Yesterday, Bungie confirmed what many Destiny 2 players have suspected (or even expected at this point) since the start of its most recent season episode- the central mechanic of Revenant is fundamentally broken. Specifically, the tonics, which are designed to provide temporary weapon-focusing buffs to help players target farm desired weapons—are not functioning as intended. Bungie’s confirmation comes after weeks of players questioning whether the tonics were working properly. Worse still, there’s a possibility they may have been actively counterproductive, focusing entirely different weapons than the ones players sought.
We have identified an issue where Tomb of Elders Tonics are not increasing chances for specific weapons as expected.
We will share a target fix date once the proposed fix is tested and verified.
— Bungie Help (@BungieHelp) December 3, 2024
Are the tonics on the Tomb of Elders page broken, or is it a system-wide failure across all tonics? For many players, faith in the game’s internal systems has eroded to the point where it’s difficult to believe anything works as advertised. And the worst part is that there have been countless issues that have been acting up similarly for years, possibly at the start of Destiny 2’s re-introduction of randomly-rolled weapon perks (D2 vanilla launched with static rolls, which everyone hated).
The tonic debacle isn’t Bungie’s first (nor will it be their last) stumble. A prior controversy, dubbed “Weightgate,” exposed deep flaws in the game’s loot system where players discovered that certain perk pairings were virtually unattainable due to how perks were weighted within the API. Bungie did its typical deny, deny deny, approach before eventually acknowledging the issue and issued god-roll weapons as compensation which can be picked up at Banshee for free for everyone right now (as long as players defeated the Dungeon from whence these weapons come from).
But the damage has been done. Weightgate shattered the illusion of fair RNG, leaving players to wonder how many hours they had wasted farming a system broken at its core, which clearly spans far and wide across other systems, leaving players furious, disappointed, and feeling betrayed for the 296th time.
Now, with the tonic issue proving yet another player conspiracy true, those suspicions have only deepened. Bungie has inadvertently trained its community to assume that every mechanic might be bugged or misrepresented.
To make matters worse still, numerous players have reported being unable to brew tonics altogether, a bug that has persisted for weeks at this point. Even after some high-profile Destiny 2 online personalities and influencers had been working directly with Bungie to resolve the issue, no solution has been delivered. Some players, including those with only one active character, have been effectively locked out of the tonic portion of seasonal content for most if not all of the episode entirely.
On top of this, Bungie announced yesterday that a recently disabled super in the new dungeon wouldn’t be fixed until mid-January. Like, holy shit. Whoever is in charge of making these decisions is an outright fool. Nothing else can be stated about it. And considering that these long wait times for fixes are becoming a grim norm, Destiny 2 will continue to bleed the last few drops of players that remain. Not a good look amidst the lowest player count in the game’s history.
Much of the blame for these recurring issues has been attributed to Bungie’s recent layoffs, which hit the Quality Assurance (QA) team especially hard. QA teams are the backbone of bug detection, and their absence is being felt acutely by the community. While the remaining QA staff continue to work with what little influence they have left, the sheer volume of unresolved issues suggests they are overwhelmed by the scale of the task.
The fault, however, lies squarely with Bungie’s leadership. The decision to downsize QA during a live-service game’s lifecycle has had devastating consequences and now players are left to contend with a game riddled with bugs and broken systems, and each new piece of content seems to arrive with more problems than solutions. Guitar errors anyone?
At this point, Bungie as a whole is indefensible. Countless players online have expressed disinterest in the content delivery cycle and the style of the episode format. Sure, once it’s all said and done, Frontiers will be here with promises that things will change. But since Bungie has demonstrated such little that can be counted on, many players won’t be returning, regardless of what Bungie assures will come.
