Beyond Light

Destiny 2 – Reissued Loot Plus The Growing Discontent Over Sunsetting

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Bungie gave us their first update of 2021 last week and one of the subjects they touched on was reissuing weapons in Season 13. We’ve got a few weapons and armour sets coming back to us next season which looks to make The Moon and The Dreaming City more relevant again. The initial feedback from the community has been mixed and today I am going to go through the detail of the update, followed by some of my thoughts and then I want to put out a call to get your thoughts and feedback.

Before I get into the video I’d like to get your feedback on the state of Destiny 2 at the moment regarding weapons, sunsetting and reissuing. I’m going to go through the update from Bungie, then get into some thoughts of my own, but it’d be great to know a bit more about what you think as I’m sure there’s a range of players our there from casual to more hardcore players – check out the update first, and then let me know what you think of weapons, sunsetting and reissuing down there in the comments.

Let’s have a look at the update from Bungie:

Since the launch of Beyond Light, we’ve been collecting what feels like a metric ton of feedback on various Destiny systems. While we’ve shared some plans related to rewards, DDoS protection on consoles, crossplay and transmog, we have new details on rewards from two of our more recent destinations: The Moon and the Dreaming City. Rewards Area Lead Justin Dazet will be walking us through some changes in response to player feedback.

Justin: Last month, Assistant Game Director Joe Blackburn spoke about some changes we were making to gear in Season 13 in response to some feedback. Today we’re going to briefly chat about what some of these changes are as they relate to our back catalogue of expansions, and the reasoning behind them.

First let’s review a list of what you’ll see starting in Season 13:

Reissued Dreaming City Reverie Dawn and Moon Dreambane armor.

* These will also drop with high stats when earned in Shattered Throne or Pit of Heresy.

* The final chest in Pit of Heresy will no longer drop a fully Masterworked Dreambane armor piece.

* Instead, the Dreambane armor piece that drops will have 7 armor energy and is guaranteed to drop with at least a +16 in two different stats and higher stats overall.

* Dreambane class items will not drop from this chest.

Reissued 4 weapons for Dreaming City with new Perk Pools.

* Waking Vigil, Sleepless, Vouchsafe, and Retold Tale.

* Dreaming City weapons that drop in the Shattered Throne dungeon can roll with perks that are unavailable from drops from other reward sources.

Reissued 4 weapons for the Moon with new Perk Pools.

* Premonition (Pit of Heresy only), Heretic, Blasphemer, and Apostate.

* Weapons that drop in the Pit of Heresy dungeon can roll with perks that are unavailable from drops from other reward sources.

Expanding Lost Sector Legend and Master rotation to 4 Moon Sectors.

* K1 Logistics, K1 Communication, K1 Crew Quarters, and K1 Revelation.

We are making these changes to help preserve the relevancy of the destinations, specifically some of the pinnacle end-game activities that still exist there. To get more specific around the actual experience, activities where re-issues are acquired will be heavily weighted towards rewarding re-issued gear over capped gear — though the exact weighting and mechanisms may differ. For example: In the Dreaming City if you have already obtained an infusion capped weapon, it will not drop for you again.

While not every gear source or Legendary reward will be kept up to date for the entire lifetime these destinations are available, we do believe there’s high value in targeting some specific activity drops for continued relevancy to give you more options for where to spend time as you seek to improve your arsenal.

Before I get into my thoughts, it’d be good to have a look at the reaction from some of the community:

My Thoughts On Reissued Loot

First of all let’s have a look at the pros:

  • It’s good that these destinations will have some relevence again, with The Moon and The Dreaming City having been relegated (unless you look at the recent Wrathborn Hunts, which were about 50% on the Dreaming City). It’ll be good to go back into the Dungeons as they are some great pieces of content, but without reasons to go back I find myself not doing them at all.
  • The Legend Lost Sectors coming to the Moon is a good thing, this was probably one of the most positive improvements in Beyond Light.
  • Waking Vigil! One of the best Hand Cannons in the game.

Next up the cons:

  • Not all of the destination weapons are coming back – we only hve 4 from each. Waking Vigil, Apostate and Blasphemer are great weapons, but where’s Twilight Oath?
  • “The final chest in Pit of Heresy will no longer drop a fully Masterworked Dreambane armor piece.” This seems like an odd change to make.
  • Reissuing Weapons from D1 might be more acceptable, but when it’s weapons from Forsaken and Shadowkeep that doesn’t seem like a great idea. We’re being promised perks along the lines of “can roll with perks that are unavailable from drops from other reward sources” – but we don’t know if these are new perks entirely, or just perks they cannot currently roll with. If they are not new perks, then how much better are these perks going to be?
  • We can’t bring out our weapons from the vault, we have to grind for these new weapons, so they are at the current power level in Season 13.
  • Grinding out godroll weapons now feels less valuable given they have a set time limit. Why am I going to spend x number of hours, when the gun is only going to exist for a few months.

Let me know what you think of reissuing down in the comments – what are the pros and what are the cons?

There’s growing discontent among the community related to sunsetting and it’ll be interesting to see what Bungie does. Many top players have quit (although it seems to be the PVP community with the highest profile casualties like Mtashed and Hush leaving due to Stasis).

We had a big problem with weapons like Mountaintop, Revoker, Recluse, Spare Rations and Mindbender’s Ambition not too long ago… these would be the mainstay of a high percentage of loadouts in PVP and we’d crutch on them in PVE because they were so strong. Sunsetting was one way of going about balancing out the sandbox, but it can’t be going the way Bungie thought it would.

Sunsetting, in principle, sounds OK on paper when you caveat with a few details. If weapons are going to be cycled out of the game, then we need those replaced with new and interesting weapons. We did have a few new weapons this season, which includes the Europa set of weapons. Arctic Haze is great, Hailing Confusion, Friction Fire from the Wrathborn Hunts and also some of the raid weapons are top tier.

Although the Europa Weapons seem pretty good, the most popular weapons this season have been reissues. The Steady Hand is a reissued weapon, even Adored is pretty much a reissued Beloved. Reissuing the weapons once you have forgotten about them seems better in my mind, but where do you draw the line. Forsaken and Shadowkeep weapons seem just too recent to reissue. Joe Blackburn did update us and say they would be bolstering their teams with weapon designers and new staff on the team, but by the time they get them hired and trained will it be too late?

Let me know what you think down in the comments as it’d be great to have this as an ongoing conversation. Share your thoughts on the current state of the game and I’ll do a follow up video highlighting some of the best ones in the coming days and weeks.

That’s it for this look at Reissuing Weapons Plus Growing Discontent Over Sunsetting. For more Destiny 2 Beyond Light content check out the full guide and subscribe on YouTube to This Week In Video Games today.