Before I start, I just want to point out that I do NOT support the idea of sunsetting. I hated it when it was first implemented and immediately lost personal connections that I had with some of my favorite weapons as a result. I was ecstatic when Joe Blackburn announced in the pre Witch Queen state of the game that sunsetting was going to be removed only a short while after it began because of community backlash and after weapon outliers (mountaintop and recluse) were nailed into their respective coffins.
However, as of right now, we have a serious power creep problem on our hands because of 2 reasons:
1. Weapon crafting and enhanced perks.
2. Subclass 3.0 interactions and verbs/ability spam
I’m only going to address the weapon crafting issue in this post as that is what I have put the most thought into. I may follow up with my thoughts on subclass power creep at a later date but that’s TBD. Mostly dependent on how much traction this post gains.
I (and many other destiny community members as well as content creators) believe that weapon crafting is slowly killing the excitement in Destiny 2. Red border drops are the ONLY things that matter in terms of weapon drops from raids and seasonal activities. After enough red borders of a particular gun are obtained and it’s pattern retrieved, that gun can be FULLY crafted to the players idea of a god roll at the enclave. After this, ALL future drops of that weapon are completely and utterly useless. Even more so now with the imminent removal of legendary shards.
Not only can the weapon be crafted, but it can be crafted with enhanced perks. I understand that most enhanced perks aren’t that great, but even still, they’re better than their default versions.
Because of this, all excitement for future seasonal and raid weapon drops of the same weapon has been killed. There is no longer any reason to run raids every week besides the exotic drop(which only comes from the boss anyway with the exception of Necrochasm so there is still no real reason to run full raids besides spoils of conquest and fun/immersion.
To this, I propose a fix (potential long term until we need to deal with this issue again in the future. And we will.)
ONLY CRAFTED WEAPONS will have a sunset timer of 6-12 months. Depending on what Bungie would decide if they were to ever consider this. You craft the weapon and the date you crafted is already tracked and posted in game on your gun. When time is up, that weapon can no longer be infused or brought up to power in current endgame activities. Of course, this idea hinges on what Bungie officially decides to do with power level in the future.
This fixes every problem listed above and then some:
1. It would still allow weapon crafting to have a place in D2
2. It would immediately return value to all random rolled raid and seasonal weapon drops, as these weapons (although craftable) will never be sunset.
3. It caters to the hardcore grinder and the casual destiny player. Hardcore players will still grind for a god rolled random weapon that will never have an expiration date. They can still craft the weapon too, but will know that they have a random rolled version to fall back onto when the crafted version is no longer usable.
Casual players who can’t find time or simply don’t care about farming god rolls can craft the perfect roll to use for a while and then move onto the next weapon of choice after sunsetting occurs. Crafted weapons are much more easily accessible than farming raids over and over for perfect rolls.
3. Excitement for random weapon drops will return
4. Much more reason to re run raids and activities that drop these weapons. Adding both replay value to the raid as well as value to every weapon drop.
I know this isn’t the BEST idea, but without bringing back sunsetting entirely, (nobody wants that) something like this will have to be good enough for the foreseeable future
Let me know what you guys think and if you agree, let’s see if we can hit the off chance that Bungie sees this and gets some ideas, if they don’t have some already.
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That wouldn't solve anything. People would just grind for god rolls instead of crafting & then you'd be back to square one.