Destiny 2
Benjy
“At the beginning of the Season of Wishes, rewards for completing ritual activities will now include additional drops of ritual engrams (Vanguard, Crucible, Gambit). This influx of engrams will allow players to focus more on equipment from seasons past and present.
Remember that? How did that happen?
If you’ve been playing Destiny 2 all this season, you know that what Bungie said in the TWAB above simply didn’t come true. Engrams are sparse, concentration is very expensive, and we seem to get much less loot, not more. Well, it turns out there’s data to back that up.
Commander Becca I took data from a wide range of ritual activities, calculated engram drops and figured out what was going wrong here. Here are the quick takeaways:
- All ritual playlists, such as Vanguard Strikes, Cucible, and Gamebit, average an engram drop rate of around 30%, or just under.
- This is very close to what previous data on the previous ritual playlist drop rate indicates, if not slightly lower, suggesting that there was no increase in engram drop rate at all.
- Crucible can be slightly higher if you win consistently, and Iron Banner is significantly higher, with a drop rate of around 50% with a 75% chance of winning.
- Due to the increase in focus costs for weapons, specifically ones that now cost three engrams, this means players will obtain 50% fewer weapons through focus. If PvP players win a good amount, it will be 20-30% less instead.
- The mathematical solution that Commander Pekka suggests is that to offset the new costs, Bungie would have to double the engram drop rate and lower the focus cost to 2. Or alternatively lower the focus cost to 1. But the Crucible’s win/lose/repeat system screws up that math a bit.
Destiny 2
Benjy
The general point is that the engram drop rate does not appear to have been as measurably improved as promised by ritual activities, if at all. In turn, increased concentration costs mean reduced overall gains. If you’ve dabbled in this system at all, regardless of mathematics, you at least know this Feel True, here’s the data to show it.
Given the current state of Destiny, I wouldn’t be surprised if they didn’t simply… increase the drop rate, either forgetting about it or thinking they did it but some technical issues prevented it from actually happening. But since it wasn’t a flagrant foul, it wasn’t investigated for more than a month into the season.
The easiest answer is to lower concentration costs, which is the biggest problem most people have with the current system, although of course it would be nice if they made rates as low as they were supposed to be. Whatever is happening, the system is not working and is somehow much less useful than it used to be. Repairs must be made.
Commander Pekka also made a long video about this that is worth watching:
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