One of the biggest reasons to play Destiny 2 is now bugging

There have been a number of complaints about Destiny 2The season of plunder, but for the most part I had a blast. It is therefore a major disappointment that one of the main reasons to play at the moment seems bugged for the second week in a row. An essential upgrade to overcome FateThe terrible crafting system is still down, and I’m so, so tired.

Anyone who plays Destiny 2 regularly right now probably knows exactly what I’m talking about, but for everyone else, here’s a quick recap of what’s going on. February witch queen expansion finally introduced a way for players to craft certain weapons and make the best and most customized versions of them, rather than relying on RNG to bless them with the perfect loot. But there was a catch. To unlock the pattern needed to craft a weapon, players first had to collect five random duplicates with a red border, called Deepsight Resonance drops. Basically, we had to deal Fate 2’s RNG loot system before you can stop dealing with it Destiny 2RNG loot system.

It’s unbelievably Fate problem to be had, but Bungie provided a saving grace: seasonal upgrades that guaranteed Red Border drops. At some point in both Season of Risen and Season of the Haunted earlier this year, players could unlock the upgrade and then be able to do what players call target farming: focusing on the collecting Red Border drops for a specific weapon until the model is unlocked. . It was far from perfect and progress was moving at a snail’s pace, but it still helped give players back some control over the game. Destiny 2 grind.

With Season of Plunder, however, that leveling advantage is gone. Instead, it was replaced with one that guaranteed the first Ketchcrash seasonal activity of each week would drop a Red Border weapon. Even if it was even worse, it was still Something. Last week, however, many players, including myself, completed our first Ketchcrash and still haven’t gotten the Red Border drop. Now it’s happened again, confirming that it was buggy, though the issue still doesn’t show up on Bungie’s weekly known issues list.

There was a wire on the issue last week on the Fate subreddit. “Still no red border for ketchcrash master,” read a new thread posted yesterday. “Two weeks in a row this upgrade hasn’t worked and I’m a bit frustrated considering they won’t let us decrypt red borders this season,” wrote the player. Some players claim to get their Red Border drops as intended, but since there’s always a random chance of getting one after completing a Ketchcrash, it’s unclear how many players are affected and if there are any workarounds . Bungie did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Bugs take time to investigate and fix, and while this is all understandable, it’s still frustrating. Especially since it only highlights all the deeper issues players have. have been complaining for months. There’s a fundamental tension at the heart of any loot hunt: how generous can you be before it’s all more special? To combat loot inflation over the years, Bungie has come up with new, more granular gear accolades. While the legendary purple drops were prized in Destiny 1they are now regularly thrown in Destiny 2. Instead, players seek out coveted “god rolls,” i.e. gear with the best selection of randomly obtained perks.

The red border dips are the latest variation, and despite a clear consensus since witch queen released that the whole system needs things like duplicate and bad luck protection, players are nearing the end of a third season without significant improvements. In fact, between the lack of target farming in Season of Plunder and the buggy Red Drop leveling, things have unquestionably gotten worse. And as more than one player has pointed out, Bungie always seems quick to fix bugs that make Destiny 2 more generous, but are slower to react when it comes to settling issues that make him more miserly.

I’ve asked Bungie what determines how long a specific grind should take several times in the past, and never really got a satisfactory answer. Here’s what Brian Frank, head of the design team, said during a round table earlier this year:

Our investment design discipline is like pursuit length, pursuit depth. And so, for example, we’re looking at a rated dungeon. All the decisions we make about how loot is distributed. You know the cost of items on the vendor, it’s all designed with some sort of pursuit duration targets and we’ve made some changes to kind of bring them to the duration of the season or shorter.

With the crafting system being new, I think the initial approach is… we know we can’t go from generous to less generous. It’s really hard to make these changes. So I think being a new system having a weapon crafted is sort of ‘the end game of grind and chase’ it kind of made sense to put it far back in the timeline and then be able to react from there, depending on how it landed with the community.

As Forbes‘Paul Tassi pointed out, there’s a new urgency around some of these issues as seasonal content is vaulted at the end of each year. Even though crafting certain weapons is meant to be a long-term quest, players theoretically only have until next February. when fall of light released to max out their current weekly red border drops.

It’s unfortunate, and also goes against how fantastic and accessible Destiny 2Seasonal story content has become. With a weekly space opera that takes place in less than an hour each week, players can keep up with every new twist and tease lore. If you’re really into Season of Plunder’s new pirate sidearm or blunderbuss-inspired shotgun, good luck. Destiny 2 will still have to become a second job if you want a chance to craft the perfect one before it gets tossed into the vault to make way for new loot.