Destiny 2 launched yet another event that fans were grumbling about this past week, this time not due to any large-scale bugs, but because of how the event was formatted. That would be Call to Arms, in which Destiny players compete against one another to get top percentile scores to land various cosmetics, including one very awesome helmet ornament.
The problem was that the modifiers you needed to use to get these high scores were too oppressive and annoying and almost unchangeable, and also that higher power players were at a significant advantage with bonus score points automatically granted to them. You could do identical runs as someone else, but someone who was 550 would always win out, screwing up the percentiles.
Now, Destiny 2 has come out with a list of hotfixes to make Call to Arms less annoying. They are:
While now fully fixed, power is now less of a factor in terms of scoring and opens up lower power and difficulties to have a chance at landing in top tiers.Boons now no longer reduce your score and are only positive benefits to aid you on your runs.All gear modifiers are now the same high-level boost to scores rather than ones like “all New Gear Bows” being the most restrictive for the highest bonus.They removed a new “hovering drone” modifier that everyone hated, which slowed down runs, clipped through walls and was just all-around irritating.
I have played with these new changes and yes, it is way, way better. I also now believe that at least some aspects of these changes, and overall additions to Call of Arms, may be things to make The Portal better to play, if they are kept after the event ends. We’re at least doing The Portal another six months, so during that time, it would be nice if a few of these changes stuck.
One that sticks out the most to me is the idea that boons no longer decrease your score. You barely ever want to use boons, much less more than one, on different runs right now, but if they are “free,” then this creates a lot more interesting runs to combat what are permanently power-locked Portal activities that you cannot over-level. I’ve enjoyed this aspect.
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Similarly, I think the general idea that you have all boons and all negative modifiers unlocked to choose from, as these Call to Arms activities do, is the way forward, rather than a much more limited selection that is curated for each one for…reasons. I’m not sure why it’s not like this now, but it feels like what custom runs were actually supposed to be.
I don’t know if all loadout restrictions should give exactly the same boost, but these have been wildly out of whack since a lot of the new ones showed up, and not limiting players to annoyingly hyper specific archetype loadouts, with the New Gear restriction on top of that, is better than it’s been.
No, I still don’t like The Portal, and I believe it should possibly be removed, or at the very least sidelined, in the future. But if it is going to exist, a lot of lessons should be learned from this event and applied to more than four activities for a limited time.
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Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy.