Destiny 2 Season 14 is getting close. It is wrapping up Season of the Chosen and this season has been great. I even wrote an article about the storytelling triumphs with this season. And as tradition, Bungie is slowly revealing all the changes and content we are going to get in the next season. One of the most requested additions to the game has been Transmog and Bungie are finally adding it next season.
Transmog gives the players the ability to take any armour they have in their collections and turn it into a universal ornament. So Bungie has revealed how Transmog is going to work in its weekly TWAB and to be honest….it is not good.
The Few Positives
New Customization Menu
Bungie showed us the new Customization screen and it looks great and seemingly easy to navigate. It has always been a chore till now to customize a character.
Improved Shader System
Also, the shaders have been revamped to be permanent unlocks rather than being one-time consumables that need Legendary shards and Glimmer to unlock. Now they will be available to the players at all times once earned.
The Price of the Shaders is going up from 40 to 300 Bright Dust which is ok in my opinion as they are becoming permanent unlocks. Along with that, a Year-1 Eververse shader bundle will also be available in the Eververse for Glimmer. This is great for players who started playing later like me, as those Shaders are mostly not earnable now.
So…. what is so bad about it?
The Complicated Process
The first problem is that it is needlessly complicated. Let’s go over it. Armour Synthesis aka Transmog will be introduced with the addition of Ada-1 as a vendor. And now any armour you have can be converted into Universal Ornaments. This is done by going through the following steps:
- Defeat enemies to earn Synthstrand.
- Spend Synthstrand on bounties to earn Synthcord. (It has been stated that 150 Synthstrand would be required)
- Convert Synthcord at the Loom in the Tower into Synthweave.
- Use Synthweave to convert an unlocked armor appearance into a Universal Armor Ornament.
That is like four goddamn steps! And each of them seems more grindy than the one before. And all this to look like armour which we have already earned. This further adds to the problem of the players having many useless world currencies as this introduces four more of them.
Year 1 Armour sadly won’t be able to be transmoged yet due to some technical problems. Thankfully it has been further stated that the bounties for Synthcord can be done in almost any playlist. But that is a small thing to be thankful for.
Capping the Transmog
But Destiny 2 has always been a grind and for the hardcore, earning cosmetics is like one of the endgame activities. So this complexity can be excused as players will figure it out and grind out all the armour pieces that they want. But Bungie messed that up too.
They have capped the earning of up to ten Synthweave per class, per Season. Just ten…that is only like two complete armour sets per season! They are allowing 20 Synthweave (four Armour sets) for the next season as a “celebration” of this system. That is ridiculous as Destiny 2 has hundreds of armour pieces that I am sure many players would love to wear, not caring about the bad stats they rolled on them.
And it is even impossible to catch up as Bungie gives us at least one new set of armour every season. This will end up with the players never being able to catch up unless they do one thing…
Micro-transactions…Obviously
Now the players will be able to buy them from the Eververse store for real money. Destiny 2 over time has completely moved away from loot boxes. And even increased the options to get one of its cosmetic currency (Bright Dust) through its weekly challenges system.
But with this Transmog system, they did not skim in the micro-transactions department. The players will have to pay 300 Silver (3 USD) for 1 Synthweave Token or you can pay 1000 Silver (10 USD) for a Synthweave Template Bundle which is about 5 tokens.
Before this, Bungie had to make to new Universal Armour to keep in the Eververse store to make players buy them. But this system is allowing them to monetize old armors (for 10 USD per set) which they have made over the years. And these are the same armour that players have already earned.
My Thoughts
Last time when I was writing about the information we had on Season 14 I stated that Transmog is going to be tricky to work into the game. Because they told us it would be payable. And I hoped that Bungie would figure out a way to not make it too grindy or force the players into buying it if they wanted the system completely. Sadly, what we got was the worst of both ends.
Personally, I do not really care about Transmog much. Even if given the choice to have it with no restrictions I maybe would convert two to three sets of armour at most. But this system is egregious and is just making the players pay for something that they already have.
My thoughts on it are perfectly summed up by this Tweet from the Youtuber Skillup ;
Transmog is a definite improvement over the current system but the way it is being implemented is transparently bad. And I think that Bungie knows that. The Destiny 2 community right now is furious. And as stated in the Tweet, I bet Bungie will roll back on the cap and the microtransactions and be praised for it by its defenders.
It is like they made this system so terrible so that people will praise them when they make it a little less bad. For me, this is a sad development from a studio I appreciate and in a game that I love.
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