If Destiny 2 players have ever felt like the odds were stacked against them when trying to earn a specific weapon roll, they might not be too far from the truth. The Destiny 2 community has come together to amass data that seems to point towards something going on with how Perks are distributed on weapons. While Bungie has responded and debunked previous questions about individual Perk weighting, it seems the studio found something worth looking into after recent player data suggested it’s Perk combinations that might be weighted, not individual Perks themselves.
When players earn a weapon in Destiny 2, most of the time, that weapon drops with a random combination of Perks and weapon attachments. While crafting weapons allows players to sidestep lady luck, not every weapon can be Shaped. That’s the case with the new arsenal of weapons from the Vesper’s Host Dungeon, and that’s where players started paying closer attention to what rolls were dropping on weapons.
The conspiracy theory holds water
Some players started to notice that it felt impossible to get the considered god roll of Envious Arsenal and Bait and Switch on the new VS Chill Inhibitor grenade launcher from Vesper’s Host. As the weapons from the Dungeon aren’t craftable, it’s just a matter of running the encounters until the players are graced with the roll. But even then, the VS Chill Inhibitor god roll seemed exceedingly rare, so, the community brought the matter to Bungie’s attention.
Bungie, having heard and responded to various drop rate worries over the years, responded as it normally does. In a seemingly , Bungie noted, “Hey all, we had a conversation with our Sandbox folks this morning about this. There is no perk weighting active for any legendary weapon perks in Destiny 2.”
Of course, the Destiny 2 community being what it is, some players didn’t take Bungie’s answer as definitive. Amassing data from across the community, players like and ran extensive testing to research weapon Perk distribution. According to the data, Bungie was technically correct. There is no apparent favoritism for any given Perks on weapons. That said, with two Perks on weapons, there seems to be something going on with how the Perks are paired.
Imagine the available pool of Perks on a weapon as two side-by-side columns of options in a fixed arrangement. While the first Perk (the left column) is truly random, after that Perk is chosen, the game has preferences on what comes next. Again, imagining those two columns, weapons prefer a set of Perks that are “close” to each other. The column perspective is important because, as tools that pull directly from the Destiny 2 API like show, that’s how the game itself organizes and references these Perks.
Bungie acknowledges something is wrong
With all of the data pointing to Perk pairing not working as Bungie thought it did, and with the conversation and discourse spilling out online, the studio had to take another look under the game’s hood. On October 24, Bungie , saying, “While we have confirmed that there is no intentional perk weighting on weapons within our content setup, we are now investigating a potential issue within our code for how RNG perks are generated.” Bungie went on to thank the community for pursuing the suspected issue and amassing the quantity of data that it had.
The next day, with news surrounding the investigation. “After investigation, we can confirm an issue has been found in our code where some random perk combinations are harder to earn per legendary weapon perk set,” Bungie noted. “In some cases, desirable perk combinations are a bit easier to earn as well. While we inspected our content and confirmed each perk is weighted equally, an issue in perk pool RNG is the culprit here. Our team has quickly identified a potential solution to the issue, and we are rapidly working to validate the fix.”
As of October 28, Bungie , explaining that it is planning to address the issue during an update on November 5. The studio again thanked the community for the part it played in identifying the issue, and promised some 🎐kind of a greater community thank you in the future. Right now, however, Bungie made a new Emblem available for all players. Players can redeem the free goodie at by using the code VHT-6A7-3MM.
A perfect storm
Players might not have realized something was off if there hadn’t been a perfect storm of a situation that created the awareness. First off, the VS Chill Inhibitor, with its god roll, is one of the best weapons currently in the game, especially with the new Artifact Mods for Episode: Revenant. This created initiꦓal demand for the weapon, which got players ꩵhunting for it.
Often, the weapons players want are craftable, so the chase for a weapon extends only as long as it takes players to earn enough red-bordered “blueprint” weapons. Without crafting as an option for VS Chill Inhibitor, players became painfully aware of how difficult it was to earn the weapon with the desired roll.
The final piece in the puzzle is that the god roll for VS Chill Inhibitor is actually one of the rolls that are least likely to drop. Suppose this wasn’t the case and that the two Perks in question were “positioned” closer together in Destiny 2‘s API. In that event, there’s a pretty good chance the desired weapon roll would’ve been easy enough to obtain that the community’s suspicion would have likely never been raised. If that were the case, who knows how long this issue would have remained in the game undetected.
It was only through happenstance that all of these conditions coalesced when they did. However, it’s a good thing that it did, as the scenario allowed the community to help Bungie identify and fix something fundamentally flawed on the backend of Destiny 2. While it’s not every day that these kinds of conspiracy theories actually hold water, in this case, it’s clear Destiny players aren’t afraid of a little extra work to prove their point.
Published: Oct 30, 2024 08:39 am