In what has come as an unexpected but huge W for those with a chronic hoarding problem, Bungie has today announced that it is undoing the last part of one of its most unpopular design decisions: Weapon sunsetting. Back in 2020, the studio made a huge call to remove huge swathes of content from the game, including entire planetary destinations and raids, and also capped the power of all old weapons, meaning they could no longer be 'infused' to the current power cap, rendering them useless in many activities.
The main reasons cited by Bungie at the time included combatting the spiraling file size of the game, the need to make it easier to test for bugs, and to encourage players to use new gear rather than sticking with old favourites. While all that made some sense, players hated it about exactly as much as you would imagine players would feel about having content they'd paid for forcibly removed from a game.
The entire sunsetting episode remained an open wound ever since, despite Bungie abandoning weapon sunsetting a year later and promising no more expansions would be removed back in 2022. Like many in the community, I eventually accepted my old 'god roll' guns were essentially useless beyond sentimental value, and with constant pressure on my limited vault space, eventually broke them down for parts.
So it was quite the shock to read in the latest This Week in Destiny post that, yeah, probably shouldn't have done that...
We understand that many old Power limited items have been dismantled by this point, and we regret that we have no recovery mechanism for these.
—This Week in Destiny
Bungie has now decided that, due to a problem created by the new power system coming in The Final Shape expansion on June 4th, those old weapons will be able to be brought up to the new power cap after all. Here's the full explanation:
"One problem we encountered when designing Fireteam Power was Power limits found on older gear items. You might have noticed as you read about Fireteam Power that the Adjusted Power shared by the Power Leader would sidestep the caps on old Power limited items, making it possible to ignore them. After thoroughly considering the problem space, we came to the decision to remove Power limits from all items starting in The Final Shape."
The upshot being that if you held onto, say, a Kindled Orchid hand cannon with the rare Rampage+Kill Clip combo, you'll be able to slap it on your Gyrfalcon Hunter and go hog wild in The Final Shape. But I won't be doing that, because despite loving many of these pretend guns like the children I will never have, they have all long since been deleted in the name of saving space. A situation Bungie is well aware many players will be in, and, well, it's sorry:
"We understand that many old Power limited items have been dismantled by this point, and we regret that we have no recovery mechanism for these. Going forward, we intend to reintroduce sources for most or all of these, updated to modern Destiny sandbox standards with added properties such as Origin Traits and buildcrafting perks (as we have started to do with the BRAVE arsenal in Destiny 2: Into the Light)."
The fact that it sounds like some beloved old weapons, like the remainder of the Black Armory gear perhaps, are coming back with modern perks is some small consolation. After all, what is Destiny if not re-grinding the same gear with slightly different perks? The addition of Origin Traits will also make these new versions technically better than their predecessors. But I can't help being jealous of the hoarders who held onto some of this stuff despite every indication that it would ever be relevant again.
Bungie senior designer Josh Kulinski took to X this afternoon with a thread explaining the thought process around unsunsetting these old guns. He makes a fair point that it's sometimes impossible to forsee the needs of the game in the future, and I imagine a lot of the people involved in the original sunsetting call are no longer even at the studio given how much time has passed.
Unsunsetting weapons or “sunrising” as many of us have been referring to it internally, was a big decision for us to make. We understand that many of you may have deleted weapon rolls that you loved, but let’s dig a little deeper 🧵April 25, 2024
Spare a thought, too, for hugely popular Destiny 2 content creator Datto, who for a couple of years now has run a 'Vault Cleaning' video series in which he helps fellow YouTubers sort through their invariably stuffed storage, berating them for all the rubbish and dupes they're holding onto, until they finally deleted enough to satisfy his item-based bloodlust. The Reddit thread accompanying Bungie's blog on r/destinythegame pictures Datto falling to his knees in Walmart upon hearing the news. Sure enough, on X he's already doing crisis management, and at least one old client is coming for him.
My legal team will be reaching out shortlyApril 25, 2024
If, like me, you performed a scorched earth-style cleanse on all the old guns, take a small amount of solace from the fact you can still pull a decent Breakneck with Subsistence+Onslaught, or 21% Delirium which has Overflow+Onslaught, from the collections section because those are the curated rolls, and then use them in The Final Shape.
Honestly though, we're going to be swimming in so much new gear that I don't think any saltiness over this decision will last too long. The broader changes to how guardian power level works have also been very well received so far, particularly as it should result in less grinding across alt characters just to make an arbirtray power number go up. Overall, if there's a lesson to be taken here it's that nothing in Destiny 2 stays gone forever. Just ask Cayde-6.
Oh, and: DON'T DELETE ANYTHING EVER, VAULT SPACE BE DAMNED!
