Dressing Up Micro Transactions

I want to start with a disclaimer as I really do love this game, probably more than any game I’ve ever played. Without putting too much thought into it, it is certainly top 3 if not number 1. I have put a ridiculous number of hours into Destiny 1 and Destiny 2, made a bunch of new friends and had some great experiences in all facets of the game. Destiny truly has something for everyone in my opinion, from PVE to PVP, collecting lore and hunting down secrets, raids and dungeons, even Trials and Grandmaster Nightfalls. I enjoy it so much, I spent time building this website so I could have all my notes and information in one place and readily available to me, my clan and all of you. That being said…

It never ceases to amaze me the ways they can mess up public relations opportunities. Transmog should have been a lay-up, or even a dunk. One of the biggest PR wins in years for them, right there for the taking. There were only a couple of ways they could have screwed it up and, short of charging silver and bright dust for everything, it appears they managed to use, well…all of them! If you read anything on Reddit, or from the content creators, or the writers who cover Destiny in the trades, there were a few over-arching themes after Transmog was announced months ago. Don’t make the process super convoluted, don’t introduce tons of new currencies, finally, and most importantly, don’t time gate it. They not only did one, they did all of them and then filled the weekly “This Week at Bungie” with rainbows and unicorns about how lucky we all were to get 20 pieces next season instead of just 10.

Now I’m not naive and I understand Bungie needs to make money off the game and that micro-transactions will exist now and forever. I don’t begrudge the Silver element of this at all and wouldn’t change anything about that part; make that money Bungie. But what I am getting sick and tired of is Bungie (and others) making it seem like Destiny has ALWAYS been a free-to-play game and ignoring or actively insulting the people who have paid for the game for the last 7+ years. All I hear from the few people defending Transmog is that Bungie needs to pay for the game and it’s free to play. I have paid for the game! Every expansion, every season, for 7+ years ($453.49 to be exact)! While I have gotten great value for that money in time played, recently I have seen –

• All my stats/records deleted when they launched Shadowkeep and changed the emblems.
  • You’ll notice Bungie announced everything to do with Shadowkeep and armor 2.0 except the fact that all stat trackers on emblems would be wiped, because they knew we’d all be angry about it. They then followed with the standard Bungie practice of reversing “part” of the decision and being patted on the back for it. Two steps backwards, one step forward. Yes, I’m still bitter about this (not a lot but…).
• The “value” of Bright Dust de-valued laughably to force Silver transactions on us.
  • Rainbows and Unicorns in the TWAB though, as it is a “great” deal for single character players, even if 3 character players lost 30%+.
  • As for shaders going from 40 Bright Dust to 300 Bright Dust, they sell 2-4 shaders a season in Eververse, in what universe is the reputation hits they are currently taking worth the 260 – 1,040 Bright Dust from the chunk of your player base that buys shaders? It’s not even Silver, what accountant made this decision?
• Half the game I paid for “vaulted” because having 8 raids might be confusing for new players (actual Bungie quote).
  • Yes, the code needed serious work, but still…
• All my guns/armor sunset only to be immediately re-issued (looking at you Gnawing Hunger, Adored).
  • Another PR opportunity snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.
• Seemingly zero work put into Crucible and Gambit maps, modes, etc. and the only justification we can come up with is these are now modes in the free-to-play arena, thus putting too many resources into them produces too minimal a return on investment.
  • Trials doesn’t count, stop putting all your Crucible resources into Trials, you’re not going to make it a thing, let it go.
• Now we get a Transmog system that is so insulting to the players it has actually managed to unite the player base in anger and disappointment.
  • And we can’t even agree which vent to take in Fallen S.A.B.E.R.

For my personal example, my Collections tab has 1,996 available armor pieces for my 3 characters. I don’t have the time to look through all of them to see how many are already ornaments, but a quick tab through my hunter shows 139 total sets, 96 sets of armor, 14 sets of non-universal ornaments and 29 sets of universal ornaments. Assuming my Titan and Warlock are roughly the same, that is 288 sets I would need to Transmog, at 6 sets a season, that’s 48 seasons or 12 years, assuming Bungie releases no new armor over those 12 years. Of course, I can pay $2,880 in silver and have them all on day 1 of Season 14.

I realize I am a completionist and others are not, but to those who say “You’d only use 2-3 sets anyways, stop whining”, I reply that I’m also someone who has a set of armor for each raid, for PVP, and for various builds on my characters (Thanks Destiny Item Manager). My Warlock has a Stasis turret build that is heavy on Discipline but uses all different pieces of armor to my standard Well-lock or Tickle-fingers build. My Titan has a strength Doom Fang build for quick Supers and general crayon inspired craziness that uses all different pieces to my standard Sun Warrior or Nipple Tassels (long story, look at Cuirass of the Falling Star closely and you have to know “YouIn” to understand). So, my Warlock would have a set for Deep Stone, Garden, Last Wish, Vault of Glass, PVP, Stasis Turret, Generic, which is a minimum of 7 different sets I could Transmog and play with, then change them if/when I wanted to. Or as someone once said…play my way?!

I can’t understand how this is the system that made it through dozens if not hundreds of people at Bungie and got released to the public (well, money obviously, but still). My Transmog could look something like the below (just throwing something out that lets us play whatever we want, however we want), the target number is generic and would obviously be adjusted based on data. Bungie could even adjust so that people would only get 10-30 a season if they were that concerned over people “completing” Transmog. The system is based on the XP curve, like Artifact power, easy then hard, then harder, then ridiculous.

• Silver exists the same as in the current system, no changes.
• No multiple currency systems. 1 Transmog Token required to Transmog 1 piece of gear.
• Make escalating missions for categories, like how multi-stage Triumphs currently work, so you don’t have to collect bounties at all.
  • Raid category could give you a Transmog Token at 10 Raid encounters beaten (DSC has 4, Garden 4, LW 6), then 25, 50, 100, 200, 400, etc.
  • Trials round wins – 10, 25, 50, 100, 200
  • Trials Flawless – 10, 25, 50, 100, 200
  • Nightfalls of Legend or higher – 10, 25, 50, 100, 200
  • Grandmasters – 10, 25, 50, 100, 200
  • Heroic public events – 50, 100, 200, 500
  • Lost sectors – 50, 100, 200, 500
  • Gambit, Crucible, Strikes
    • Wins, kills, elements, HVT, motes, zones, etc.
  • Auto Rifle (each individual gun) kills – 1K, 2K, 5K, 10K
    • Alternatively “Kinetic” kills – 1K, 2K, 5K, 10K
  • Void (each individual element) kills – 1K, 2K, 5K, 10K
    • Alternatively “Elemental” kills – 1K, 2K, 5K, 10K
  • Warlock (each individual class) kills – 1K, 2K, 5K, 10K
  • Seals – Complete a Seal, any Seal, get 1 Transmog Token.
  • Dungeons, Patrols, Bounties, etc. all have targets
• These are things that you can grind while doing everything else in the game and they will slowly accumulate over the season.
• The first ones should be relatively achievable, and casuals should be able to get them within weeks, grinders will get them quicker, but if we’re playing these activities anyways, let us accumulate tokens. Reward our time, our play, and variety by encouraging players to use other classes and other weapons, while also trying other activities.

Under this system, would someone absolutely get 100 Tokens in the first week, yes, and you know what? I salute that person and I also hope they’re eating right and getting outside occasionally for some exercise and to hang out with the three-dimensional people. Being honest, would I grind 200 Lost Sectors for a single Token, no I wouldn’t, but I could if I wanted to and that’s the point. Bungie’s system says I can’t. Say you were helping new players in the Blind Well, you could look and see you were close to Tokens for Void, SMG and Titan and decide to roll in with a Captain America Doom Fang and break out the Recluse for some nostalgia. At the moment, you’d either refuse to do it at all, or probably just grudgingly agree, then speed run it as fast as you can because there is nothing in there for you…and there won’t ever be at this rate.

I’m honestly confused by Bungie’s plan here, are they trying to get me to play the game less? If I crank out my 20 pieces per character next season in the first 2-3 weeks, do I ever need to go see Ada again that season? If so, why? XP? I don’t need XP now, the grind is only Pinnacles (1310-1320) and once you hit 1335 with the artifact (Grandmaster) XP means nothing. To change my clothes, why? You only have a few sets of clothing because Transmog is time gated. It’s even slightly worse if you’re like me because I probably won’t even spend all 20 Synthweaves, I’ll save 5 of them “just in case”. I mean, what if a cool new armor set comes out that I must have? Once you’ve done your maximum, you’re apparently done for the season. I already have lots of vendors I don’t go see anymore, Crow, Variks, Failsafe, Devrim, Shaw, Amanda, Ikora, Eris, I hadn’t imagined Ada would go on that list at all, let alone within a month of the season launching.

The TL/DR of this angry and frustrated wall of text – I probably have one of the largest “clothing closets” of players in Destiny 2 and thanks to this silver-focused, time gated system, I still won’t have a thing to wear.