Almost every week brings something new to Destiny 2. Whether it’s story beats, new activities, or an interesting new mix of elements for players to destroy each other in the Crucible. Iron Banter is a weekly compilation of what’s happening in the world of Destiny and what’s trending throughout the solar system.
Solstice is probably my least favorite of Destiny 2’s annual events. The summer celebration originally started with a moment of triumph, marking the end of his year in Destiny and helping to commemorate all the cool things players did with a nice set of glowing armor. The event lacked the fun personalities of Festival of the Lost on Halloween and Dawn of the holiday season. Solstice also tends to be a heavy grind, and if there’s one thing he isn’t a fan of Destiny games, it’s the content he grinds over and over again.
However, in 2022, Bungie has made some significant changes to Solstice. SPECIAL EVENTS Change the way his armor works, tweak special his EAZ locations and the events that take place there, and introduce a new “Event Card” system to help you complete objectives and earn premiums as part of events Earned rewards.summer solstice looks very 2022 will be different, but now that it’s over, take a look at our three weeks of summer celebrations to see what worked, what didn’t, and what’s coming from additional annual events as Destiny 2 progresses. You can check what you can expect.
Improvements
Overall, my impression of Solstice this year was that Bungie identified some significant issues that were slowing the event down and addressed them to improve. The largest and most important of them: Solstice Armor.
Armor earned during Solstice events is always special. It has its own unique design and can take on a “shine” that gives it a unique glowing look. However, the downside of Solstice Armor is that it takes a lot of work to craft. The whole celebration event is usually about doing the work of upgrading your Solstice armor from low-level Common gear to high-level Legendary gear. Technically, you’ll have to pay extra to get the coolest look. But this year, Solstice’s armor has gotten a lot better with Bungie’s continued improvements to its equip targeting system.
With Condense Armor, earned this Solstice, you’ll finally be able to tune each piece of gear to the specific stats you want. The system allowed me to choose his one stat that had a “spark” that guaranteed at least 20 points to be invested. That’s a good number, as his one stat for Legendary-type armor tops out at 30. In addition to that, with the Ghost mod system that allows you to target armor towards specific stats in general, further away Adjust your Solstice armor in a different direction, the Ghost mod guarantees 10 points with a different stat than your Spark. For example, the number of remaining gears could randomly add up to 68. With a lot of Summer armor dropping throughout the event, players were much more likely to craft something fairly close to the type of armor they wanted during Solstice.
It’s safe to say that this year’s armor system was a huge improvement for Solstice. Offering what is essentially the best gear tuning opportunity in the game made the whole event very worthwhile. Even if you weren’t particularly keen on Solstice, the cool armor event was worth it. Well-deserved rewards are always a big plus in Destiny 2, and Solstice delivered them.
Similarly, we have added a new weapon to the game, the Hand Cannon Something New. This had a new special trait called Dreamwork that rewarded you for working closely with your teammates. very It’s special, but even without that add-on, Something New feels special (as does the Compass Rose, a shotgun reworked for Solstice). Bungie is using the new Origin Trait system very well. As you can see in particular here, Something New is a gun that came from a single source, with unique elements that make it feel special. Another good reason to dive into Solstice.
Bungie scrapped the old EAZ event where players were chasing hidden treasure chests after fighting waves of enemies in favor of a new activity called Bonfire Bash. It’s not particularly different from the old EAZ, where you have to kill waves of enemies, but at least things are a little fresher and you don’t have to run around the map to find those treasure chests at the end. Although obsolete (more on that later), Bonfire at least feels like a better version than anything I’ve played in this space before.
Finally, the event card system is pretty decent. All the objectives of the event are in one place, and if you want to spend a few bucks to upgrade, it also offers some premium cosmetic rewards without fundamentally adjusting how you play Solstice. The event card system is a good system for keeping things organized, but I’m not sure if anyone really cares about ghost projection or transmat effects, so it would be nice to see better rewards, but that’s just me It’s a minor addition, but a useful one anyway.
Disadvantage
Solstice saw many improvements this year, but its main drawback remained.As usual, it will take many Work to improve summer armor to the highest possible level. Not only did I have to play a lot of competitive matches and a ton of Bonfire Bash, but I also had to mess around with a lot of public events and playlist activities.It wasn’t as grindy as the past few years, but still important Destiny 2 is, in a general sense, a time away from the lengthy requirement to make numbers generally more meaningful engagement (although the hell grind certainly persists).
The task of maxing out your armor wasn’t as onerous as last year, including requirements like completing raids and dungeons.Not a high hurdle for some players, but can be done very Frustrating for others. The worst this year was having to play his 25 games in either Crucible or Gambit. It didn’t help that alternate character boosted progression was broken for most of the event. Still, 25 games is a lot for anyone. I hope Bungie finds a way to make these requirements more meaningful. For example, I want them to have some light story elements tied to them so that they feel like they’re looking for armor from around the solar system or doing something to pay their respects. Solstice is for celebrating victories. Anyway, Armor Grind was a nuisance, and after completing the Titan character which took about half the event to complete, I gave up on the rest of Solstice and abandoned Alto to his unshining fate.
The Bonfire Bash also suffers the same fate as previous EAZ events. A little ok, but not too difficult or interesting. Of course, you have to consider that annual events like this are designed for broader participation of the player base, so they’re kept casual. With this year’s tweaks, I think Bonfire Bash is less irritating than it used to be. repetition.but you still end up playing it tonsand it’s basically the same every time.
EAZ has potential as a space, it’s more vertical than anywhere else in Destiny 2 and navigating in three dimensions to complete events is a cool idea.New environmental items are also very useful . But the event itself doesn’t use space in a way that adds much to it. , allowing the event to end as quickly as possible. In fact, it’s because there are so many Bonfire Bashes to complete that everyone wants to knock out the Bonfire Bash as quickly as possible. But after 4 or 5 runs, it’s pretty much the same.
verdict
I am in favor of the 2022 Summer Solstice. At least within the framework of other Solstice events. In general it was a big improvement. However, the issues that make Solstice one of the weaker yearbooks remain. Bungie added some really great premium cosmetic items to this year’s event, and I bought some of them, but Solstice feels like it lacks character compared to other events.
However, the worst element remains the grind. It was nice to see Solstice’s armor improved to the point where it felt worth chasing, but it still required a high degree of effort to obtain, not a fun effort to challenge and beat it, but , the tiresome kind of effort, like running 25 gambit matches just to get through. I think it’s about beefing it up further so that the rewards are commensurate with the work required to earn it. It’s still not enough to boost Solstice during the event.
What do you think of this year’s Solstice? Do you like the changes? What do you want Bungie to do in the future? Am I totally wrong about that? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.
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