A dedicated Destiny fan has stats from last week's Iron Banner event, showing that drop rates appeared to improve drastically over past events, just as Bungie promised.

Last week, Destiny fans played the monthly, one-week-long PvP event known as Iron Banner. Iron Banner is a modified playlist (this time of the Clash gametype) where level advantages are turned on.

Since deploying the Destiny April Update, Bungie said Iron Banner received special attention in the patch, with improved drop rates after each game. And if the statistics provided by one dedicated Destiny fan, it appears that Bungie's modifications to Iron Banner were effective in practice.

That Destiny fan, known as HeyFitzy, posted his findings on the Destiny subreddit. He played 300 games over the course of the week of Iron Banner. For the stat junkies, he provided full spreadsheets showing the maps played and loot given out after each match.

He noticed that loot dropped at a 22% percent rate, doubling from the approximate 10% rate from the previous three Iron Banner events (of which he also played 300 games providing the same stats). Of that gear, he noticed a high number of it with 335 Light, provided the player who received it was within 6 Light of the 335 level cap.

He commended Bungie for a more rewarding experience for this first Iron Banner after the April Update. However, based on his stats, he critiqued the map rotation and matchmaking active in the playlist.

The maps were weighted toward the new The Taken King maps: The Drifter, Frontier, The Dungeons, Sector 618, and Vertigo. Meanwhile two maps, Cathedral and Blind Watch never came up, meaning they were removed from the map rotation.

Another issue HeyFitzy believes is going on is some implementation of skill based matchmaking. Since admitting three months ago that skill based matchmaking was stealth implemented after The Taken King, Bungie has rolled back the skill based matchmaking, and now operates on an unknown ratio of connection based and skill based matchmaking.

Matchmaking continues to be something Bungie tinkers with, and it's a regular topic in the community, but according to HeyFitzy, Iron Banner's matchmaking appeared to heavily favor skill over connection, thus leading to increased amounts of lag and highly competitive matches. It appeared to him that Bungie's Damage Referee system did not work well in these instances. These were his observations and Bungie has not revealed just how much skill based matchmaking came into play in Iron Banner.

And just as an extra note, with each game lasting 10-12 minutes, that means HeyFitzy played 50-60 hours over the Iron Banner week to get those statistics.

What was your experience with Destiny's Iron Banner last week? Did you notice an increase in the drop rates?

Source: Destiny Reddit