Destiny 2 perk weighting is real: Players find wild loot drop bug Bungie may have missed for years, and now a fix is coming [UPDATED]

Destiny 2.

What you need to know

• Compiling data en masse, Destiny 2 players may have discovered a significant bug that's potentially been influencing perk rolls on weapons for years.
• Using data collected from the API of Bungie's looter shooter, players have put forth the "perk proximity theory" that suggests perks closer together in each weapon's API listing have a higher chance of rolling together in a combo, while perks that are far away from one another are less likely to drop together.
• The catalyst for this potential discovery was a new heavy grenade launcher called VS Chill Inhibitor, with players having an exceptionally difficult time getting the desired meta combo of Envious Arsenal and Bait and Switch. Those two perks are three spaces away from one another in the weapon's API listing, while much more common combos like Envious Arsenal and Explosive Light have perks that are right next to each other.
• Bungie has announced that it's been made aware of the issue, and is using player data as well as internal investigations to try and find "a potential issue within our code for how RNG perks are generated."

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Original article: At the heart of the gear chase in Bungie's space fantasy looter shooter Destiny 2 are random rolls for perks, which are the traits on weapons that influence how they operate and what they're capable of. Over the years, some players have subscribed to the belief that less desirable perks are intentionally weighted so that they'll drop more frequently than better ones, which the developers have routinely denied. Now, though, fans may have discovered a very real bug that's interfering with perk drop rates — and it might have gone under Bungie's nose for years.

The catalyst for the potential find was the VS Chill Inhibitor, an exceptional heavy grenade launcher from the new Vesper’s Host dungeon added in the Episode: Revenant update recently. It can roll with the fantastic perk combo of Envious Arsenal and Bait and Switch, with the former completely refilling its magazine and the latter giving it a massive 35% damage bonus whenever you do damage with your other two weapons first. As you'd expect, this specific roll skyrocketed to the top of the boss damage meta immediately, but it's proven to be an exceedingly rare drop that's gotten statistics wizards in the Destiny community investigating.

First suggested on social media by streamer T1Vendetta as "copium," Destiny scientists like Newo and MossyMax have collected and compiled extensive amounts of data that suggest something called the "perk proximity theory" may actually be affecting drop rates. I won't get into the weeds of the drop rate numbers themselves here — Newo wrote a 10-page analysis paper you can read if you're curious — but essentially, the theory is that perks have a lower chance to drop together if they're far away from each other in Destiny 2's application programming interface (API). The below image from MossyMax shows what this looks like:

This image from MossyMax shows that there seems to be a direct correlation between how close together perks are in Destiny 2's API and how likely it is that those perks will drop together in-game. (Image credit: @mossy_max on X (Twitter))

In this example, perks that are directly next to one another in their respective columns (yellow line) have dropped together the most, followed by perks that are one space away (green line), two (blue line), and three (purple line). You're supposed to have an even 1/36 chance to get any possible perk combination on a weapon with six traits in each column, but assuming this bug is real, it's affecting the drop rates so that perks in close proximity have a high 1/24 chance to roll, with ones far away from each other having woefully pitiful odds of 1/454.

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I'll admit that at first, I found this theory incredibly hard to believe. After seeing the consistent pattern in all the data, though, it's clear that something really is going on — and it explains why people are having such a hard time getting their desired VS Chill Inhibitor god roll. Envious Arsenal and Bait and Switch are three spaces away from each other in the weapon's API listing (visible on Light.gg) and that combo has proven to be almost impossible to land, while Envious Arsenal and Explosive Light (the "runner-up" combo) are right next to each other and seem to drop together frequently.

What's truly wild is that by comparing information from a dataset published by Light.gg that shows perk combo distribution in every weapon since 2018's Forsaken expansion to perk columns on the site's individual weapon pages, one can see that this issue has potentially affected Destiny 2 for years, possibly making bad rolls more common, great rolls rarer than they should be, and vice-versa. The good news, though, is that thanks to player reports, Bungie has been made aware of the problem and is investigating.

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In this chart, perk combos that have dropped more than expected with a 1/36 chance are white, while ones that have dropped less than expected are black. Gray boxes represent drops in-line with the odds. Note that the white perk combos are all from perks close to each other in the API, while the black ones are from perks that are far away. (Image credit: @kneewoah on X (Twitter))

"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," wrote the developer through its official Destiny 2 Team social media account. "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."

Previously, Bungie responded to player concerns by noting that there's no perk weighting active in the game, but I suspect the studio missed the "perk proximity" issue because it was looking for individual perks rolling more frequently than others rather than combinations of perks being unusually common or rare. Now that data collected by players gives a clearer idea of what the issue might be, the developer will hopefully be able to figure out what's causing the problem and take care of it.

All in all, this is shaping up to be one of the craziest scandals in the history of Destiny, though I definitely don't think any part of it was intentional on Bungie's part. Ultimately, with weapon crafting — a mechanic that allows players to give weapons the specific perk combos they want after earning enough "red border" versions of them — taking a backseat and traditional loot farming becoming more prevalent in the post-The Final Shape era, I'm just glad this was brought to the developer's attention when it was.