Bungie Reverses Controversial Destiny 2 Weapons 'Sunsetting' Measure
In its weekly This Week in Destiny blog post, Bungie announced today it would be reversing one of its most controversial Destiny 2 decisions: the one that “sunset” older weapons by giving them a power limit.
The news comes just as Bungie prepares for the final chapter in Destiny 2’s Light and Darkness saga, which began way back in 2014.
“As we close out the Light and Darkness saga, we want to rally all Guardians (active, returning, and new) to help fight the Witness, and there is no better way to play Destiny than with your fireteam,” the blog post reads. “As we pursued this goal, it became apparent that Power limits were fundamentally incompatible with Fireteam Power.”
Over three years ago, Bungie announced they’d be making older weapons in Destiny 2 essentially irrelevant by giving them a maximum power that would reduce their effectiveness over time. The move was controversial, as many saw it as invalidating their previous accomplishments (which sometimes included hours of grinding), while others saw it as the only way to combat power creep.
At the time, Bungie actually referenced power creep as the reason for the change, with players simply becoming too powerful over the course of such a long-running game, making it made it difficult to design future content since players were able to steamroll through it.
“We understand that many old Power limited items have been dismantled by this point, and we regret that we have no recovery mechanism for these.
But the move was unpopular enough that Bungie later stopped sunsetting weapons, and haven’t done so again in the years since, instead favoring the strategy of heavily nerfing and tweaking old weapons players still use to try and balance the sandbox in real time.
When Bungie announced sunsetting originally, it made a major point to assure players that old, sunset weapons would never be un-sunset, so players could safely dismantle all of their most powerful legacy weapons without fear. Today’s news is a complete upheaval of those assurances, which Bungie addessed, writing, “We understand that many old Power limited items have been dismantled by this point, and we regret that we have no recovery mechanism for these. Going forward, we intend to reintroduce sources for most or all of these, updated to modern Destiny sandbox standards with added properties such as Origin Traits and buildcrafting perks (as we have started to do with the BRAVE arsenal in Destiny 2: Into the Light).”
The reversal has already been met with mixed reactions. Some in the Destiny community who were paranoid enough to hold onto their weapons are overjoyed to see this arbitrary power barrier removed, while others feel betrayed by yet another reversal of something the community was repeatedly told would never happen.
Bungie has also released a slew of videos showing off Destiny 2: The Final Shape, including footage of the upcoming Dread enemy faction.
Travis Northup is a writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @TieGuyTravis and read his games coverage here.
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