Destiny 2’s The Dawning holiday event returns tomorrow to bolster the Black Armory expansion, though it’s free for all players regardless of the Annual Pass. And with its arrival, it’s made me return to an old topic yet again.
It’s time for Destiny 2 to stop selling armor through Eververse, once and for all. It’s annoying for players and it isn’t helping Bungie make more microtransaction cash either. Why? Let me explain.
Last year at this time, the armor issue was actually less prevalent because at that point, armor was literally nothing but cosmetic. But then Forsaken hit, armor had perks again and suddenly, everyone was looking for their coordinated builds and armor god rolls yet again.
The problem is that Eververse is still selling armor in this definitely-not-cosmetic era, but the issue isn’t what you think, it feeling pay-to-win or something like that. In fact, it’s the opposite, Eververse armor is relatively useless because it’s more or less impossible to farm for a full set with all the perks you want, whether you grind for Bright Engrams (Etched Engrams) naturally, or whether you actually throw down cash for Engrams.
Some math here:
Since Bungie is now legally required to show the drop rates of its loot boxes (Engrams), we know from this page that there is a 16% chance to get a piece of armor from a Bright Engram. That’s a little worse than a 1 in 6 shot.
Then you have a 1 in 5 chance that it’s actually the piece you’re looking for. I’m not positive whether there’s a knockout system until you have a full set, but once you do and are looking for more rolls, then it would be 1 in 5 for further duplicates.
Then say, you’re looking for a particular perk set on those Eververse gloves you like so much. Well, referencing the enormous list of potential rolls, you have a 1 in 20 chance of getting the even first “loader” perk you want and a 1 in 9 chance of getting the second scavenger/finder perk you want. To get both perks you want? That’s uh, not great odds.
Add in a chance or two that the store may be selling that one armor piece in a given week with set rolls, and you have all your shots at getting the gear want. As you can see, if you add up these 1 in 6, 1 in 5, 1 in 20 and 1 in 9 chances, getting even one perfect piece of Eververse armor you want is…almost certain not to happen.
Clearly, I am someone who plays Destiny 2 all the time, earning every free Bright Engram I can every week. I am also someone who admits that I sometimes drop money on Engrams. But say, when the Dragonfly set was available, after countless, countless engrams, the most drops I had of any one piece of armor for any one class was three Titan arms, and surprise, none of them were the rolls I was looking for.
You can say “aha, this is just a ploy to get players to spend money!” but no, the odds are so bad there’s really no point even trying to pay the Silver price for boatloads of engrams because you will almost certainly not find what you’re looking for and instead end up with a pile of legendary ghost shells and ships most of the time. This is not something you can effectively grind for or effectively gamble for, even if you’re throwing down a ton of cash.
Why this is an issue now is that with the launch of Black Armory, players have gotten just two new in-game armor sets. One that is going to take a long, long time to grind out from specific Black Armory bounties, one that is raid-specific that 80% of the non-raid-clearing playerbase will never see. But now with the Dawning arriving, that now makes two additional armor sets that are only available in the Eververse. The current season 5 armor sets I’ve already talked about, and they’re probably the coolest armor sets the game has ever sold because they reference past characters in Destiny lore like Andal Brask and Ulan Tan. The Dawning set looks neat, but it will be even harder to get rolls for because of the incredibly short time limit of these holiday events.
Even if a new Iron Banner set is coming (which I think is the case), that still means that 40% of all the new armor sets for this season are in Eververse, and are more or less impossible to farm good rolls for, for all the reasons I’ve just mentioned. To actually use any of these sets effectively in-game, you have to get either insanely lucky with rolls for your build, or you have to say screw it, and just prioritize your look over any semblance of functionality. It’s not hard to get one complete set of armor for free, but in an age when I need to find 50 pairs of Scatterhorn boots to get the perks I want, that’s not good enough and these armor sets are more or less useless as a result.
Taking whatever sets were designed for Eververse and simply putting them in the game as drops or quest rewards or something would bolster the content of expansions like Black Armory, and the store surely wouldn’t lose that much revenue because it’s impossible to effectively farm this armor for rolls, even for big-spending whales. Eververse would be left with stuff that is still very attractive, when I’m buying Engrams I’m usually looking for exotic ghosts, sparrows, ships and legendary/exotic ornaments. And if Bungie ever figures out that they could make money by selling character redesigns and hairstyles and face tattoos and what not, that would make more money than these armor sets ever would.
Selling armor in Eververse has always felt weird, but we’ve entered a new era of the game where it just flat-out doesn’t make sense. Not for the health of the game, not even to push microtransactions, because of how armor works now. Take armor out of Eververse, and focus on other cosmetics that actually will encourage purchases.
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