By Jenna Brown
This article was originally posted on 2014-09-25 13:05 MDT. It was updated on 2022-05-28 for clarity and to provide additional details.
Bungie has rendered the famed “treasure cave” at Skywatch on Earth effectively useless with Hot Fix 5, an update file released to consoles this morning. The patch notes indicate that the spawn time of every cave on Earth was increased to 40 seconds. For comparison, treasure cave monsters previously spawned every six seconds, the shortest on Earth. Three of the other four caves respawned every 10 seconds. The cave with the longest respawn cycle was in the Barrens at 20 seconds.
According to their Dev Notes, farming for loot does not align with Bungie’s tenuous "dream for how Destiny is played." One of the most compelling aspects of video games is when users find new ways to play a game and make it their own. Gaming becomes infinitely more fascinating when a game evolves into something other than its hardware and mechanics, providing a backdrop for a community to grow and greater entertainment value outside the campaigns and arenas.
For as much as Bungie claims that Destiny is a social experience, they certainly make it difficult to socialize. There's no proximity chat to help gamers group up and fight together while casually patrolling the open areas, and the "social" Tower area provides no method to communicate either, besides gestures and dancing. Loot farming was a great way to find a group of people to interact with while picking off the runners and hoping for Legendary drops.
Other popular farming method “waking the Hive” was nerfed with the Sept. 22 Update 1.0.1.4, but clarified with the rest of today’s Hot Fix notes: the engram drop rate is now temporarily reduced after a hard wipe, meaning you will have to wait longer between rounds of waking the Hive if you want any of your kills to drop loot.
Perhaps I'm being too emotional, but this update has certainly made Destiny less appealing to me. In my irrational fervor, I almost feel like organizing a protest, like a sit-in at the cave, or picking a day where no one plays Destiny as a kind of walk-out.
What do you think about the updates? Still in love with Destiny? Were you ever in love with Destiny to begin with? Let me know!
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