The Debate Over Destiny 2’s Shiny Drop Rates Is Pointless

Destiny 2 players are embroiled in yet another war about whether RNG farming is good or crafting is better. There may be a place for both in the game as the systems evolve, but one thing entering into the grind discussion is the shiny drop rate in Into the Light

I posted the other day that data suggests the shiny drop rate is likely somewhere between 1-3%, depending on how many final chests you reach. That is extremely low, and after an insane amount of grinding, I only have six shinies. Many have less. Or none.

But with shinies and their drop rates specifically, I cannot really get behind the fervor about the game “demanding” an insane grind here.

At its core, the concept of a shiny drop in Destiny 2 is more or less purely cosmetic. There are three differences between shinies and normal weapons. 1) It’s shiny. It has a unique shader you cannot get on any other weapons, 2) it comes Masterworked already saving you a couple cores, 3) it has two perks in each column, That’s it.

There is almost no compelling situation in which you need those four columns. There is an interaction on Edge Transit where you can transition from Envious Assassin to Cascade Point by flipping those perks for big damage quickly, but Bungie has already said that they are looking at changing that.

So, the double perks is simply to give you…a better chance at the roll you want. Or maybe you can have one good gun instead of two good guns for different situations. The main point of a shiny is instead simply that it is a shiny. It’s a cosmetic difference with a mildly better chance at the roll you want. It may be a psychological thing, as in I got a drop with the perks I want, but I wish that it was a shiny, but there’s no reason for that from a gameplay perspective. All of these perks are going to be enhanceable when Bungie introduces the ability to do that on all BRAVE weapons. Your weapon does not need to be shiny in order to enhance those perks.

There should be grinds for things this rare, and to me, shinies are a good balance of something to chase without it being at all remotely necessary from a gameplay perspective. You want shinies because it’s cool to have a shiny, not because it’s going to be wildly better than a normal drop with the same perk combo you want.

The one exception to this is that I still think that Bungie’s desire to set a ticking clock on shiny farming that expires when The Final Shape comes out is wrong. If you do want a shiny racing against time like that is very annoying, and is the one aspect of this system I cannot abide. I am still hoping that Bungie changes that soon, and I don’t like this as an engagement ploy to get people grinding harder than they would otherwise because of the shiny concept. That part is lame.

But shinies in general? The drop rates are fine, the concept is fine, this does not need to be a discussion.

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