Bungie revises Commendation score targets in Destiny 2 Lightfall

Commendations were one of the many changes that Bungie implemented in the Destiny 2 Lightfall expansion. This system allows players to commend each other at the end of an activity, based on how they feel their fellow teammates have performed.

For every Commendation that players receive, they'll receive a score as well. As such, there are two ways in which these scores come into play. Firstly, they're required to advance through Guardian Ranks, and secondly, the higher the Commendations score of a player, the more friendly and helpful they're believed to be.

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Possible causes behind the Commendations score revision in Destiny 2

Being a loot-oriented game, Destiny 2 is well-known for the immense grind that players have to subject themselves to in the hunt for a god roll weapon or high-stat armor sets. Although Bungie tried to reduce the grind in Lightfall, the issue arose once again with the Commendations system that the developers introduced.

Bungie introduced a brand new system known as Guardian Ranks with the new expansion. While this rank does reset every season, it's meant to be a measure of how experienced a player is in the game. To progress through these ranks, Guardians are required to complete certain sets of challenges, and achieving a particular Commendations score is one of them.

Upon release, the required scores were as follows:

• Rank 7: 750
• Rank 8: 1,250
• Rank 9: 1,750
• Rank 10: 5,000
• Rank 11: 6,000

As expected, these scores sparked a new grind. Players were looking for groups to actually farm Commendations, defeating the overall purpose of why Bungie introduced this in the first place. To combat this, the developers have finally reduced the score requirements to advance through the ranks. The new score requirements are as follows:

• Rank 7: 460
• Rank 8: 790
• Rank 9: 1,290
• Rank 10: 1,530
• Rank 11: 1,800

While this will definitely reduce the grind for the Commendations score, the way that these Commendations are offered is still strange, with many players likely to continue farming for these scores. The current method of awarding Commendations to a player involves completing an activity with them before heading into the post activity screen, where players can be given their accolades by clicking on their profiles.

Although these accolade cards do have specific titles on them, players tend to just spam them without considering how the other player has performed or whether they deserve Commendations in the first place in Destiny 2.

In an ideal scenario, this score shouldn't be associated with Guardian Ranks in the first place. This will essentially lead to two outcomes, with the first being that players won't have to farm for Commendations to advance through the ranks. Secondly, it'll be a more valid measure of how a player actually performs in an activity, especially when they're playing with random strangers in Destiny 2 Lightfall.