If you missed the Destiny 2 beta tests, and you don’t want to buy the game without giving it a try. You’re still in luck. Thankfully, Bungie will offer a free trial for PS4, XBox One and PC starting on November 28th. They’re also giving you a good portion of the game to try before you actually shell out the cash to buy the game. You will be able to explore Earth’s European Dead Zone and Titan. You can fight fellow players in the Crucible’s Quickplay rotation and even progress up to level 7. Some are saying that this is “all” you get. But don’t be greedy. Shouldn’t that be enough time to decide if you like the game or not? Further, if you do decide to buy the game, any progress you’ve made so far will carry over into the full game.
This trial is great, but there are some other possible issues with the game. They are facing some complaints that Destiny 2’s experience point (XP) system leads to diminishing cosmetic rewards for players who particulate in a lot of short-term activities. Why is this an issue? It seems like it could push them to spend real cash for these perks, instead of earning them through gameplay. Reddit User EnrgiserX posted, last week, that the game drops XP earned in-game based on how quickly you earn it. “If you earn XP slow, the in-game display is correct. If you play normally the game drops some XP (~50%). If you power-grind XP the game will drop most of your XP (in testing, I managed to lose ~95% of the XP during an ‘enemies moving against each other’ event)”.
This doesn’t make sense, does it? In order to figure this out, EnrgiserX conducted three different tests where they played the game in the three playstyles mentioned above, recording the playthroughs and then graphing out the amount of XP earned to see if there was a change. According to EnrgiserX : “since the XP bar in-game is 360 pixels long, I calculated that 80000 XP/360 pixels= 222.8 (rounded to 225) XP per pixel could be used to estimate how much XP was being recorded in the backend.” This is clever, don’t you think?
The results are, essentially, that what he suspected was happening. Which is why people aren’t happy with the game. You can read EnrgiserX’s full report on Reddit. But what’s happening with the game itself? According to Bungie:
“Effective immediately, we are deactivating this system. As a result, players will see XP earn rates change for all activities across the board, but with all values being displayed consistently in the user interface. Over the course of the next week, we will be watching and reviewing XP game data to ensure that these changes meet our expectations, as well as yours. Any additional updates to this system will be communicated to you via our official channels.”
Which is totally making this worse! This fix seems to just be another way to hinder players from leveling up in the game. The company has been straightforward about the level cap change, but that doesn’t make it right. The whole thing is kind of confusing, to be honest, in terms of how or why it can’t be fixed. It makes you wonder if there will be an update that addresses this issue, but for now, Destiny 2 is hindering player progression, unfortunately.