We are in deeply strange and generally bad territory in Destiny 2 these days after an Ash an Iron “Major Update” that did not add anything good, actively took away some things, and introduced a number of game-breaking bugs.
The most recent controversy wasn’t specifically Ash and Iron related, but the discovery that a paid Eververse set from last season was originally supposed to be a new Iron Banner set. Now that Iron Banner has returned, fans were instead tossed a six-year-old reskinned set.
This all blew up and now Bungie has come up with its “fix,” giving away an Eververse armor set that was planned for release later this season. Now it’s the (logo-free) Iron Banner set for this season. Here’s what Bungie said about this:
“We’ve heard your feedback on the current Iron Banner armor set as well as the overall state of unique and compelling earned rewards. The overall balance in paid and earned armor cosmetics is off for this season and we’re aiming to adjust our approach to earned rewards in the future.”
The “approach to earned rewards” will have to deal with the fact that there are now five paid sets of Eververse/battle pass armor every three months, and with this giveaway, that’s down to four.
Players are split here with some calling this a “W” for Bungie, while others say they shouldn’t be given credit for the gesture. While it is good they have done this thing instead of not doing this thing, clearly, the issue is that it’s Bungie solving another problem they themselves created, which has been happening at an increasing frequency.
But this is only part of what’s going on in Iron Banner. The mode was taken off the table for a full three months after The Edge of Fate’s released with some promised improvements coming. Now that it’s here, those improvements are a mystery, and fans have noted that there is only a single actual Iron Banner weapon here. 95% of past Iron Banner weapons aren’t here, updated with the new Tier system. Four of the six are from the recent Arms Week event, where we were told to grind for them before they went away. And here they are?
It has long been obvious that Bungie is going to reissue a bunch of gear for the zillionth time with the new Tier system, but this suggests to me that this is “harder than it looks” like so many other things. But why you wouldn’t throw at least 5 or 6 Tier-upgraded old Iron Banner weapons in the mix here is a mystery to me, considering it’s a more widely-played event than Trials which did get a big Tier system update.
None of this has lured me back to play Destiny or the very unbalanced PvP mode of the game. I set down Ash and Iron about two days after it launched, and I just have no desire to power climb or grab a handful of new loot. I’ll be back for the exotic quest, I guess.
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