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Titans’ absolute victory so far in Destiny 2’s Guardian Games is legit, apparently

No foul play here — Bungie reveals some of the math behind Guardian Games

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Guardian Games 2020 artwork Image: Bungie

For the last two weeks, Bungie has hosted a new seasonal holiday in Destiny 2 called Guardian Games. Players have been able to dive into Destiny 2, play the game, and vote for the best of the game’s three classes. However, for all but one of the days since the event started on April 21, Titans have reigned supreme — leading some players to cry foul.

In Bungie’s weekly blog post on Thursday, senior designer Peter Sarrett dove into the numbers behind Guardian Games, to prove that nothing nefarious was going on behind the scenes.

At the start of Guardian Games, Bungie “normalized” the player base. What does that mean? A few weeks ago, Bungie revealed that voting during Guardian Games wouldn’t be entirely equal. That’s because far more people play as Hunters in Destiny 2 than as Titans or Warlocks — a well-known fact among the player base.

To compensate for this discrepancy, Bungie weighted votes based on a pool of potential players. The studio counted every player who participated in one or more activities over the past month. After dividing that number across all the classes, the developers built a scale for the classes — basically flattening the Hunter curve by making the other classes’ votes count for more.

a chart showing participation by class in Destiny 2’s Guardian Games event
“This graph shows how many of each class actually participated, relative to how many characters each class had active during the prior 30 days of the event beginning,” said Bungie’s Paul Sarrett.
Image: Bungie

According to Sarrett, Hunters won the first day of Guardian Games because more Hunters participated in the event than any other class. But between day one and day two, the Hunter population dropped off, and Titans started participating more — claiming easy victories for the next week. In layman’s terms, Hunters tried out Guardian Games and crushed the competition on the first day, but didn’t log in as heavily for day two or thereafter. Titans have logged in consistently since the event began.

“On average, each Titan has contributed more medals to their cause than each Hunter or Warlock,” said Sarrett. “This was even true on Day 1 but, on that day, there were enough Hunters participating that they made up in bodies what they lacked in output.”

Sarrett also spoke to a concern among the community: players deleting characters and dumping more votes for their team. Some people even suggested they’d seen players glitch into depositing more medals than intended. Sarrett said Bungie has looked into both of those issues, and found that neither problem has affected the integrity of Guardian Games.

Despite Titans’ surprise domination, Bungie will make no changes to the event. “Our goal has always been to create a competition that is decided by how much each class engages with the event, and not which class has the largest roster,” said Sarrett. “Titans are currently engaging the most, but we will see if they keep it up.”

Hunters have only one win under their belt, and Warlocks have yet to win a single day. But the last week of Guardian Games counts for double, so it’s still possible Titans could lose the in-game event.


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