'Destiny 2' and the Extravagant Exotic Economy

Destiny is only a few weeks into its lifecycle and has, so far, been received mostly positively. But there is one thing that players are finding strange about their experience. It seems that Destiny 2 has a habit of giving players Exotic gear all willy-nilly. For those new to Destiny, Exotics are the ultimate form of loot. Gear and items that boost your guardian abilities to new levels.

In Destiny 1, Exotics were items that players had to grind for in traditional MMO fashion. These items rarely dropped for players and some required that players complete harrowing tasks, that only a fraction of the player base ever achieved.

There was a certain prestige associated with Exotic items. Players would show off the gear that came as a result of their accomplishments to friends or to other players in the online community. These were items that a player could brag about. Something that put them a notch above the rest of the player base.

All that prestige seems to have been stripped away in Destiny 2. Players all over the online community are reporting Exotics dropping at rates much higher than the original Destiny. Many spent the entire lifespan of Destiny grinding out their collection of Exotics. In Destiny 2, it seems that most players have already acquired collections of respectable sizes just by completing the weekly and daily tasks that don't pose much of a challenge.

An Early Exotic for Mundane Tasks

In fact, this seems to be a pattern established early in the FPS-MMO hybrid's content. At around level 4, which can be attained in the first hour or two of play, players must complete a mission that rewards them with an Exotic item that is fairly powerful, even when compared to gear acquired at higher levels. Since players can break down high-level gear to upgrade Exotics, that item can still be powerful for the rest of the player's time in game.

Players in the online community have created threads such as this one on GameFAQs, where they are reporting high numbers of duplicates for Exotic items. Which seems to break the premise of an Exotic in the first place. While having these powerful items is necessary for character progression in the endgame, the items themselves seem to have lost a great amount of importance.

Players no longer need to spend days grinding out strikes to earn these rare rewards, since they are just handed them. In Destiny 1, Exotics had some legend to them. Seeing more than one player in a row with one kind of Exotic rarely happened and it was unlikely that you would receive the same Exotic four times in a row. Yet in Destiny 2, every player in a crucible match is using a copy of the Wardcliff Coil and there are Reddit threads dedicated to Destiny players sharing screenshots of all their duplicates.

Everybody has Five of These

This is frustrating for both those who play Destiny for the lore and those who play for the gear-grind. For those who love to dig into the lore of Destiny, when an item is described as one of a kind and a player has a bunch hiding in their vault, it can immediately break immersion.

In terms of the gear-grinders, when players are progressing in the end game, they need high-level exotics to push their levels up. A player can only have one Exotic armor piece and one Exotic weapon equipped at a time. When those items drop for them with the same stats as the ones they have collected, it can feel like they just wasted a good chunk of time.

Destiny 2's Exotic economy seems like Bungie over-corrected after hearing fans complain about the lack of gear drops in Destiny 1. What used to take players days of grinding challenges, now takes them hours of doing the standard content. Since Destiny 2 is a living game, subject to frequent patches, there is a chance this will be adjusted again soon. Otherwise, players will have to wait and see if Bungie has a plan for their Exotic laden Guardians.