Destiny has received a new hotfix today which Bungie says will "reduce the effectiveness of a humbling number of economy exploits." Among the "fixes," was a change to the loot cave, a location on Earth in Old Russia that would rapidly spawn an infinite number of new enemies serving as a popular place for high-level players to grind for loot.
"The Hive of the holy “Treasure Cave” have realized the futility of their endless assault on Skywatch and have retired to lick their wounds and plan their next attack," Bungie said of the change. As a result of today's hotfix the respawn timers for monster caves in Skywatch have been "normalized" to 40 seconds, up from the previous 6 seconds.
In a separate post, Bungie explained the reasoning behind nerfing the loot cave:
The social experience of a cave farming run is amazing: the herding to get a team of Guardians all behind the line and firing in the right direction, the rush to grab the loot, the scramble when the panic wave starts, the beckoning glow from inside the cave. The speed at which the community organized around this activity was inspiring and humbling to us.But shooting at a black hole for hours on end isn't our dream for how Destiny is played. Our hope is that social engagement in public spaces is only one part of the Destiny experience. Expect changes soon which decrease the efficiency of cave farming and correspondingly increase engram drops from completing activities.
Reactions to the change are about what you'd expect from the Destiny playerbase: anger and frustration.
On the bright side, it sounds like Bungie at least recognizes there's a problem with the current loot drop system. In the dev notes they mentioned changes to the Cryptarch (maybe he won't be such a bi*ch anymore) and increased engram drops for completing activities.
