I spend most of my playtime in Destiny 2 deleting tier 5 weapons and exotic engrams. Probably since hitting around 400 in light level, after a somewhat enjoyable solo ops playlist grind (I didn’t do Caldera), I have been absolutely showered in loot to the point where I am now no longer interested in any rolls, perks, weapons or builds based around weapons…and don’t even get me started on exotics.
I actually enjoyed the Edge of Fate campaign (maybe not the ball part as much but the story and the characters involved were cool) and I enjoy the Lawless Frontier activity from Renegades. I haven’t quite got all the lightsaber colours yet. I’ve got a few. The ones I’m missing are the exotic contract one, the Europa and Venus planet colours and the dungeon one.
I know most hardcore players have finished this grind months ago but I took a break after completing the campaign at launch and waited for a friend of mine to pick up the dlc. We’re only working through the post campaign Lawless Frontier stuff now.
This grind for the Praxic Blade colours was probably the most fun I’ve had with a loot pursuit in a while – probably since Heresy….and that was by no means perfect.
I actually went back to play Destiny 1 before the masses did. If you didn’t know, Aztecross and a bunch of other creators are all going back and playing Destiny 1 as part nostalgia trip, part jumping on the band wagon because Destiny 2 has no content.
The main differences between Destiny 1 and 2
- The content is all there
- You can play through the entire campaigns of vanilla, The Dark Below, House of Wolves, The Taken King and Rise of Iron and complete all the associated quests.
- The loot rarity actually matters
- You start with white weapons and armour, you gradually work up to greens, then blues, then the odd purple, then mostly purples and you’re very lucky if you ever get an exotic if you’re not using three of coins (Xur’s currency for getting exotics to drop from bosses).
- You have to level your weapons and armour
- You have to use the weapons and armour to unlock the perks on them. This means you actually use a variety of weapons early game. This is in contrast to D2 where you just find one smg (they weren’t even in D1) and bullet hosing everything down and infuse it up for every campaign.
- The levelling actually matters
- You start at a low light level and character level and have to work your way up for the missions, strikes and patrol spaces. You can’t just rock up at any light/power level and expect to ability spam your way through it all.
- The difficulty was based on skill/using cover like a real shooter
- The difficulty feels more natural for a shooter – things hit hard and you need to be more tactical in your movement and actually hit your shots with weapons – not just ability spam your way through every encounter.
I’m not sure when exactly it happened but at some point along the way, Destiny 2’s loot pursuit became a real issue. It isn’t meaningful. It isn’t interesting and it’s essentially broken down into – weapon drops with 3 perks per column, you easily get the god roll, you pick the god roll perks and delete everything else. I may also add that the perks are really not that interesting anymore either. It’s essentially a case of looking for a damage perk and something that synergises with the subclass you use or abilities you use if you’re using prismatic.
This just isn’t interesting.
In Destiny 2, a new player can get a legendary weapon within the first 30 minutes of playing the game. An exotic from the season pass in minutes if they’re not a free to play player.
Destiny 2 essentially skips the rarity of every white, green and blue weapon and jumps straight to legendary gear. There is no meaning to standard loot, level or rarity anymore.
Exotics are just broken and a new rarity probably won’t fix it.
Exotics are probably one of the biggest and most obvious areas where loot in Destiny 2 is broken. You get an exotic given to you after a legendary campaign completion. This isn’t too bad as you at least have to complete the legendary campaign – although this is nowhere near as hard as it was when Witch Queen introduced the difficulty because it’s been toned down since then, no doubt because someone on twitter whined about sucking at the game.
You get given exotics on the season pass… for just logging in and opening the season pass. Yep.
Then you get an exotic engram pretty much every 3-4 activities. This is just ridiculous. The rarest loot in the game is supposed to actually be rare. Exotics are the highest loot rarity and are supposed to compliment your build with some sort of cool perk that’s a step higher than the perks in the legendary perk pool.
You are only allowed to equip one exotic weapons and one exotic armour piece because of this and yet you are showered in exotics and it just totally ruins the rarity and the feeling of getting an exotic to drop.
In Destiny 1 when you get an exotic (outside of quest exotics) you have to take the engram to Rahool the Cryptarch and then it’s RNG as to what exotic you get. It was and still is, even on the 5th go around, exciting to get an exotic engram and to take it to find out what it could be!
In Destiny 2, you can take your inventory full of exotics and speak to Rahool and literally pick the exotic you want. That just isn’t what a looter, shooter is supposed to be. It isn’t what made Destiny special. It just isn’t right.
I really hope that this changes but to be honest, I don’t think they’re likely to go back on using exotics as marketing material, they’re unlikely to add a new rarity and even if they did I just don’t think that will make enough of a difference if the core loot problem stays the same.