Seven Times Bungie Made Destiny Too Easy
Destiny broke the record in 2014 for being the most expensive game ever produced, a massive $500-million-dollar investment made by Activision and Bungie. A year later the game’s expansion, “The Taken King” broke the record for being the most downloaded day-one release in Playstation history.
As of February 25, 2017, according to Destiny Tracker there are 8,539,559 registered players around the world. Yesterday there were over 365,000 players in the Crucible, Destiny’s PvP (player vs. player mode) and over 500,000 players taking part in PvE (player vs. environment) activities.
While gamers love a good challenge, they also love to capitalize on a crack in the system. Here are seven times Bungie accidentally made Destiny a little too easy.
1. Leveling Up at Launch
Leveling up in any game is never the best part. It’s usually a tedious and drawn-out grind, slowly working your way up to a point where you can face stronger enemies. In the original release, Destiny was no different, but players found an exploit. If you stood a certain distance away from a cave on Earth, enemies would keep pouring out of it making a stream of easy targets. The enemies would drop loot on par with any higher level activity, so many players took to shooting at a cave instead.
2. The Push That Completed A Thousand Raids
Destiny’s raids are the bread and butter of the PvE community. The original raid, “The Vault of Glass,” remains one of the most challenging activities even three years later. As a fire-team of six, players faced puzzles and boss fights to get loot specific to the raid. Deep in the Vault players face off against the final boss, Atheon, in a difficult and stressful battle. Less than a week after the raid was released, players found that two perfectly placed grenades would cause Atheon to stumble off of his platform into the abyss, ending the encounter in less than 30 seconds.
3. The Musicians Touch
The second raid in Destiny, “Crota’s End,” was not as challenging as “The Vault of Glass.” This led to many players in the community coming up with ways to challenge themselves a little more. YouTuber Sean Gallagher decided to solo attempt the boss fight — using a Rock Band drum kit as his controller. He completed the ridiculous task in just under nine minutes.
4. The Etheric Backfire
With the release of their second Destiny Expansion, Bungie tried to give the community more ways to hit max level without having to do the raids religiously. The introduced the concept of “Etheric Light,” which was an item you could use to bring a piece of gear up to max level. The item was made to drop from several different activities, and because they were made relatively easy to obtain and many players have three characters, most of the community hit max level within days of release. Because the expansion was made too easy many players moved on to other games.
5. The Race for the Chaperone
Exotic weapons are rare in Destiny, and some even require the completion of a specific set of tasks. “The Chaperone” is an exotic shotgun that was acquired through one of the exotic bounties. The bounty requires that players get a set number of kills in the Crucible with “The Last Word” equipped as your weapon. When Sparrow Racing was introduced, players found that if you completed races while having “The Last Word” equipped it counted towards kills for the bounty.
6. Prison of Elders Challenge Mode
When Destiny’s “Prison of Elders” was introduced many players spent hours trying to kill the final boss. It was regarded in the community as a challenge, especially when certain mission modifiers were active. A year later when Challenge mode was introduced, many wondered how much worse it was going to get. The new mode required scoring a certain number of points before the time expired, and it was supposed to take three players to be able to score high enough. On the day of release it became apparent that the time penalty didn’t matter and the encounter could be completed solo.
7. Three on Cons
“Three of Coins” were introduced to Destiny as a consumable item you could use to heighten your chances of getting an exotic engram to drop from a boss encounter. Any “Ultra”-rated enemy counts, and players quickly found that you could kill the boss of a specific mission over and over, and as long as you killed yourself at the same time the encounter would keep repeating. Players found that they were getting drops very quickly with this method. Bungie told the community they patched the exploit, however some believe it still works.
