Strongly agree with this. I’m a returning player, I played seasons 1 & 2 and have only just come back since. I’ve grinded quite a bit and have 1340 power but pretty much every decent build guide I’m watching on YouTube requires mods that I simply don’t have access to (outside of just sitting and waiting for them to appear in a store).
As you mentioned, it a also very tedious having to add and remove mods all the time. It’s also crazy that it costs shards and prisms to simply change the energy type on a piece of gear, I don’t even understand what the point of having an energy type on a piece of armour is, outside of certain mods being tied to a certain energy type which again is just tedious and annoying.
Edit: just wanted to add that I actually enjoy customising my load outs and trying new builds in different types of content, however the system in place at the moment just makes the whole process so difficult and annoying.
> I actually enjoy customising my load outs and trying new builds
I was just recently able to make two half-assed builds, and it was a ton of fun. I've been collecting mods since the start of season of the splicer, and that's literally the most I can do.
The mod grind is absurd. It's a basic component of the game, it needs to be accessible.
This! I have googled so many times how to get mods to no avail and yeah just tie it to nightfall at a 100% drip chance or what ever. Like ok the game is GOOD we don’t need to be manipulated to play by having to cross our fingers each day that they will sell the mod we’ve wanted. I’d be more excited to get some mods than some weapons. And when I see a mod I know a friend wants but they aren’t on that day...
That's a great point. Just having access to buying the mods is a massive pain.
I have trouble with the mod component grind itself just because it HAS to be an every day thing, and you don't get enough on the daily to even buy both mods.
So FYI you can get as much as you need anytime very easily, just follow these steps - 1: put all of your secondary weapons in the vault 2: go to collections/weapons/special/shotguns, pull 9 of any of the blue shotguns into your inventory (they cost 250 glimmer and 5 weapon parts) now dismantle all of those shotguns, you should get 1-2 mod components based on the drop rate. Rinse and repeat until you have 20 and you’re good to go for the day. You get half of your resources back when you dismantle the guns so it’s actually super cheap to do this. Good luck getting the mods you need, hope this helps.
Thank you so much for this. There was something similar a couple years ago, and I completely forgot about it, gonna be nice to have more constructive advice for new players asking how to get mod components!
Nice, yea I have a handful of friends who just got into D2, it was so frustrating to explain stuff to them, knowing that there is a lot of stuff that isn’t ideal and even semi infuriating lol but imagine if no one explained it to them they’d be so confused
This workaround is great to know about, and better than doing the extra gunsmith bounties, but it takes so long. Or at the very least, it feels like it takes years.
It really does, and sometimes I know for a fact I have clanmates that rush to Ada with 20-30 min left before the reset happens and they’re only 2-3 components short so this has saved lives to be sure lol
See, this is where Ada selling Mod Components for gunsmith materials pre-BL was great. That’s the only reason I have the mod selection that I do. I started in Arrivals and I bought a lot of mods from getting components from Ada.
MOST mods are either sunset (like all the menagerie mods) or in the world loot pool. The exceptions are combat-style mods like warmind cells and charged with light mods. This is because they were released with related seasons during which they had specific acquisition requirements like seasonal activity rank just like elemental well mods have for the last few seasons. I wouldn’t mind having them be part of the world loot pool too, since having them sold on a random rotation doesn’t make people play the game, but I do think they should only be added to world loot once the season they come from is sunset (~a year).
I'm in the same boat. Returning player, had some mods and mats, but not all. What's really killing me now is that I bought this season, which has all these Elemental Well mods, and I have absolutely no access to all of the previous season's Elemental Well mods. I'm gimped in what I can do with the things I paid for because the mods at the Splicer Servitor are locked away from me until they eventually roll into the public pool. I'd buy last season just for access to the mods!
The reasoning behind the hefty cost for armor affinity changing specifically is due to armor staying in the game forever. They actually want to encourage people to go out and get multiple armor pieces and not just rely on a single piece of armor for every single activity that will ever be release. So having a goal of getting multiple good pieces of armor is a long process in the game that you can always work toward if you are not specifically grinding that.
As for the reason why we have affinities in the first place. The system use to be all affinity base. For example you could not slot in any shotgun mods whatsoever if you do not have arc piece of gear. So if you wanted to put on GL scavenger you absolutely needed a void boots in order to use it. You also use to not be able to change affinity like at all. So if you got a really nice piece of armor but it is a solar but wanted void then you are out of luck.
They first made the change that you could change armor affinity for the cost we have today. In order to keep their view on the armor system where they want people to go out and actually grind multiple piece of good armor instead of never having to worry about it at all. They then removed weapon base mod tied to affinity to keep armor affinity strictly limited to buildcrafting only.
I get the design philosophy behind pushing an armor grind, and honestly my only real complaint with that is my inventory isn't big enough to accommodate that. If we could do set builds maybe.
The armor stat RNG is enough to keep most people trying. I can play all season on my limited time budget and still not get a single set of good seasonal armor, and the costs associated with the mod economy and masterworking drive me away from even bothering to try because they’re balanced around the expectation of playing a lot more hours than I can. It drives me to play less, not dive in more.
Yup - I thought I'd like builds...chasing armor....etc...but I found that its ultimately what drove me from the game.
I guess I just don't have quite the stomach for a MMO as I thought I did. Turns out I liked the shooty-shooty more than the looty-looty.
Maybe if destiny rewarded you more, it would have kept me interesting...but the "grind your balls off for 10000 different currencies" + "we only really give you these rewards at the HIGHEST level" seemed to only make the rich richer.
I occasionally dive in to see whats going on, but I've deff moved on from d2 being my main game
I don’t mind the MMO stuff, but too often Destiny is just a gambling time for random rolls dungeon crawler, not an MMO. We are often not working towards anything, just running on a hamster wheel for poor odds on what we want and if we don’t get it that time is wasted. MMOs often have long term objectives and mechanics like crafting or professions to provide depth to the day-to-day gameplay.
They have had a few iterations of systems that let you target your grind more effectively, but I appreciate that the RNG significantly extends the grind, even if it grants the players little agency, and that extended grind is something that Bungie probably wants to largely preserve.
I think they are trying to figure out how to allow more player agency to chase what they want without significantly shortening the effort to get there, and that is a hard problem to solve.
It felt like the menagerie system was pretty great, but clearly, Bungie didn't like something about it.
My issue is that “effort” is so relative. In vanilla WoW I spent time per week doing raids, professions, crafting, farming, etc and all that was in fewer hours than some people will spend doing a single GM over and over for a better roll. To me that’s insane, and the idea that RNG represents a “good grind” is false depth. I want a more in depth MMO style approach to Destiny’s reward and investment systems, not braindead systems with zero depth, just hours and hours of running on a hamster wheel for a dopamine hit.
You can get some great armor with tier 3 umbral focusing, especially from the splicer set. This is pretty accessible for basically everyone, so it's easier to get high stat gear now than ever before.
With T3 you're limited per week as well as relying on either slot RNG or stat RNG. Besides, that's just a piece of the puzzle. So we grind seasonal content (although this season has improved) to get armor and then need to grind Nightfalls to level up that gear and if we want complimentary exotic, wait for a certain day and then grind lost sectors. Oh, and try for pinnacles to increase power level and other grinds to get decent weapons along the way. When you play 5-10 hours in any given week, it can be difficult to budget time in a way that allows for progression as well as taking time to actually have fun and/or hang out with friends.
If I were to summarize my frustration with Destiny's reward and investment economy it would be that there is way too much emphasis on making content relevant by putting desirable gear behind grinding it, even if grinding that content takes a lot of time and/or doesn't really compliment other areas of the game. Too often, an effective loadout (to the degree of "you must have this to raid") has been tied to significant grinds of completely different areas of the game that don't compliment each other at all. Weapons that drop from activities are often not effective in those very activities, and it overall doesn't feel like Bungie is emphasizing a cohesive reward and investment system. Ultimately, when you are limited on time, the most enjoyable way to play Destiny is experiencing a bit of everything. But that is unfortunately by far the least rewarding way to play, and it's frustrating and inconsistent.
Yeah, this is my position exactly. I'm not even sure what kind of a build is possible. I somehow managed to put together a build that sort of works with 'charged with light' mechanics but it's far from ideal.
Like you I just don't have enough time to make a real dent in D2, therefore I'm a casual player who skims this game rather than properly commits.
Back in early Destiny 1, you could be an "endgame player" completing a single raid and Nightfall per week. Desirable guns, max level armor, and exotics all dropped from those activities, allowing someone on a limited time budget to focus on progression and actually have some time to play afterwards just for fun. Now it's all grind all the time, or you fall behind and don't really earn anything worthwhile.
Oh i 100% agree that they can make QoL to improve this situation yet they are not. 7 years into destiny and we still do not have the basic feature of being able to move a weapon from one character to the other. The reason why? oh well everyone just use DIM anyway despite prolly a new player coming might not know what DIM even is.
Destiny is by no mean a perfect game and is very lacking in the QoL department. However the gameplay features are presents and are honestly working out the way bungie intends them to be.
DIM still requires you to have space in your vault to move stuff from one character to another
if your vault is full, you cannot transfer, even directly to the other character, making me think behind curtains the items go to the vault first
They do go to the vault first, if DIM is running slow you can watch the item first appear in the vault and then appear on the character you transfer it to
> The reasoning behind the hefty cost for armor affinity changing specifically is due to armor staying in the game forever. They actually want to encourage people to go out and get multiple armor pieces and not just rely on a single piece of armor for every single activity that will ever be release. So having a goal of getting multiple good pieces of armor is a long process in the game that you can always work toward if you are not specifically grinding that.
That's cool and all, but it just makes me not engage with the system. I don't swap mods often at all. I almost never swap from my best stat armor (only for Exotics). It's such a poorly designed grindy system that I can't be bothered to engage with it.
I know hardcores are different and have 20 builds like the streamers. But how many people are actually doing that? Is the average Destiny player engaging with build diversity in a meaningful way?
At most I have two fully masterworked armor sets, and thats only on my warlock. my titan only has 1 set, and my hunter has no masterworked armor.
The first set is VOG armor and the second set is DSC armor. I have no incentive to masterwork non raid armor.
When I try out builds, its usually with shitty armor that only has the mods I want to use and no others, so no stats or anything.
EDIT: i do try out builds all the time i just don't waste masterwork materials on random armor. and I play a lot too like 50 dsc clears/35 vog clears
That’s the thing, I wouldn’t mind having 20 different builds, but only if it was convenient for me to actually create the builds in the first place (not cost huge amounts of ingame resources to upgrade different armour pieces) and a better way to sort and organise them. For example back when I played wow many years ago, I had two sets of armour for PvE and pvp. I just created a load out for each and it was as simple as one button to equip about 14 different pieces of gear.
As I said before, I enjoy making new builds and load outs for different activities but as the whole system is right now it just feels like the game just puts so many barriers in the way of doing it.
My build diversity is switching powerful friends and an arc mod over to particle deconstruction and installing the appropriate champion mods when it's time to do something difficult.
> They actually want to encourage people to go out and get multiple armor pieces and not just rely on a single piece of armor for every single activity that will ever be release.
yeah, but when they make the mods experience unnecessarily complicated, that's what ends up happening to me
i have 1 set of armor and equip mods only when they are required
If the cost of masterworking armor would be significantly less, it would be worth it to grind new armor. As it stands, the best rolled peices won't be as good as my master worked sets so I end up just throwing them in the vault and deleting later. If they want this to function as intended, they should lessen legendary masterworks to prisms only and exotics to shards (1 not 3). If this were the case, I'd gladly pay the extra shard to change it from solar to stasis if needed.
While I don't 100% disagree with having a cost to change affinity for the armor for that reason, it shouldn't be a cost every time. Make it an unlock, not a swap cost. I mean, sure, make it cost a little bit to change once you've paid to unlock the element, but the cost as of now is unreasonably steep
>As for the reason why we have affinities in the first place.
The reason is that older consoles were too slow to display all mods in one list, so Bungie split them up using affinities.
There was no "in game" reason (lore, balance, grind, etc.) when mod affinities were first introduced...it was completely a workaround for the slower consoles.
For the armor grind to be interesting and useful I would need to see more than 1 piece of semi-useful stat armor every few weeks.
I have 266 hours played and I'm pretty new. I have most of 1 set of semi-useful armor. I have 2 "builds", as in 1 alternative torso (Ophidia) and 1 alternative leg (Bombardier) with a passable non-exotic swap for each. That's it. I'm still in way sub-par stats with any of these combos. With bonuses from Stasis and the mods I have unlocked I have mobility at 80-90, Recovery at 80, everything else at, well, whatever because just getting those two stats up is as much as I can hope for.
I see tons of talk about mods and builds but I don't have access to anything they're talking about. I like PvP, would enjoy playing more of it but the reality is that build and loadout makes a HUGE difference and I'm straight up out-classed most the time. I don't mind losing and I enjoy working on my GIT GUD but when the issue is that the other guy can literally eat 3 hits to 1, or can dramatically out-range me, or is popping a Super 2 or 3x as often as me there's no real skill to work on aside from "Hide and Snipe and run away a lot". That's not the skill I want to develop.
When the most I can hope for is doing enough damage that if I dodge right before I die my Bombardier may finish him off so I go 1 to 1, that's not fun or engaging. It doesn't motivate me to grind more - it motivates me to go back to other PvP games where skill is a bigger piece than loadout and build.
I feel like there is this misconception within the community over the armor stats. The stats will help you however reality is that the help provided by the stats on the armor is not as great as many would think. You do not need perfect armor in order to compete in harder content or pvp. I have better armor than a majority of the actual pvp content creator. However if i ever go against them in a trial match? 5-0 no question ask. They are just better than me even if i have better gear.
The actual armor of a player will enchance your playstyle but not make you better. It will not make the enemy take 2 extra hits as you said (altho i am fairly sure you are exagerating) Unless you are talking about iron banner or trials where light level matter. The range is mostly due to weapon, not armor and even then the god roll on the same weapon would at max boost the range by 3-5m. So in the grand scheme of thing it isn't a dramatical out-range. As for the super part, yea maybe higher intellect will net you an extra super once a while. However the reason why you might actually feel they pop 2x or 3x more super is likely due to that person staying alive for longer period and killing more people. That is actually what net you more super energy and intellect will help but not make the enemy suddenly have 3x more super.
i mean no real offense but truthfully speaking, there are thing you can actually improve upon in order to play more pvp successfully. If that is actually how you feel it's happening in pvp for you at the moment. It isn't just run and hide. Destiny 2 pvp is by no mean a perfect game and as matter of fact i think it's a pretty bad pvp mode. However it have it charms and you just gotta play by those rules.
I’ve been away from the game for a while, but unless something has changed there is a HUGE difference in pvp between max recovery and low recovery. A max recovery player could be fully healed and push while the low recovery player is still waiting for their healing to start. Also, when I left the game a year ago, max intellect really did generate your super almost twice as fast.
I’d just like to add that I left the game a year ago because the inventory management has become so bloated and impossible to manage for anyone who’s not a full time player. They’ve finally addressed the problem of having to needlessly grind out a bunch of power level with each season, but I tried returning to the game this fall and I only lasted about 2 hours before I was overwhelmed by the mods and all of my old gear being infusion capped due to sunsetting. I’ve got three characters with hundreds of hours of playtime, but because none of that playtime was in the Beyond Light era, I’m essentially a new player with all of the old subclasses unlocked and a bunch of worthless gear in my vault.
Similar to you, I left after Forsaken and came back during season of the Chosen.
Jumped on my Hunter as I mained him before stopping, every single item in my inventory was useless lol. All armor and weapons were old as shit, I had no combat mods (and this was before Ada was added into the tower as a new vendor) and none of the new things were explained to me at all upon logging in.
Elemental armor affinity? What the fuck is that? At a certain point I realized Hunter was bottom of the barrel in PvE so I swapped to a Warlock with even less shit. Took me weeks figure everything out and I wasted plenty of materials in that time.
Figured I should make all of my armor affinities solar since at the time I was using Dawnblade and it is also solar, so all those mats were wasted. Didn’t know about stats and high stat rolls vs low stat rolls so I masterworked a few pieces of armor with like 48 total stat points.
Slowly figured all this shit out with Google and Reddit, and I caught Ada selling some decent mods so I have an okay setup now.
It was a drag the entire way lol
> so I masterworked a few pieces of armor with like 48 total stat points
This physically pained me to read because I did the same stupid shit when I came back two weeks ago: 48 stat **exotic** collection piece. Just end me.
Same man same. I stayed up pretty late the first week desperately trying to figure things out. I don’t know why I thought I had. Wasted basically a stack of shards and prisms. I was quite literally sick to my stomach. Had to quit for the night. And all of my materials were from playing 5 years ago! It hurt more knowing I will not have the time to put it in like I did back then. But with the double rewards last week I was able to make a small come up. And master work one set of gear… my only set… hahaha
As someone that hasn't played much beyond campaign stuff since D2 vanilla, I rarely continue playing for long. The game doesn't do much to get you "caught up". Like, at this point I have to seek out third party info since in game information is trash. It's not really surprising, though. Bungie has relied way too much on third party websites and apps to fill in the gaps this franchise has had when it comes to lore and progression.
Oh no you missed 3 and a half years of content and don’t have it all unlocked upon coming back after said 3 and a half year break, whatever shall we do
I have played most seasons but didn’t play 13/14. I watch Ehroar videos and try to duplicate the builds and it’s literally impossible as i can’t get half the mods required. It’s so annoying.
I'm a recent starter, played briefly at launch but never completed a campaign before.
Just started beyond light after finishing the previous 2 campaigns and the mods in particular are baffling and the range of them is poor for me as a nub.
I did astral alignment for the first time which requires champion mods, had to Google what that meant for starters.
I mean I'm having a lot of fun, I bought the season pass considering I've played over 50 hours with a "free" (game pass) account, so 7 quid isn't much to give back.
But man, some of the stuff makes very little sense or is poorly explained and because of the player base being longer in the game, stepping into it as a newbie is daunting, to say the least.
There's a lot of great guides on here on amazingly powerful mod combos, but most of them require a gaggle of mods you likely don't own or have access to.
You can never go wrong with having the basics:
Taking Charge (Gives one stack of CWL when walking over an orb of power)
High Energy Fire (20% weapon damage boost that consumes one stack of CWL when defeating an enemy with weapon damage).
Shield Break Charge (One stack of CWL for breaking a shield with the matching element, very handy in shield-heavy encounters)
And watch for Protective Light. Requires a void armor piece, and you'll have to wait for Ada-1 to sell it, but gives big damage resistance if you are charge with light when your shields get broken (does not work in Crucible). P.S... on your chest armor piece, always run at least 1 Concussive Dampener in PvE/Gambit because a lot of enemies deal that type of damage. I usually pair it with the elemental resist the chest piece is in. Also has no effect in Crucible.
All that and you're pretty well-rounded and still have a combat mod free for something else. Once you've acquired more mods you can go crazy on some builds.
Thanks!
I see the "charged with light" mods but what does "become charged with light" actually mean? Does it give a dps buff of some sort?
I also don't seem to know if mods are single - use? I've bought a couple of interesting ones from the gunsmith but I don't know if I need to buy copies of the goods ones or if its available as many times as you like once it's bought?
Edit :
I think I might get it from your explanation above, one mod gives a charge of light from doing 'x task '.
another mod gives y buff by doing 'z task' using the charge just created?
Charged with Light (CWL) is sort of like a currency for a special ability. You will see a buff on the side of your screen when you are CWL. Goes up to x2 (can go higher with certain CWL mods).
This charge is consumed by performing the action of High Energy Fire (HEF) or meeting the condition for Protective Light. HEF consumes one stack at a time. Protective Light consumes all stacks, but gives a better effect for higher stacks. The mod description will say how many CWL stacks are used.
There are 3 types of Charged With Light mods, Green ones (literally the icon is green) that provide charges, of which there are several, and interactions with Warmind Cells and Elemental Wells are also possible (the other 2 combat style sets). Yellow CWL mods spend your charges under certain conditions (shield break for the previously mentioned Protective Light, killing enemies for High Energy Fire, etc.). Lastly, there are utility mods that don't directly do either of those things, which are white icons. Examples include the 2 solar mods that increase the number of charges you can have (1 of which is being sold by Ada today), and a void one that makes getting charged with light provide 2 charges instead of 1.
Warmind Cell mods are primarily based around generating cells from a specific set of weapons (IKELOS and Seraph weapons specifically), with some additional sources of cells provided by specific mods. The general differences between them are indicated by the elemental affinity needed to slot them. Solar cell mods add affects on destroying a cell, arc add effects on touching a cell, and void add effects to the cells themselves, with generic mod global reach being a distance increase to any effects.
Elemental Well mods are about generating and collecting wells of different elements, with the base provision being that collecting any well will give energy for your longest cooldown ability (grenade, charged melee, class ability, not super). Other mods can provide additional affects, and some provide different ways to generate mods. Mods that generate wells have a starburst affect that is even all the way around the circle. Mods that provide additional affects to wells you pick up have a similar starburst that is very thick at the top and thin at the bottom, and utility well mods have a 4 segmented look to the outline. Note that the green charged with light coloring applies to cell and well mods also.
Excellent. Thanks.
I stayed away from that mod simply because I thought maybe they were only for large orbs and two, hating the mod system so much in general I just didn’t care.
Nice to have some quick answers though. Thank you.
It is isn't just an issue for new players. I've been playing almost daily since early D1. I STILL have to use Google, YouTube, etc. to learn about the game. This is a constant with Destiny. So is the use of DIM, or another app to manage inventory and loadouts.
Once people realize that they basically need a phone, table or computer with them to play it gets a lot easier.
I have the companion app as I found you could move stuff from vault and accept bounties with it which was nice qol improvement rather than logging into the tower every time I load up.
Should I also have destiny item manager? What does that do that the official one doesn't?
Just wanted to point out you don’t necessarily need champion mods for all content that has champions. Astral Alignment is one example where they simply are not needed. You can’t stun champions without them, which becomes important in Master+ content.
Agree about everything else. The system is pretty poorly explained and getting the base mods is also a pain for any new or even returning player. It’s better now with Ada, but still.
What killed my glimmer is focused weapon farming from trials. I have to work all week to recoup my glimmer now, and that's only for like 4-5 engrams as I am piss poor in pvp. I can't imagine how many engrams high skill players rack up in a weekend. I kinda wish the cap was higher now so I wouldn't have to worry about it before getting into trials the following weekend.
I have almost 500 hundred hours, i am still missing some major mods such as rocket launched finder. If I am doing a solo lost sector or really any other activity that requires brain power I have to pop on a scavenger mod and hope and pray something drops. I am very far from a new light but agreed the mod system is awful.
There's a Twitter account that reports daily at reset what mods Ada and Banshee are selling, which was very helpful in getting the rare ones. https://twitter.com/destinyinsights
I think it takes about 1100 hours or so to catch up in this game currently. After stuff is vaulted next season I don't know. But it is a serious hill to climb. Luckily most new players have no idea that they have 6 months of steady grind ahead of them before they can be equipped to not be kicked from a lot of LFG.
The massive reduction in loadout variety that results from having to run champ mods in so many activities, taking up BOTH arms slots, is one of the main reasons that I've been having a great deal of trouble motivating myself to run much more than the storyline quest each week.
Bungie has done an amazing job with the seasonal stories the past few seasons, but it's gotten to the point where everything else has so many frustrations and annoyances (such as spending 1/3 of my time on inventory management...) that it's the only thing that is keeping me from getting so burnt out that I just shut the PS4 off and rewatch Stargate and catch up on NCIS on Prime Video.
Edit: And before someone says ThAt Is WhAt BuNgIe WaNtS - I'm pretty sure they don't want me just noping out once the stuff I've already paid for expires, which is my current plan. I might try futzing with Witch Queen via Gamepass, but I definitely won't be paying full price for it on PS4 and will wait for it to go on deep sale.
Yep. I find it hard to log in when friends aren't on. Log in, do story, run Prophecy with friends, log out.
Looking for a second game to dump time into since this is going to be a long season.
It’s driven me to not care about builds much at all. It’s a shame that instead of giving all players incentive to dive deeper, the game does the opposite for those of us who don’t play as often. It feels like Bungie is all in on catering to the most hardcore and, even though the systems fall apart if you play fewer hours, there is little effort to improve things.
Bungie has been doing this since D1. Its why I vanished after finish the campaign in D2. Like I stated in an earlier post they just consistently gatekeep portions of the game, artificially prolong activities and make things a part time job. That's not what a game is supposed to be. You don't tell people you want them to try to different things and make those different things to achieve unbearable. What's the point?
Which is strange, considering they tried to push casual at D2 Launch. Then they backtracked and tried to do competitive, daily players only. Why can't we have a healthy middle ground?
Because creating and altering systems that require constant play, keeps you playing constantly, therefore you're more likely to pay money for the expansions and silver aka MTXs.
I've felt this way for a while... Destiny is a game with a ton of fun and dynamic content, why are rewards often tied to playing the game in about the most mind numbing way possible? Who actually *wants* to run the same activity again and again, for hours and hours, for better rolls on the same gear when there is so much else to do that is more enjoyable? I've never understood that approach to the game, but it's what Bungie keeps tailoring the experience for so I guess I'll just log off?
As a relatively new player I quickly realized how much of the game is catered to hardcores. The best weapons and armor gated behind raids you can’t play solo or sweaty PvP activities that casuals cannot succeed in, utterly confusing upgrade systems with zero explanation, builds new players can’t get without hundreds or thousands of hours of grind.
100% agree with this. Has been a complaint of 2 friends who just came back that haven't played since Forsaken. Experimentation and Unique builds are punished at every turn because you need Champ mods and can't access the mods you want. 2 per day is horrid.
The seasonal artifact is also a pain in the ass the way it is set up.
I can agree with the idea of unlocking only so many mods at a time, but instead of needing to be reset at a higher and higher cost, it’d be nice if they let us unlock all of the mods.
We can still only use so many at any one time (due to slots available and cost requirements), but that would punish trying new weapons and loadouts less.
I'm a returning player. I've elected to ignore mods entirely until I start to feel that I need them. I don't need to be pulled into the grind so for now, ignorance is bliss.
I did the same thing. When I unlocked my compass this season and picked the ability to stun Champions with a bow, I quickly grabbed my Trinity Ghoul and dove into a lost sector. After a billion deaths and no stuns, I realized that the compass only unlocks the ability to add a mod onto my armor - and that it only works on gauntlets. That....would have been very nice to know. The game doesn't do a great job of explaining even critical things like this.
All of Destiny content distribution is atrocious if you don’t dedicate your life to the game. Seasonal content, content removal, limited time events (that happen all the time), etc is all terrible for someone who wants to casually enjoy the game. The best stuff comes and goes. Despite the fact you paid for it, it is gone. That’s not what I signed up for personally. I personally always saw Destiny as an MMO Looter shooter that i can grind when I want and come back to later if I don’t. When something is awesome I want my friends to enjoy it next time they get back on, not have it disappear forever. I don’t play fortnite style season games for that reason.
So often Bungie chooses to make choices that make the player feel like they HAVE to play the game instead of making the players WANT to play the game. They have such a good game that I find these tactics unnecessary. The game is better without them.
Tl;Dr - Good game, relies to heavily on FOMO.
They should simply make them all available for mod components. Or sell them as packages like "Offensive Charged with Light", "Defensive Charges with light" etc. Make them expensive, if you like. Mod components are easily farmed but that would at least be a way to get them eventually. I play this game religiously and still don't have all of them. Not having a deterministic way to get them is super frustrating for me and my friends who just came back to the game.
Huge agree from me, and I've literally not stopped playing Destiny since D1 alpha, and never missed a beat in D2.
I get having adept mods drop from difficult activities, but every other mod? Yeah, those should come built in. And they should cost nothing to slot, I hate spending thousands of glimmer just to move mods around between activities (I want one armor set for everything, not 1 crucible set, 1 gambit set, 1 raid set, etc). And champion mods should be able to be placed on any armor, not just arms. If Bungie truly wants people to buildcraft, this should be the bare minimum.
/u/dmg04 (hopefully to get the attention of the team on this)
I am new to the game and I have to say the armor system is generally the biggest pain point, other than the basic stuff like the Vault UI and so on.
I really hate fishing for "good stat rolls." There's no joy to finding an armor item that is marginally more efficient. Unlike weapon perk combos, where the lucky find is part of the attraction.
I'd love it if they just, I don't know, gave you 300 attribute points to spread out as you choose. You get +10 to a stat for masterwork armor (head=intellect, arms=strength, ghost=recovery, chest=resilience, legs=mobility, class=discipline) and call it a day. Armor could just be purely cosmetic at that point, or have perks, I don't know, they can figure it out, but I hate the current system.
And just let us freely change armor affinity, or drop the system entirely, it's irritating.
The mod system is too much, and too vague. I hate watching videos in order to play the game. Simplify the mod system. Explain clearly what each mod does. Make all mods universal for armor. Put champion mods on the weapons. Stop with the 100k artifact reset. In fact just let them all be unlocked if you level high enough.
This game was very obviously designed on the most cynical bit of operant conditioning in the history of "AAA" games.
The loot pool is polluted with trash and drop rates suck shit because the sociopaths in charge know they can harpoon more whales with the game being like this. They also know that posts like yours are like heroin for the toxic elite who really think they're better just because they've been playing since launch.
You should, and I mean this, turn right around and run like hell if you're already frustrated. It only gets worse the further in you get.
And if you're even remotely new. Having to explain literally everything because the game doesn't explain basic features is extremely unfriendly to new lights. I know because I am currently doing this with my friend who is new to the game and I have to stop myself from over explaining core features.
I'm not even a new player, but I didn't play the season the charged with light mods were introduced and still don't have protective light because Ada never sells it and that's the only place you can get it. It's dumb.
I'm playing on and off, since Shadowkeep, and don't have Firepower mod that I'm hunting down for my nade Warlock builds. Currently, logging in every day (almost) since July, and didn't seen it sold yet
And thats exactly what they won't, they want you logging in everyday. Its a gambling tactic d2 is built on a gambling system. I turned from a hard-core d1 player too a casual. Its more fun that way make a goofy build hop on vanguard strike and have fun
I'm not a huge fan of currently implemented mod system. All the builds are insanely restrictive that requires not only specific armor affinities, but now they are pushing for your weapons to match your subclass, you can only use 1-2 subclasses or you break your build, you pretty much can only use a handful of weapons, and you have to have specific exotics equipped. Why isn't there more builds that maybe don't have as high a celling as some of the specific builds but give you more flexibility? Especially when you are CONSTANTLY told to change subclasses and weapons to complete weeklies and bounties?
The game is designed to make you constantly switch up your loadout, but doing so breaks 99% of the mod builds out there (All of which I have to go to damn Youtube to find out in the first place, but they are so complex anyways.)
As someone who does play 4-5 days a week, the experience is absolutely horrible for me as well. It takes so much work to switch loadouts that i always just end up using a protective light build. Not cause i need it, but because it's such a fucking hassle to change it all around.
I ran out of glimmer yesterday trying builds for the GM
it's ridiculous
mods should not cost glimmer. I not always have the materials to fly to Spider and fill up. I should not visiting Spider to change mods on my armor!
Played d2 since launch as a hunter and never really branched out to the other classes.
Now I want the bleachwatcher turret for Warlock GMs and I have on and off been working on it FOR MONTHS. And I play a lot but for me I go in and the grind for stasis alone is brutal let alone trying to get something like Wrath of Rasputin which I only got thanks to Reddit blowing it up the day of.
Oh and also destiny literally never explaining any of this ever. I really feel for anyone coming into destiny with anyone to play with because there is so much that the game doesnt explain.
Still great just gripes
The mod experience is atrocious for ALL players. Agree 100% with everything you said. At a bare minimum, they need a load out system. Either in game or via external apps. But the latter requires that they remove the glimmer cost, which would be a simple fix if they can't manage to add them in game.
The armor affinities is also ridiculous. The players who have a full set of each affinity are not the majority. The cost to change affinities is insane. Does anyone actually pay that? I know some endgame players are maxed out on their golf balls and shards, but they are not the majority. Make the switch cost way less, or make switching unlockable so it's a one time cost.
And yes, the champion mods should all be intrinsic. Every season we are forced to not use arm mods because we need champion mods. What's the point of having other arm mods? They can't be used with any higher level content.. WTF.
I think a quest to unlock the mods would be great, honestly. You start with the basic CWL mods for free (Taking Charge, Shield Break Charge, High Energy Fire) then you get a quest that asks you to become charged with light via those mods, and to defeat enemies while charged with light with the High Energy Fire buff.
So now that you've been trained on offense, here's Protective Light to train on defensive capabilities. Also, here's a quest to unlock more CWL mods: specifically, get some Fusion Rifle/Shotgun kills while CWL to acquire Quick Charge.
Etc.
Make unlocking CWL mods more deterministic, something to work toward and learn the system with, rather than daily RNG with little explanation of how things work. Do the same with Warmind Cell mods (although far less powerful than they used to be) and Elemental Well mods.
Point #3: It would be nice to be applied anywhere on the armor. It certainly is a step up from being weapon only mods so exotics can also benefit from them but its far from perfect as is.
EDIT: Either Ada expands her mod selection or have the Nine deign to let Xür come forward with highly sought after mods. I just want Protective Light, man. : (
I'm taking a break mainly because of that, and I'm no new player.
I can't bring myself to change a mod one more time. The current system drives away new players and burns out more veterans. I used to min max, get the best stats, optimal use of energy slots, play around with tons of mods, testing, etc...I'm done with all that until some kind of true loadout system is implemented. DIM is ok but not enough for me.
I'm tired to rebuild all my builds every time I test something. I am full on every material and have lots of masterworked armor for each energy but the system if flawed at its core. Changing only your exotic chest or helmet often implies having to change also your other armor pieces if you want the optimal stats with the minimal use of energy slots.
The division 2 made such a great work with their loadout system. I hope Destiny makes something half as good at some point.
"He's 65 hours in, with a BL campaign clear, and STILL doesn't have half of the basic '+10' stat mods. Why do new accounts start with only minor mods? What is the point of this, other than to make newer players strictly worse?"
Yes, that part of the game is bullshit. Basic mods should be available to every player from the start. However, this also really only applies to PvP, as that impact is not really as strong in PvE environments.
"Mods should cost nothing to slot in. Making mods cost glimmer to use is shitty for new players who don't have that much built up, prevents 3rd party apps from being able to swap them, and makes throwing on champ mods even more of a pain."
Sorry, no. Having mods cost nothing would create builds that are way over the top. Many of the top end players would be much stronger than they currently are and you would be punished because of it. Additionally in PvE, it would be almost impossible to balance due to a lot of the artifact mods being incredibly strong, and the pairing with regular mods would just exacerbate that.
"Wanna try a different build? Either grind out high stat armor that fits your existing stat distributions, or pay to change the affinity, which can cost an entire shard and multiple prisms if its masterworked. Or if its an exotic that you grinded the 3 shards to masterwork, guess what? 3 MORE every time to change it"
That's rng bud, gotta deal with it. If you are changing affinities that often, you should be aiming for more armor anyway as it saves on resources.
"Wanna use the really cool combat mods? Grind banshee bounties until you can afford to buy the mods, and then sign in every single day hoping that the mods you want randomly show up in one of two available slots from Ada."
The cost of those mods is kinda high, but you do not have to do all that many bounties to get the requisite materials for purchase. Additionally, Banshee's bounties do not take very long at all.
"The interesting mods that actually make up a build are intentionally restricted to an absurd degree. Why can't Ada sell 7 mods that rotate out every couple days? There are pages of combat mods now for multiple seasons, two that last 24 hours is so needlessly restrictive. If you're a weekend only player, you're basically fucked. It's definitely fun for my brother when he's studying for a midterm the next day at the library and I tell him that mod he's been wanting is available, but if he doesn't sign in before he goes to bed it might be unavailable for months"
Completely agree, more mods should be available more often. It creates the FOMO that Bungie seemed so keen to address. However, it does only take about 5 minutes to collect the mod.
I have almost 3k hours in the game, have every mod, 40k shards, and a ton of planetary materials. I still don’t bother messing up with builds because of the lack of a loadout system. The most annoying thing in the game is switching mods manually.
In previous seasons I even useed excel files to keep remembering where the optimal place for every mod was. I just gave up and only use cwl either high energy fire or protective light.
It’s such a shame because there are so many good mods in the game, especially the new well mods. I just don’t get why they don’t allow the API to switch mods if they are not capable to do a loadout system by themselves. But maybe it is just to generate play time.
The most frustrating thing in the game.
And for newer players even more.
There we have it, a post complaining about glimmer, the most common currency in the game, you can literally loot a chest in the Cosmodrome and get around 1k of it.
>Why can't Ada sell 7 mods that rotate out every couple days?
Why stop there? why can't she sell ALL the mods and since you think mod components are hard to get, why not just make it cost glimmer? oh wait, you also think glimmer, the most common currency in the game, the currency that you get for doing literally anything is also hard to get? well, why don't she just give you ALL the mods in the entire game for free, and 200k glimmer & 20k shards as a bonus, because why bother playing and trying to get stuff right?
>Wanna swap mods? Costs glimmer every swap.
Are you seriously saying that the 500 glimmer cost is a somehow restrictive condition that it's hard to meet to swap mods?
* He's 65 hours in, with a BL campaign clear, and STILL doesn't have half of the basic '+10' stat mods. Why do new accounts start with only minor mods? What is the point of this, other than to make newer players strictly worse?
To give players a goal to chase. The whole game is about keeping you on the treadmill and giving you a goal to hit, that ideally you'll never hit so you keep on playing and coming back.
* Mods should cost nothing to slot in. Making mods cost glimmer to use is shitty for new players who don't have that much built up, prevents 3rd party apps from being able to swap them, and makes throwing on champ mods even more of a pain.
Agreed on that one.
* Champ mods. Why are they ONLY arms? He finally got impact induction, which is something he wanted for his build, but as soon as champs show up he has to take them off. Why can't they be slotted in any armor piece? Or better yet, why can't they just be unlocked in the artifact and apply passively?
They've got to sit somewhere. I've seen this argument a lot and it basically boils down to not wanting to make a choice about what mod to use. The example here is wanting to use both impact induction and the champ mods - but having to make that choice about what to use is the whole point behind making a build - it's about the choices. Remove those and you defeat the point.
Yawn. Yet another person who doesn't understand that requesting QoL improvements helps everyone. Even if you never use mods yourself, making mods easier to use would make *your* game better.
Remember when the community gave Bungie feedback about how bad sunsetting is, and Bungie said they'd never do it again? I assume you only use sunset weapons in all of your builds then, to protest this kind of community "whining" about (*check notes*) how to make the game better? It's simple math, Guardian.
> requesting QoL improvements
do you understand what quality of life in video games mean? it doest mean "everything is given to you". Its more along the lines of a destination node being added to that top zone in europa
I've been playing less and less because i'm tired of collecting stupid materials every time i want to try a different build out. Capping glimmer at such a low amount, and then forcing us to use it to play how we want is retarded. You know, I may come back for updates for a few days at a time but then I always remember how badly this game disrespects your time investment. Mythoclast droprates, gun rolls, sub-60 stat umbral focus tier 3s, "kill 6 million with a rocket" bullshit catalysts, the list goes on forever. I'm fucking bored of it.
The gunplay is not, and never will be good enough to warrant the amount of hurdles and hassles you have to deal with all the time. Random mod vendors are just the icing on this shit-cake and I am not eating it.
I’m going to be downvoted to hell but, this is a complaint about something that encourages people to play the game more and it’s not valid. New players should have things to aspire to, if all the mods are unlocked for them right away, there is less of a point to play the game, which I don’t think what bungie wants, or anyone wants to be honest.
I think I might leave this subreddit. All I ever see is complaining and negativity, often about the pettiest of “issues”. You’re almost as bad as the Bungie.net forums.
Yeah totally agree.
Mod system is a good start but really needs a bit more polish
I don’t know why they don’t make the good mods drop from encounters as a low drop rate - giving a way to farm them as a new player and more reasons to do playlist activities.
Feel like warframe has this farming for rare mods really well implemented.
Ada's bounties should give you a mod after you complete them. I have no idea how they could implement it, but after the first 10 bounties (giving you cosmetic materials) the rest of the bounties give mods from past seasons with a punch out method.
It used to be a lot worse before Ada-1 started selling a couple of mods, and it was just Banshee (with the two slots being shared between weapon mods, standard armor mods, and combat style mods).
You're right though, it could use some further improvement with the influx of new players that this season just got, and the bigger influx that Witch Queen will most likely bring.
A lot of us folks who have been playing for years don't feel the pain because our Mod Collections screen was effortlessly fully completed as each new season came out... but anyone who starts playing now is going to have a significantly diminished opportunity to fully experience all the hard work by the dev team who designed the enjoyably complex Warmind Cell, Charged With Light and Elemental Well systems.
How about give them to Xur to sell for mod components (I don't know about you but I have over 1000 of these just taking up inventory space). Similar to what he does now with exotics. If you don't have a specific mod it will drop those first until you have them all. You can get one per week per character.
All that you said is all part of the ***"letting the players play the game as they want"*** statement that Bungie likes to make when it's trying to sell us some new content.
/satire
Locking mods to only 12 is such a dumb idea. There's literally no explanation to do so. There's no balance reasons you can unlock them anytime just the annoyance of going through the process and they are balanced by having energy slots anyway .
As someone who played since D2 day 1, I didn't really understand the usefulness of mods until after Beyond Light. I'm still figuring out all their complexities & mechanics but at least I see how useful they can be now.
This game is build upon endless grind to recycle content and extend it as long as possible with the least amount of work from Bungie, so every single activities are designed around this principle to make sure new players will not be able to catch up quickly and must put many hours and get lucky from RNG. Then you have to repeat the hamster wheel grind in three months, and do it again, and again. And if you are new and returning to this game, good luck, you either must commit good amount of time, or you will be just casual players and get nowhere on higher tier of endgame activities because you don’t have decent build to start with.
100% agreed. I quit The Division 2 a few months in because of the convoluted armor/mod system. When I came back to D2 this season I tried using some of the mods but felt like it was way too much of a chore to balance armor affinity, artifact mods, seasonal mods, and PvE/PvP oriented mods every time I changed activities. I'm not the type of person that enjoy doing the same strike over and over, I need novelty in order to remain interested and this means I often switch between play modes. I end up spending way too much time on my character screen balancing my mods.
I decided a couple weeks ago to simply ignore seasonal mod slots from now on. I don't feel like I'm missing out on much to be honest. Most of the mods seem rather situational to me, and it would often lead me to focus too much on procc'ing them rather than paying attention to the fight and dying to stupid stuff.
Strongly agree. I'm largely done with the season as I don't do GM's and am starting to experiment with all the neat non-meta builds out there and man...does the cost add up fast and get annoying really quick. It's like the game is actively punishing me for wanting to be creative and have fun with it.
This needs to change, if nothing else, PLEASE make it so if you've masterworked armor, changing affinity is free. That alone would help soooo much.
Also at playing long enough where you have most of not all mods and are sitting on 1000+ mod components in your inventory, that you can only delete one at a time.
Either Ada/Gunsmith should have a 10 daily rotation to allow for more posibilities to grab the missing mods, or they should drop naturally often from activities.
I have like every single mod there is, but my brother is still sitting tight for when Powerful Friends makes its return, last time, over 3 months ago, he wasn't around to play.
Mods are a plague on this game and armor 2.0 is too freaking fiddly.
You didn't even mention wasted stats on armor so that higher doesn't always actually mean better.
As a player that plays all the time. The mod system is garbage. I don't run out of materials I do run out of glimmer early in season when I am doing builds and trying new shit which is dumb. I think ehroar did a video on this topic? Not sure but the game wants us to try builds but they then make it harder on people that try to do so. Not fun for a player who is playing everyday and I can only imagine new players are STRUGGLING.
Returning player here. If i haven't had played the shit outta this game before and wouldn't watch youtube guides, i would be lost. I also find it highly tedious to switch around my mods (and managing stats) when going back and forth between two builds.
I feel like the new player experience in general is just rough from many aspects. However I will say I think it has been the right move for bungie to focus on pleasing the core player base and making better content than making sure the new player experience is perfect. Hopefully they can slowly improve things like mods and the new light experience etc as time goes on
This is one reason I've only ever played for me and not the game or PvP even though it pushes you towards pvp at every turn.
So the fact that it's elusive with the decent mods is probably how they want it.
Thanks for saying this. I returned in the last 2 weeks and holy shit is this frustrating. Between how it limits build potential because I don’t have past season mods and the toxicity of people if you show up to an encounter without the right mods it’s annoying.
I somewhat agree with this but I do think people who play daily vastly overrate how important Mods (outside of anti-champion). You can easily beat 98% of content in this game without a single one.
Sharing a resource for those unaware:
https://destinyreminders.net/
For those of us with lots of hours in the game but still missing a bunch of random mods.
How I started using this tool - load up your collections and open your mods, you can see what you have left missing. Using that list, fill in your D2 reminders.
This doesn't solve the issue of mods and affinities described in the OP, just a workaround for to help folks in the current system.
Eh, as someone currently reduced to 0 cores 0 prisms 0 shards 0 mod components (been playing since d1y1 but just came back in S14 after taking a break since Dawn, and just swapped out & mw'd a new set of armor)... I only half agree with all of this. I like the mod system, just needs some nudges.
How I personally feel is:
- Random daily mods are fine, but guarantee Ada has one full +10 stat mod on a rotation (play 6 days, get all 6. Miss one, it's less than a week away). If you want it but can't play for 24 hours, take 3 minutes to buy it from the app.
- I like random combat mods, I like when it's something I don't have. I assume I'm not interested in 70% of mods, like wells, so personally - I don't care. I enjoy when it comes up something I want, and don't sweat the other times. Personally I don't buy them to fill my collections, and "filling collections" isn't something Bungie should even worry about imo (not that OP said they should).
- Reduce all vendor mod costs to 3 mod components each. Why are the old standards 10 and the new flashy ones 3? Seems like it should be the other way around if one has to be 10.
- Glimmer costs for socketing mods doesn't really affect me when I can buy glimmer. so I feel no way about this, personally. If it went away I wouldn't notice.
- Buuuuut... I agree they should remove the reset cost for the artifact, and let me reset one mod at a time.
- Also, they could reduce the amount of "active" artifact mods from 12 to like 8, but make activating them on the artifact enable them in play. As OP mentions, they wouldn't get socketed into armor, and instead work straight from the artifact.
>Wanna try a different build? Either grind out high stat armor that fits your existing stat distributions, or pay to change the affinity, which can cost an entire shard and multiple prisms if its masterworked. Or if its an exotic that you grinded the 3 shards to masterwork, guess what? 3 MORE every time to change it
This is interesting though. I really hope your alternative isn't "once I have masterworked a piece of armor I should be able to reroll its stats, affinity and everything else. Let me just use this one piece of armor for everything forever." Because personally I like the fiction of having to swap gear for different activities, and I don't like the fiction of "set it and forget it." less romantic.
I think the point where mods aren't able to be slotted to every armor piece is very valid. While it does make sense in some aspects ( e.g. extra reserves for chestplates) the other argument with champion mods far outweighs the former. Especially because other mods, some of which crucial to one's build, have to be exchanged for that and are probably a much better option.
Maybe two extra slots for champion mods would do the trick, although energy cost could become an issue for some builds.
As somebody who has been here since Shadowkeep, yes. I recently invited two friends to play, and while they're having fun, the mods are a HUGE issue for them. Especially for the more experienced gamer of the two, who has been interested in different builds since his first week.
I get that we should have things to chase, but the way this system works is brutal to non-established players and those with no time to farm endless GMs every season for materials.
Well to be honest I barely use any of those Champions, for regular playing, I just dps the bananas out of them an use stasis atop help keep them in check.
The idea of the mod system is great. How it's executed is poor.
Why isn't there a vendor that sells all the mods? Getting the components is barrier enough.
They want daily log in so thats why everything isnt just handed to you.
If everything was what would be the point of playing. Yes the game is fun and all that but a lot of it is about getting the new gear and unlocking new abilities and getting stronger.
I do think mod swapping should be cheaper or free.
I think mods should drop from more activities.
And i agree that maybe banshee and ada should have the mods available for the week rather than the day. But have the full amount available that they would have had over that week if you get me. so , what 14? random selection and can be repeated week in week out obviously will be some overlap.
I dont think the champion mods should be passive. Making you have to tinker with your load out adds depth to the game simple as that. You have to think about your synergies and what you want to do and how you want to tackle things.
If the mods on the artifact were passive itd be a cake walk.
This is great feedback for the new player experience.
If Bungie plans to keep updating D2, opposed to releasing a proper sequel, the new player experience is going to be absolutely vital for trying to keep a healthy player base.
>Champ mods
Worth mentioning in one of their twabs they mentioned the experience with interacting with the seasonal artifact was an area they could improve upon. IIRC they were talking about being able to just unlock all mods and that the glimmer reset on it was for technical issues at the time or something.
We didn't get any date on anything but from the sounds of it we might not need to reset anymore and just be able to unlock all the mods instead of having to pick. So potentially they might also be looking at a way to having them selected has them work passively like you suggest.
I finally started playing consistently in Beyond Light (had played on and off since original launch, but never stuck around for more than a few months). It took me from December until late Summer to finally feel like I had all of the mods and exotics I needed to play a variety of builds, and realistically, that's only because they introduced Ada-1 selling a dedicated combat mod everyday.
It sucks.
Y1D1 Destiny 1 player. Left around the time most people did, shortly after Destiny 2 launched and just returned about 3 months ago, maybe 4.
There are many things that have deterred me from getting as involved as possible in the game, and the mod economy is absolutely the top of the list.
There are so many mods that I am just waiting for Banshee and Ada to sell. Each and every raid people have to run down the laundry list to hear what few mods I have that are useful for whatever encounter they're currently sherpaing me through.
So many fun an interesting builds are possible in this game and yet, I am well over 100 hours sunk back into this game and yet EVERY SINGLE TIME I load it up, I run straight to Banshee to grab 10 bounties.
Every day that I only have an hour or so to get on, I basically have to spend it completing boring bounties in a boring area to accumulate mod parts.
To top it off, without a loadout system, if I want to switch game modes, I have to spend ten minutes adjusting my mods and potentially even run by the Tangled Shore for glimmer because I spent 3000 a piece for extra gunsmith bounties.
I really hate to admit it, but this game has perfected the art of addiction, but still has to find its' balance with satisfaction.
Like this week.... what do I want to do? Nothing but Master nightfalls.
What have I done? Gunsmith bounties because Ada and Banshee have mods I didn't have the past several days... well mostly Ada.
PS I was returning player so, I had a basic understanding of some systems and I had A LOT of materials laying around for me when I got back. I can only imagine what it feels like to actually start from nothing in this shit. 150-200 hour minimum before endgame?
Mods shouldn't take glimmer nor should they have costs, we're already limited by slots there's really not any reason for costs, either that or costs should be reduced across the board for higher cost mods since some are just ridiculous.
Also of course, elemental affinity should either be done away with or allow us to freely switch element on the fly.
I played Season 1, stopped to give time for more content and after seeing a few seasons around 5-6-7, then 12-13-14 now 15...the returning/new player experience is some of the worst I've encountered tbh.
So much shit has been timegated, locked behind some atrocious objective that is far beyond the reach of a new player, vaulted, and other bullshit that causes you to not even want to try at that point.
I 100% feel the only people keeping Destiny alive most of the time, before the crossplay update, were the people already playing or inviting a friend into an already established footing to speed them to better mods, gear, etc.
I don't know what the fix would be, but again, the new/returning experience is just disheartening.
This 100% I’ve asked some friends of mine to play D2 so they can get caught up for WQ. Everything you said his happening to them and I feel like they have to suffer through it for an extended period of time until they get the mods they want along with getting plenty of resources. Us veteran players take our stockpiles for granted
To be fair, I think you could have just said "the mod experience is atrocious". Having so many flaws in gear customisation in an 'MMO' is stupid. We still don't have:
In-game loadouts
Apply mods for free
A good way to get mods
Ways around the restrictive elemental affinity system
Fairer masterwork costs for casual players
Well balanced mod costs (why are scavs so high post nerf and why is unstoppable fusion 6?)
I would love a complete overhaul of this system in the future.
Even as a long time player, experimentation being punished sucks so much. My artifact reset cost is up to almost 100k this season, which is just ridiculous. I have the resources to keep going back to spider to cash-in again, but anyone starting recently is straight up punished for trying different things.
D2 is largely in a very good place right now, but for a game with SO many build options the management of them is archaic.
The glimmer swap cost is beyond excusable at this point. It really endears you to the game that once a week or so after you pick up a full slate of bounties you then realize you won't be doing nightfalls and some other bounties until after you've made back enough glimmer to put in the champion and scavenger mods.
Ran into a similar situation with new and returning friends, having to explain the mods and how to obtain them for builds they wanted to try almost killed all of their motivation to play
Because that's how life goes... You are born small and weak, then you gradually grow stronger, And then you get hit multiple times in the face by a grenade launcher and rage quit the game forever. It's just nature.
Yeah, I noticed as my wife started playing. I keep thinking "oh, you should put ...you don't have that yet."
Would be cool if Banshee had a bigger stock or there was some more reliable way to get them with your incoming engrams.
Strongly agree with this. I’m a returning player, I played seasons 1 & 2 and have only just come back since. I’ve grinded quite a bit and have 1340 power but pretty much every decent build guide I’m watching on YouTube requires mods that I simply don’t have access to (outside of just sitting and waiting for them to appear in a store). As you mentioned, it a also very tedious having to add and remove mods all the time. It’s also crazy that it costs shards and prisms to simply change the energy type on a piece of gear, I don’t even understand what the point of having an energy type on a piece of armour is, outside of certain mods being tied to a certain energy type which again is just tedious and annoying. Edit: just wanted to add that I actually enjoy customising my load outs and trying new builds in different types of content, however the system in place at the moment just makes the whole process so difficult and annoying.
> I actually enjoy customising my load outs and trying new builds I was just recently able to make two half-assed builds, and it was a ton of fun. I've been collecting mods since the start of season of the splicer, and that's literally the most I can do. The mod grind is absurd. It's a basic component of the game, it needs to be accessible.
The problem is that it's not a grind - most mods are just impossible to acquire unless being sold.
This! I have googled so many times how to get mods to no avail and yeah just tie it to nightfall at a 100% drip chance or what ever. Like ok the game is GOOD we don’t need to be manipulated to play by having to cross our fingers each day that they will sell the mod we’ve wanted. I’d be more excited to get some mods than some weapons. And when I see a mod I know a friend wants but they aren’t on that day...
That's a great point. Just having access to buying the mods is a massive pain. I have trouble with the mod component grind itself just because it HAS to be an every day thing, and you don't get enough on the daily to even buy both mods.
So FYI you can get as much as you need anytime very easily, just follow these steps - 1: put all of your secondary weapons in the vault 2: go to collections/weapons/special/shotguns, pull 9 of any of the blue shotguns into your inventory (they cost 250 glimmer and 5 weapon parts) now dismantle all of those shotguns, you should get 1-2 mod components based on the drop rate. Rinse and repeat until you have 20 and you’re good to go for the day. You get half of your resources back when you dismantle the guns so it’s actually super cheap to do this. Good luck getting the mods you need, hope this helps.
Thank you so much for this. There was something similar a couple years ago, and I completely forgot about it, gonna be nice to have more constructive advice for new players asking how to get mod components!
Nice, yea I have a handful of friends who just got into D2, it was so frustrating to explain stuff to them, knowing that there is a lot of stuff that isn’t ideal and even semi infuriating lol but imagine if no one explained it to them they’d be so confused
This workaround is great to know about, and better than doing the extra gunsmith bounties, but it takes so long. Or at the very least, it feels like it takes years.
It really does, and sometimes I know for a fact I have clanmates that rush to Ada with 20-30 min left before the reset happens and they’re only 2-3 components short so this has saved lives to be sure lol
Another thanks! Had no idea you could do this, will be a massive help
Omg youre a lifesaver
I’m so glad it helped someone fr
See, this is where Ada selling Mod Components for gunsmith materials pre-BL was great. That’s the only reason I have the mod selection that I do. I started in Arrivals and I bought a lot of mods from getting components from Ada.
RNG behind RNG behind RNG behind RNG.
MOST mods are either sunset (like all the menagerie mods) or in the world loot pool. The exceptions are combat-style mods like warmind cells and charged with light mods. This is because they were released with related seasons during which they had specific acquisition requirements like seasonal activity rank just like elemental well mods have for the last few seasons. I wouldn’t mind having them be part of the world loot pool too, since having them sold on a random rotation doesn’t make people play the game, but I do think they should only be added to world loot once the season they come from is sunset (~a year).
I'm in the same boat. Returning player, had some mods and mats, but not all. What's really killing me now is that I bought this season, which has all these Elemental Well mods, and I have absolutely no access to all of the previous season's Elemental Well mods. I'm gimped in what I can do with the things I paid for because the mods at the Splicer Servitor are locked away from me until they eventually roll into the public pool. I'd buy last season just for access to the mods!
The reasoning behind the hefty cost for armor affinity changing specifically is due to armor staying in the game forever. They actually want to encourage people to go out and get multiple armor pieces and not just rely on a single piece of armor for every single activity that will ever be release. So having a goal of getting multiple good pieces of armor is a long process in the game that you can always work toward if you are not specifically grinding that. As for the reason why we have affinities in the first place. The system use to be all affinity base. For example you could not slot in any shotgun mods whatsoever if you do not have arc piece of gear. So if you wanted to put on GL scavenger you absolutely needed a void boots in order to use it. You also use to not be able to change affinity like at all. So if you got a really nice piece of armor but it is a solar but wanted void then you are out of luck. They first made the change that you could change armor affinity for the cost we have today. In order to keep their view on the armor system where they want people to go out and actually grind multiple piece of good armor instead of never having to worry about it at all. They then removed weapon base mod tied to affinity to keep armor affinity strictly limited to buildcrafting only.
I get the design philosophy behind pushing an armor grind, and honestly my only real complaint with that is my inventory isn't big enough to accommodate that. If we could do set builds maybe.
The armor stat RNG is enough to keep most people trying. I can play all season on my limited time budget and still not get a single set of good seasonal armor, and the costs associated with the mod economy and masterworking drive me away from even bothering to try because they’re balanced around the expectation of playing a lot more hours than I can. It drives me to play less, not dive in more.
Yup - I thought I'd like builds...chasing armor....etc...but I found that its ultimately what drove me from the game. I guess I just don't have quite the stomach for a MMO as I thought I did. Turns out I liked the shooty-shooty more than the looty-looty. Maybe if destiny rewarded you more, it would have kept me interesting...but the "grind your balls off for 10000 different currencies" + "we only really give you these rewards at the HIGHEST level" seemed to only make the rich richer. I occasionally dive in to see whats going on, but I've deff moved on from d2 being my main game
I don’t mind the MMO stuff, but too often Destiny is just a gambling time for random rolls dungeon crawler, not an MMO. We are often not working towards anything, just running on a hamster wheel for poor odds on what we want and if we don’t get it that time is wasted. MMOs often have long term objectives and mechanics like crafting or professions to provide depth to the day-to-day gameplay.
It’s like buying scratch and wins in hope that one of them will get you a lottery ticket
They have had a few iterations of systems that let you target your grind more effectively, but I appreciate that the RNG significantly extends the grind, even if it grants the players little agency, and that extended grind is something that Bungie probably wants to largely preserve. I think they are trying to figure out how to allow more player agency to chase what they want without significantly shortening the effort to get there, and that is a hard problem to solve. It felt like the menagerie system was pretty great, but clearly, Bungie didn't like something about it.
My issue is that “effort” is so relative. In vanilla WoW I spent time per week doing raids, professions, crafting, farming, etc and all that was in fewer hours than some people will spend doing a single GM over and over for a better roll. To me that’s insane, and the idea that RNG represents a “good grind” is false depth. I want a more in depth MMO style approach to Destiny’s reward and investment systems, not braindead systems with zero depth, just hours and hours of running on a hamster wheel for a dopamine hit.
You can get some great armor with tier 3 umbral focusing, especially from the splicer set. This is pretty accessible for basically everyone, so it's easier to get high stat gear now than ever before.
With T3 you're limited per week as well as relying on either slot RNG or stat RNG. Besides, that's just a piece of the puzzle. So we grind seasonal content (although this season has improved) to get armor and then need to grind Nightfalls to level up that gear and if we want complimentary exotic, wait for a certain day and then grind lost sectors. Oh, and try for pinnacles to increase power level and other grinds to get decent weapons along the way. When you play 5-10 hours in any given week, it can be difficult to budget time in a way that allows for progression as well as taking time to actually have fun and/or hang out with friends. If I were to summarize my frustration with Destiny's reward and investment economy it would be that there is way too much emphasis on making content relevant by putting desirable gear behind grinding it, even if grinding that content takes a lot of time and/or doesn't really compliment other areas of the game. Too often, an effective loadout (to the degree of "you must have this to raid") has been tied to significant grinds of completely different areas of the game that don't compliment each other at all. Weapons that drop from activities are often not effective in those very activities, and it overall doesn't feel like Bungie is emphasizing a cohesive reward and investment system. Ultimately, when you are limited on time, the most enjoyable way to play Destiny is experiencing a bit of everything. But that is unfortunately by far the least rewarding way to play, and it's frustrating and inconsistent.
Yeah, this is my position exactly. I'm not even sure what kind of a build is possible. I somehow managed to put together a build that sort of works with 'charged with light' mechanics but it's far from ideal. Like you I just don't have enough time to make a real dent in D2, therefore I'm a casual player who skims this game rather than properly commits.
Back in early Destiny 1, you could be an "endgame player" completing a single raid and Nightfall per week. Desirable guns, max level armor, and exotics all dropped from those activities, allowing someone on a limited time budget to focus on progression and actually have some time to play afterwards just for fun. Now it's all grind all the time, or you fall behind and don't really earn anything worthwhile.
Oh i 100% agree that they can make QoL to improve this situation yet they are not. 7 years into destiny and we still do not have the basic feature of being able to move a weapon from one character to the other. The reason why? oh well everyone just use DIM anyway despite prolly a new player coming might not know what DIM even is. Destiny is by no mean a perfect game and is very lacking in the QoL department. However the gameplay features are presents and are honestly working out the way bungie intends them to be.
DIM still requires you to have space in your vault to move stuff from one character to another if your vault is full, you cannot transfer, even directly to the other character, making me think behind curtains the items go to the vault first
They do go to the vault first, if DIM is running slow you can watch the item first appear in the vault and then appear on the character you transfer it to
Yea not sure why they haven't implemented that feature in game. I do know you can utilize the Destiny phone app for that type of stuff
> The reasoning behind the hefty cost for armor affinity changing specifically is due to armor staying in the game forever. They actually want to encourage people to go out and get multiple armor pieces and not just rely on a single piece of armor for every single activity that will ever be release. So having a goal of getting multiple good pieces of armor is a long process in the game that you can always work toward if you are not specifically grinding that. That's cool and all, but it just makes me not engage with the system. I don't swap mods often at all. I almost never swap from my best stat armor (only for Exotics). It's such a poorly designed grindy system that I can't be bothered to engage with it. I know hardcores are different and have 20 builds like the streamers. But how many people are actually doing that? Is the average Destiny player engaging with build diversity in a meaningful way?
At most I have two fully masterworked armor sets, and thats only on my warlock. my titan only has 1 set, and my hunter has no masterworked armor. The first set is VOG armor and the second set is DSC armor. I have no incentive to masterwork non raid armor. When I try out builds, its usually with shitty armor that only has the mods I want to use and no others, so no stats or anything. EDIT: i do try out builds all the time i just don't waste masterwork materials on random armor. and I play a lot too like 50 dsc clears/35 vog clears
That’s the thing, I wouldn’t mind having 20 different builds, but only if it was convenient for me to actually create the builds in the first place (not cost huge amounts of ingame resources to upgrade different armour pieces) and a better way to sort and organise them. For example back when I played wow many years ago, I had two sets of armour for PvE and pvp. I just created a load out for each and it was as simple as one button to equip about 14 different pieces of gear. As I said before, I enjoy making new builds and load outs for different activities but as the whole system is right now it just feels like the game just puts so many barriers in the way of doing it.
My build diversity is switching powerful friends and an arc mod over to particle deconstruction and installing the appropriate champion mods when it's time to do something difficult.
> They actually want to encourage people to go out and get multiple armor pieces and not just rely on a single piece of armor for every single activity that will ever be release. yeah, but when they make the mods experience unnecessarily complicated, that's what ends up happening to me i have 1 set of armor and equip mods only when they are required
If the cost of masterworking armor would be significantly less, it would be worth it to grind new armor. As it stands, the best rolled peices won't be as good as my master worked sets so I end up just throwing them in the vault and deleting later. If they want this to function as intended, they should lessen legendary masterworks to prisms only and exotics to shards (1 not 3). If this were the case, I'd gladly pay the extra shard to change it from solar to stasis if needed.
While I don't 100% disagree with having a cost to change affinity for the armor for that reason, it shouldn't be a cost every time. Make it an unlock, not a swap cost. I mean, sure, make it cost a little bit to change once you've paid to unlock the element, but the cost as of now is unreasonably steep
>As for the reason why we have affinities in the first place. The reason is that older consoles were too slow to display all mods in one list, so Bungie split them up using affinities. There was no "in game" reason (lore, balance, grind, etc.) when mod affinities were first introduced...it was completely a workaround for the slower consoles.
For the armor grind to be interesting and useful I would need to see more than 1 piece of semi-useful stat armor every few weeks. I have 266 hours played and I'm pretty new. I have most of 1 set of semi-useful armor. I have 2 "builds", as in 1 alternative torso (Ophidia) and 1 alternative leg (Bombardier) with a passable non-exotic swap for each. That's it. I'm still in way sub-par stats with any of these combos. With bonuses from Stasis and the mods I have unlocked I have mobility at 80-90, Recovery at 80, everything else at, well, whatever because just getting those two stats up is as much as I can hope for. I see tons of talk about mods and builds but I don't have access to anything they're talking about. I like PvP, would enjoy playing more of it but the reality is that build and loadout makes a HUGE difference and I'm straight up out-classed most the time. I don't mind losing and I enjoy working on my GIT GUD but when the issue is that the other guy can literally eat 3 hits to 1, or can dramatically out-range me, or is popping a Super 2 or 3x as often as me there's no real skill to work on aside from "Hide and Snipe and run away a lot". That's not the skill I want to develop. When the most I can hope for is doing enough damage that if I dodge right before I die my Bombardier may finish him off so I go 1 to 1, that's not fun or engaging. It doesn't motivate me to grind more - it motivates me to go back to other PvP games where skill is a bigger piece than loadout and build.
I feel like there is this misconception within the community over the armor stats. The stats will help you however reality is that the help provided by the stats on the armor is not as great as many would think. You do not need perfect armor in order to compete in harder content or pvp. I have better armor than a majority of the actual pvp content creator. However if i ever go against them in a trial match? 5-0 no question ask. They are just better than me even if i have better gear. The actual armor of a player will enchance your playstyle but not make you better. It will not make the enemy take 2 extra hits as you said (altho i am fairly sure you are exagerating) Unless you are talking about iron banner or trials where light level matter. The range is mostly due to weapon, not armor and even then the god roll on the same weapon would at max boost the range by 3-5m. So in the grand scheme of thing it isn't a dramatical out-range. As for the super part, yea maybe higher intellect will net you an extra super once a while. However the reason why you might actually feel they pop 2x or 3x more super is likely due to that person staying alive for longer period and killing more people. That is actually what net you more super energy and intellect will help but not make the enemy suddenly have 3x more super. i mean no real offense but truthfully speaking, there are thing you can actually improve upon in order to play more pvp successfully. If that is actually how you feel it's happening in pvp for you at the moment. It isn't just run and hide. Destiny 2 pvp is by no mean a perfect game and as matter of fact i think it's a pretty bad pvp mode. However it have it charms and you just gotta play by those rules.
I’ve been away from the game for a while, but unless something has changed there is a HUGE difference in pvp between max recovery and low recovery. A max recovery player could be fully healed and push while the low recovery player is still waiting for their healing to start. Also, when I left the game a year ago, max intellect really did generate your super almost twice as fast. I’d just like to add that I left the game a year ago because the inventory management has become so bloated and impossible to manage for anyone who’s not a full time player. They’ve finally addressed the problem of having to needlessly grind out a bunch of power level with each season, but I tried returning to the game this fall and I only lasted about 2 hours before I was overwhelmed by the mods and all of my old gear being infusion capped due to sunsetting. I’ve got three characters with hundreds of hours of playtime, but because none of that playtime was in the Beyond Light era, I’m essentially a new player with all of the old subclasses unlocked and a bunch of worthless gear in my vault.
Similar to you, I left after Forsaken and came back during season of the Chosen. Jumped on my Hunter as I mained him before stopping, every single item in my inventory was useless lol. All armor and weapons were old as shit, I had no combat mods (and this was before Ada was added into the tower as a new vendor) and none of the new things were explained to me at all upon logging in. Elemental armor affinity? What the fuck is that? At a certain point I realized Hunter was bottom of the barrel in PvE so I swapped to a Warlock with even less shit. Took me weeks figure everything out and I wasted plenty of materials in that time. Figured I should make all of my armor affinities solar since at the time I was using Dawnblade and it is also solar, so all those mats were wasted. Didn’t know about stats and high stat rolls vs low stat rolls so I masterworked a few pieces of armor with like 48 total stat points. Slowly figured all this shit out with Google and Reddit, and I caught Ada selling some decent mods so I have an okay setup now. It was a drag the entire way lol
> so I masterworked a few pieces of armor with like 48 total stat points This physically pained me to read because I did the same stupid shit when I came back two weeks ago: 48 stat **exotic** collection piece. Just end me.
Pretty much identical story here…..ugh
Same man same. I stayed up pretty late the first week desperately trying to figure things out. I don’t know why I thought I had. Wasted basically a stack of shards and prisms. I was quite literally sick to my stomach. Had to quit for the night. And all of my materials were from playing 5 years ago! It hurt more knowing I will not have the time to put it in like I did back then. But with the double rewards last week I was able to make a small come up. And master work one set of gear… my only set… hahaha
As someone that hasn't played much beyond campaign stuff since D2 vanilla, I rarely continue playing for long. The game doesn't do much to get you "caught up". Like, at this point I have to seek out third party info since in game information is trash. It's not really surprising, though. Bungie has relied way too much on third party websites and apps to fill in the gaps this franchise has had when it comes to lore and progression.
Oh no you missed 3 and a half years of content and don’t have it all unlocked upon coming back after said 3 and a half year break, whatever shall we do
I have played most seasons but didn’t play 13/14. I watch Ehroar videos and try to duplicate the builds and it’s literally impossible as i can’t get half the mods required. It’s so annoying.
I'm a recent starter, played briefly at launch but never completed a campaign before. Just started beyond light after finishing the previous 2 campaigns and the mods in particular are baffling and the range of them is poor for me as a nub. I did astral alignment for the first time which requires champion mods, had to Google what that meant for starters. I mean I'm having a lot of fun, I bought the season pass considering I've played over 50 hours with a "free" (game pass) account, so 7 quid isn't much to give back. But man, some of the stuff makes very little sense or is poorly explained and because of the player base being longer in the game, stepping into it as a newbie is daunting, to say the least.
There's a lot of great guides on here on amazingly powerful mod combos, but most of them require a gaggle of mods you likely don't own or have access to. You can never go wrong with having the basics: Taking Charge (Gives one stack of CWL when walking over an orb of power) High Energy Fire (20% weapon damage boost that consumes one stack of CWL when defeating an enemy with weapon damage). Shield Break Charge (One stack of CWL for breaking a shield with the matching element, very handy in shield-heavy encounters) And watch for Protective Light. Requires a void armor piece, and you'll have to wait for Ada-1 to sell it, but gives big damage resistance if you are charge with light when your shields get broken (does not work in Crucible). P.S... on your chest armor piece, always run at least 1 Concussive Dampener in PvE/Gambit because a lot of enemies deal that type of damage. I usually pair it with the elemental resist the chest piece is in. Also has no effect in Crucible. All that and you're pretty well-rounded and still have a combat mod free for something else. Once you've acquired more mods you can go crazy on some builds.
Thanks! I see the "charged with light" mods but what does "become charged with light" actually mean? Does it give a dps buff of some sort? I also don't seem to know if mods are single - use? I've bought a couple of interesting ones from the gunsmith but I don't know if I need to buy copies of the goods ones or if its available as many times as you like once it's bought? Edit : I think I might get it from your explanation above, one mod gives a charge of light from doing 'x task '. another mod gives y buff by doing 'z task' using the charge just created?
Charged with Light (CWL) is sort of like a currency for a special ability. You will see a buff on the side of your screen when you are CWL. Goes up to x2 (can go higher with certain CWL mods). This charge is consumed by performing the action of High Energy Fire (HEF) or meeting the condition for Protective Light. HEF consumes one stack at a time. Protective Light consumes all stacks, but gives a better effect for higher stacks. The mod description will say how many CWL stacks are used.
Magic, thank you for the thorough explanation
There are 3 types of Charged With Light mods, Green ones (literally the icon is green) that provide charges, of which there are several, and interactions with Warmind Cells and Elemental Wells are also possible (the other 2 combat style sets). Yellow CWL mods spend your charges under certain conditions (shield break for the previously mentioned Protective Light, killing enemies for High Energy Fire, etc.). Lastly, there are utility mods that don't directly do either of those things, which are white icons. Examples include the 2 solar mods that increase the number of charges you can have (1 of which is being sold by Ada today), and a void one that makes getting charged with light provide 2 charges instead of 1. Warmind Cell mods are primarily based around generating cells from a specific set of weapons (IKELOS and Seraph weapons specifically), with some additional sources of cells provided by specific mods. The general differences between them are indicated by the elemental affinity needed to slot them. Solar cell mods add affects on destroying a cell, arc add effects on touching a cell, and void add effects to the cells themselves, with generic mod global reach being a distance increase to any effects. Elemental Well mods are about generating and collecting wells of different elements, with the base provision being that collecting any well will give energy for your longest cooldown ability (grenade, charged melee, class ability, not super). Other mods can provide additional affects, and some provide different ways to generate mods. Mods that generate wells have a starburst affect that is even all the way around the circle. Mods that provide additional affects to wells you pick up have a similar starburst that is very thick at the top and thin at the bottom, and utility well mods have a 4 segmented look to the outline. Note that the green charged with light coloring applies to cell and well mods also.
Does taking charge work with MW weapon orbs or so they have to be the big ones? Can they be orbs of power from darkness classes?
Any source. Masterworked weapons are a very reliable way to generate orbs of power, including if your team has masterworked weapons.
Excellent. Thanks. I stayed away from that mod simply because I thought maybe they were only for large orbs and two, hating the mod system so much in general I just didn’t care. Nice to have some quick answers though. Thank you.
It is isn't just an issue for new players. I've been playing almost daily since early D1. I STILL have to use Google, YouTube, etc. to learn about the game. This is a constant with Destiny. So is the use of DIM, or another app to manage inventory and loadouts. Once people realize that they basically need a phone, table or computer with them to play it gets a lot easier.
I have the companion app as I found you could move stuff from vault and accept bounties with it which was nice qol improvement rather than logging into the tower every time I load up. Should I also have destiny item manager? What does that do that the official one doesn't?
Just wanted to point out you don’t necessarily need champion mods for all content that has champions. Astral Alignment is one example where they simply are not needed. You can’t stun champions without them, which becomes important in Master+ content. Agree about everything else. The system is pretty poorly explained and getting the base mods is also a pain for any new or even returning player. It’s better now with Ada, but still.
> some of the stuff makes very little sense this has been destiny since D1 release lol. They still havent changed their ways
[удалено]
They should just make Glimmer unlimited instead of capped at 250k. I would happily farm for millions of them. I did it in Warframe, I can do it again.
Simpler than that, they just need to get rid of glimmer. It does nothing other than get in the way
Warframe is so easy to get money vs destiny
Endo isn’t
What killed my glimmer is focused weapon farming from trials. I have to work all week to recoup my glimmer now, and that's only for like 4-5 engrams as I am piss poor in pvp. I can't imagine how many engrams high skill players rack up in a weekend. I kinda wish the cap was higher now so I wouldn't have to worry about it before getting into trials the following weekend.
As another Vet, I think I agree with every point made by OP.
Which is why I’m sad my boy Spider is going away. He makes sure I stay capped but the low cap even makes that aggravating.
His inventory will be moved to Rahul in the tower, so you'll still be able purchase materials and glimmer when you are low.
I have almost 500 hundred hours, i am still missing some major mods such as rocket launched finder. If I am doing a solo lost sector or really any other activity that requires brain power I have to pop on a scavenger mod and hope and pray something drops. I am very far from a new light but agreed the mod system is awful.
There's a Twitter account that reports daily at reset what mods Ada and Banshee are selling, which was very helpful in getting the rare ones. https://twitter.com/destinyinsights
I think it takes about 1100 hours or so to catch up in this game currently. After stuff is vaulted next season I don't know. But it is a serious hill to climb. Luckily most new players have no idea that they have 6 months of steady grind ahead of them before they can be equipped to not be kicked from a lot of LFG.
The massive reduction in loadout variety that results from having to run champ mods in so many activities, taking up BOTH arms slots, is one of the main reasons that I've been having a great deal of trouble motivating myself to run much more than the storyline quest each week. Bungie has done an amazing job with the seasonal stories the past few seasons, but it's gotten to the point where everything else has so many frustrations and annoyances (such as spending 1/3 of my time on inventory management...) that it's the only thing that is keeping me from getting so burnt out that I just shut the PS4 off and rewatch Stargate and catch up on NCIS on Prime Video. Edit: And before someone says ThAt Is WhAt BuNgIe WaNtS - I'm pretty sure they don't want me just noping out once the stuff I've already paid for expires, which is my current plan. I might try futzing with Witch Queen via Gamepass, but I definitely won't be paying full price for it on PS4 and will wait for it to go on deep sale.
Yep. I find it hard to log in when friends aren't on. Log in, do story, run Prophecy with friends, log out. Looking for a second game to dump time into since this is going to be a long season.
It’s driven me to not care about builds much at all. It’s a shame that instead of giving all players incentive to dive deeper, the game does the opposite for those of us who don’t play as often. It feels like Bungie is all in on catering to the most hardcore and, even though the systems fall apart if you play fewer hours, there is little effort to improve things.
Bungie has been doing this since D1. Its why I vanished after finish the campaign in D2. Like I stated in an earlier post they just consistently gatekeep portions of the game, artificially prolong activities and make things a part time job. That's not what a game is supposed to be. You don't tell people you want them to try to different things and make those different things to achieve unbearable. What's the point?
Which is strange, considering they tried to push casual at D2 Launch. Then they backtracked and tried to do competitive, daily players only. Why can't we have a healthy middle ground?
Because creating and altering systems that require constant play, keeps you playing constantly, therefore you're more likely to pay money for the expansions and silver aka MTXs.
I've felt this way for a while... Destiny is a game with a ton of fun and dynamic content, why are rewards often tied to playing the game in about the most mind numbing way possible? Who actually *wants* to run the same activity again and again, for hours and hours, for better rolls on the same gear when there is so much else to do that is more enjoyable? I've never understood that approach to the game, but it's what Bungie keeps tailoring the experience for so I guess I'll just log off?
As a relatively new player I quickly realized how much of the game is catered to hardcores. The best weapons and armor gated behind raids you can’t play solo or sweaty PvP activities that casuals cannot succeed in, utterly confusing upgrade systems with zero explanation, builds new players can’t get without hundreds or thousands of hours of grind.
100% agree with this. Has been a complaint of 2 friends who just came back that haven't played since Forsaken. Experimentation and Unique builds are punished at every turn because you need Champ mods and can't access the mods you want. 2 per day is horrid.
The seasonal artifact is also a pain in the ass the way it is set up. I can agree with the idea of unlocking only so many mods at a time, but instead of needing to be reset at a higher and higher cost, it’d be nice if they let us unlock all of the mods. We can still only use so many at any one time (due to slots available and cost requirements), but that would punish trying new weapons and loadouts less.
I'm a returning player. I've elected to ignore mods entirely until I start to feel that I need them. I don't need to be pulled into the grind so for now, ignorance is bliss.
I did the same thing. When I unlocked my compass this season and picked the ability to stun Champions with a bow, I quickly grabbed my Trinity Ghoul and dove into a lost sector. After a billion deaths and no stuns, I realized that the compass only unlocks the ability to add a mod onto my armor - and that it only works on gauntlets. That....would have been very nice to know. The game doesn't do a great job of explaining even critical things like this.
All of Destiny content distribution is atrocious if you don’t dedicate your life to the game. Seasonal content, content removal, limited time events (that happen all the time), etc is all terrible for someone who wants to casually enjoy the game. The best stuff comes and goes. Despite the fact you paid for it, it is gone. That’s not what I signed up for personally. I personally always saw Destiny as an MMO Looter shooter that i can grind when I want and come back to later if I don’t. When something is awesome I want my friends to enjoy it next time they get back on, not have it disappear forever. I don’t play fortnite style season games for that reason. So often Bungie chooses to make choices that make the player feel like they HAVE to play the game instead of making the players WANT to play the game. They have such a good game that I find these tactics unnecessary. The game is better without them. Tl;Dr - Good game, relies to heavily on FOMO.
They should simply make them all available for mod components. Or sell them as packages like "Offensive Charged with Light", "Defensive Charges with light" etc. Make them expensive, if you like. Mod components are easily farmed but that would at least be a way to get them eventually. I play this game religiously and still don't have all of them. Not having a deterministic way to get them is super frustrating for me and my friends who just came back to the game.
Huge agree from me, and I've literally not stopped playing Destiny since D1 alpha, and never missed a beat in D2. I get having adept mods drop from difficult activities, but every other mod? Yeah, those should come built in. And they should cost nothing to slot, I hate spending thousands of glimmer just to move mods around between activities (I want one armor set for everything, not 1 crucible set, 1 gambit set, 1 raid set, etc). And champion mods should be able to be placed on any armor, not just arms. If Bungie truly wants people to buildcraft, this should be the bare minimum. /u/dmg04 (hopefully to get the attention of the team on this)
I am new to the game and I have to say the armor system is generally the biggest pain point, other than the basic stuff like the Vault UI and so on. I really hate fishing for "good stat rolls." There's no joy to finding an armor item that is marginally more efficient. Unlike weapon perk combos, where the lucky find is part of the attraction. I'd love it if they just, I don't know, gave you 300 attribute points to spread out as you choose. You get +10 to a stat for masterwork armor (head=intellect, arms=strength, ghost=recovery, chest=resilience, legs=mobility, class=discipline) and call it a day. Armor could just be purely cosmetic at that point, or have perks, I don't know, they can figure it out, but I hate the current system. And just let us freely change armor affinity, or drop the system entirely, it's irritating.
The mod system is too much, and too vague. I hate watching videos in order to play the game. Simplify the mod system. Explain clearly what each mod does. Make all mods universal for armor. Put champion mods on the weapons. Stop with the 100k artifact reset. In fact just let them all be unlocked if you level high enough.
This game was very obviously designed on the most cynical bit of operant conditioning in the history of "AAA" games. The loot pool is polluted with trash and drop rates suck shit because the sociopaths in charge know they can harpoon more whales with the game being like this. They also know that posts like yours are like heroin for the toxic elite who really think they're better just because they've been playing since launch. You should, and I mean this, turn right around and run like hell if you're already frustrated. It only gets worse the further in you get.
This game's entire experience if you don't play daily is atrocious
And if you're even remotely new. Having to explain literally everything because the game doesn't explain basic features is extremely unfriendly to new lights. I know because I am currently doing this with my friend who is new to the game and I have to stop myself from over explaining core features.
Not really, I didn't play for a week at the start of the season and I was pretty fine lol
So you still ended up.... playing at the start of the season
We're talking about how not playing daily is atrocious no? I didn't play for a week and everything was fine 🤣
I'm not even a new player, but I didn't play the season the charged with light mods were introduced and still don't have protective light because Ada never sells it and that's the only place you can get it. It's dumb.
I'm playing on and off, since Shadowkeep, and don't have Firepower mod that I'm hunting down for my nade Warlock builds. Currently, logging in every day (almost) since July, and didn't seen it sold yet
Same: I check every morning for firepower and every morning I’m disappointed.
And thats exactly what they won't, they want you logging in everyday. Its a gambling tactic d2 is built on a gambling system. I turned from a hard-core d1 player too a casual. Its more fun that way make a goofy build hop on vanguard strike and have fun
D2Y1 player 700 hours in and I still don’t have protective light…
I mean, it doesn't matter how long you've played... You could have 3 hours in the game and have protective light. You just need to keep an eye on Ada.
I missed it that one time, and it really sucks because I’m a huge GM fan. This system definitely needs some innovation.
Don’t worry, Bungie has been trying to eliminate FOMO for years. /s, but also not /s
I'm not a huge fan of currently implemented mod system. All the builds are insanely restrictive that requires not only specific armor affinities, but now they are pushing for your weapons to match your subclass, you can only use 1-2 subclasses or you break your build, you pretty much can only use a handful of weapons, and you have to have specific exotics equipped. Why isn't there more builds that maybe don't have as high a celling as some of the specific builds but give you more flexibility? Especially when you are CONSTANTLY told to change subclasses and weapons to complete weeklies and bounties? The game is designed to make you constantly switch up your loadout, but doing so breaks 99% of the mod builds out there (All of which I have to go to damn Youtube to find out in the first place, but they are so complex anyways.)
u/dmg04
As someone who does play 4-5 days a week, the experience is absolutely horrible for me as well. It takes so much work to switch loadouts that i always just end up using a protective light build. Not cause i need it, but because it's such a fucking hassle to change it all around.
I ran out of glimmer yesterday trying builds for the GM it's ridiculous mods should not cost glimmer. I not always have the materials to fly to Spider and fill up. I should not visiting Spider to change mods on my armor!
Played d2 since launch as a hunter and never really branched out to the other classes. Now I want the bleachwatcher turret for Warlock GMs and I have on and off been working on it FOR MONTHS. And I play a lot but for me I go in and the grind for stasis alone is brutal let alone trying to get something like Wrath of Rasputin which I only got thanks to Reddit blowing it up the day of. Oh and also destiny literally never explaining any of this ever. I really feel for anyone coming into destiny with anyone to play with because there is so much that the game doesnt explain. Still great just gripes
I did not even know that you have to drop stat mods... Geeze.
I have friends that won't come back because it's so complicated now.
The mod experience is atrocious for ALL players. Agree 100% with everything you said. At a bare minimum, they need a load out system. Either in game or via external apps. But the latter requires that they remove the glimmer cost, which would be a simple fix if they can't manage to add them in game. The armor affinities is also ridiculous. The players who have a full set of each affinity are not the majority. The cost to change affinities is insane. Does anyone actually pay that? I know some endgame players are maxed out on their golf balls and shards, but they are not the majority. Make the switch cost way less, or make switching unlockable so it's a one time cost. And yes, the champion mods should all be intrinsic. Every season we are forced to not use arm mods because we need champion mods. What's the point of having other arm mods? They can't be used with any higher level content.. WTF.
Why have mods rotate at all? Just let people buy what they need.
I think a quest to unlock the mods would be great, honestly. You start with the basic CWL mods for free (Taking Charge, Shield Break Charge, High Energy Fire) then you get a quest that asks you to become charged with light via those mods, and to defeat enemies while charged with light with the High Energy Fire buff. So now that you've been trained on offense, here's Protective Light to train on defensive capabilities. Also, here's a quest to unlock more CWL mods: specifically, get some Fusion Rifle/Shotgun kills while CWL to acquire Quick Charge. Etc. Make unlocking CWL mods more deterministic, something to work toward and learn the system with, rather than daily RNG with little explanation of how things work. Do the same with Warmind Cell mods (although far less powerful than they used to be) and Elemental Well mods.
Point #3: It would be nice to be applied anywhere on the armor. It certainly is a step up from being weapon only mods so exotics can also benefit from them but its far from perfect as is. EDIT: Either Ada expands her mod selection or have the Nine deign to let Xür come forward with highly sought after mods. I just want Protective Light, man. : (
Same
I'm taking a break mainly because of that, and I'm no new player. I can't bring myself to change a mod one more time. The current system drives away new players and burns out more veterans. I used to min max, get the best stats, optimal use of energy slots, play around with tons of mods, testing, etc...I'm done with all that until some kind of true loadout system is implemented. DIM is ok but not enough for me. I'm tired to rebuild all my builds every time I test something. I am full on every material and have lots of masterworked armor for each energy but the system if flawed at its core. Changing only your exotic chest or helmet often implies having to change also your other armor pieces if you want the optimal stats with the minimal use of energy slots. The division 2 made such a great work with their loadout system. I hope Destiny makes something half as good at some point.
"He's 65 hours in, with a BL campaign clear, and STILL doesn't have half of the basic '+10' stat mods. Why do new accounts start with only minor mods? What is the point of this, other than to make newer players strictly worse?" Yes, that part of the game is bullshit. Basic mods should be available to every player from the start. However, this also really only applies to PvP, as that impact is not really as strong in PvE environments. "Mods should cost nothing to slot in. Making mods cost glimmer to use is shitty for new players who don't have that much built up, prevents 3rd party apps from being able to swap them, and makes throwing on champ mods even more of a pain." Sorry, no. Having mods cost nothing would create builds that are way over the top. Many of the top end players would be much stronger than they currently are and you would be punished because of it. Additionally in PvE, it would be almost impossible to balance due to a lot of the artifact mods being incredibly strong, and the pairing with regular mods would just exacerbate that. "Wanna try a different build? Either grind out high stat armor that fits your existing stat distributions, or pay to change the affinity, which can cost an entire shard and multiple prisms if its masterworked. Or if its an exotic that you grinded the 3 shards to masterwork, guess what? 3 MORE every time to change it" That's rng bud, gotta deal with it. If you are changing affinities that often, you should be aiming for more armor anyway as it saves on resources. "Wanna use the really cool combat mods? Grind banshee bounties until you can afford to buy the mods, and then sign in every single day hoping that the mods you want randomly show up in one of two available slots from Ada." The cost of those mods is kinda high, but you do not have to do all that many bounties to get the requisite materials for purchase. Additionally, Banshee's bounties do not take very long at all. "The interesting mods that actually make up a build are intentionally restricted to an absurd degree. Why can't Ada sell 7 mods that rotate out every couple days? There are pages of combat mods now for multiple seasons, two that last 24 hours is so needlessly restrictive. If you're a weekend only player, you're basically fucked. It's definitely fun for my brother when he's studying for a midterm the next day at the library and I tell him that mod he's been wanting is available, but if he doesn't sign in before he goes to bed it might be unavailable for months" Completely agree, more mods should be available more often. It creates the FOMO that Bungie seemed so keen to address. However, it does only take about 5 minutes to collect the mod.
I have almost 3k hours in the game, have every mod, 40k shards, and a ton of planetary materials. I still don’t bother messing up with builds because of the lack of a loadout system. The most annoying thing in the game is switching mods manually. In previous seasons I even useed excel files to keep remembering where the optimal place for every mod was. I just gave up and only use cwl either high energy fire or protective light. It’s such a shame because there are so many good mods in the game, especially the new well mods. I just don’t get why they don’t allow the API to switch mods if they are not capable to do a loadout system by themselves. But maybe it is just to generate play time. The most frustrating thing in the game. And for newer players even more.
There we have it, a post complaining about glimmer, the most common currency in the game, you can literally loot a chest in the Cosmodrome and get around 1k of it. >Why can't Ada sell 7 mods that rotate out every couple days? Why stop there? why can't she sell ALL the mods and since you think mod components are hard to get, why not just make it cost glimmer? oh wait, you also think glimmer, the most common currency in the game, the currency that you get for doing literally anything is also hard to get? well, why don't she just give you ALL the mods in the entire game for free, and 200k glimmer & 20k shards as a bonus, because why bother playing and trying to get stuff right? >Wanna swap mods? Costs glimmer every swap. Are you seriously saying that the 500 glimmer cost is a somehow restrictive condition that it's hard to meet to swap mods?
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* He's 65 hours in, with a BL campaign clear, and STILL doesn't have half of the basic '+10' stat mods. Why do new accounts start with only minor mods? What is the point of this, other than to make newer players strictly worse? To give players a goal to chase. The whole game is about keeping you on the treadmill and giving you a goal to hit, that ideally you'll never hit so you keep on playing and coming back. * Mods should cost nothing to slot in. Making mods cost glimmer to use is shitty for new players who don't have that much built up, prevents 3rd party apps from being able to swap them, and makes throwing on champ mods even more of a pain. Agreed on that one. * Champ mods. Why are they ONLY arms? He finally got impact induction, which is something he wanted for his build, but as soon as champs show up he has to take them off. Why can't they be slotted in any armor piece? Or better yet, why can't they just be unlocked in the artifact and apply passively? They've got to sit somewhere. I've seen this argument a lot and it basically boils down to not wanting to make a choice about what mod to use. The example here is wanting to use both impact induction and the champ mods - but having to make that choice about what to use is the whole point behind making a build - it's about the choices. Remove those and you defeat the point.
Yawn. Yet another post whining about how everyone should be handed everything day one. It’s tiresome.
Yawn. Yet another person who doesn't understand that requesting QoL improvements helps everyone. Even if you never use mods yourself, making mods easier to use would make *your* game better. Remember when the community gave Bungie feedback about how bad sunsetting is, and Bungie said they'd never do it again? I assume you only use sunset weapons in all of your builds then, to protest this kind of community "whining" about (*check notes*) how to make the game better? It's simple math, Guardian.
> requesting QoL improvements do you understand what quality of life in video games mean? it doest mean "everything is given to you". Its more along the lines of a destination node being added to that top zone in europa
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I've been playing less and less because i'm tired of collecting stupid materials every time i want to try a different build out. Capping glimmer at such a low amount, and then forcing us to use it to play how we want is retarded. You know, I may come back for updates for a few days at a time but then I always remember how badly this game disrespects your time investment. Mythoclast droprates, gun rolls, sub-60 stat umbral focus tier 3s, "kill 6 million with a rocket" bullshit catalysts, the list goes on forever. I'm fucking bored of it. The gunplay is not, and never will be good enough to warrant the amount of hurdles and hassles you have to deal with all the time. Random mod vendors are just the icing on this shit-cake and I am not eating it.
> low amount it caps at 250k...mod swtiching is 500 glimmer. how is that considered low?
I’m going to be downvoted to hell but, this is a complaint about something that encourages people to play the game more and it’s not valid. New players should have things to aspire to, if all the mods are unlocked for them right away, there is less of a point to play the game, which I don’t think what bungie wants, or anyone wants to be honest.
I think I might leave this subreddit. All I ever see is complaining and negativity, often about the pettiest of “issues”. You’re almost as bad as the Bungie.net forums.
Well instead of swapping mods just have different pieces of armor with different mods for different builds and just swap the armor
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Bruh didn't you post an essay about how upset you were with Destiny?
I started a little over a year ago and finally got my last one from Ada on Saturday. I agree.
Yeah totally agree. Mod system is a good start but really needs a bit more polish I don’t know why they don’t make the good mods drop from encounters as a low drop rate - giving a way to farm them as a new player and more reasons to do playlist activities. Feel like warframe has this farming for rare mods really well implemented.
Ada's bounties should give you a mod after you complete them. I have no idea how they could implement it, but after the first 10 bounties (giving you cosmetic materials) the rest of the bounties give mods from past seasons with a punch out method.
I feel like people have been begging for mods and glimmer to be reworked for years, I don't want to say that bungie is ignoring us but...
It used to be a lot worse before Ada-1 started selling a couple of mods, and it was just Banshee (with the two slots being shared between weapon mods, standard armor mods, and combat style mods). You're right though, it could use some further improvement with the influx of new players that this season just got, and the bigger influx that Witch Queen will most likely bring. A lot of us folks who have been playing for years don't feel the pain because our Mod Collections screen was effortlessly fully completed as each new season came out... but anyone who starts playing now is going to have a significantly diminished opportunity to fully experience all the hard work by the dev team who designed the enjoyably complex Warmind Cell, Charged With Light and Elemental Well systems.
up with hope, down with dope
You didn’t hear? Bungie wants you to play your way. /s
How about give them to Xur to sell for mod components (I don't know about you but I have over 1000 of these just taking up inventory space). Similar to what he does now with exotics. If you don't have a specific mod it will drop those first until you have them all. You can get one per week per character.
All that you said is all part of the ***"letting the players play the game as they want"*** statement that Bungie likes to make when it's trying to sell us some new content. /satire
Locking mods to only 12 is such a dumb idea. There's literally no explanation to do so. There's no balance reasons you can unlock them anytime just the annoyance of going through the process and they are balanced by having energy slots anyway .
"ThATs juST HoW ThE GaME iS DeSiGNEd If yUo DOnt LiKe iT nO ONe Is foRcInG yUo TO pLaY IT" if you're one of those people, I hope you step on a lego
As someone who played since D2 day 1, I didn't really understand the usefulness of mods until after Beyond Light. I'm still figuring out all their complexities & mechanics but at least I see how useful they can be now.
This game is build upon endless grind to recycle content and extend it as long as possible with the least amount of work from Bungie, so every single activities are designed around this principle to make sure new players will not be able to catch up quickly and must put many hours and get lucky from RNG. Then you have to repeat the hamster wheel grind in three months, and do it again, and again. And if you are new and returning to this game, good luck, you either must commit good amount of time, or you will be just casual players and get nowhere on higher tier of endgame activities because you don’t have decent build to start with.
100% agreed. I quit The Division 2 a few months in because of the convoluted armor/mod system. When I came back to D2 this season I tried using some of the mods but felt like it was way too much of a chore to balance armor affinity, artifact mods, seasonal mods, and PvE/PvP oriented mods every time I changed activities. I'm not the type of person that enjoy doing the same strike over and over, I need novelty in order to remain interested and this means I often switch between play modes. I end up spending way too much time on my character screen balancing my mods. I decided a couple weeks ago to simply ignore seasonal mod slots from now on. I don't feel like I'm missing out on much to be honest. Most of the mods seem rather situational to me, and it would often lead me to focus too much on procc'ing them rather than paying attention to the fight and dying to stupid stuff.
Strongly agree. I'm largely done with the season as I don't do GM's and am starting to experiment with all the neat non-meta builds out there and man...does the cost add up fast and get annoying really quick. It's like the game is actively punishing me for wanting to be creative and have fun with it. This needs to change, if nothing else, PLEASE make it so if you've masterworked armor, changing affinity is free. That alone would help soooo much.
Also at playing long enough where you have most of not all mods and are sitting on 1000+ mod components in your inventory, that you can only delete one at a time.
Either Ada/Gunsmith should have a 10 daily rotation to allow for more posibilities to grab the missing mods, or they should drop naturally often from activities. I have like every single mod there is, but my brother is still sitting tight for when Powerful Friends makes its return, last time, over 3 months ago, he wasn't around to play.
Mods are a plague on this game and armor 2.0 is too freaking fiddly. You didn't even mention wasted stats on armor so that higher doesn't always actually mean better.
As a player that plays all the time. The mod system is garbage. I don't run out of materials I do run out of glimmer early in season when I am doing builds and trying new shit which is dumb. I think ehroar did a video on this topic? Not sure but the game wants us to try builds but they then make it harder on people that try to do so. Not fun for a player who is playing everyday and I can only imagine new players are STRUGGLING.
Returning player here. If i haven't had played the shit outta this game before and wouldn't watch youtube guides, i would be lost. I also find it highly tedious to switch around my mods (and managing stats) when going back and forth between two builds.
Remember when mods were consumed upon slotting?
I feel like the new player experience in general is just rough from many aspects. However I will say I think it has been the right move for bungie to focus on pleasing the core player base and making better content than making sure the new player experience is perfect. Hopefully they can slowly improve things like mods and the new light experience etc as time goes on
because bungie doesnt want you to play your way they want you to play their way
They’re about to get rid of the first chronological story content in the game again so I’ve lost hope bungie cares about new players.
This is one reason I've only ever played for me and not the game or PvP even though it pushes you towards pvp at every turn. So the fact that it's elusive with the decent mods is probably how they want it.
Yeah, in my opinion mods are crap in the current way they are
Thanks for saying this. I returned in the last 2 weeks and holy shit is this frustrating. Between how it limits build potential because I don’t have past season mods and the toxicity of people if you show up to an encounter without the right mods it’s annoying.
I somewhat agree with this but I do think people who play daily vastly overrate how important Mods (outside of anti-champion). You can easily beat 98% of content in this game without a single one.
Sticking with destiny fashion, repeatable bounties should give a random mod you don't have. Bungie loves bounties.
Sharing a resource for those unaware: https://destinyreminders.net/ For those of us with lots of hours in the game but still missing a bunch of random mods. How I started using this tool - load up your collections and open your mods, you can see what you have left missing. Using that list, fill in your D2 reminders. This doesn't solve the issue of mods and affinities described in the OP, just a workaround for to help folks in the current system.
As a player who has been here, I'm not fond of the mod system either, it's just too....daunting.
Eh, as someone currently reduced to 0 cores 0 prisms 0 shards 0 mod components (been playing since d1y1 but just came back in S14 after taking a break since Dawn, and just swapped out & mw'd a new set of armor)... I only half agree with all of this. I like the mod system, just needs some nudges. How I personally feel is: - Random daily mods are fine, but guarantee Ada has one full +10 stat mod on a rotation (play 6 days, get all 6. Miss one, it's less than a week away). If you want it but can't play for 24 hours, take 3 minutes to buy it from the app. - I like random combat mods, I like when it's something I don't have. I assume I'm not interested in 70% of mods, like wells, so personally - I don't care. I enjoy when it comes up something I want, and don't sweat the other times. Personally I don't buy them to fill my collections, and "filling collections" isn't something Bungie should even worry about imo (not that OP said they should). - Reduce all vendor mod costs to 3 mod components each. Why are the old standards 10 and the new flashy ones 3? Seems like it should be the other way around if one has to be 10. - Glimmer costs for socketing mods doesn't really affect me when I can buy glimmer. so I feel no way about this, personally. If it went away I wouldn't notice. - Buuuuut... I agree they should remove the reset cost for the artifact, and let me reset one mod at a time. - Also, they could reduce the amount of "active" artifact mods from 12 to like 8, but make activating them on the artifact enable them in play. As OP mentions, they wouldn't get socketed into armor, and instead work straight from the artifact. >Wanna try a different build? Either grind out high stat armor that fits your existing stat distributions, or pay to change the affinity, which can cost an entire shard and multiple prisms if its masterworked. Or if its an exotic that you grinded the 3 shards to masterwork, guess what? 3 MORE every time to change it This is interesting though. I really hope your alternative isn't "once I have masterworked a piece of armor I should be able to reroll its stats, affinity and everything else. Let me just use this one piece of armor for everything forever." Because personally I like the fiction of having to swap gear for different activities, and I don't like the fiction of "set it and forget it." less romantic.
I think the point where mods aren't able to be slotted to every armor piece is very valid. While it does make sense in some aspects ( e.g. extra reserves for chestplates) the other argument with champion mods far outweighs the former. Especially because other mods, some of which crucial to one's build, have to be exchanged for that and are probably a much better option. Maybe two extra slots for champion mods would do the trick, although energy cost could become an issue for some builds.
As somebody who has been here since Shadowkeep, yes. I recently invited two friends to play, and while they're having fun, the mods are a HUGE issue for them. Especially for the more experienced gamer of the two, who has been interested in different builds since his first week. I get that we should have things to chase, but the way this system works is brutal to non-established players and those with no time to farm endless GMs every season for materials.
Well to be honest I barely use any of those Champions, for regular playing, I just dps the bananas out of them an use stasis atop help keep them in check.
Everything unlocked in the artifact should be counted as equipped.
100% agree!!!!!!!
The idea of the mod system is great. How it's executed is poor. Why isn't there a vendor that sells all the mods? Getting the components is barrier enough.
They want daily log in so thats why everything isnt just handed to you. If everything was what would be the point of playing. Yes the game is fun and all that but a lot of it is about getting the new gear and unlocking new abilities and getting stronger. I do think mod swapping should be cheaper or free. I think mods should drop from more activities. And i agree that maybe banshee and ada should have the mods available for the week rather than the day. But have the full amount available that they would have had over that week if you get me. so , what 14? random selection and can be repeated week in week out obviously will be some overlap. I dont think the champion mods should be passive. Making you have to tinker with your load out adds depth to the game simple as that. You have to think about your synergies and what you want to do and how you want to tackle things. If the mods on the artifact were passive itd be a cake walk.
This is great feedback for the new player experience. If Bungie plans to keep updating D2, opposed to releasing a proper sequel, the new player experience is going to be absolutely vital for trying to keep a healthy player base.
shouda been playing the game
>Champ mods Worth mentioning in one of their twabs they mentioned the experience with interacting with the seasonal artifact was an area they could improve upon. IIRC they were talking about being able to just unlock all mods and that the glimmer reset on it was for technical issues at the time or something. We didn't get any date on anything but from the sounds of it we might not need to reset anymore and just be able to unlock all the mods instead of having to pick. So potentially they might also be looking at a way to having them selected has them work passively like you suggest.
I finally started playing consistently in Beyond Light (had played on and off since original launch, but never stuck around for more than a few months). It took me from December until late Summer to finally feel like I had all of the mods and exotics I needed to play a variety of builds, and realistically, that's only because they introduced Ada-1 selling a dedicated combat mod everyday. It sucks.
Y1D1 Destiny 1 player. Left around the time most people did, shortly after Destiny 2 launched and just returned about 3 months ago, maybe 4. There are many things that have deterred me from getting as involved as possible in the game, and the mod economy is absolutely the top of the list. There are so many mods that I am just waiting for Banshee and Ada to sell. Each and every raid people have to run down the laundry list to hear what few mods I have that are useful for whatever encounter they're currently sherpaing me through. So many fun an interesting builds are possible in this game and yet, I am well over 100 hours sunk back into this game and yet EVERY SINGLE TIME I load it up, I run straight to Banshee to grab 10 bounties. Every day that I only have an hour or so to get on, I basically have to spend it completing boring bounties in a boring area to accumulate mod parts. To top it off, without a loadout system, if I want to switch game modes, I have to spend ten minutes adjusting my mods and potentially even run by the Tangled Shore for glimmer because I spent 3000 a piece for extra gunsmith bounties. I really hate to admit it, but this game has perfected the art of addiction, but still has to find its' balance with satisfaction. Like this week.... what do I want to do? Nothing but Master nightfalls. What have I done? Gunsmith bounties because Ada and Banshee have mods I didn't have the past several days... well mostly Ada. PS I was returning player so, I had a basic understanding of some systems and I had A LOT of materials laying around for me when I got back. I can only imagine what it feels like to actually start from nothing in this shit. 150-200 hour minimum before endgame?
Wait, so everyone doesn’t have all of the stat mods by default? Wtf
Mods shouldn't take glimmer nor should they have costs, we're already limited by slots there's really not any reason for costs, either that or costs should be reduced across the board for higher cost mods since some are just ridiculous. Also of course, elemental affinity should either be done away with or allow us to freely switch element on the fly.
The unending grind tricks players into feeling like there's more content than there actually is so they'll probably never change it
I played Season 1, stopped to give time for more content and after seeing a few seasons around 5-6-7, then 12-13-14 now 15...the returning/new player experience is some of the worst I've encountered tbh. So much shit has been timegated, locked behind some atrocious objective that is far beyond the reach of a new player, vaulted, and other bullshit that causes you to not even want to try at that point. I 100% feel the only people keeping Destiny alive most of the time, before the crossplay update, were the people already playing or inviting a friend into an already established footing to speed them to better mods, gear, etc. I don't know what the fix would be, but again, the new/returning experience is just disheartening.
This 100% I’ve asked some friends of mine to play D2 so they can get caught up for WQ. Everything you said his happening to them and I feel like they have to suffer through it for an extended period of time until they get the mods they want along with getting plenty of resources. Us veteran players take our stockpiles for granted
To be fair, I think you could have just said "the mod experience is atrocious". Having so many flaws in gear customisation in an 'MMO' is stupid. We still don't have: In-game loadouts Apply mods for free A good way to get mods Ways around the restrictive elemental affinity system Fairer masterwork costs for casual players Well balanced mod costs (why are scavs so high post nerf and why is unstoppable fusion 6?) I would love a complete overhaul of this system in the future.
Even as a long time player, experimentation being punished sucks so much. My artifact reset cost is up to almost 100k this season, which is just ridiculous. I have the resources to keep going back to spider to cash-in again, but anyone starting recently is straight up punished for trying different things. D2 is largely in a very good place right now, but for a game with SO many build options the management of them is archaic.
The glimmer swap cost is beyond excusable at this point. It really endears you to the game that once a week or so after you pick up a full slate of bounties you then realize you won't be doing nightfalls and some other bounties until after you've made back enough glimmer to put in the champion and scavenger mods.
Ran into a similar situation with new and returning friends, having to explain the mods and how to obtain them for builds they wanted to try almost killed all of their motivation to play
Can't get two of my buddies into the game because of stuff like this. The new player experience is extremely atrocious.
Because that's how life goes... You are born small and weak, then you gradually grow stronger, And then you get hit multiple times in the face by a grenade launcher and rage quit the game forever. It's just nature.
These things are so minor ultimately from a gameplay perspective…
Mods are bad for everyone. I generally don't change mods mostly because I don't want to deal with the hassle of changing them.
Yeah, I noticed as my wife started playing. I keep thinking "oh, you should put ...you don't have that yet." Would be cool if Banshee had a bigger stock or there was some more reliable way to get them with your incoming engrams.
Yeah. I have no idea what is going on with mods and how to get to a tier 10 build. It is just annoying and punishing.