While this week’s update from Destiny 2 has plenty of things for fans to read over, one of the bigger topics is about cheaters. According to Bungie, cheating behavior is up roughly 50% since January, with 2,133 bans dished out to players four weeks after Season of the Worthy launched. And while the banhammer has been swinging mightily, the devs admit that reaction times have still been far too slow.
So what’s being done about it? The devs will be shifting more bodies to combating cheating, with more people analyzing reports, more work on anti-cheat systems, more people developing and testing new ban rules, and ultimately “more fuel for the hammer.” Speaking of the banhammer, players who are in a fireteam with a cheater could now be the target of a ban themselves. “If you LFG your way into a fireteam with a cheater, get out and report them. If you ride them to a flawless, the banhammer will come for you as well,” explains the post.
Considering most of the cheating is happening in the Trials of Osiris, Bungie is also looking at requiring a longer playtime needed — up to 100 hours — to even access the content. This isn’t set in stone, however, and the devs are interested in gathering player feedback on this idea. Bungie also believes that making Trials available for those who didn’t buy the Season Pass was a mistake; this won’t be changing for Season of the Worthy, but it could be changing for future seasons.
Speaking of the Trials, some adjustments are in the works there as well, including token payout milestones at three, five, and seven wins to mitigate token farming, adding a weekly bounty that encourages participation each weekend and does not require match wins, and adding more Masterworking materials from Trials to make them feel more rewarding when compared to other endgame activities.
