This heavy ammo bug has been around for quite some time now. Bungie knows by now it’s a huge quality of life issue for us players, enough to place up constant complaints on this sub. Whether the issue is difficult to fix or not, why hasn’t it just been settled in another manner by now? How can they even predict a timeline when it will be fixed anyways? If they can measure the resources and time it takes to fix this, can they dedicate more people to the problem faster?

This community has proposed countless wonderful solutions while they “continue to work on the bug” in the background. How long has it been? Why not take advantage of all the advice we're giving and use one of the good ideas that can be implemented much faster? At the very least, why not ensure Xur is selling heavy ammo packs each week?

I started thinking of it from a business standpoint. I do have an MBA and an undergrad in marketing after all. It became clear to me that not fixing this issue is the best strategic decision for their business. Even just stalling as long as possible under the cover of “it’s complicated” would be smart if they could get away with it.

A small population of their game complains about the problem. Does anyone actually reduce their playtime directly over this problem? Do you stop playing or do you start farming for more glimmer? With my heavy ammo draining so much, I know I don’t instantly log off after raids. I go farm glimmer to buy all those expensive ammo packs for my three characters. So you want them to fix something sooner than later that's going to make us play less in the long run? This bug is another way to get us to grind, whether intentional or not.

I believe this was an unintentional issue that when noticed was left in as yet another method of keeping us in the grind. That is their number one goal after all, right? We complain, but we’re still playing. With no negative action outside of complaints, there is no reason to do anything but stall. It’s just another reason for us to log in and redo the same thing a million more times. And we do because the gameplay at its core is that freaking good.

At least with glimmer farming there are options and variety. You can free roam if you choose not to be optimal. The issue even gives us an excuse to do more stuff in game. I know it was the first time I ever used those consumables to increase glimmer drop rate from mobs. So it’s not all a bad thing, unless you get offended by this type of manipulation.

It takes a certain amount of time for your average player to farm/earn enough glimmer to purchase one heavy ammo synth from the gun vendor. Add that up and look how much time you save by spending one coin with Xur from your stash of 120. Look at the time saved even by just cutting the price in half at the gun vendor. Time is money. The longer we play, the longer we stay interested, the longer we have to farm a little more glimmer to prepare for the next raid is one step closer to us buying the next DLC pack.

Hopefully this encourages some good discussion about the possibility one way or another. I'm not trying to raise pitchforks and riot but rather talk about the issue from a different perspective. It’s okay if you don’t agree, I just hope this doesn’t go completely unnoticed because if I’m right, the greedy corporation wins without anyone being the wiser. Based on the business focused decisions we’ve seen time after time since launch, if this were true, would it even be that surprising?

TLW: The heavy ammo bug may be an unintentional issue that when noticed was left in as yet another method of keeping us in the grind. Bungie may be stalling a solution as it's increasing our play time. The gun vendor wants your business and Bungie wants your time. They have to keep us on the treadmill until the next dlc release somehow and all the little tricks add up. So they may have a working fix at the end of February. When does House of Wolves come out again?