Destiny 2 Players Are Not Happy About This Upcoming Change
A lot of changes are coming to Destiny 2. Players will get to explore Europa and wield chilling new Stasis powers in the Beyond Light expansion, and Bungie will start vaulting content to keep the game's hard drive footprint to a minimum. The company also has one more piece of upcoming content that has some players feeling less than enthusiastic: Season 12.
Recently, Bungie detailed the adjustments coming to Destiny 2 via Season 12, also known as Season of the Hunt. These include the usual suspects, such as a new story mission, an Artifact, and gear. Plus, Season 12 will mark the start of Bungie's war on fear of missing out (FOMO). Once the season starts on Nov. 10, players can revisit past seasons to relive their missions, as well as collect any missed loot.
Best of all, Bungie is adding Bright Dust (Destiny 2's special currency that can be spent on cosmetic items) to the game's Season Pass. Players can earn up to 7,500 Bright Dust through the free Season Pass, plus an additional 3,000 via the purchased pass. Sounds like something everyone would enjoy, right? Well, the devil is in the details.
To accommodate the Season Pass' Bright Dust rewards, Bungie nerfed Weekly Bounties. Instead of providing 200 dust, bounty rewards will only deliver 100 a pop. As people such as reddit user CourrierMojave pointed out, the Season Pass prizes are finite. Once you reach level 100 in the pass, you have wrung that particular well of dust dry. You can only get more Bright Dust from the hamstrung Weekly Bounties rewards — and exceedingly rare Bright Engrams. Players latched onto this detail and started crunching the numbers, and they didn't like what they found.
Redditor albatkross0108 concluded that currently, if players log on every week and complete the Season Pass as well as Weekly Bounties and Dawning runs, they can earn a total of 49,500 Bright Dust each season in Shadowkeep. And yes, albatkross0108 accounted for completing these tasks with all three allotted characters. However, despite the upcoming increase in Season Pass Bright Dust, albatkross0108 asserted that the halved bounty dust rewards would decrease total season earnings to 33,900 Bright Dust in Beyond Light. Another reddit user, False Devourer Reflection, came to the same conclusion. According to these math wizards, Destiny 2 players can expect to earn 15,600 fewer dust each season.
The math only appears to get worse the more you examine it. Say, for example, you don't have three characters. If you only use one character, albatkross0108 calculated these changes don't impact your potential Bright Dust earnings. But, if you play two characters, the net loss jumps to 7,800 dust. With three, that turns into the aforementioned 15,600 lost dust per season.
While some gamers don't mind the changes — mostly players who stand to benefit since they either don't or can't grind for Bright Dust — many more are livid. Quite a few Reddit followers are miffed that they will earn less dust for the same amount of work, while many more see this alteration as an attempt to disincentivize grinding and encourage players to spend more real money on Destiny 2 microtransactions. Some commenters even went so far as to accuse Bungie of catering to players who have more money than time but still want the latest shiny baubles.
This decrease in Bright Dust earnings is the latest in a line of issues audiences have taken with the in-game economy. Long before Beyond Light and Season 12 were scheduled to decrease the amount of dust die-hard players could collect, gamers noticed smaller Bright Dust gains and larger cosmetic item prices. While these initial changes could have been chalked up to Destiny 2's switch from a buy-to-play to a free-to-play model, certain gamers aren't willing to give Bungie the benefit of the doubt a second time. These individuals are less than enthused to see, from their perspective, Bungie continually making it harder to earn in-game cosmetics and other items.
On the bright side, Bungie promised to continue monitoring feedback and will issue more Bright Dust earning improvements for Season 13 — even though many gamers might argue Bungie did not improve Season 12. If enough people complain, the company could improve Destiny 2's dust economy in the future.