That title kind of sounds like pointing out the obvious, but I couldn’t think of a better one.
So a couple of recent news posts on Bungie.net have gotten the community on edge. It started minor with a post detailing a rework to how swords function, which really only led to some concerns about warlock skating. Then a longer post talking about some weapon nerfs coming with the next season made players more uneasy, with two popular weapon classes for boss damage having their effectiveness reduced. The Trials announcement video added fuel to the fire when it was revealed that power would be enabled for the playlist and that artifact levels would indeed be a part of that, with more criticism about the potential for no-lifers to dominate Trials. And finally, Luke Smith posted his latest Director’s Cut post with one very unpopular note: the announcement that legendary weapons would have a fixed lifespan in the future. For people who have been using Recluse exclusively for a year or so now, that wasn’t good news.
The summation of this post is something along the lines of “take a deep breath, it’s not the end of the world.” I do have some criticism for some of Bungie’s plans, but I don’t think the hyperbolic reaction that the community has had is wholly justified.
Weapon nerfs
I’m gonna skip past the sword changes pretty quickly because it’s really a wait-and-see thing, but overall they sound pretty good. Here’s a quick summary anyway:
- Swords will have a sword energy meter in addition to sword ammo. It regenerates naturally over time and is consumed by various actions.
- Guarding no longer consumes sword ammo, only sword energy. You still need at least one ammo to guard. Stronghold, the Titan exotic gauntlets, will be given a rework to account for this new system.
- Light attacks can now loop indefinitely, and light attacks will cleave damage to nearby enemies.
- Heavy attacks consume sword ammo and sword energy. The strength of your heavy attack is based on how much sword energy you have at the time of the swing. You can still use a heavy attack with no energy, but it will be much weaker.
- A portion of sword damage will bypass elemental shields to set swords apart from shotguns and give them a niche of their own in close-quarters combat.
Overall, it should make for more interesting gameplay with swords, and hopefully they’ll be more revitalized in the months to come.
Now let’s get into the big stuff, the upcoming weapon nerfs. Again, you can read all these changes and the reasoning behind them in the post, but summarized:
- Izanagi’s Burden: Honed Edge activation is no longer affected by reload speed, Outlaw perk replaced with No Distractions
- Sniper rifles: Shadowkeep damage buffs reverted (~20% damage reduction); adaptive frames given lower precision modifier; rapid-fire frames given lower base damage
- Grenade launchers: Aggressive frames are now called rapid-fire frames, reducing damage by 20% but increasing reserves; damage by all power weapon grenade launchers to major targets and above reduced by ~10%
- Lord of Wolves: Accuracy greatly reduced when Release the Wolves is active
- The Last Word: A variety of changes to encourage hip fire as the default state of play instead of aiming down sights, returning the gun to its quickdraw gunslinger fantasy
- Shotguns: Target acquisition for non-slug shotguns no longer accounts for precision locations, improving accuracy; cone angle is no longer affected by range; aiming down sights no longer affects range
- Fusion rifles: Target acquisition no longer accounts for precision locations, improving accuracy; damage falloff floor reduced from 0.75x to 0.5x damage; effective range and impact of optics on range reduced; Backup Plan perk now sets charge speed to 0.85x the rapid-fire archetype
- Auto rifles: Slight damage buffs to all frame types except high-impact
Quite a lot of stuff getting hit with the nerf bat, with only one buff listed. Naturally, the reaction from the community was quite reasonable and level-headed…haha, just kidding, there was much rage.
But really, I think it’s kind of overblown.
First, let’s get a few of the quick ones that nobody should complain about out of the way. Lord of Wolves was really in dire need of a nerf. While not quite as bad as during season 6, it’s still been a problem weapon in Crucible thanks to the ease of use of Release the Wolves. Being able to dump ten rounds into anyone who crossed your path from a long distance meant easy kills and frustrating matches. The accuracy nerf should help differentiate the two damage modes better and require increased risk for those fast kills.
The Last Word is another weapon that really needed to return to its roots. The fantasy of the gun is that of a gunslinger whipping out a hand cannon and firing off a bunch of rounds without aiming, yet still managing to hit every target. However, particularly on PC, it was far too easy to just use it as an exceptionally fast-firing full-auto killing machine while aiming down sights. These changes should encourage players to return to using it in its intended form.
The shotgun and fusion rifle changes are good overall, I’d say. Shotgun apes have been a problem since Forsaken launched, mostly due to shotguns with long range stats being far too effective to counter easily. Fusion rifles have also had a variety of issues, and getting the right combo of perks would enable you to destroy opponents from 50 meters away, or more! Backup Plan was an outlying perk that needed adjustment, so I’m glad they brought it to a more reasonable level. These changes should enable better counters to these weapons, while the auto-aim changes should help make them more usable.
And of course, nobody should be upset about the auto rifle buffs. It’s not much, but it should help them remain competitive with other primary weapons.
Now for the nerfs that people are really mad about: sniper rifles (especially Izanagi’s) and grenade launchers.
Let’s start with grenade launchers, because I feel that’s an easier topic to wrap up. Ever since season 6, drum-loaded grenade launchers (the ones that use heavy ammo) have been DPS kings in PVE, and aggressive-frame launchers were even better. As the news post points out, aggressive-frame launchers dealt the same damage per round as adaptive-frame launchers, but fired rounds at a faster rate. Paired with auto-loading abilities (Rally Barricade/Lunafaction Boots pre-Shadowkeep, Auto-Loading Holster post-) and Spike Grenades (more damage dealt on direct hit), players could one-phase many bosses easily.
Well, that’s about to change. All drum-loaded launchers are getting a minor nerf, while aggressive frames are getting a major one in their transition to rapid-fire frames: 20% less damage, but more in reserves.
What does this mean? Well, a couple things. First is that the different grenade launcher frames will have a bit more identity: adaptive frames will be the slower heavy-hitters, while rapid-fire frames will deal quick damage and have the ability to spread that damage farther. Second, because adaptive frames will now be the go-to boss damage archetype, launchers like Doomsday and Wendigo GL3 will have their day to shine. Finally, the nerf should bring grenade launchers in general back down to other power weapon levels like rocket launchers, so we could see some more variety in what players bring to the endgame.
(Side note: did Bungie forget precision frames on grenade launchers were a thing? These launchers fired bouncing grenades that could be detonated at the player’s command, like Fighting Lion, but the last one released was back in season 2. Get on it, Bungie!)
Sniper rifles are a bigger point of contention, and it’s a double whammy. Not only are sniper rifles as a whole getting hit with nerfs, but Izanagi’s Burden, the most popular sniper by far, is getting its own set of targeted nerfs. To quote Bungie on the sniper nerfs:
We gave Sniper Rifles an increase in PvE damage back in Shadowkeep. We’re removing that change for a few reasons. Sniper Rifles have a lot of utility and safety due to their range and the increased damage was giving them too much of a leg-up on their closer range counterparts. That gulf only widens as the difficulty of any given encounter goes up.
The general criticism of this change that I’ve seen can be summarized as: “nobody uses a shotgun to do boss damage.” That is to say, most bosses don’t let you get in close range due to the ubiquitous stomp attack, so you can’t really do boss damage with short-range weaponry. Because of this, sniper rifles are your only real option for special ammo boss damage (fusion rifles too, kind of).
I think that this is missing the point of the nerfs. These were not targeted to make boss damage harder, but to prevent content from being trivialized due to sniping from safety. As the post mentions, snipers can pick off enemies from a much farther distance, making them the preferred option for those that don’t like to get up close and personal. But if their damage is too high, then the strategy for basically every trash encounter becomes “everyone snipe from this safe corner.” The more damage each round does, the longer your reserves last, and the more you can keep plinking away at enemies that can’t realistically fight back.
Post-nerf, you’ll have to make a choice. Do you want to engage from long distances and run the risk of losing ammo, or do you want to charge in guns blazing with a shotgun or fusion rifle? Instead of sniper rifles always being the preferred option, these changes should increase some weapon diversity in PVE.
And speaking of…now we get to Izanagi’s. Again, quoting Bungie:
Since the removal of auto-reload effects from Rally Barricade and Lunafaction Boots, as well as the introduction of a catalyst for Izanagi’s Burden, it’s seen a significant uptick in use. Izanagi’s Burden solidified itself within the majority of endgame builds due to its excellent burst damage, sustained damage, ammo economy due to Special ammo, and safety due to being a Sniper Rifle.
Post-Shadowkeep, Izanagi’s Burden was just…too damn good. A special ammo sniper rifle that could go toe-to-toe with the heavy ammo D.A.R.C.I. and Whisper of the Worm, versatile enough to handle smaller adds or put out good burst damage. The catalyst only made it even better, bumping up the burst damage to even higher levels. Paired with Divinity, it was made all the more effective due to the enormous crit spot the Divinity bubble provides. It’s honestly surprising it made it this far before the nerfs set in.
The biggest problem with Izanagi’s (especially when combined with Divinity) is how it trivialized Master-level content, including Nightfall: The Ordeal and Nightmare Hunts. Champions have varying powers that force players to use Anti-Barrier, Overload, or Unstoppable weapons/abilities to overcome them…or you could just pop a Honed Edge round or two into them to ignore that entirely. It’s no surprise that the standard toolkit for Ordeal farming has been two Izanagi’s and one Divinity for six months now.
But here’s the thing: those anti-Champion methods stun the Champion for a good five seconds or so. They have to sit there and take whatever you throw at them, completely neutralized and harmless. Run up with a shotgun, chuck a grenade at them, whatever the hell you want to do. If your team is coordinated, Champions aren’t an issue no matter what you’re running. Because of this, Izanagi’s isn’t entirely necessary. The biggest reason it’s used so much is because it’s the easiest option, not because you really have to.
Datto’s video on the upcoming nerfs put it better than I could:
It is Master content, after all. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to have to communicate with your team a little bit during Master content.
Izanagi’s Burden will still be a good weapon. Snipers will still be a good weapon class. The difference is in how good they’ll be. Instead of being the best choice for every encounter in the game, they’ll be one option you can take. Maybe you’ll prefer to be a shotgun runner, maybe you’ll find a love of fusion rifles, or maybe those hundred Martyr’s Retributions you got from donating all that Fractaline are looking pretty nice right about now.
The goal is to bring more options into play, not limit you. Some players are claiming that Bungie is actively preventing them from playing how they want, which is again pretty hyperbolic. If anything, this would ideally help curb other players from hampering your style. Do we need to go back to Destiny 1 and how hard it was to find a raid group if you didn’t have Gjallarhorn? How many players were shut out from content more recently when the Izanagi’s questline was broken for a couple months? If it weren’t such a massive outlier, it wouldn’t have been as big of an issue. And if you don’t like sniping, you shouldn’t feel forced into using snipers. With luck, these changes will help.
Speaking of Gjallarhorn, I do have a little more to say on this topic and build diversity, but I’ll save it for a later section.
Trials and Artifact Power
In case you’ve been living under a rock these past few days and somehow managed to miss the shouts of jubilation, Trials of Osiris is coming back in season 10. Alas, Trials of the Nine, we hardly knew ye.
Trials of Osiris looks to be essentially a return of the original mode from Destiny 1. Players will need to create their own fireteams of three (no matchmaking) and duke it out in the Elimination gametype with other teams. Your progress is tracked on a card, and the more you win, the greater your reward. However, if you lose too many times, your run is over, and you have to start over from the beginning. Those who manage to complete a flawless card will score the best rewards as they travel to the newly-built Lighthouse. And to top it all off, Saint-14 is handling match commentary. Beautiful.
However, there were already rumblings of discontent within minutes of that trailer dropping. News that Trials would have power advantages enabled wasn’t unexpected, since that’s how it was in D1. However, footage from the reveal video showed matches where players had power levels well in excess of 1000, far beyond the current power caps and only accessible with a very high artifact level. It was later confirmed on the Destiny subreddit that artifact levels would be active in Trials.
This led to some pretty massive blowback. Artifact levels had already proven to be a problem in Iron Banner, where players who spent countless hours grinding XP (usually taking advantage of Eris’s repeatable bounties) had a 20-30 power level advantage over more casual players and were using that ability to stomp others into the ground. The thought that Trials would be dominated by the same no-lifers who would win solely because they had more time to grind and not because of better skill had many worried that Trials would be ruined out of the gate. And I have to admit, I shared those concerns fully.
This section, however, has a happy ending. In a perfect illustration of why I probably should have waited to start this post until after the TWAB came out, Luke Smith posted to Twitter:
This is a very good bit of news. I really don’t have a problem with power advantages in some PVP modes, so long as there’s a reasonable cap on power that you can reach without spending an absurd amount of time grinding to get there. For much of Destiny’s history, that’s been the case, but artifact levels were throwing a pretty big wrench in the works. Those who had lots of time and a high tolerance for monotony were able to roll into Iron Banner and stomp skilled players who just didn’t have as much time to play.
Disabling artifact levels was the right call, and it gives Bungie time to work on creating a power cap for PVP modes to prevent this issue from happening again. Most importantly, it keeps Trials fairer. Gear will certainly still play a part, but the difference between the casual and hardcore grinders will be much lower, and thus everyone will stand a fighting chance.
Subclass changes
Again, I probably should have waited to start this before this week’s TWAB came out so I could organize this better, but I want to end with the Director’s Cut article. So, the patch note preview from this week comes next.
This week’s TWAB had a few notes about subclasses, rebalancing a few aspects of each. You should read it yourself for the full context, but here’s a quick summary:
- Warlock melee range increased one meter to 5.5 meters; if you start meleeing from full range, you should be able to take out your opponent before they get you
- Titan Barricade health increased from 500 to 600 health; various special/heavy weapons have 30% or 60% increased damage against Barricades
- One-hit melee abilities have been re-tuned:
- Titan shoulder charge abilities have had their auto-targeting angle reduced by 50%, and all lunges will travel a distance of 5.5 meters (previously 6m targeted, 4.5m untargeted)
- Gunslinger Hunters’ Weighted Knife has had its tracking reduced significantly and better follows its original trajectory curve
- Handheld Supernova has had a variety of changes: increased activation time, reduced hold time, reduced range, tightened horizontal spread, projectiles can damage yourself, and reduced projectile explosion; Contraverse Hold is also getting changed in some way; to compensate, this tree is getting other buffs, including the Nova Warp super
- Overperforming subclass trees like Stormcaller top, Striker bottom, and Arcstrider bottom are getting brought down in effectiveness
- Underperforming subclass trees like Voidwalker bottom, Nightstalker bottom, and Striker middle are getting brought up in effectiveness
- Tripmine Grenades are once again sticky grenades
I think Warlocks are likely to be the most upset about these changes, given the dominance of Handheld Supernova and the continued complaints about Warlock melees. However, the melee change seems to be a return to D1 Warlock gameplay, which was slower but had a longer range. Bungie appears to want to try that first to keep classes unique from each other, and if it doesn’t work out, then they’ll bring it to the same level as the other classes.
I think we can all agree that Handheld Supernova was far too overpowered (Warlocks, you know it’s true). Even when the rest of middle-tree Voidwalker was nerfed, HHSN was still a very powerful ability, especially when coupled with Contraverse Hold. Anyone who’s spent even a little time in the Crucible has been on the receiving end of more of those than you’d like to be, so I’m glad that its reign of terror might finally be over. And as the post pointed out, the tightening of its spread makes it more effective against opposing Supers, so it’s not all bad.
The other one-hit melee tuning is justified as well, I think. Shoulder charges were pretty ridiculous for a long time, and forcing players to aim them a little better is reasonable to ask; Bungie brought up that players could effectively turn 90 degrees with the auto targeting, which is far too much. The Weighted Knife changes sound as though you’ll need to up your knife skill if you want to score those sweet one-hit kills.
I’m not entirely sure what to think about the Barricade changes. They already seem pretty weak as it stands, to the point where I often forget to use it in Crucible just because I often don’t see the point (or I get killed before I can finish deploying it). I suppose the idea is to force players to decide whether they want to knock out a Barricade quickly, at the cost of using up more of their special/heavy ammo. As the post mentioned, these changes are mostly related to Trials, since Barricades give you additional protection as you revive your teammate. We’ll have to see how it plays out.
There’s no specific details on what exactly is being retuned for these subclasses, so we’ll have to wait for the full patch notes to find out. I’ll note that it was about this time last year that Arc Week happened, bringing up a lot of Arc subclasses in power, and the overperforming trees all happen to be for Arc subclasses. Void subclasses haven’t really had a lot of love yet, so I’m glad to see a couple of the underperforming ones are having a chance to be brought up. And middle-tree Strikers definitely need a boost; Thundercrash is fun as hell, but it hits like a wet noodle.
Finally, Hunters can stop complaining, Tripmine Grenades can stick to opponents once again. Enjoy turning your opponents into unicorns. This also makes me think that Young Ahamkara’s Spine is likely to enter the meta soon.
Legendary retirement
The 2020 Director’s Cut post went into a lot of things, giving a good amount of info as to where the game is headed in future updates. The overarching theme of the post, as Luke Smith describes it, is that Destiny 2 is currently lacking in aspirational goals. The common refrain of “there’s so much to do and none of it matters” is a problem that Bungie wants to tackle by helping players find goals to set and achieve. To do that, various changes are needed.
Luke first talks about the problems with seasons as Bungie sees them currently. Namely, while seasonal narratives are linking together and adding some memorable moments, seasons aren’t really evolving the world like they had intended them to, instead adding some content that takes the place of the core systems before disappearing at the start of the next season. Changes to come include investing more in core activities, letting seasonal questlines stick around until the next major expansion instead of going away immediately, and evolving the game world to potentially include more challenges that make you really appreciate having other players around.
Later on, Luke goes into Destiny’s narrative, wanting to push the story forward instead of continuing to tread water. He admits that this has been the goal for quite a while now and that they’re not quite there yet, and he also talks about some of the difficulties associated with reaching it. Destiny is a big game, but it can’t grow forever. The section ends with a bit of a teaser regarding the upcoming expansion later this fall, with a brief note on how the game world and its systems will have a chance to evolve with a major update. So yes, this confirms D2 will be around for at least another year.
But sandwiched in between these sections, one particular idea has, once again, drawn a lot of feedback, much of it angry. Luke discusses the weapons sandbox and its current issues. Because every weapon can be used and infused all the way up to max power, from the first weapons added at D2’s launch all the way up to the Sundial weapons, various problems have emerged: continued power creep, development time spent supporting old gear instead of creating new gear, and reduced desire for and value of new items.
The overall result of these issues is that designers aren’t able to create interesting weapons anymore because players keep returning to their old standbys that they’ve already got good rolls of. The time and effort put into creating every unique weapon is essentially wasted for a majority of the playerbase, especially for weapons that come from pinnacle activities that should feel great to earn. The solution isn’t as simple as just “make better weapons” either because that would lead to increased power creep and its associated problems; Luke specifically points to how the Reckoning was designed as an example of how power creep affects encounter design. Pinnacle weapons aren’t the answer either, since they’re basically exotics in their own right and required a lot of work to develop.
The weapons sandbox is likened to a card game like Magic: The Gathering:
In Destiny 2, with infusion, it’s like having every card you own in Magic available and playable in all formats forever. […] We’ve made a lot of Magic cards, and we want you to keep the ones you love in your collection (as opposed to taking them and throwing them all away and having the Tower get destroyed again). And a bunch of those Magic cards could be playable around the world while free-roaming or in PVP formats. But where Power matters or aspirational activities are involved, we’re going to make some changes to Legendary weapons.
Rather than do a hard reset like The Taken King or Destiny 2’s launch, the proposed solution is to give every weapon in the game a natural lifespan through infusion caps. Weapons will not be able to be infused beyond their caps, which will let them stay relevant in endgame activities for somewhere between three and five seasons (exact numbers TBD). When they run up against the cap, you can still use them while you’re in more basic activities like patrols, strikes, or the Crucible, if you want. However, you’ll need to look for new weapons if you want to engage in endgame activities like raids or Trials.
A lot of players were immediately upset that Bungie was going to take away their favorite guns, claiming that this was the exact same mistake they’d made before and that infusion was created to address the problem in the first place. They argued that they were basically just going to have to farm all their favorite rolls over and over again, so what was the point of removing their old weaponry?
I’ll admit, I was a bit concerned about this change too. However, after thinking about it more, I think it’s a healthier change in the long run. There will be growing pains and adjustments as we work our way into this new system, but I believe the game will be better for it.
First, my personal background: I’ve got an Outlaw/Rampage Bygones I got pretty early into Forsaken. I tried it out and found that I really liked it, and it was only later that I realized I got pretty damn lucky with a great PVE roll. I have used that Bygones a hell of a lot in the past year and a half (over 36,000 kills on it as of this writing), and only shelved it for a little while after getting the Mountaintop/Recluse wombo combo late in season 6. To say it’s my favorite primary weapon in my arsenal is an understatement.
But the trouble is, I haven’t felt much need to find anything else. If I’m going to do raids on different characters, I’ll just swap that Bygones to them. I’ve got a lot of other kinetic primaries in my vault, but I never use any of them because my trusty Bygones is so much more familiar and useful. It’s only recently that I’ve actually tried using other kinetic primaries, with Randy’s Throwing Knife and a Rapid Hit/Explosive Rounds Patron of Lost Causes finally making their way into my regular arsenal.
The Director’s Cut really touched on an issue that I’ve been having with the game for quite some time, but only recently could articulate. The loot side of things has been pretty dull for a while now, and for a looter shooter, that’s a bad problem to have. I’ve already got so many good or great weapons that I don’t really need to find any others, so practically any rewards I get are immediately sharded.
For another example, let’s go all the way back to Destiny 1’s first year. There were some really great weapons in that first year, especially from raids, and one combo in particular was really good if you were able to acquire all three. I’m talking, of course, about the Fatebringer/Black Hammer/Gjallarhorn combo. If you had these three weapons, you could handle pretty much all high-level content with ease. Paired with a Void subclass, you could have all elemental shields covered, and even if you didn’t use Void, you still had elemental damage on all your weapons. Fatebringer was a very strong hand cannon which had great range and damage; Black Hammer was a versatile sniper that could also pump out effectively infinite damage if you were skilled with your shots; and Gjallarhorn…well, it was Gjallarhorn, what more needs to be said? Even if Fatebringer was a little lower in damage than weapons from Crota’s End, it was so good that you’d often still use it for tough content.
Then came House of Wolves, and with it, the Ascension system. Using special materials from endgame content, you could Ascend any piece of gear to the current max level, making all older gear relevant again. Naturally, anyone who had this combo immediately Ascended these guns and proceeded to destroy everything in their path for the rest of that first year. As someone lucky enough to have all three, it was pretty damn great.
It also killed the loot game for me.
There was just nothing else that could compare to that combo of weaponry. You had tools for every situation, limited only by ammo drops. Rank-and-file? Fatebringer. Powerful enemies? Black Hammer or Gjallarhorn. Need to clear a bunch of adds fast? Gjallarhorn. Boss damage? Black Hammer or Gjallarhorn, depending on if you could reliably hit a crit spot. All weapons had elemental damage, so shields were never an issue. All three had great range, so you could attack many enemies from safety. Plenty of cheeses involved hiding in a far place where the boss couldn’t reach you and plinking away with infinite Black Hammer rounds. For a good four months there (and to only a slightly lesser extent, the previous five), this combo reigned supreme.
Then came The Taken King, and with it, the reveal that all year 1 weapons would be left in the dust. It was effectively a hard loot refresh; you could keep using your year 1 weapons for a little while as you leveled to the new cap, but at some point you’d have to swap to stronger guns when enemies began outleveling you. Paired with Black Hammer’s White Nail nerf (the same thing that happened to Whisper of the Worm, for those who started in D2), the wombo combo dream had died.
And yet, I was never really hurting after that. Sure, I missed those glory days, but when I was forced to move on, I found other guns that I really enjoyed. Shadow Price, Hung Jury, Imago Loop, Eirene RR4, LDR 5001…would I have ever used these guns if my old standbys were still available? When I was forced to get out of my comfort zone, I was able to experience more of the weapon sandbox and find new guns to enjoy. Even when Gjallarhorn made a return, I found myself using it as often as not, simply because I’d grown to love plenty of alternatives (I still miss you, IF MATERIA~).
Of course, by the end of D1, you could infuse any weapon from year 2 onward up to maximum power, and this system was brought forward to Destiny 2. In this regard, some players have asked why we’re taking a step back to the D1Y1 days when weaponry had an expiration date. If the infusion system was implemented to keep gear relevant, and it worked just fine in D1, why is it a problem now?
The answer, as I see it, is pretty simple: the difference between the end of D1 and now is the amount of updates and the size of the sandbox.
From The Taken King’s launch all the way through the Age of Triumph update, there were really only four times that weapons were added to the game: The Taken King, the April Update, Rise of Iron, and Age of Triumph (which brought back old Y1 raid weapons to the game). The weapon pool was not expanded that much over those two years, so while players had a fair amount of options, the loot pool wasn’t enormous.
In D2 right now, we’re in our ninth season, with every season bringing new weaponry. Sure, you probably don’t want to take many year 1 weapons out of your collection and use them due to their lackluster perk options, but there are exceptions (Midnight Coup being the biggest I can think of). Point is, if you wanted to, you could take any weapon from nine separate updates and use it in any content you want. Even if you leave out year 1 guns, that’s still six updates’ worth of weapons to choose from. Then you have to consider all the new weapon types that have been added (submachine guns, bows, linear fusion rifles, two types of grenade launchers), with every update providing at least one new example for almost every weapon class.
The viable weapon pool is drastically larger than it was at any point in D1. It’s clear to me that Bungie’s weapon designers are having a hard time setting new weapons apart from the pack. Sure, there are a few new perks sprinkled in, but many of these aren’t good enough to justify swapping away from your old standbys. My Bygones continues to remain my go-to workhorse for most activities. Lots of people are still using their Recluses, their Mountaintops, or whatever other guns they’ve been using for over a year now.
I also think back to my time playing WoW. Pretty much every long-term loot game has a point where players are forced to move on from their old gear and pick up new items. For WoW, every new raid tier adds new gear levels to climb to, making you gradually replace all your old items as you work your way to the new item level cap. On a larger scale, every expansion raises the level cap, and all that raid gear you spent months grinding the last expansion’s endgame for is replaced quickly by leveling greens and blues. Your old epics will last for a few levels, but eventually you’ll have to give them up. However, once you’re leveled up and in the new expansion’s endgame, now you’ve got an all new set of loot to chase, and because Blizzard doesn’t have to keep worrying about supporting all the old items, they’re free to design items with more elaborate effects.
We’re at a point where many players just don’t care about the loot they get anymore. While I’m not in favor of hard loot resets like TTK or D2’s launch, I do think that the proposed system is an acceptable compromise between “delete everything” and “keep everything forever.” It’s not like the loot you’ve earned will be irrelevant after a month or so; you’ll have roughly a year to use the guns you’ve earned before you’re forced to move on in endgame content. A year is more than enough time to find new guns to use.
Not only that, but it’s not like they’re actually taking your guns away. As Luke mentioned, you’re free to use every single gun as usual in lower-level content. You can still whip out your Midnight Coup with its 50k killcount when you’re running strikes, and your trusty Luna’s Howl can still be taken into the Crucible. Only when it comes to endgame content will you be forced to use newer weaponry.
And who knows? Once you’re required to look at the rest of the sandbox, maybe you’ll find a new favorite.
Conclusion
Let me make this clear right off the bat: this is not a “Bungie can do no wrong, stop criticizing them” post. Bungie can and has done plenty of wrong things over the years, but I’m not deluded enough to think that I could do better. By all means, if you have a problem with an aspect of the game, you should give them your feedback on why you think it’s an issue. If it weren’t for the massive amount of feedback on artifact levels in Trials, we might not have seen that changed (although some are claiming that this was planned all along for Bungie to score some easy goodwill, so believe what you want to).
However, I think much of the criticism to the weapon nerfs and proposed weapon retirement was hyperbolic. It’s not like we’re going back to D2Y1 levels of firing pea shooters at bosses, and it’s not like Bungie’s going into your vaults and deleting your perfect weapons. There will still be viable weaponry, and hopefully there will be even better weapons to come. We’ll adjust to these changes as we always have.
While there are problems with the game as it stands, I believe the Director’s Cut post shows that Bungie is aware of these issues and is working on a path forward that helps to solve them, while keeping the core of the game healthier. I’m excited to see what’s next, but as always, I’ll keep a critical eye on future changes to the game.
So take a deep breath and relax. It’s not the end of the world.
After all, the Pyramids aren’t here yet.
Man, what a long post! There’s been a lot to talk about over the past few weeks, so I just wanted to get my own opinions in writing. If you’ve got your own opinions, feel free to post them in the comments!
So I guess I was wrong about a preview for season 10 launching this week, though looking back, I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised. The season 9 trailer dropped only a week before the season began, so it’s likely that season 10 info will arrive this coming Tuesday, and there might be a livestream preview next week as well. As always, I’ll be ready with my own thoughts!
Until next time!
Deep Stone Crypt 
[…] previously discussed Luke Smith’s 2020 Director’s Cut in an earlier post, so I won’t rehash it too much here. Director’s Cut is an occasional ongoing long post […]
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