Bungie has now released the gigantic list of sand-job update details for the yet-to-hit Ash & Iron on September 9th. Now the Destiny 2 community is actually melting down. Prioritise this chaos with your bowl of popcorn!
The official DestinyTheGame account had boasted of the endless list of changes for which it asked fans to grab some water and snacks before proceeding with the reading, but a virtual riot ensued—after all, these players are really PISSED. That much wrath is being poured on this very update.
Let’s take a bit of a deeper look at it. This one punishes super regeneration through weapon damage, changes the producing sword guarding mechanic, nerfs some exotics, and lays down this very vague featured gear system that even seemingly a fair number of Bungie do not appear either to be able or willing to explain. And players want none of it.
Samuel Bennett laid it down flat: “I give up. I’m tired of trying to buildcraft around the friction they keep injecting into the game.” He is certainly not going to be the only one to say that,”said with dozens of comments.” “We have players that are tired and truly exhausted from consistent nerfs to things they legitimately like using.”
For the featured gear system, the storm was not even calm at all. WizardCerulean replied to that: “There’s very few things I am DEFINITELY against, but the Featured Exotics is absolutely a nuisance. There’s no connection between what is featured and why, or why some other aren’t. It’s some arbitrary list of needless restrictions. AND NO CLASS ITEMS? WHY? Just annoying.”
So, what does that system really do? Seems like Bungie is limiting your gear usage in some activities; completely against buildcraft that they’ve been pushing for years. Absolutely zero sense.
I’d say nerfing offensive swords is a whole lot of action good for nothing to buildcraft. That somebody would want to nerf defensive options when the game already punishes its players enough is a matter of their opinion that ruins the experience for those who want to build to play the game.” —Nathan Royster Jr.
Then there are sword nerfs. Nathan Royster Jr. lamented the Stronghold exotic changes: “You will have to run eternity edge for infinite guard now or lament. No one will use a more offensive sword bc offensive output doesn’t matter if you’re dead from taking direct hits. This is only going to severely limit buildcraft potential not enhance it.”
And he’s raising a valid complaint against nerfs for defensive choices in a game that already punishes players excoriatingly much. It seems like Bungie keeps diminishing the joy of playing for the few who really do play the game.
That made the MIDA Multi-Tool alteration one for confusion. Alex Armour just asked, “What the hell is that Mida rework? 😅,” neatly summing up just how most of these changes make everyone feel.
Players saying that they are just done for good is all the real tea. Samuel Bennett (again, the man has a lot of truths) said he’s going to play Cyberpunk instead. Another player, Dre.co, did a rundown of the problems: “Nerfs, notswap, cheaters, terrible power grind that as of today is still set to reset at December, raids/dungeon have 0 incentive to play, locked loadout sometimes with only new/featured gear, little new content, unable to get exotics that are currently in game. Why Bungie?”
Those are all problems for one single game. And the players can see it. Sentiment in the replies is overwhelming with negativity, including comments like “Ya’ll literally don’t understand your own game at all this is wild” and “How do you guys keep taking L after L and somehow GET BETTER AT IT EACH TIME.”
The good parts are getting drowned by all these nerfs, dude. Like yeah, have a rework on some exotics for sure, but nobody is really going to care about that when defensive options are being nerfed and featured gear is being limited.
What makes it crazy is how out of touch these seem. Players are arguing that some of these nerfed exotics were barely ever used to begin with. Games321Voltage commented, “I think I’ve seen 2 people run that exotic in the past 2 years and one was a new light,” referring to one of the adjusted items.
It seems as if Bungie is going after problems that don’t even exist while blatantly ignoring the real problems players are into: Cheating? That’s been there! Power grind reset? Still there! Incentive to play older content? Not really. But hey, at least they’re fixing swords!
There is so much division in the community. A lot of players try to defend these changes but their voices get drowned out by the bulk of oppositions from people who really understand how these changes will affect gameplay. Then they go at it for days debating whether arc hunters are broken or not; this is for the bigger part, a negative on this patch.
Looking through all of these replies, it is apparent that Destiny II is hitting a critical mass of frustration. Whenever multiple people talk about quitting and going to other games, it’s not good. Bungie has been working to just inject that much more friction into the gameplay experience while not addressing the issues that players really care about.
Launched September 9th, the Ash & Iron patch might very well go down in history as one of the most hated recently, judging from the reactions from the community. Constrained by nerfs to everything players’ fun with and arbitrary loadout limitations are making playing an increasingly difficult task for them.
At this point, it is difficult to believe that these changes will do much else but push more players out of the game. It’s always been a shame, really, when Destiny 2 is really good, it is just so good. But lately, it looks like Bungie is really trying to kill off the fun from the really dedicated players.
We’ll have to sit back and watch how these changes actually fare in September, but the initial response is… not good. Not good at all. Maybe Bungie will listen to the feedback and undo some of these changes pre-launch. Or maybe they simply double down. Time will tell.
