What FPS Manipulation Could Mean for the Future of Destiny 2

It shouldn’t be a secret to any Guardian on PC that lowering your FPS lowers the damage you take. If this fact has escaped you, then don’t worry because it passed me by as well. This is something that I’ve noticed crop up over the past few weeks, as more and more Guardians share ways to cheese bosses and other activities in videos. The most egregious tell you to deliberately lower your FPS to avoid taking too much damage and rinse bosses. Others simply point it out but don’t condone it.

FPS is your framerate, something that you have no control over on consoles. However, on PC, it’s an entirely different matter. You can tweak all sorts of settings to deliberately lower your FPS, and even pull separate settings right back to make your FPS lower than would be acceptable in any other circumstances. Doing that doesn’t sound like it makes sense, and it doesn’t unless you’re trying to avoid taking too much damage.

I think the system works by your Guardian missing some frames of damage, allowing you to tank certain shots that would have otherwise killed you. Missing the frames misses the damage, but it’s unclear as to whether this will benefit you in PvP. Many Guardians believe that you could probably cheese your way through encounters if you lowered your PvP sufficiently, but I’ve not seen anyone get it right so far.

Bungie is pretty good at spotting this stuff, and the reality is that they know how to work around it. We’ve already had reports of Guardians holding the minimize button to cause all sorts of mayhem to their favor, and Bungie is all too aware of it. I have no doubt that they’re aware of this FPS issue, but it can’t be that much of a problem if they’re not doing anything about it.

Low FPS generally hurts you in PvP, so I don’t see Bungie doing a lot about it. With that said, the company would be remiss to ignore Guardians wilfully altering their specifications to get around taking damage. I think that, in the future, FPS will come into play with matchmaking, and you’ll only be matched with Guardians of similar FPS to avoid any of you having fun.

Let us know what you think should be the solution in the comments.

Jamie Moorcroft-Sharp

I'm an avid Destiny 2 fan and player. I fell in love with Destiny 1 during the early alpha and have been hooked by the universe ever since. I really enjoy playing with other Guardians, speculating about the lore, and writing about as much of the Destiny universe as I can.