It’s been several years now since Bungie replaced pinnacle weapons in Destiny 2 with what they call “ritual weapons.” It’s also been about that long since we got a really unique weapon from that system, not to mention one that requires an interesting objective to acquire.
Sometimes, I think back to the insane grind of unlocking The Mountaintop grenade launcher back in the day. Yes, it took a lot of time, and required more effort than the battle passes we have these days. It required you to get a lot of kills in the Crucible using a grenade launcher at a time when using one of those weapons was truly an uphill battle. But many of us fought through that pain and frustration because we knew a reward that was truly worth it was waiting for us at the top. The whole way through that grind, I had Three Days Grace’s “The Mountain” playing in my head. Even when I felt like dying, I just kept climbing the mountain. And The Mountaintop was so worth it.
In Vanguard activities, The Mountaintop decimated bosses in conjunction with the (now gone) auto-reload capability of a Titan’s rally barricade. It was almost like having a full-auto rocket launcher, and watching those health bars diminish under the assault of my well-earned toy was a delight. But alas, all good things must come to an end, and little did I know that Bungie had an avalanche ready to knock me off that figurative mountaintop.
Yes, The Mountaintop was overpowered, and so were several of the other amazing weapons or abilities at one point or another. I still think fondly of when Wish-Ender was doing 4x its intended damage due to a bug in the game. Before that damage bump, I felt like Wish-Ender was a mediocre reward for its Dungeon-related questline, but when it got that unintended damage boost it became powerful, fun, and downright satisfying to use. They patched it about three years ago now — oh, and guess how long it’s been since I used Wish-Ender: yeah, about three years.
Or how about when we had a really cool synergy with Rat King and Omnioculus? Acquiring Rat King originally involved a clever, riddle-filled questline, and alongside Omnioculus it allowed Hunters to keep themselves and their allies invisible almost indefinitely, while also providing healing and damage resistance. It was definitely strong, but allowed you to play as an effective support Hunter – something that you can’t do nearly as well these days. If you go back and look at Reddit threads discussing this build, everyone talks about how much they love it but should probably stay quiet about it lest Bungie comes after it. Well, they did.
None of these nerfs compare to what happened to The Mountaintop though. Eventually, just like many other amazing weapons, Bungie capped its power level at 1060, making it completely useless in PvE activities. And, as if to add insult to injury, they eliminated the questlines to acquire many weapons, so any ol’ Guardian Joe can just go to the Monument to Lost Lights and purchase a Mountaintop or Rat King for some common currencies. The Mountaintop was fun for a while, but these days it feels like climbing that mountain was wasted effort.
These days, Bungie has become a bit too efficient at identifying something that’s game-breakingly good, making said item inaccessible, then sending through some nerfs before reactivating it. I didn’t even get to enjoy the Retrofit Escapade machine gun with Gyrfalcon’s Hauberk before that combo was gone. Admittedly, that build was actually breaking the game for some people, but surely Bungie could have kept the fun factor while patching out the game-breaking bug? Regardless, is it really necessary for it to do this in the cases where it’s not truly breaking the game?
I guess the perceived risk here is that if something is too powerful, nobody will use anything else. But the truth is, that’s already how Destiny 2 works. There are things in the game now that are way more powerful than anything else out there. While soloing the Legendary Lightfall Campaign, I can’t tell you how many times it forced me to use Strand, and I was saying to myself, “this is so weak and terrible, please let me go back to Void so I can be invisible forever.” In high-level activities, I only ever use Gyrfalcon with Graviton Lance, because nothing else is as broken.
But what happens when something even more powerful comes along, and then you start going up a mountain of endless power creep? I’d actually argue that power creep is fine in a PvE game. Keep it out of the Crucible, but shouldn’t the new toys in the PvE experience always be more fun than the stuff that came before? Especially when we grinded our hearts out to acquire said toy? I don’t like playing a whole Legendary Campaign to unlock Strand only to go back to Void immediately for the new Raid.
Pinnacle weapons were one of the few times Bungie created tools for us that it knew would be overpowered. It was allowed because Bungie knew only the most dedicated Guardians would go through the grind needed to obtain them. Hunting for weapons these days just doesn’t feel as exciting as it once did. In Season 19, I got dozens of the ironically-named Path of Least Resistance trace rifle, which is far less rewarding than working toward that one unique item, and knowing exactly what you need to do to get it. There are a lot of weapons with voltshot in the game. But there’s only one with micro-missile.
There are plenty of ways to go about allowing us to have fun with these overpowered weapons and builds without making all our effort and creativity be for naught. Let’s not have another season where the item we’re meant to strive for is a trace rifle with voltshot.
