Despite the fact that Destiny 2 has been out for a little over four years, Bungie's work is making it so the game is constantly evolving and changing with each new major content drop or sandbox patch. Of course, Destiny 2 is far from perfect, even though it's improved a lot since its early days thanks to the Forsaken expansion and all the constant output of seasonal content that came after that. With the Forsaken campaign now being vaulted when The Witch Queen expansion comes out in February of next year, there is still a lot of work for Bungie to do on Destiny 2 to make it an even better version of itself moving forward.

One of the main aspects of the game is to combine a series of elements to mix and match them into a custom build, including things like guns, armor pieces, Exotics, mods, and much more. Another very sought-after facet of Destiny 2 is to create interesting and good-looking fashion sets through the Armor Synthesis and universal ornaments obtainable for free or purchasable in the Eververse store for Silver. Both of these components of the game are what make Destiny 2 fun in terms of customization, but it is also true that these systems are still not optimized to this day, and need to be more polished without punishing players.

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Why Destiny 2 is Punishing to Those Who Don't Play Regularly

The issue with players trying to make their own builds in Destiny 2 is that they have to go through obsolete systems that ruin the experience, and also the fact that most of the game's content eventually becomes unavailable, making things even harder. A great example of this logic is how mods are currently implemented and how they are unlocked. Upon creating a new character for the first time, players barely have access to the most basic of mods to use for their gear, and even major stat boosts are to be farmed and obtained gradually.

As such, the New Light experience requires something like over one hundred hours and logging in very often to actually have some of the most useful and best mods to employ in a build. Players' progression is gated behind farming for mods to use to be better at farming Mod Components, which in turn are used to purchase mods whenever they are available in both Ada-1's shop and Banshee-44's. Their respective inventories contain just two mods each, but the number of mods currently in the game equals 334 total, with only 29 of them being legacy mods that are currently unobtainable.

Furthermore, it's not only mods to have issues when it comes to build diversity and character customization in Destiny 2, as another common topic on Reddit and other platforms is that of armor affinity. Armor affinity in Destiny 2 means that each piece of armor has an element associated with it among Solar, Arc, Void, and Stasis. Changing that affinity allows for different mods to be slotted in that piece of armor, but this action comes at the cost of crafting materials. The cost also goes up depending on the energy of the armor, making it almost impossible to sustain with Masterworked gear.

Not being able to deterministically farm for mods and not being able to change a specific armor's affinity damages all Destiny 2 players, including veterans, and especially newer players. This ends up promoting a mindset that forces players to just "be there" for Destiny 2 content, whatever it may be, whenever it may drop. Unfortunately, this also applies to the cosmetic part of the game.

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Destiny 2's Issues With Customization and Diversity

Because of how Destiny 2's transmog system works, players can obtain several materials per character each Season, and then spend them to unlock specific armor pieces and turn them into a universal ornament for that class. The system has its flaws, but it is mostly a great addition that came with Ada-1's return in Season of the Splicer. The main problem with the transmog system is that players can only unlock universal ornaments of armor they own or at least owned and then dismantled.

Since players can no longer obtain many armor sets that have been sunset and removed from the game with the Destiny Content Vault, this also means that the selection is limited to all obtainable gear currently within the game. Shaders too suffer from a similar problem, as they were made permanent unlocks account-wide with Season 14, but past shaders of any kind are also not going to be available for the foreseeable future, if at all.

To add insult to injury, Destiny 2 players who skipped a specific Season and its Season pass contents can no longer obtain it. For those who did participate in Destiny 2 seasons, there is a trick, which consists in downloading an older version of the Companion App to get past seasonal loot, but for those who never played past seasons, this doesn't work. Still, it poses the question as to why Bungie doesn't go the Halo Infinite route of allowing players to accumulate progress towards any Season pass they own, no matter how long it was since its release.

All these little details further reinforce the idea that Destiny 2 players have to deal with fear of missing out, or FOMO for short, which revolves around the idea that not playing the game equals losing out on something permanently. While common in video games, this is something that Destiny 2 shouldn't rely on simply because it doesn't need to. On the contrary, Destiny 2's success is founded on it being one of the most popular looter-shooters around, and also have a unique and very deep sci-fi setting with space magic and aliens. Ultimately, that's what Bungie should aspire to. Possibly, without limiting players' options.

Destiny 2 is available on PC, PS4, PS5, Stadia, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.

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