How does this keep happening?
If you were thinking that the level of distrust between Destiny 2 ’s player base and developer Bungie couldn’t get any higher, think again. The latest controversy to roil the Destiny community hit over the weekend, and Bungie is on its heels once more in front of an angry mob of dissatisfied, frustrated players.
It all started last Friday, when the weekend merchant Xur arrived in the game world with a new item in his inventory: Three of Coins. Destiny players will remember this consumable, which provides a boost to your chances of receiving an exotic engram from an activity that can drop them. However, Bungie has never provided details on the nature of the buff, leaving players guessing as to its exact usefulness.
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That backfired on Bungie this weekend, when dozens of players took to the Destiny subreddit to complain that Three of Coins didn’t seem to be working: They weren’t seeing any exotic engrams, even with multiple uses of the item over many hours of play. Without specifics from Bungie on what Three of Coins does, players were left to their own devices, so they did what they do best — they conducted experiments, as Kotaku noted.
After playing for “nearly 16 hours” and receiving just two exotics — both of which dropped without the Three of Coins buff active — Redditor Brknsymtry concluded that something was wrong with Three of Coins.
“This is clearly bugged and there is no way the frequency would be this low or just flat out not there,” said Brknsymtry. “I tried heroic and non heroic strikes, all of crucibles playlists, trials, and public events. Not one.” It’s gotten to the point where some people simply don’t take Bungie’s statements at face value anymore.
Bungie confirmed Brknsymtry’s (and everyone else’s) suspicions today. The studio said in a forum post that it “found that Heroic Strikes do not currently grant higher chances for Exotics when using Three of Coins consumables, compared to Vanguard Strikes.” Heroic strikes are tougher than Vanguard strikes — and generally offer better rewards — so people would be more likely to play them if they were looking for exotics. Bungie said it plans to fix this issue in “early 2018,” and added that it “will continue to monitor and forward feedback concerning this feature throughout the holiday season.” (As for a general reduction in the frequency of duplicate exotics, that update is also not coming until 2018.)
In addition, Bungie explained exactly how Three of Coins works — likely in an effort to stem the tide of complaints (and live up to its recent promise to be more transparent). “When players use a Three of Coins consumable, this provides a 50% increase to the base chance of being rewarded an Exotic Engram upon activity completion,” said Bungie. “Using this consumable does not guarantee an Exotic reward upon completing a set number of activities — but rather increased chances upon each activity completion.”
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As if things weren’t bad enough, players have also been reporting issues with another one of Xur’s strange curios: the Fated Engram. Also introduced with the Dec. 12 patch, Fated Engrams are expensive — Xur charges a whopping 97 Legendary Shards for them, more than three times as much as a Three of Coins bundle costs — because they’re guaranteed to turn into an exotic item that you don’t already have.
Or at least, that’s the way they’re supposed to work.
Multiple players are saying they’ve spent their shards on a Fated Engram, only to receive an exotic weapon or armor piece that they already own — which, of course, is tremendously frustrating when an item is specifically designed for the opposite purpose. Bungie said today on Twitter that it is “investigating reports that some players have received duplicate Exotic rewards from Fated Engrams.” Stay tuned for more updates — including, perhaps, yet another acknowledgment of a bug.
