So, back to Iron Banner for Destiny 2. Bungie’s announcement was all about style: a moonlit wolf image, then the line “the howls grow louder.” But if you thought those cabin cries were reason enough to get everybody hyped for Lord Saladin’s return and new gear, well, those woods cries certainly beg to differ.
And the community? What a mess. Perfect chaos, entirely predictable.
Straightaway, players started raising issues: immediate criticisms. warofcurrents noticed that some Iron Banner challenge requirements only count wins and not matches played. So, sweaty matches, losing: tough luck, no progress. Then there is the armor set bonus, which is not even working properly with a few pieces, most notably the Iron Will set. Which… is bad, because when the wearing reward is supposed to be the armor!
The other stuff is about ornaments. Prodigy points out that the Iron Banner rewards multiplier – the thing that bumps reward better while wearing more IB gear – doesn’t count the ornaments. So even if you do decide to convert the new armor into ornaments (which is the default way we transmog), it doesn’t count. You physically have to wear the armor for it to count. Just seems like one step backward in that regard.
The loot? Stodds13 nails it: “Too bad there is only one shitty new weapon. How did you not have a new arsenal for us to chase?!” This Iron Banner was supposed to be an event that gives us multiple new weapons to go grind for. One new hand cannon now, apparently, and the other weapons dropping are not even Iron Banner weapons? MMSV23 calls them out on this, asking why they couldn’t at least bring back some old IB weapons and slap the new tier system onto them. That seems like such an obvious fix.
And little love for the armor designs. ArcticReaper28 summed up the Titan armor as looking like “it has an outlasts bambino head over there” and said the Warlock looks even worse. Ouch. Meanwhile, RyukiBladewolf wonders why Saladin has a cape when he’s a Titan but players do not. Fair question!
Then there are even bigger issues players put on the table. Zenfa3310 mentions Eververse, saying: if Bungie made the store decent-wise more accessible to all players and brought back those items taken away (pointing at the vaulted content), maybe they’d even consider coming back to Destiny 2. And AdiGamesREAL went back to the dedicated servers again—how do you get bought for billions by Sony and not get proper servers for your game?
In the meantime, players are even starting to compare Destiny 2 with other games. HellHazard said they knew they should have remained loyal to Division 2 on PS4. There was even a whole thread about how thebreadlord went about arguing that while shiny might be the new game, it is nowhere near Destiny 2’s overall quality, though they themselves admitted Destiny 2 is in quite a lot of trouble right now.
But the real standing-out issue: there’s this huge frustration not even tied to this Iron Banner. It’s about patterns. Players feel like Bungie keeps making the same mistakes. ScottoSays even held an entire thread: the only way to push for real change is to simply refuse to play and boycott because Bungie won’t change unless forced. They talked about how great games don’t need to be patched constantly—they always get almost everything right the very first go and then only need minor tweaks. And now Bungie is in the middle of losing everyone’s confidence.
Yet in all of this, Iron Banner is happening. Players are logging in. ZynthPlays said he played over 20 games of IB, never seeing an IB weapon drop—only other “portal weapons” and not the hand cannon he was after. They’re playing and frustrating RNG!
That weird relationship Destiny players have with the game. We complain non-stop, pointing out everything wrong with it, comparing it to other games… and here we are: still running Iron Banner matches, still hoping for that god roll, still angry enough to write paragraphs on what’s wrong.
Bungie tried to fix it a little bit. Momomissouri stated: “Im glad you guys realized your mistake and in some way made amends. However, she added: “If you want this game to be good focus on what the players need, you know the ones who been supporting your game since 2014.”
So Iron Banner is back. The howls are indeed growing louder. But they’re not just howls of excitement—they’re howls of frustration, criticism, and that complicated glum love-hate destiny players have for this game they’ve somehow never been able to let go. The rewards might be bugged, the armor might be questionably designed, and there’s only one new weapon… but that’s probably going to get played all week anyway. Because that’s how Destiny rolls on Xbox.
