Destiny 2 Players Aren’t Happy About Exotics Getting Weaker In Upcoming Patch

As ever, Bungie is continuing to tweak Destiny 2 with balancing changes through live updates, but the next one hasn’t garnered much excitement from fans. With the Season of the Drifter coming to a close at the end of the month, Bungie used a blog post to detail its next slate of changes to the game, and they’re all of the “nerf” variety–weakening some of the game’s most-used, best-loved equipment.

On its blog, Bungie detailed some of the upcoming changes coming with its next content season, the Season of Opulence, which starts on June 4. The new tweaks focus on ratcheting down the power of several Exotic weapons and pieces of armor. According to the post, through the Season of the Drifter, Bungie saw a lot of Exotics becoming “must-pick” items for various loadouts, and the changes are meant to get other items back into the rotation a bit more. Most of the changes focus on players’ Super abilities, which charge up over time but which can be fast-tracked with certain pieces of armor and “Orbs of Light” created by other players.

“Primarily, we’re paying attention to pieces of Exotic armor that grant back Super energy,” the post reads. “We felt they are increasingly becoming ‘must-pick gear choices. Orb generation from teammates is meant to be the best way to accelerate your Super generation. These Exotics are allowing players to bypass this teamwork mechanic by generating a large amount of Super energy without relying on other players’ orbs.”

Exotics like the Skull of Dire Ahamkara helmet for Warlocks and the Ursa Furiosa gauntlets for Titans give Super energy back to players when they use their Super abilities, and under the right circumstances, can almost fully fill up a player’s energy bar–which means they can launch several Supers in succession. That’s great if you’re enjoying wrecking a lot of enemies all at once, but apparently, it’s not really what Bungie is going for.

Several weapons are also receiving nerfs in the update, most notably the Whisper of the Worm. The Exotic sniper rifle currently sports infinite ammo if you can manage to land only critical hits with it on enemies. The change will remove the infinite ammo perk; Bungie says it’s hoping to make other sniper rifles more viable with the change, instead of Whisper being the de facto choice in all circumstances. It’s worth noting that Bungie made this same change in Destiny 1 to Black Spindle, an Exotic sniper rifle that’s very similar to Whisper.

Players haven’t responded too well to the upcoming slate of changes, even though they’re not actually in the game yet. Bungie’s Twitter post pointing to its blog was awash in memes mocking the changes as fans protested the weakening of armor and weapons that have become staples in the game.

It’s worth noting that Bungie hasn’t released the full patch notes for the Season of Opulence update, so there will probably be others to go with these changes that might change how players feel about them. And Bungie is constantly making adjustments to Destiny 2 in order to make weapons, armor, Supers, and abilities more or less viable. It’s very likely we’ll see further adjustments to a lot of these things as the game continues to evolve.

But it’s undeniable that much of the Destiny community is pretty upset with Bungie’s upcoming changes, with some even threatening to defect before the next content drop. That seems like a major overreaction, but Destiny has a pretty vocal community, and Bungie often talks about how much it’s paying attention to what players want. The question now is whether the developer responds to those complaints, and how it might do so.

from GameSpot – Game News https://www.gamespot.com/articles/destiny-2-players-arent-happy-about-exotics-gettin/1100-6467002/