Destiny 2’s latest expansion The Edge of Fate is already facing an uphill battle, launching with the lowest concurrent player counts for a Destiny 2 expansion ever, while the community rail against a raft of controversial mechanical changes detailed in some of the longest patch notes Bungie has ever produced. Now, it turns out that the aforementioned changelog was still not long enough, with Bungie apologising for missing out numerous adjustments that players have claimed are “stealth nerfs”.
The community has drawn up several lists and reports of the alleged stealth nerfs (and, in some cases stealth buffs) on the Destiny 2 subreddit, including this one by user llIicit. Among these changes are some particularly dramatic adjustments to the Warlock class, including a major apparent nerf to the Touch of Flame, while user arixagorasosamos says Incinerator Snap builds are “gutted completely”.
Among all this, Destiny 2’s communication’s manager Dylan Gafner also took to Reddit to address the situation. “For the last few days, teams have been reviewing player reports and auditing changes to identify gaps in our patch notes article,” he wrote in a statement. “We’re looking to get details out ASAP on the missed notes, and seriously—many apologies here.”
Gafner denies the accusations that Bungie deliberately tried to slip these changes under the radar. “We never intend to ship ‘stealth nerfs’ in Destiny 2. I understand this has happened a few times before, too—and it stands to show that a few of our processes need improvement. We would be completely out of our minds if we thought we could slip something under the rug without players noticing.”
I’m inclined to believe Gafner that the missing updates are a consequence of slapdash record-keeping rather than trying to get one over on players. Given how Destiny players obsess over such changes, it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense for Bungie to actively attempt to conceal them.
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Moreover, Gafner likewise points out that the changelog for The Edge of Fate is “one of (if not THE) longest patch notes submissions we’ve had” so it would be understandable, if not acceptable, that some changes got missed. Likely compounding the issue is the small matter of Bungie laying off 220 people toward the end of last year—the kind of corporate bloodbath that’ll have a dramatic effect on processes such as documentation.
All that said, I can understand why players might think Bungie is trying to pull a fast one. It was only two months ago the developer was caught inserting the designs of an independent artist into Marathon without permission, which caused an enormous outcry and contributed to the indefinite delay of the game.
Bungie claimed the designs were filched by a former Bungie artist who has since left the studio. But whether the theft occurred with or without Bungie’s oversight, the fiasco has seriously damaged trust between the developer and its community.
Hence, it’s understandable that any actions taken by Bungie which smack of evasion would be treated with suspicion by players. But the Internet does also tend to react to such controversies like sharks in chummed waters, and we should be wary not to assume the worst intentions every time a developer makes a mistake. Bungie has clearly goofed here, and its reputation does it no favours from an optics perspective. But I think the problem is not that Bungie tried to be sneaky, rather that it laid off a huge number of people who, it turns out, were hired for damn good reasons.
Gafner says he doesn’t have a “specific timeline” for when these missing changes will be added to the log, but he stresses that documenting Warlock changes is a priority, with more to be “straightened out” down the line. “Some exotic ammo backpack changes were also not detailed enough—we had notes on how ammo was changing all up with a broad rebalancing line, but no specific bullets for things like Queenbreaker.”