Bungie Comments on Concerns of Destiny 2 Perk Weighting

Bungie commented on the ongoing reports suggesting how Destiny 2 handles RNG is not working as intended.

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.

Many thanks to all players who have been contributing to data collection across the community. This data has been monumentally helpful with our investigation, and we are currently working on internal simulations to confirm your findings.

We will provide more information as soon as it is available.

This is a bit different from their previous comment about perk weighting, which was a simple confirmation that such a mechanic does not exist in Destiny 2.

For those unaware, reports of a possible issue started appearing last week when players started noticing Vesper’s Host’s extremely sought after new grenade launcher, VS Chill Inhibitor, was not dropping Envious Arsenal, with Bait and Switch at the expected rate.

It started with people simply asking for confirmation the roll existed, before players started speculating it was simply less common than the expected 1:36 chance a non-weighted perk system would provide.

While reports of foul play are common with any RNG based system, many noticed that particular roll was unexpected unpopular. By contrast, a weapon like Mountaintop had the most desirable roll, Recombination, with Auto-Loading Holster as the second most popular drop within days of release. The pattern was also not present in other dungeon weapons, making VS Chill Inhibitor stand out as peculiar.

The community debated this until Destiny 2 community manager, dmg04, with the aforementioned message. Many wrote this off as players underestimating RNG, or the admittedly subjective data being flawed. However, many others continued to look into it when a pattern seemingly emerged.

A lot of sources added their two cents on this section, with the easiest to see being the newly added tool on Light.gg. With the release they also issued a FAQ explaining their thoughts, and how their systems actually work.

The page itself shows a general preference towards certain perk positions. We included a couple weapons from the dungeon, including VS Chill Inhibitor, where the general pattern can be seen. Essentially perks 1/4, 2/5, 3/6, 4/1, 5/2, and 3/6 appear less often than those around it, or in the middle. In the case of Envious Arsenal, with Bait and Switch it happens to be positioned at 2/5. Since this is subjective data a bias is already starting to appear, though it’s happening at such a slow rate it’s reinforcing the idea that something is going on.

Curiously, the pattern is somewhat different on weapons with 12 perk arrangements. Instead of being a uniformed shape like the dungeon weapons, it’s more of a checkerboard pattern.

Players seem unsure when the glitch supposedly started. It was initially thought to be limited to VS Chill Inhibitor, though the data suggests it’s impacting weapons across the board. Unfortunately, as weapons get older subjective data like this becomes nearly unusable. However, there is a strong case for this starting with The Final Shape, with some suggesting it potentially dates back to Destiny 2: Forsaken (2018).

At this point Bungie is absolutely aware of the concerns, and making an effort to see what, if anything, is going on. It’s helpful to remember it’s all speculation, and it could be a bit before Bungie follows up, and more importantly, offers a potential solution.