I'm pretty sure everything she is selling is going away. Or at the very least the exotic stuff. I know there is going to be new of whatever armor she gives away.

Explicit mentions of optimacy sets, emotes (specifically focus on exotic ones) as well as sparrows and ships from the TwitchCon stream, I believe. As well as Ghost shells. Shaders were specifically identified as not going away.

I don’t remember if Exotic Ornaments were mentioned in the context of Bright Engram changes.

I decided specifically to wait on this reply for the big "State of the State" address and THAB to see if they cleared up specifically which items will be rotated out. Sorry this post is kind of a hot mess. I've never been very eloquent, which tends to encourage me to keep my mouth shut.

Right. I was the one that posted a Youtube rip of the TwitchCon stream to the forum here... since it was not available any other way, at that time.

The entire point is, it was not explicitly CLEAR nor specified during the stream. We are all still guessing about certain items.

The stream focused on Exotics (Emote, Ship, Sparrow). They didn't show every emote that would be going. They showed 1 Exotic Emote that would be for sure going (Six Shooter) and talked about another one that we can surmise will probably be going away (Spicy Ramen). Showed 1 Exotic Ship that would be going, showed 1 Exotic Sparrow that would be going, showed 1 Ghost that would be going. Along with these what else exactly is going?

Looking back, I think they DID say that Shaders and Exotic Ornaments WILL NOT be specific to Seasons. Meaning, I bet they will add to and rotate the stocks but certain Exotic Ornaments won't get locked away forever and will still be available later

I'd love to see Season One Bright Engram loot remain in the Season 2 loot pool instead of being taken away "forever". I think I would feel less badly about the whole XP thing if this was the case?

For whatever reason during release week I thought it would be cool to track my number of Bright Engrams after reaching Power Level 20 as it would be a mark of how many times I've "leveled up" and earned/received something that I did not and will not pay for.
As I have played the game I have thrown a tally into a notebook next to my TV for each Bright Engram at the time I've decoded it. I've only played one character so far. I started a Titan a week or so ago, but have not progressed past The Farm or earned a Bright Engram for it yet.

(there have been other applicable threads for this observation, but I have decided multiple times not to bring it up in past threads)

I looked up my playtime on some tracker site and it is just north of 200 hours - who knows how much of that is campaign up to 20, AFK, garbage time, etc. (I'm not sure if this ranks as a little time or a lot of time - I don't have any lens for comparison.)

I have "earned" and decoded approximately 44 Bright Engrams
(sure, I may have missed one or two or counted one twice along the way)

I have barely sharded anything so far I think. Judging by my inventory, from these 44 engrams I've received:

• 1 Exotic Ship
  
• 1 full set of Optimacy armor just about (I think I accidentally sharded the ugly helmet before I realized or knew it was part of some special set. Bought helmet back when it was available for Dust)
  
• 2 Exotic Weapon Ornaments
  
• 8 Legendary Ghosts
  
• 5 Emotes(blue)
  
• 10 Sparrows
  
• 11 Legendary Ships
  
• some Shaders, Mods, & Transmat FX
  
• plus 1 or 2 small Bright Dust packages in weeks past

I recently sharded my shaders which netted me around 1475 Bright Dust. I did not realize that deleting shaders would give me Dust. I would have rather continued to collect these shaders since they could be leaving the market at some point.

Don't get me wrong, I'm appreciative of what I have received so far. I just have a dreadful feeling because basically none of the items I have are on the list of things that are leaving the game. (1 exotic ship qualifies, I think) There are a big handful of other items that are going to go away and I will not have them nor be able to collect them ever again.

If you told me there will be a Season of Triumph at the end of all of this and I will be able to have a chance at these items again I will feel a lot less badly.

*Sadness Emote* (not even kidding, one of the last items I received from a Bright Engram last night)
How many hours invested is required to overcome the "Bad Beat"? How many Engrams must be opened in order to overcome the "Bad Beat"?

What is the secret?

Could the game and ‘economy’ be tuned such that each player is basically required to have 3 characters to “earn” all of the items that will be removed from the game world? Besides just limiting the available loot pool with sheer number of engrams you could earn, could simply having a 2nd and 3rd character and unlocking Bright Engrams on your 2nd and 3rd character somehow up your chances at better loot dropping?

Does a starter pack or a silver purchase receipt on your account gain you increased chance of good loot dropping from Bright Engrams? Do I need to "grease the pump" by making my first ever purchase in the Eververse/Silver marketplace?

Does the game nearly require that you play in a particular way that Bungie appears to have tried very hard to ‘prevent’? Focusing on specific areas as a farm or grinding particular game tasks to actually earn EXP at a rate that is requisite enough to ‘earn’ a significant number of Bright Engrams?

Does each and every item from a Bright Engram need to be sharded as you unlock it, in order to liquidate all your assets so you can buy ‘the big prizes’? And then once you “earn “ all the big prizes then you can go back to “collecting” in the predictable and regular fashion?

Or is it the other way around? Do you have to collect everything on hand to limit down the loot pool until you, by chance, receive the big prizes. And then after you get the big prize you can whittle down your inventory if you want to.

Is the Bright Engram loot pool simply just too large and the only way to overcome it is sheer quantity of decryptions?

How is it fair to move the goal posts on the players approximately halfway through the Season? Its even worse than that since in fact we didn’t really even know for sure that Seasons truly existed until Twitchcon. (Clan Banners were one of the only vague clues)

How is it fair to in some ways “change the rules” of the ‘Collection game’, when the game has already begun and is in play with time already expired from the clock (I use this term ‘rules’ very loosely – not in a fully applicable sense)

(I'm hoping to garner any kind of a response from someone that can help provide any insight or ideas. I don't want this post to get buried as all of them seem to)

I'm pretty sure everything she is selling is going away. Or at the very least the exotic stuff. I know there is going to be new of whatever armor she gives away.

Explicit mentions of optimacy sets, emotes (specifically focus on exotic ones) as well as sparrows and ships from the TwitchCon stream, I believe. As well as Ghost shells. Shaders were specifically identified as not going away.

I don’t remember if Exotic Ornaments were mentioned in the context of Bright Engram changes.

I decided specifically to wait on this reply for the big "State of the State" address and THAB to see if they cleared up specifically which items will be rotated out. Sorry this post is kind of a hot mess. I've never been very eloquent, which tends to encourage me to keep my mouth shut.

Right. I was the one that posted a Youtube rip of the TwitchCon stream to the forum here... since it was not available any other way, at that time.

The entire point is, it was not explicitly CLEAR nor specified during the stream. We are all still guessing about certain items.

The stream focused on Exotics (Emote, Ship, Sparrow). They didn't show every emote that would be going. They showed 1 Exotic Emote that would be for sure going (Six Shooter) and talked about another one that we can surmise will probably be going away (Spicy Ramen). Showed 1 Exotic Ship that would be going, showed 1 Exotic Sparrow that would be going, showed 1 Ghost that would be going. Along with these what else exactly is going?

Looking back, I think they DID say that Shaders and Exotic Ornaments WILL NOT be specific to Seasons. Meaning, I bet they will add to and rotate the stocks but certain Exotic Ornaments won't get locked away forever and will still be available later

I'd love to see Season One Bright Engram loot remain in the Season 2 loot pool instead of being taken away "forever". I think I would feel less badly about the whole XP thing if this was the case?

For whatever reason during release week I thought it would be cool to track my number of Bright Engrams after reaching Power Level 20 as it would be a mark of how many times I've "leveled up" and earned/received something that I did not and will not pay for.
As I have played the game I have thrown a tally into a notebook next to my TV for each Bright Engram at the time I've decoded it. I've only played one character so far. I started a Titan a week or so ago, but have not progressed past The Farm or earned a Bright Engram for it yet.

(there have been other applicable threads for this observation, but I have decided multiple times not to bring it up in past threads)

I looked up my playtime on some tracker site and it is just north of 200 hours - who knows how much of that is campaign up to 20, AFK, garbage time, etc. (I'm not sure if this ranks as a little time or a lot of time - I don't have any lens for comparison.)

I have "earned" and decoded approximately 44 Bright Engrams
(sure, I may have missed one or two or counted one twice along the way)

I have barely sharded anything so far I think. Judging by my inventory, from these 44 engrams I've received:

• 1 Exotic Ship
  
• 1 full set of Optimacy armor just about (I think I accidentally sharded the ugly helmet before I realized or knew it was part of some special set. Bought helmet back when it was available for Dust)
  
• 2 Exotic Weapon Ornaments
  
• 8 Legendary Ghosts
  
• 5 Emotes(blue)
  
• 10 Sparrows
  
• 11 Legendary Ships
  
• some Shaders, Mods, & Transmat FX
  
• plus 1 or 2 small Bright Dust packages in weeks past

I recently sharded my shaders which netted me around 1475 Bright Dust. I did not realize that deleting shaders would give me Dust. I would have rather continued to collect these shaders since they could be leaving the market at some point.

Don't get me wrong, I'm appreciative of what I have received so far. I just have a dreadful feeling because basically none of the items I have are on the list of things that are leaving the game. (1 exotic ship qualifies, I think) There are a big handful of other items that are going to go away and I will not have them nor be able to collect them ever again.

If you told me there will be a Season of Triumph at the end of all of this and I will be able to have a chance at these items again I will feel a lot less badly.

*Sadness Emote* (not even kidding, one of the last items I received from a Bright Engram last night)
How many hours invested is required to overcome the "Bad Beat"? How many Engrams must be opened in order to overcome the "Bad Beat"?

I don't think the system was a bug at all. I do think it was designed to scale up and down XP to load balance during activities. However, a lot of contention is on what the is displayed by the XP bar. Whether the values weren't working as intended or if the system wasn't displaying certain things properly are both things that came to mind personally when the subject came up.

That’s sort of what I’m getting at too. What you’re proposing is a totally realistic and sensible explaination. But then why didn’t Bungie just say “The XP display is broken, and we’re going to fix it”? Maybe that explaination is coming today.

In the same way that basically all game related media has been negative following all the Battlefront 2 stuff.

So the only thing a player could conceivably be doing by grinding events beyond level 20 to get exp would be trying to get cosmetic gear without paying. Throttling exp only really effects this (after level 20), so the intent is clear: we don't want you to bypass paying money to get bright engrams. If exp had some sort of other functionality, the scaling might be justified.

Ummmmm... wouldn't they just make the cool cosmetics only available via money if that were the case. There is a way to "earn" them so I'm not sure your conclusion is as concrete as you think. Maybe it's that they want to give you something to continue to chase so that people keep filling the world. I think one of them even said that was their design goal this time around- fill the world with cosmetics rather than forcing people on a power grind. At the time, I believe everyone was cool with that trade because it was all cosmetic. The catch is, if you accrue everything too quickly, there's nothing really to chase and people leave the game. People are leaving anyway, but I don't think it's over this.

And because exp does nothing but get you cosmetics, there isn't really an incentive power wise to grind events. Thus, people unconcerned about cosmetics will play the events that interest them, since for those people exp is pretty much no reward at all.

So the only thing a player could conceivably be doing by grinding events beyond level 20 to get exp would be trying to get cosmetic gear without paying. Throttling exp only really effects this (after level 20), so the intent is clear: we don't want you to bypass paying money to get bright engrams. If exp had some sort of other functionality, the scaling might be justified.

I mostly agree with what you're trying to say. But grinding Public Events doesn't purely have to be for cosmetics. It could be for gear. Sure, it won't be that helpful for leveling up, but we're mostly at the point where that's irrelevant. I'm at 303 or so and have plenty of 300 level stuff that's just infusion fodder at this point. Grinding Public Events is the fastest way to just get gear, if you're trying to complete a world set or just otherwise completing collections. That's probably just as big a motivator as Bright Engrams for some folks.

That is why I qualified the statement as being only about exp. Gear rewards are not scaled. Only the exp rewards are scaled. So Bungie did not see a problem with earning gear too fast - only exp.

Part of what gets me is that activities like Public Events were granting enough XP to trigger the throttling entirely by itself. Like, if I hop on to do the public events needed for the weekly challenge, why am I being restricted on how much XP I'm getting even though I'm doing what the game tells me I should be doing?

I get that I'm getting other rewards in the process but it feels so skeevy.

And because exp does nothing but get you cosmetics, there isn't really an incentive power wise to grind events. Thus, people unconcerned about cosmetics will play the events that interest them, since for those people exp is pretty much no reward at all.

So the only thing a player could conceivably be doing by grinding events beyond level 20 to get exp would be trying to get cosmetic gear without paying. Throttling exp only really effects this (after level 20), so the intent is clear: we don't want you to bypass paying money to get bright engrams. If exp had some sort of other functionality, the scaling might be justified.

I mostly agree with what you're trying to say. But grinding Public Events doesn't purely have to be for cosmetics. It could be for gear. Sure, it won't be that helpful for leveling up, but we're mostly at the point where that's irrelevant. I'm at 303 or so and have plenty of 300 level stuff that's just infusion fodder at this point. Grinding Public Events is the fastest way to just get gear, if you're trying to complete a world set or just otherwise completing collections. That's probably just as big a motivator as Bright Engrams for some folks.

That is why I qualified the statement as being only about exp. Gear rewards are not scaled. Only the exp rewards are scaled. So Bungie did not see a problem with earning gear too fast - only exp.

And because exp does nothing but get you cosmetics, there isn't really an incentive power wise to grind events. Thus, people unconcerned about cosmetics will play the events that interest them, since for those people exp is pretty much no reward at all.

So the only thing a player could conceivably be doing by grinding events beyond level 20 to get exp would be trying to get cosmetic gear without paying. Throttling exp only really effects this (after level 20), so the intent is clear: we don't want you to bypass paying money to get bright engrams. If exp had some sort of other functionality, the scaling might be justified.

I mostly agree with what you're trying to say. But grinding Public Events doesn't purely have to be for cosmetics. It could be for gear. Sure, it won't be that helpful for leveling up, but we're mostly at the point where that's irrelevant. I'm at 303 or so and have plenty of 300 level stuff that's just infusion fodder at this point. Grinding Public Events is the fastest way to just get gear, if you're trying to complete a world set or just otherwise completing collections. That's probably just as big a motivator as Bright Engrams for some folks.

Halo was so much fun and created so many memories. The multiplayer was a blast with so much variety! The stories were thoughtful and well contained. It's like they spent 12 or so years developing the perfect game and learned nothing from it and decided to start from scratch...twice. So what has changed the most. Bungie? The Industry? Us? I need some positivity yall. Am I way off base?

Not only that, but in this particular instance regarding exp scaling, Bungie met with Blizzard and was told all the lessons they learned making loot games and Diablo 3. Blizzard was one of the first to figure out with World of Warcraft that scaling down exp feels like punishment, and getting a boost after not playing feels like a reward. This is literally what they discovered when players in WoW reacted poorly to having their exp scale down.

So why was that advice not taken?

Everything you say is certainly possible. However, my estimation, that scenario simply doesn’t add up. It took months of play and extensive testing for the community to even realize there was XP scaling happening. If scaling was so successfully hidden, then it certainly wasn’t influencing the play patterns of most players, right?

My take on the reaction is this:

The scaling system, or even the lack of UI for the scaling system isn't the real issue. Others have said scaling systems are common in many of these types of games, and serve a purpose.

I think the issue here, is that beyond level 20, exp is only used to get bright engrams, and bright engrams are available for money. So the scaling is put in place to prevent players from doing activities repeatedly in order to get bright engrams without paying.

Remember, exp does literally nothing else but get you bright engrams after level 20. Grinding these events for exp will not grant you an advantage in game (public events are lucrative with gear rewards though, but that wasn't scaled). You could at least then make the argument that throttling exp could be a beneficial thing if exp made you more powerful. But it doesn't.

And because exp does nothing but get you cosmetics, there isn't really an incentive power wise to grind events. Thus, people unconcerned about cosmetics will play the events that interest them, since for those people exp is pretty much no reward at all.

So the only thing a player could conceivably be doing by grinding events beyond level 20 to get exp would be trying to get cosmetic gear without paying. Throttling exp only really effects this (after level 20), so the intent is clear: we don't want you to bypass paying money to get bright engrams. If exp had some sort of other functionality, the scaling might be justified.

That alone is shady, but the fact that it was hidden makes it more so. That's what I'm guessing the reaction is about.

“Wasn’t working as intended” doesn’t necessarily mean it wasn’t providing the XP incorrectly. It could just have been displaying incorrectly and since the community jumped to the extreme Bungie only really had the option to shut it off.

Not sure I follow you there... I’m certainly open to the possibility that this was a bug of some kind (if that’s what you’re suggesting). As I said in my first post, Bungie’s language implied that this system wasn’t a bug, so I’m basing my assessment from that point unless we hear otherwise.

I can only think of 2 possible reasons for Bungie to clamp down on XP gains. It could be that Bungie thought that grinding Public Events would get players up to level 20 too quickly... but if that's the case, I would ask 2 things:
a) Really?
and b) then why hide the fact that XP gains were being reduced? Why not be transparent about it?

The other explanation I can think of does not look so good for Bungie. And that's the possibility that they didn't want players earning Bright Engrams so quickly that they'd never feel the need to buy any. So they artificially slowed down the progression towards earning them, and hid it from the player.

While either of those can be true, there's the possibility of a 3rd option: Bungie just honestly trying to steer players away from activities that can be completed too quickly for rewards to longer activities that might be more rewarding XP wise; which they did in Reach. Problem with that is though, Public Events are too rewarding regardless of how quickly they get done and every other activity is not as rewarding and subject to the token economy leaving most players who participate not feeling like their time was valued. But something like that's a whole other discussion.

That’s certainly possible, but my response would again be “why hide it from the player?”. If the expressed goal is to steer players away from repeating the same activity over and over, then one would think that Bungie would make diminishing XP returns as obvious as possible.

True, I would agree with you. But at the same time Bungie is also very much into making the game fun without know why it's fun. Seemlessness, in game play and User Interface. Yes, they need to change that the experience is changing dynamically when showing XP gain. But what they need to do is make it obvious through the bar, that if you grind the same thing over and over again your XP bar grinds to a stop.

This is all very hard to do imo. But I also think it lines up with what Bungie want for Destiny all along, diverse activities that allow people to have fun without feeling like they are working too hard. Grinding public events for loot is not what Bungie intended for public events. They implemented this XP debuf to make that happen.

I don't consider it "throttling the grinders" I consider it as Bungie making a game that they wanted to make.

Everything you say is certainly possible. However, my estimation, that scenario simply doesn’t add up. It took months of play and extensive testing for the community to even realize there was XP scaling happening. If scaling was so successfully hidden, then it certainly wasn’t influencing the play patterns of most players, right?

I couldn’t finish pretty much any of the reporting or commentaries about this throughout the media and Destiny community for the fact thqt all anyone wanted to talk about was the negative, given that they weren’t even going to acknowledge an opposing side.

I guess you get more views if you feed the flames instead of doing a balanced consideration of available information, though.

As I’ve pointed out in other comments, the fact that the scaling XP was hidden from the player does cast a shadow on the possibility of this being purely a well-intentioned design goal. It’s not impossible... the scaling could have been hidden due to lack of time to implement, or maybe it simply came down to a bad decision. But hiding XP scaling does seem to work against the argument that XP scaling was done to encourage a diverse gameplay experience.

I don’t remember if Exotic Ornaments were mentioned in the context of Bright Engram changes.

Tess isn't even selling any of the items that we think/know will be going away forever, like the Spicy Ramen emote. We STILL don't even know, in total, exactly which items will be going away.

I'm pretty sure everything she is selling is going away. Or at the very least the exotic stuff. I know there is going to be new of whatever armor she gives away.

Amongst other things they might do "to try to make this right"
Seeing the Season 1 Bright Engram loot not go away on the 5th as planned and instead continue to appear in the Season 2 loot pool would be nice

(as far as I can tell they still have not even clearly communicated specifically each and every item that will be "going away forever" from Season 1 - and we are basically a week out from the day that these items are scheduled to be gone...)

There is an in game pop-up when you launch Destiny 2 today, since the weekly reset overnight.

"SEASONS
Season 1 Ending Soon

The current season ends in less than one week, on Dec. 5 at 10AM PST.

This means that Bright Engram contents and Clan progression will be refreshed for Season 2, beginning December 5. Work with your clan to reach maximum level and unlock this season's Clan Staff. Also, be sure to "earn" [quotes installed by me snarkastically] that Spicy Ramen emote while you can!

More information about Season 2 can be found on bungie.net"

Tess isn't even selling any of the items that we think/know will be going away forever, like the Spicy Ramen emote. We STILL don't even know, in total, exactly which items will be going away.

I'll come back to sample the content I've already paid for, and perhaps one day if D2 gets to a stable place I'll participate again. But it's honestly such a shame that the same type of experience can be had in plenty of other games (like Diablo) with so much less hassle.

Just do what I did, and what the game lets you do this time:

Play through the game doing only what you want. Don't grind at all. Then put it down. Like every properly designed game ever.

Remember: perpetual games cannot exist in practice without wasting your time.

This seems obvious, but really is key. If you play D2 to make yourself happy you cannot go wrong. It is an excellent game. When it is enough, put it down.

Play with your friends. Play for fun. Don't pursue the doodads.

End-Game economies make life weird.