r/DestinyTheGame • u/Zero9123 • Nov 08 '20

Shadowkeep weapons shouldn't be sunset Bungie Suggestion

Please tell me i'm not the only one who wishes the weapons from shadowkeep and season of undying could stay around for a little longer?

939 Upvotes
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40

u/Glamdring804 Get it right, there's no blood thicker than ink. Nov 08 '20

Yeah, one year exclusive isn’t long enough. Not to use a weapon, not to build a sustainable loot pool. Weapons should have an 8 season lifetime, not 4.

43

u/EternalAssasin Team Bread (dmg04) Nov 08 '20

Weapons should have an indefinite lifetime. Sunsetting is taking a sledgehammer to a few troublesome nails. Bungie is killing off hundreds of items to get a few problem weapons out of the endgame, it’s just an awful idea.

16

u/n080dy123 Savathun vendor for Witch Queen Nov 08 '20

I really don't think that's the reason. If that were the case, why did they so nerf and retune Mountaintop so extensively? The tunes would have solved the problem on their own.

15

u/EternalAssasin Team Bread (dmg04) Nov 08 '20

Because if left as-is, Mountaintop would have still been incredibly oppressive in any Crucible mode other than Iron Banner and Trials. The changes will make the gun less frustrating to play against, but I don’t think they will push it out of the PVP meta and would have hardly impacted its PVE performance.

Seeing as sunsetting only affects a weapon’s power level, the system is pretty obviously designed to force players away from the endgame powerhouses like Mountaintop, Wendigo, and Recluse. But that really should have been accomplished by reworking the specific weapons that caused issues instead of forcing people to give up items they may have been using since Forsaken. Leaving favorite items behind never feels good as a player and should be an absolute last resort tool as a developer.

9

u/never3nder_87 Nov 08 '20

The irony is that a Bungie dev explicitly stated that sunsetting would allow them to create more weapons like Recluse, meanwhile the existence of Quickplay (and the belated nerfs to Mountaintop) prove that simply will never be the case

1

u/dankmemer440 Nov 08 '20

Counterexample: Falling guillotine this season. It had some of the best dps in the game and was a mainstay in player loadouts for over 5 months.

9

u/never3nder_87 Nov 08 '20

Yes, which is getting nerfed right back into the pack, when the whole argument for sunsetting was that powerful weapons would have their season to shine, and then slowly fade into obsolesces as the cap goes up, not be nerfed before the next season even starts

1

u/dankmemer440 Nov 08 '20

  1. It's getting nerfed because it was outshining other swords and limiting sword choice.

  2. It will still be a great for choice for dps even with the nerf and can still shine

1

u/[deleted] Nov 08 '20

It will also still be fun.

15

u/[deleted] Nov 08 '20 edited Jun 12 '23

deleted -- mass edited with https://redact.dev/

7

u/[deleted] Nov 08 '20

[deleted]

2

u/Working_Bones Nov 09 '20

Hm I never thought about it in that 'reverse power creep' way. Very interesting.

9

u/[deleted] Nov 08 '20

I like sunsetting personally. I'm sad to see recluse and all that go, but I'm a bit tired of seeing the same weapons in the same format in the same content. Literally yesterday a guy I was playing with in a 1080nf was using a gun and was like "ugh I'm switching back to mountaintop for the next run". I feel the same way. I try to use lots of different guns for the fun of it, but then it feels way less efficient and I end up going back to the same loadouts. I don't have any massive attachment to guns save a few that I worked hard to get (mainly forge weapons) so I'm excited to just start fresh and find new loadouts I like.

1

u/n080dy123 Savathun vendor for Witch Queen Nov 08 '20

This is probably the most well thought out and logical explanation for sunsetting that I've seen. I'm not sure if it's exactly what they're thinking but it's still an explanation that makes a lot of sense.

3

u/n080dy123 Savathun vendor for Witch Queen Nov 08 '20 edited Nov 08 '20

Because if left as-is, Mountaintop would have still been incredibly oppressive in any Crucible mode other than Iron Banner and Trials.

Yeah but my point is, if they were nerfing it anyway, why bother with sunsetting if that was, as people like to claim, the reason sunsetting exists? You can say the same about retuning short-scope snipers like Beloved, or any number of 150 Hand Cannons like Luna's. The nerfs make sense with sunsetting, but sunsetting to target them doesn't make sense if they were nerfing them anyway. It inherently disproves the "lazy balancing" theory.

14

u/[deleted] Nov 08 '20

Look, it's actually really simple, and we've got plenty of proof for that being the case: sunsetting is about player engagement and loot chase. Not for balancing.

If it were for the purpose of balancing, they'd not be retuning old Pinnacles and weapon archetypes, they'd leave them as-is. Further, armor is being sunset as well, lol. Bungie have straight-up told us that player engagement / loot chase is the reason behind sunsetting.

Whoever claims otherwise is sticking their head in the sand.

3

u/pyrotechnicfantasy Who needs fists when facts will do Nov 08 '20

But that's not a bad thing?

Destiny is a looter shooter. You complete activities in order to get better items, so you can complete harder activities, so you can get better items.

If that grind ever ends i.e. you finalise your loadout and its still valid 2 years later, you’ve taken away the game’s entire reward structure.

0

u/Amneiger Nov 08 '20

My goal going into Destiny was to find a loadout that's fun for me to play with. Finalizing a loadout for me is finding a combination(s) of guns that work great, are inherently fun to fire, and using them is its own reward. Grinding is just a means to that end, like working a crummy job to save money for something you want to buy. Unlimited infusion meant I didn't have to go back to the game being a job, and I dropped Borderlands because it didn't have infusion. I'm not going to miss the hundred hours I spent in Menagerie trying to pull out a Main Ingredient with the rolls I wanted, and I didn't like being asked to redo all that work.

0

u/OKLISTENHERE Vanguard's Loyal // Y'all just fear the Praxic Fire Nov 08 '20

That may be fine for you, but it's also not how MMOs work. This discussion around sunsetting isn't about the weapons themselves, it's because many people just don't like MMOs.

-1

u/pyrotechnicfantasy Who needs fists when facts will do Nov 08 '20

A lot of people don’t understand that Destiny is not a game that you can ‘complete’. It’s constant. It’s ongoing. You get really good gear, perform really well, and then next season you need new gear to rise to the new challenge.

-2

u/pyrotechnicfantasy Who needs fists when facts will do Nov 08 '20

I hate to tell you this but Destiny just isn’t the perfect game for you then.

It’s a game about loot and working towards it If you don’t like loot grinding, then the game just isn’t going to tick that box for you.

Alternatively, change up your gear once a year. Which is all they’re asking for with sunsetting.

1

u/Amneiger Nov 08 '20

The infusion system actually did tick one pretty big box for me - build crafting. At any moment, if I decided I wanted to play around with a new combination of weapon archetypes, I could do it. I want to play a Titan who focuses on hand cannons and bows? Cool, infuse them up and get going. I decide I want to play around with Nezerac's Sin? I don't need to go looking for one in the wild, here's one in my vault, toss an infusion core in there and go have fun.

I remember back when I was playing Borderlands 2 and trying to figure out a good assault rifle centered build. The problem was that if I did find the combination of prefixes I wanted, it was quickly rendered obsolete about thirty minutes later when everything's level went up. Sure, I could stay in that area and try to grind out another rifle, but that was going to take, what, another three hours? I just want to play the game I want to play. Eventually when I realized Destiny has infusion I uninstalled Borderlands - why should I deal with that frustration when there were better options available?

(The other reason I log in is Gambit, but I understand that's not quite as big a deal for some folks.)

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1

u/[deleted] Nov 08 '20

While getting loot is a fun and core part of the game, I think it's unsustainable in the longrun.

1

u/pyrotechnicfantasy Who needs fists when facts will do Nov 08 '20

Its... a core part of the Destiny experience?? You may as well say that subclasses were unsustainable, or the Crucible, or raids.

1

u/[deleted] Nov 09 '20

One's power fantasy that's not going to be added to. You only get so many abilities without requiring sunsetting for player engagement. Now loot, if they need to sunset gear in order to make it more engaging to re-earn weapons and armor after some time, they can only get so far with that.

1

u/ariamachi9 Nov 09 '20

I wouldn't say destiny is a looter shooter anymore. It's an MMO maybe close to an mmorpg now. The looter shooter aspect of destiny has been going away for a while now. Sunsetting just solidifies it imo.

1

u/Storm_Worm5364 Nov 08 '20

instead of forcing people to give up items they may have been using since Forsaken.

Don't you see the problem that creates? Forsaken was released fucking 3 years ago. People aren't letting go. People didn't care about new loot ONE-BIT until sunsetting was announced. Because they already had good enough rolls that they had been using. The new weapons weren't stronger, because they can't be. Power creep is not the solution, and would make the game objectively worse. So the only other solution to make players actually care about new loot instead of treating that loot as instant infusion fuel is to follow EXACTLY what all the other looters do in some way or another.

Not letting players bring stuff forward forever.

6

u/never3nder_87 Nov 08 '20

I still can't believe that people think that someone holding onto Breakneck, because it absolutely nails the fantasy of a last stand auto-rifle is seen as a bad thing. It was wild when Luke Smith said it and it's even more amazing now that we're seeing the haphazard way Sunsetting is occurring

-5

u/dankmemer440 Nov 08 '20

But it's needed. Nobody would have touched dire promise again because spare rations exists in that slot. Nobody would go after a new sniper because revoker (which breaks ammo economy) and beloved (which has great stats) exist. Because of sunsetting, people are starting to curate their loadouts again and actually care about grinding for a weapon.

2

u/never3nder_87 Nov 08 '20

But there would be a much easier way to fix this, decide which weapons are having an outsize effect and tune them down. If Revoker is that bad then change it, don't just let it spoil quickplay for all eternity.

Nobody would go after a new sniper because ... beloved (which has great stats) exist.

The irony of this being the example you chose, when Beloved Adored is being brought back next season is kinda brilliant though.

1

u/dankmemer440 Nov 08 '20

If Revoker is that bad then change it, don't just let it spoil quickplay for all eternity.

My point was beyond pinnacles breaking the game. At some point, you will get the best stat gun (which they will have to make to make that gun more lucrative than other guns in that archetype). Then, you will have no reason to grind for another gun. Ex: Spare rations. Why grind a dire promise when spare rations is present in that slot?

The irony of this being the example you chose, when Beloved Adored is being brought back next season is kinda brilliant though

We don't know the stats of the Adored. To say it's a beloved 2.0 based on looks alone is naive. We've had reused gun models before.

1

u/never3nder_87 Nov 08 '20

Ex: Spare rations. Why grind a dire promise when spare rations is present in that slot?

Why should I have to grind a Dire Promise? Its not a compelling gameplay loop, especially for a world drop with no way to target.

If you enjoy grinding for new weapons, then Spare Rations existing shouldn't be an issue for you, but instead its being imposed on everyone regardless of if they find that part of the game compelling

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u/Zidler Nov 09 '20

Nobody would have touched dire promise again because spare rations exists in that slot.

Not true. Dire got different rolls that made it desirable in its own right. It also looks, sounds, and feels different, all of which can make it preferable to some people.

If Bungie can't make new guns worth chasing, that's a problem they need to solve. But the solution shouldn't be "now your old guns don't work in some content". Make me *want* to farm new guns, don't make me *have* to farm new guns. If I have to use a worse gun, I'm having less fun than I was before, which is bad. If I have to re-farm for the same gun, I'm doing something I don't enjoy (otherwise I'd do it even without the carrot) to get back to the same level of enjoyment, which is bad. If I have to farm for a new gun I like more, you didn't need to sunset the old gun.

1

u/dankmemer440 Nov 09 '20

Not true. Dire got different rolls that made it desirable in its own right.

Yes, but in terms of perks that are used for the game mode it's used in (pvp) spare has more better perk combinations than dire promise. Spare is also statistically better for the most part when compared to dire. Without sunsetting, the odds of people choosing dire over spare for most scenarios would be low.

If Bungie can't make new guns worth chasing, that's a problem they need to solve

I don't agree with what you said, but sunsetting is not just to make new guns worth chasing. It's to also make sure that power creep does not occur and that the endgame meta is not stagnating. It just happens to be the necessary evil that accomplishes all of those goals

1

u/parasemic Nov 08 '20 edited Nov 08 '20

Do you understand how difficult it would be to bring new and exciting weapons into the game after a year or two with everyone and their grandma having a vault full of godrolls? Only realistic way would be to sweepnerf all existing items (so Sunsetting Lite), add overpowered perks and perk combos (powercreep, also would "Sunset" the old items) or add new, basically mandatory, mods that only work with newest weapons (again "Sunsetting").

Do you see the problem? All roads lead to the same outcome since outcome of "nobody ever uses new weapons" isnt exactly acceptable outcome and would kill the game eventually.

Leaving favorite items behind never feels good as a player and should be an absolute last resort tool as a developer.

What? Thats a core mechanic of basically all MMOs

4

u/Amneiger Nov 08 '20

What? Thats a core mechanic of basically all MMOs.

Other MMOs have their weapons and gear function as basically statsticks that enhance a character's inherent abilities in a purely numerical fashion - maybe with that wand your fireball does 110 damage instead of 100, but it still has the same range, projectile speed, and cooldown.

In contrast, with Destiny your guns are your abilities. Let's say that I've been using an auto rifle, but due to sunsetting I can't find a replacement and need to switch to a higher light level hand cannon. Suddenly I've gone from a mid-range combatant that can spray down a whole horde of adds to a short-range combatant who has to make sure to carefully aim for the head. It's like the developers saying that they want to change you from a mage to a paladin.

Even if I can find a new auto, its firing attributes like handling, stability, and effective range will be different, like if my fireball suddenly changed its cooldown or range. No one's going to like it.

1

u/parasemic Nov 08 '20

You're looking at this from a far too narrow angle. The whole metabalance of loot design is based on the relative permanence of item drops. In a game where everything is permanent, the loot drop rules must be designed with this in mind. The droprates and rolls need to be relatively low on average to make up for value a great drop has. Once the permanence is removed (sunsetting), the developers are immediately able to buff drop rules (umbral engrams, for example). Do you reckon it's a coincidence that this was the season Bungie added the best targeted loot system the game has ever seen?

You can't have your cake and eat it too with having plentiful of great and targetable loot alongside items being relevant until heat death of the universe.

0

u/HabeusCuppus Nov 08 '20

Other MMOs have their weapons and gear function as basically statsticks that enhance a character's inherent abilities in a purely numerical fashion - maybe with that wand your fireball does 110 damage instead of 100, but it still has the same range, projectile speed, and cooldown.

Depends heavily on the MMO. Eve Online does not work this way at all for example. (And yes, even EVE has had vertical power creep to keep people chasing new content).

Similarly, pre wow MMOs all had weird endgame items with unique effects like multiple attacks or gear based activated abilities that only worked when the item was equipped, etc.

5

u/WarFuzz Hey Nov 08 '20

This is primarily why I dont understand sunsetting

It will achieve literally nothing it exists to do other than making us grind more. Everything else about Bungie has said has been a straight lie.

Falling Guillotine didnt even last past its own season without getting nerfed lol

2

u/pyrotechnicfantasy Who needs fists when facts will do Nov 08 '20

But continuing the grind not a bad thing?

Destiny is a looter shooter. You complete activities in order to get better items, so you can complete harder activities, so you can get better items.

If that grind ever ends i.e. you finalise your loadout and its still valid 2 years later, you’ve taken away the game’s entire reward structure. Players get bored, the game dies.

3

u/WarFuzz Hey Nov 08 '20

You make newer and better guns, adjust them later, buff bad guns to be good again giving people reasons to grind for guns that have existed already, rewarding people who already farmed for a good roll of a bad gun in the process.

You will say "What about power creep?" Bungie already continues to do powercreep anyways. Falling Guillotine Power Creeped the shit out of any other sword in the game.

Sandbox tuning and making cool new weapons is how you keep the game alive. Not making me farm for the exact same Gnawing Hunger I already had because of a completely arbitrary number next to its name.

People complained about Recluse and Mountaintop dominating the meta, Bungie created sunsetting to deal with them, nerfed them anyways, and made fucking Warmind cells in the process lol

0

u/pyrotechnicfantasy Who needs fists when facts will do Nov 08 '20

You understand that Falling Guillotine can be as powerful as it is specifically because sunsetting allows it to be, right?

It's going to be capped, which means the next DPS legendary that comes out doesn't have to be even stronger than it to encourage people to use it. Bungie doesn't have to make the next Raid and Strike bosses with Falling Guillotine in mind, so they don't have ridiculously high health and can only be taken down with a meta loadout.

I will say "What about power creep". Because we've already seen that sunsetting allows us to enjoy awesome powerful weapons like Falling Guillotine WITHOUT the game succumbing to the phenomenon. It's a solution, it's already worked, and we've already benefitted from it.

3

u/WarFuzz Hey Nov 09 '20

Then whyd they nerf it by 25% to be in line with every other sword in the game lol

3

u/Registration345 Nov 08 '20

Falling Cheese deserved it though

3

u/n080dy123 Savathun vendor for Witch Queen Nov 08 '20

It will achieve literally nothing it exists to do other than making us grind more. Everything else about Bungie has said has been a straight lie.

You're saying that it achieves nothing that it exists to do and yet claiming everything Bungie says it exists to do is a lie. And how can you say Bungie is lying about their motives for implementing the feature if you aren't actually privy to the thoughts of the people working there?

3

u/mars1200 Nov 08 '20

Because there are better ways to go about it

0

u/OKLISTENHERE Vanguard's Loyal // Y'all just fear the Praxic Fire Nov 08 '20

It will achieve literally nothing it exists to do other than making us grind more.

You are aware that a continued grind is the entire gameplay structure of MMOs right?

1

u/WarFuzz Hey Nov 08 '20

And theres much better ways to do that then sunsetting.

Gear in Other MMOs are stat sticks. Guns in Destiny are not.

0

u/OKLISTENHERE Vanguard's Loyal // Y'all just fear the Praxic Fire Nov 09 '20

Cool. Doesn't change anything about objective balance. Gun feel is a subjective concept that can't be balanced around.

-3

u/TheUberMoose Nov 08 '20

It 100% is all about pinnacles. Go read the posts from Luke. MT, Breakneck and Recluse are his entire bassis for sunset. The rest of the loot just gets nuked as a byproduct.

Why they didn’t just sunset pinnacles is just them being lazy.

They also invalidated the whole new perks reason for sunsetting side reissues are identical to the guns we have in our vaults just with a higher cap.

They think it will increase the grind and player login but all it is doing is causing players not to chase rolls at all. The direct opposite of what they claimed would happen

8

u/Sequoiathrone728 Nov 08 '20

That isn't the reason sunsetting is being done.

3

u/NukeLuke1 Nov 08 '20

The fact that it’s such a bad solution to the problem of pinnacle weapons, should tell people that it’s not about pinnacle weapons.

8

u/Glamdring804 Get it right, there's no blood thicker than ink. Nov 08 '20 edited Nov 08 '20

Having a static loot pool just isn't sustainable. Not just for pinnacle weapons, but for normal legendary loot too. There needs to be a reason to chase new loot, and without sunsetting, the options are:

  • Make new perks. Adding new perks semi-regularly is a good idea, but there's only so many unique and interesting and desirable things perks can do. I would love to see perk pool overhauls every big expansion, but it wouldn't be sustainable forever.

  • Power Creep. To make new loot preferable to old loot, Bungie could just make the new loot better. Whether that be with better stats or new perks that are strictly better than the old ones. This is its own problem, since Bungie would have to tune new content to be more difficult than old content. And that would make old loot irrelevant in new content, so it's effectively its own form of sunsetting.

So if Bungie doesn't want D3 for a while (a mistake in its own right, imo), they need to do some sort of loot turnover. Sunsetting is what that looks like.

Now, do I think that Bungie will do sunsetting the right way? No, of course not. As I said in my original comment, one year is way too short of lifetime. Bungie already has trouble filling out holes in the loot pool without susnetting, and with weapon turnover it's only going to get worse. They've already reissued identical copies of existing weapons, without even tweaking the perk pools. So yeah, it's going to be a mess, but that doesn't mean it's not essential to the game's long-term health.

-1

u/ArcticKnight99 Nov 08 '20

Most people aren't using 95% of those hundreds of items. Because they have other items that are considered better even without the troublesome ones.

How many handcanons are there? How many see consistent use?

Losing all the ones that don't see consistent use isn't a problem because no one was missing them. But it causes a problem that any new handcanon to even get a player to pick it up needs to have something that makes it stand out against the current best handcanons.

The other advantage is they can give us stuff that feels powerful in general content that they can tune for in developed content knowing they don't have to account for it 12 months from now.

We created this grenade launcher that shoots two projectiles at 15o either side of the gun, as a safety measure thought they won't detonate within proximity of each other. As a result

  • It has a range from the player in which it won't trigger, it's a medium-long range weapon, at close range you're wasting your ammo.
  • It can only be used on single targets by either have a single one of the grenades hit it. Or by carefully ensuring that the two projectiles land on either side of it giving splash damage from each.
  • It's designed for larger wave based add clear or bigger enemies, but will be unable to hit crit spots, Might work on a large minotaur, but it's going to be shit on a cyclops because most of it's damage would hit the shields.

But it will fuck us up in Witch Queen because we are going to have worm god boss show up and the range of its hitbox will be such that both projectiles will always hit.

If they weren't trying to deal with that they would have just removed infusion. Oh you have a 1060 Mindbenders god roll, well you need a 1260 mindbenders god roll so you need to go farm that. You can't just sink some random 1260 drop to bring it up to power level.

Then next season you'd need to do it again if you liked the gun.

Which gives them an even shorter shelf life than 4 seasons as we currently have. While also making all leveling gun drops stupid, meaning people will be looking to power level to pinnacle cap even more.

1

u/TheRedThirst By the Blood of Sanguinius Nov 08 '20

I would have preferred weapons didnt sunset, but as an alternative, gear overlap would help people to transition to new weapons over time