Players have been able to change their cosmetic appearance while keeping the stats from their hard-earned gear in many games for year. Now, Destiny 2 is finally bringing that feature into the fold, but many fans are extremely concerned that the implementation is missing the mark. A gear-dominated game like Destiny 2 inevitably leads to an endgame where most players end up looking similar as they scavenge the most powerful gear sets for their characters. Implementing the ability to change appearance in Destiny 2 is looking to be more of a hassle than it is in most other games, however.
Transmogrification, or Transmog, is the generally used term in games for the ability to alter one's appearance without affecting the stats they've acquired from high-level equipment. Games like World of Warcraft and Diablo offer this ability at a relatively low entrance point. In each of those games, players need only spend gold (albeit sometimes a huge amount) in order to customize their appearance, but so far it seems like transmog in Destiny 2 is going to be more complicated than it should be.
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Destiny 2 has a lot going for it, especially a robust player base even years after its release and a gameplay loop that hasn't been really replicated since. The ability to transmog gear, called Armor Synthesis in Destiny 2, is usually a tertiary option that just ends up costing players base currency, still hard-earned but more plentiful. Yet, in Destiny 2, players will be tasked with obtaining a completely new resource in order to synthesize another new resource to finally obtain the ability to change appearances. Destiny 2 is already rife with challenges for players to complete and a myriad of different resources to obtain, so adding another separate set of them to complete with the reward being nothing more than a cosmetic change can seem slightly obtuse.
It's worth noting that some of the decisions about transmog make sense, as Exotic weapons in Destiny 2 can't be transmogrified at all. While in games like Diablo, even its most legendary weapons can be changed, that game doesn't have nearly as large a PvP component. The decision to make Exotics unchangeable makes sense as it will allow other players to tell if an opponent is carrying a certain weapon while playing Crucible, one of Destiny 2's most popular modes. If this hadn't been addressed, many competitive players would have been sounding alarms about balancing issues, especially since the various requirements for transmog isn't exactly balanced itself.
Overall, the move to make transmog a separate set of challenges to complete and resources to gather seems somewhat antithetical for a game that should probably be more focused on grinding for actual items. The capacity to just buy (with actual money) the materials for Armor Synthesis might be a panacea for some but largely goes against what many players want and expect from Destiny 2. It remains to be seen whether Destiny 2 will allow Glimmer, its base currency, to be used in exchange for the Armor Synthesis materials now that there's been considerable fan backlash.
Destiny 2 is available now for PC, PS4, PS5, Stadia, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X.