14 DAY TRIAL // Yesterday, the major 2.01 update for Destiny arrived and introduced the Eververse Trading Company and the associated Silver currency, which allows gamers to use real-world money in order to get access to some emotes for their characters, which do not have any impact on the actual gameplay.
The player community has quickly dug through the files associated with the patch and has found a number of items that offer boosts to both armor and weapon drops for the new King's Fall raid that cannot be currently found in the world of the social shooter.
There is also a new item that would allow a user to boost a character from level one to the current cap without actually playing the title.
Speculation is rampant that Bungie is planning to actually sell them through the Eververse Trading Company at some point in the future, basically introducing a pay-to-win option for the game.
This would be a boon for gamers who do not have the time to basically farm the various activities for the best gear, but the move would certainly annoy gamers who have played Destiny since launch and pride themselves on the equipment they managed to get access to.
Luke Smith, one of the creative directors at Bungie, says on Twitter that the company is not and does not have plans to sell items that will buff drop rates.
The developer has not talked about the fact that a boost item might be sold for Silver and by extension real-world money in the future.
Presumably, Bungie will share more details about its plans for the evolution of microtransactions in the coming months.
Destiny is shifting towards a free-to-play MMO model
The title from Bungie was initially defined as a social shooter, which would focus on the classic mechanics of the genre but would also encourage players to interact with other gamers and to group with them to tackle the most powerful bosses.
With the introduction of the microtransactions, Bungie is saying that more resources will be made available to the live events team for Destiny, which should deliver a range of events for the community in the coming weeks.
It also seems that the company will be offering missions and quests for free every couple of months as long as the community is interested in the emotes and other content that's delivered for Silver.
This is a model that is working well for a number of developers that offer free-to-play MMOs, a model that Bungie seems interested to emulate to some extent.
The development team has made a number of tweaks to the core mechanics in the recent 2.01 update, changing weapons balance and improving the features of both Iron Banner and Trials of Osiris.
Bungie is waiting for the community to deliver feedback linked to the changes before offering info about the way it will improve the shooter shortly.
Rumors are saying that an entirely new Destiny 2 title is at the moment in development and will be launched on both the Xbox One and the PlayStation 4 in late 2016.
We aren't (nor are we planning) on selling consumables that buff King's Fall drop rates for Silver.
— Luke Smith (@thislukesmith) October 14, 2015