https://www.bungie.net/7/en/News/article/twid-07-25-2024 [quote]1) Increasing chances for drops when opening Overthrow chests. 2) As you open chests tied Overthrow activities, your chances will increase. 3) Higher tiered chests give bigger increases to drop chances. 4) This should decrease the amount of time it takes (on average) to get an Exotic Class Item, but we'll be watching the feedback and tuning further if necessary. 5) Reducing chances from unrelated Pale Heart chests in freeroam to encourage Overthrow participation. 6) Increased chance stored up from Overthrow chests apply to Lost Sectors and Co-Op missions that take place in the Pale Heart.[/quote] First up, most of this is just good. Overthrows dropping more often and providing an escalating pity rate is intuitive and a mechanic many people already thought existed. No complaints here. When you get to #5 though, that’s when the outlook becomes terrible. When you reduce the odds for macro-using players, you don’t stop them from using the macro. You just make them use the macro for longer to get what they want. That’s not a solution. Despite most of these buffs being good, I think these changes are terrible. It comes down to the philosophy, and misunderstanding the loot chase. See, macros represent a problem when they are widely used by the community. It means you have created a system that is so [i]unfun[/i] to engage with, [u]players would rather automate the process than do it as intended[/u]. And I’m afraid these tweaks, while good, do not provide a solution. Unless you make the class items drop like cheap candy, which I doubt will happen. Sure Overthrows are a more active farm than running around in a circle or a macro, but these changes are only addressing a symptom. The issue isn’t the drop rate. The issue is [i]how long it takes to thread the needle on your dice rolls.[/i] Fundamentally: [u]players don’t want to spend over 100 hours farming for lottery tickets[/u]. There’s this lovely analysis by someone on Twitter (please help me find it, community!) that explained that 50% of players will spend over 400-500 hours farming for all the class item drops they want (not every combo, just the combos [i]they want[/i]) These tweaks change the time to maybe 300-400 hours for 50% to get what they want. 200 if the odds are high. But that’s still not good enough. That’s still absurd and unhealthy. [b]Players are using macros because they want to do more than run around the Pale Heart for endless hours failing to get the one drop they want that enables the playstyle they desire.[/b] You need a perk combination lockout system at a minimum. You need to draw a ceiling for how long someone can do Exotic class item farming before they can just stop. Or, you can drop the pretense of having this item be a random drop and make the perks selectable like the Aeon suite. One drop by doing the quest, and you’re done. Easy peasy. [i]The fantasy is enabling the Prismatic playstyle you want, and this lets you have whatever fantasy you’re pursuing on the fly without having to invest 100+ hours to try it out[/i]. This ends the random drop system, a system I suspect Bungie wants to keep, but cures a second problem in the process: inventory bloat. Inventory bloat is a massive problem in Episode: Echoes. Each player has around 8-12 combinations they want on the class items [i]per character[/i], and each combo takes up a slot. These Exotics are meant to incentivize creativity but the limited vault space says no. I’m already 675/700 in my vault and I have been dismantling unneeded items out the wazoo! You can save every player around 30 vault spaces this way. Until you address how incredibly unhealthy the Exotic class item reward system is, the problem is not solved. Higher drop odds are not a cure, it only addresses the symptom of the time sink. It boils down to: 1) the random drop system is incredibly time consuming and unhealthy. [u]Rampant macro use is a response to this problem[/u]. Boosting drop rates does not solve this problem, only shrinking the size of the time sink. [i]Macros will still be used after the nerf to chest drop rates, they’ll just be used for longer than before[/i]. 2) there is no ceiling to how long you can spend trying to get the combinations you want. This contributes to the size of the time sink and the incentive to use macros. A “half is what I want” roll is not good enough and will not be used. The value comes from combining the two perks to make [i]your[/i] fantasy, after all. 3) even if a knockout system on perk combos was implemented tomorrow, the Exotic class items are still responsible for massive inventory bloat. Until these 3 points are addressed, the community will continue to regard the Exotic class item grind as a blight upon the game. EDIT: Thank you Mactics for putting it succinctly. https://twitter.com/macticsg1/status/1816544249242132634