Destiny 2: The Final Shape is a good expansion with one particularly terrible exotic loot chase. The new exotic class items are powerful pieces of RNG gear that can be extremely tedious to chase, which is why lots of players instead rely on AFK macros to farm the loot for them. The epidemic of AFK farming has gotten so bad that Bungie is now changing its terms of service to ban players for the workaround if they continue using it.
“While input macros can be a beneficial accessibility tool for many—and we intend to keep it that way—some have been leveraging these tools to automate gameplay,” the studio announced on Reddit and Discord on Monday. “Players detected using automation to circumvent idle detection or perform automated activities to earn loot may be restricted or banned. Loot includes, but is not limited to, XP, materials, or drops (e.g. Exotic class items).”
While Bungie didn’t call out exotic class item farming specifically, that seems to be the most popular form of AFK macros lately, ever since players hit peak exhaustion with the gameplay loop required to attain them. Since exotic items spawn with random perks, it’s not just a matter of getting one but of getting the “right one” for the builds you’re running. And with Overthrow activities in the Pale Heart not being generous enough and Dual Destiny being a lot of work to keep re-running, some Destiny 2 diehards on PC started turning to running scripts in the background to farm for them, especially after recent accidental nerfs made the whole thing even worse.
The way it works, as you can see from dozens of Reddit threads and YouTube videos, is by loading players into the Overthrow the Landing patrol zone and looting the same old chest that has a roughly 2 percent chance to drop an exotic class item over and over again. Because the chest is close and always in the same place, it’s just a matter of rinsing and repeating. The script can loot about one chest a minute, which would be mind numbing for a player to do but can make quick work of the farm if outsourced to a macro script that inputs all the commands for you while you’re busy complaining about Destiny 2 on the subreddit.
“Is this allowed?” one player asked in early July amid discussions of whether this was a bannable offense. “I mean, as long as he’s doing it solo and not hampering anyone else’s enjoyment of the game, I personally don’t see a problem with it,” another responded. “I don’t know why anyone would wanna spend hours actively running around a patrol space for a 1/64 chance to get something they are looking for for a build in the game.”
Bungie is now making it clear that that’s no longer the case. Most players seem to be okay with this change, and the studio specified that checkpoint macros, which are used to give teammates the same encounter save spot as the main person running the activity, won’t be regulated in the same way. But it still leaves the larger issue of why players were so turned off by the current grind that they started AFK farming to begin with. “Based,” wrote Destiny 2 YouTuber Stefan “Datto” Jonke. “But now it’s time to do something about why people opt for those paths in the first place.”
“That is indeed the goal,” Bungie wrote back. “We have some changes to XUR coming that we announced last week, and the team is continuing to look at opportunities for improvement. Know it can be frustrating, but increased feedback/data to show the problem helps a lot, rather than resorting to Macros.”