do so. While other games celebrate top-tier players as living legends, Bungie seems determined to make sure that everyone stays on relatively even footing. They’ll go so far as to add mechanics that ensure even the least-skilled players don’t feel left behind. We’ve seen this across the board in Destiny’s history: skill-based matchmaking in PvP, SRL racing in Destiny 1 where gates narrowed for skilled players while giving wider gates to less skilled ones, XP throttling, and the point debacle in Gambit that kept the traveling team from ever feeling too far behind. Each of these “features” ended up being blatant attempts to flatten the playing field and keep everyone (read: new or casual players) in the game as long as possible. So, sure, the dopamine fix works wonders to hook newcomers. But veterans? They’re stuck in a grind designed to keep them chasing a prize just out of reach. And as the game goes on, the more obvious it becomes that Destiny’s RNG isn’t just bad luck—it’s engineered retention. 3. Pinnacle Drops: The "Same-Category" Phenomenon And then there’s the suspicious habit of pinnacle drops stacking up in the same category. My own recent experience says it all: three heavy weapon drops in a row, four class items the week before, and to top it off, four Roses—all with the same perk lineup of Accurized Rounds. I don’t know about you, but that doesn’t scream “random” to me. Sure, occasionally you’ll have a stroke of luck and see multiple drops that work in your favor. But when RNG keeps delivering identical items over and over, it stops feeling like luck and starts feeling like weighting. Destiny’s RNG could easily be defined as a random generator… that’s been “guided” to keep you grinding. 4. Time for Transparency: Acknowledge the Weighing If Bungie is using weighting to keep us grinding, they should just own it. Other games have been upfront about similar systems. There’s no need to act as if the player base won’t notice or won’t care. In fact, acknowledging the use of weighted drops would at least demonstrate some respect for the community’s intelligence. The truth is, Bungie’s retention-based RNG is hardly a mystery. At this point, denying it only leads to resentment. When players feel manipulated, they check out. For a game that relies on its loyal player base, treating that loyalty as just another metric to exploit is risky. So here we are, locked in a cycle of grind, weighted RNG, and so-called “bugs” that just so happen to keep us coming back for more. Bungie, if player retention is your holy grail, that’s fine—just admit it. We’re not asking for a miracle, just a little transparency. Because let’s be real: Destiny is supposed to be about fun, challenge, and community, not a never-ending loop of manipulated RNG drops. And as more players become aware of how Destiny’s systems work, it might be time for Bungie to give us the transparency we deserve.[/quote] I got 4 exotic class items last weekend. All the same roll lol. How tf is that fair. Big waste of time grinding all those coins. I just gave it up
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I couldn't agree more. I've been saying for a long time but as you said, I'm met with the fanboys saying "yOu JuSt doN't unDerstAnd whAt raNdoM mEans, IDIOT" Just this week, my 3 pathfinder pinnacles were not only in my already highest slot, but they were the exact same item x3. Basque in the randomness, smh.
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1 ReplyIf you play this game for a living I think someone tested it that you get garbage rolls and if you play once in a while you get god rolls. Which I’ve seen. New light players with god roll legendarys and I’m playing all day can’t get a decent roll.
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1 ReplyWhy would they lie? If your so called truth comes out, that would be a PR disaster. I mean it already is pretty bad. As a bug. They fixed. Apologized. And offer a token of good will. We (the community) now have different tools to track if the randomness works. Lying would make no sense because they would just run into an open knife. I sure understand the frustration with bad loot, but putting on your conspiracy hat for that. I think you overestimate bungo that they sort out the perks on each weapon, so they are impossible for YOU to get. Looking at the amount of bugs in that game, i'm sometimes happy it doesn't crash completely xD
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7 RepliesIt's sad how many people agree with this post. Yes, bungie was proven wrong about perk COMBO weighting. They admitted to it when presented with sufficient evidence and are making it up to us. We don't need to start making conspiracies about the entire loot system of this game. No, they don't weigh perks in favor of keeping you playing. The perk combos went both ways. Some guns had good combos that were more likely. For some guns, these were less likely. The evidence points to an honest mistake. Anyone who knows anything about RNG knows it isn't truly random. If you aren't careful about keeping your variables independent... we know what happens. So, no, they aren't weighing perks and pinnacle drops against you. Pinnacle drops ARE weighted. But that's because there are more energy weapons than, say, power weapons. They're actually weighted to help you get those power weapons faster than you would otherwise. Would love for them to post some code so all you morons can finally stuff it.
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Bungie fixed the ball dupe and some skip in Vesper's before they fixed the first chest not giving everyone rewards. They are fully aware of how they prioritize bug fixes. If you think that they don't, then you are oblivious.
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1 ReplyEdited by Toots238857: 11/7/2024 2:46:16 PMBlack screens....(Delaying load times) More "dialogue" than actual seasonal content Countless "bugs" and "weight gate".... Capping things like strange coins. Why? (To keep you fishing for more) I even disappeared and turned into a CHICKEN when doing tonics for Eido! 😆 (To delay time and keep us in game longer) Why? To delay time and keep us logged in longer!!!! I trust nothing they say or do anymore. People can think what they want, I feel they purposely have done these things. My opinion only. I can't like this post enough. You're exactly right.
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2 RepliesEdited by Morakx: 11/7/2024 7:05:25 PMBungie has rigged perk rng since year 3-4 (2020) As someone who played for thousands of hours, i pretty quickly noticed how the algorythm picked up which specific perks my account seemed to keep and use and soon after, the intentionally rigged algorythm made it so these specific perks i desired, were conveniently dropping way less frequently than usual. Wow how welcoming for Bungie that it made ppl like me have to farm way way more and waste more time doing stuff we didn't want to. The countless numbers of times, i chased kill clip on most of my weapons i farmed for pvp and have gotten pve godrolls instead that i literally didn't care about at all while my pve mates i farmed with got the pvp perks i wanted. Amazing. And this wasn't happening on a single occasion. No, it happened WAY too regularly that it could not be just called bad luck. People were calling me crazy and a sore loser when i said Bungie was weighing perks literally 4 years ago. Now thats not so far off, is it? Bungies reaction to getting exposed is so obvious aswell lol. "Oh we are so happy that our great community helped us identify this ISSUE". We have professionals here at Bungie and truly didn't see this at all wow. Yea right. Same thing with Activision and their fake double xp events for new call of duty releases every single year. "Oh sorry, double xp didn't actually reward proper double xp and instead just +10 % xp, wow how could that happen for the 5th year of a cod launch in a row, wow we are so sorry". Guys, stop getting fooled. These scummy practices are intentional. To streatch the grind. They got caught and play it off as a mistake. Good one Bungie. They would even have declared sunsetting as a bug they didn't intent to implement if their literal game director wasn't pushing it with their heart and soul.
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Well said .I have had the same experience. With pinnacle drops.. all last week nothing I mean nothing but special weapons... This week.bonds.. this is the frustrating part when there are fewer pinnacles to chase. I just don't understand the business model of making your player base miserable. From exploding bricks of ammo to dup gear drops to no gear at all ( I B) . Admittedly so there has been some quality of life changes that have been great for the game,but it's only coming after the community has given up. I don't even want to get started on ALL THE NEW SUBCLASSES I'VE UNLOCKED..
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1 ReplyBumpety-bump! 👻 The Umbrella Corp. responds… Msg to BHQ. Stop. Maintain Radio Silence. Stop. End Msg. Stop. 🚨🛰️🚨 [b][i]What every Guardian knows - sooner or later…[/i][/b] [b]RNG is Really Not Good [/b]🎲🎲🎲 Moving on…with the grrrrrrind! 🎰🃏🎰 Ease Springs! 🎃
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Player retention without player enjoyment is impossible I don't know about you, but when I stop enjoying a game, and feel like I'm no longer getting anything out of it, I simply stop playing it, or take a break
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Edited by The Hermit IX: 11/8/2024 10:50:29 AMD2 grind isn’t anywhere as bad as some make it out to be. Theres a lot of focusing and an absurd amount of weapons that can be fully crafted. With that said, I have awful RNG and know first hand, how brutal it is to grind out that specific roll. Currently it’s the Braytech Werewolf with lone wolf/kill clip. Not a single one for me has dropped. If I really want it, I’ll put in grind to get it and if I don’t my high range zen/kill clip will have to do. People forget how much stinger loot was, one upon a time.
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5 RepliesYour logic on the perk weighting not being a bug makes zero sense. You say it has to be intentional because it hurts players but it doesn’t, it just hurts specific perk combos. Depending on how it’s coded, an envious arsenal and bns combo can either be the least combo possible roll [b][i]or[/i][/b] the most common. Do your research so you don’t just make stuff up.
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Edited by A_mo: 11/7/2024 10:50:51 PMIts an MMO. Some of the stuff you put like the way the game screws people for "playing too much" is probably more unfair than just the way the perks are handled in general.
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2 RepliesWhile I severely doubt that the perk weighting thing was intentional (I genuinely don't think Bungie are smart enough to implement it in that way), I do think that it highlights the flaws in Bungie's RNG implementations in general. We've all known it's been terrible since Destiny 1 (forever 29 anyone?) and that it really got highlighted in Destiny 2 (for all those -blam!- having to delete all the Edge Transits that kept dropping), so all that really happened here is that it got a spotlight on it once people had a chance to compare their gear drops once contest mode ended on the dungeon. All game RNG has a natural skew but developers usually find a way to negate it by layering RNG passes to introduce variables from the norm or implementing concepts like 'drop protection' which essentially just compares current results to previous ones and 're-rolls' to avoid repetition. It's the lack of this which you're actually noticing, not the evidence of deliberate actions. The root problem isn't that Bungie are being dishonest about their aims, but that they're being dishonest about their competency, and at this stage in the lifecycle of the company I'm not sure which is worse.
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1 ReplyEdited by Magiscene: 11/7/2024 12:18:53 PMBungie is a business and profit is their goal no matter what. Everything they do It’s all to keep you in the game longer because the longer you’re playing the more chances you’ll look at Eververse store and potentially buy something. Hence why the game is designed to be addictive as possible. Countless hours grinding, expansions and seasons to extend the carrot on the stick even further. Meta changes that entice you to grind new and old content for meta loot, abusing fomo, and battle passes. Even bright engrams because you have to visit the store page to decrypt them with the store right in front of your face. All to entice you to buy something.
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Hey I’m cool with RNG on the trash guns this season because they are giving out god rolls on a few of the only guns worth having haha
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8 RepliesPeople are very dumb it seems. Perk combo weighting helped players in many instances. If it was intentional, they wouldn’t let this happen. God rolls are subjective and change over time. The pattern in which the weighting occurs indicate a very common coding error: believing a computer can generate truly random numbers. This flaw in reasoning can lead to unintentional pairing of events. If you aren’t careful to ensure both RNG pulls are truly independent, you get scenarios like this. People with basic coding skills can attest to the difficulty of making a complex random system appear truly random (often times even things that appear truly random in short tests are not and often times you accept a little bit of imperfection if it is unnoticeable in the short term in a sufficiently complex system). I’m fairly sure 2 is true, so no arguments here. The extent to which this is true is not known to me, but I believe there is a mechanism to grant players who haven’t played in a bit better exotic drop chances, for example, unless I’m hallucinating that piece of info. Pinnacle weapon drops are weighted, even if every piece of gear is evenly weighted in the code (which they have stated they have an intended mechanism to alter this so I’m not entirely convinced of this). This is because there are much more energy weapons than power or kinetic weapons for example. The exact breakdown of what can drop from each activity determines the likelihood you get a pinnacle from a certain slot. I do think this is a problem, but not in the clearly malicious way you are ascribing it. It’s possible they have additional weighting in place for certain pieces but I have not seen convincing evidence. I agree that Bungie should be more transparent. However, would you believe them? Ultimately players only want transparency if it confirms their suspicions. If they were transparent and said everything you said here was false you’d simply say they were lying. This is why transparency only goes so far as trust.
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4 RepliesIf it wasn't a bug it wouldn't have been helpful (as far as getting certain rolls) to players in other areas. They already acknowledged, and seemingly fixed, the perk COMBO weighting. People will really just invent things to be mad about instead of playing a game they like instead. Crazy.
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Perk weighting i have a question does anyone have a Maahes-HC4 with Perpetual motion-Frenzy? i have all perk combinations possible but the only one i want NEVER, i think i dismantle a hundred of this gun with no perpetual motion/frenzy.
