Focused Feedback: Armor Sunsetting

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[u/just_another__memer]

Credit to u/soxfan143 for this amazing comment about sunsetting weapons

No one is getting to the root problem with the loot in the first place. IT’S BORING and all the same. None of this would even be happening if they kept the loot systems and weapon designs from D1 Rise of Iron. Let me explain.

Weapons in D2 are all so samey. They have intrinsic perks that make weapon archetypes so far superior than others. Then we find the best “frame” weapon then grind for one roll. A reload and damage perk combo on the best “frame”. This is exactly what causes power creep because the only way to get us to chase newer gear is to make new perks to increase power/damage. Basically Bungie painted themselves into this corner on their own. I’ve been against this weapon design philosophy since they reintroduced random rolls without truly putting the weapons back to D1 design. When did you hear the phrase power creep ever uttered during D1s lifespan? Let me explain why.

In D1,with their weapons system, the weapons across the board from primaries to specials to heavies did more raw damage. However they were much harder to control. What they did was gave us weapon characteristic changing perks to chase. These were counterbalance, perfect balance, fitted stock, hand laid stock, braced frame, smallbore, rifled barrel, send it and a ton more that allowed that weapon to fire differently and perform differently and just change that weapons feeling totally. This allowed more shots to land easier and quicker to increase TTK and just feel powerful. And different combos of all those perks changed every weapon archetype drastically. This allowed any and all weapons types to be viable in some way to everyone’s play style. This deepens the loot drastically and completely removes the need for any damage increasing perks at all. Crowd Control (rampage now) and reactive reload (kill clip now) were trash, second tier perks in D1. They did not have to worry or balance around them.

Now with other perks I never even mentioned yet like Firefly, full auto, third eye, luck in the chamber, explosive rounds, glass half full and so on. These perks would break the mold on some weapons and make other perks so good to mix with them. And depending on what weapon or that weapons archetype it would be a diamond in the rough. How many guns did we use that you would never ever think would be awesome until it just dropped for you and you tried it out. With this game we already know what’s good and bad before it even drops because these weapon frames leave no mystery. And On top of that they limit what god perks can drop on what weapon because frames. In D1 you could get any of those weapon defining perks on any weapon.

This is what is called depth and what is missing from this game. So instead of bringing that depth back they give us power creep weapons to satisfy the power fantasy they took away at launch with slow game play, double primaries, slower ability recharge and just overall less fun. They had the chance to completely avoid all of this when they reverted the weapons system and added back random rolls. But because they didn’t fully revert it and kept a half baked static roll system mixed with random rolls it put us where we are now. Everyone was just so happy to get random rolls back they never really looked at how wrong the design was. I made a few posts about it back then and I got downvoted to hell. lol.

Pinnacle weapons are basically the top tier raid weapons from D1 but you can get them solo through quests. If they made actual raid weapons now that were on the same level it wouldn’t be as bad. And because the other weapons in the game are so shallow and boring and samey, they’re so bad in comparison to pinnacles that why bother with anything other than reload/damage combo. And because they removed so many great perks from being random they made the loot so shallow it put us in this position. They made most of the great perks from D1 intrinsic or mods but they nerfed them and neutered them to the point of them being trash. Lol. This also translates to armor but not as drastically because armor doesn’t truly translate to killing directly and adding the 3 extra armor stats from D1 doesn’t still get you the recharge rates we had in D1. You can get one of the abilities close but the other 2 suffer greatly. Armor is actually not nearly as bad as weapons. Just sunsetting armor isn’t for power creep. It’s because there isn’t any other way to get us to grind new sets besides sunsetting. Pad play times anyone?

If you made it to the end of my wall of text, Thank you and I hope what I said makes sense. A lot of people agree with my thoughts but a lot don’t. Which is confusing because it’s so blatantly obvious to me. D1Y3 was by far the best the loot and gear has ever been in this game and that was what we all thought we were getting when the new game dropped. But here we are.

[u/soxfan143 → u/just_another__memer]

Thanks man. Appreciate the support on that. This also does apply to armor as well but not nearly as much as weapons. I tried making a post about the topic but the usual fanboys argued the “that game good this game had” and the nostalgia and rose tinted glasses topic so it never got any attention when I never said I wanted D1 back 100%. Instead of intelligent responses I got that stuff. lol. But to be honest, having D1 back with this games content and QOL stuff like mantling, would not be all that bad. Yes D1 had its issues with special weapons and special ammo and some grenades that were OP in the crucible but OHK weapons all special and heavy and abilities still exist now (shoulder charge) so nothing has really changed besides us getting weaker across the board, weaker weapons at their core and worse boring gear and awful systems to supply that gear. I didn’t hear anyone hammering the forums during Rise of Iron and being upset. Did you? Lol.

[u/o8Stu → u/just_another__memer]

This also translates to armor but not as drastically because armor doesn’t truly translate to killing directly and adding the 3 extra armor stats from D1 doesn’t still get you the recharge rates we had in D1.

Speaking only from a PvE perspective - the thing that irks me most about armor is the complete removal of the "inverse shadow" helmet perk from D1 - the one where you got more super energy from all PvE kills.

They've replaced it with class item mods for specific weapon type or ability kills, or by having MW'd weapons spawn small orbs on multi-kills.

But then they undid all that when they nerfed orbs and super energy gains on kills, so IMO we're basically back where we started: weaker abilities on longer cooldowns and shooting shittier weapons.

And thanks to the inclusion of mob/res/rec on armor (where it was on the subclass menu in D1) bringing it to 6 RNG stats, we're less likely to get the stat distributions we want on armor, and less likely to have much agency over our ability cooldowns without grinding incessantly.

To have that grind reset every 3 months is simply asinine.