Lot 2
@alwayslinks
Okay look, on some level I get it. An infinite currency exploit, especially for something that has no limit, can do serious, long-lasting damage to a game’s economy, so you’ll want to get it under control ASAP.
That’s what happened yesterday in Destiny 2, when a new legendary shard farm was found that allowed you to buy a Guardian Games class item from collections, dismantle it for shards, buy more glitter from Rahool for shards, and still lead the way with a few dozen shards.
The first I heard about it was from a FalloutPlays YouTube short at noon, though I think the glitch was found a little earlier in the day before it spread widely. The outage was turned off at 1:20 PM.
This raises two concerns, one of which I think is more valid than the other. The first is “of course Bungie patched something that would benefit players so quickly!!” There were complaints that another bug was going on at the same time where leaving Comp games saved people from losing points. But that was also resolved at the end of the day.
This is one of those “game dev vs. player perception” issues that most games, but especially Destiny, keep running into. On the technical side, yes, it’s probably much easier to flip a switch that disables an item than it is to, say, fix a specific boss glitch that’s ruining things for players in a dungeon. And like I said yes it’s true that a very easy very fast infinite currency error can wreak havoc at the core of your game’s economic feedback loop for a very long time when suddenly everyone has 50,000 shards stored so I understand the rush to fix things like that, even if it feels good to players. The problem is that player perception is that glitches that benefit them become insta-patched and more harmful stagnate. This would be less of a problem if there were fewer short and short term bugs in the game, but there are plenty of them, which is why this keeps coming back.
Lot 2
Bungie
So that’s the half that I think we need to understand at least a little bit about how game developer works. The other end of this is something that probably needs to be addressed, the fact that the Legendary Shard economy itself isn’t in a great place.
Currently, the main use for Legendary Shards is gambling for reels with specific weapons from vendors. Granted, those costs have been reduced, but thanks to RNG, the game becomes a literal slot machine as you hunt down a 5/5 roll of unmanufacturable weapons, spending shards wildly faster than you take them in, plenty of time. Other people are broke from when the shard cost doubled, and spent 100 shards per focus on that one weekend glitching an Adept hand cannon to be able to be focused infinitely many times. Thousands were dumped in there for many players.
The fact is, there really isn’t a good way to farm special shards, much less than Enhancement Cores. And while Cores may be another currency that people are short on, the same level of gambling mechanism isn’t there.
Legendary shards are mostly pure playtime with no really efficient way to craft them. If you make a full attack or do a full Crucible match, you get… 4 shards. You get 4 shards from each Legendary Drop you dismantle, and they drop at fairly regular intervals. The “best” shard farm in the game right now by actual gameplay is probably spamming Terminal Overload completions for 3-4 Legendary players at a time, or running the seasonal battlefields that will give you 5-6 engrams and gear per run can yield. But that’s about it.
The cost is high, both for engram gambling and things like 400 shards for weekly Ascendant Alloy (which also needs more resources). Acquisition is low. I agree that it should be looked into, even if I’m sure, I understand why fixing infinite glitches like this would be a priority.
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I’ve been writing about video games, television, and movies for Forbes for over 10 years, and you may have seen my reviews on Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic. I cover all sorts of console and PC games, but when it comes to looting or shooting, I’m sure. When I watch something, it’s usually sci-fi, horror, or superhero. I’m also a regular on IGN’s Fireteam Chat podcast and have published five sci-fi novels.
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