I am not fully defending sun setting, nor am i completely ridiculing it but it was executed poorly. im placing potential fixes first on the extremely rare off chance Bungie sees this
Potential fixes:
1. Undo global sun setting but look at weapon popularity and the top 10-20% of weapons which are most used and have been sunset are those that are taken away leaving 80-90% of weapons which almost didn't get to see the light of day. (e.g. take away Revoker = 6.86%, beloved = 5.11%, mindbenders, mountain top, drang baroque, lunas howl etc.// leave in weapons such as Duke mk 44, some old raid weapons and those with similarly low percentages). Further to this you can then the following season if a weapon which was supposed to be sunset becomes outrageously dominant such as those mentioned above it can be taken out the following season. People have personal favorites, its not always about using the absolute meta and that should not be punished.
2. add a resource which you can EARN which allows you to extend the power cap of some weapons. I say some as if you let the most dominant weapons be extended then people will only place them on the same weapons
3. DO NOT sunset armour of all things
The good:
1. Forces people to use new weapons
2. makes people leave their comfort zone in weapon choice
3. Mixes up the PVE meta (at least where legendaries are concerned)
The bad:
1. Not many weapons were added in comparison to what was taken away
2. Armour was sunset, all this does is force a grind for the exact same Armour as Armour is basically a cosmetic factor and if people want cosmetics that's their choice
The ugly:
1. Some of these sunset weapons have been added again with higher level caps
2. (Personal point) heading into survival, it is basically the same meta as it was before sunsetting
Ultimately it would be nice to give some uniqueness to older players
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Artisan
D2 8700+ hours - old
Some good points. However the fallacy that Planned Obsolescence creates weapon diversity is not remotely true. Never was, never will be. It removed THOUSANDS of weapons without replacing any significant portion of them. Early Obsolescence isn't Sandbox balancing. If they wanted [b]more game promotion [/b] via more discussions on builds, then they needed to do selective buffs and nerfs, potentially degrading top contenders as they did (very idiosyncratically) with Recluse, whilst adding more perk types and variations and more new weapon types. In combination THAT works, wiping out all weapons (then reissuing them) doesn't do that one bit - it's just keeping the hamsters in the hamsterwheel...even if the hamsters are looking worn down to the skin and bones. Not only that but a meta dominance will ALWAYS be established. It's delusional to believe anything other than that will happen. It wasn't a cure for that, nor ever could be.