Shaders in Destiny 2 are currently in an unacceptable state.
Tuesday saw the console release of Destiny 2, and thus far, it's showing to be a marked upgrade over the prior game. Shaders are one area where Bungie's work went tragically wrong despite everything else that went well with the game.
To put it simply, there are a lot of reasons why the shaders in Destiny 2 are in an undesirable condition right now.
Now for the juicy part: Shaders were used in Destiny to apply different colors to your character. You may get them in a variety of ways, including as via purchases, random drops, or rewards for completing special tasks. But what made them enjoyable was that, once you discovered any you liked, you could use them all at will, switching between them as often as you wanted.
However, in Destiny 2, this is not the case. Shaders are now consumables that vanish when used.
This is especially concerning since getting them is now harder and requires more than just purchasing them from a merchant. Shaders may now be discovered in new things called Bright Engrams at random. While it is possible to get a big supply of shaders via standard ways, purchasing them with real money is the simplest way to do so. Players may purchase a Bright Engram, which may or may not include a shader, by going to the Eververse Trading Company with silver.
It's terrible enough to have to spend real money to increase your shader collection, but the situation is made much worse by the fact that silver isn't always cheap and the expenses mount up. Based on a cursory look at the PlayStation Store, silver may be purchased at four different pricing points:
- 500 Silver for $4.99
- 1000 (+100) Silver for $9.99
- 2000 (+300) Silver for $19.99
- 5000 (+800) Silver for $49.99
Now, take into account that:
- 1 Bright Engram costs 200 Silver
- 3 Bright Engrams costs 500 silver
- 5 Bright Engrams costs 800 silver
Obviously, if you want the best chance of obtaining a shader, you should purchase in large quantities. But given that the maximum price point is $49.99, which is just $10 less than the game itself, isn't it better to simply spend the additional money and get your buddy a copy? In such case, at least you can endure looking awful together.
Regretfully, things only get worse from here on out. Shaders were limited to one piece of armor at a time by Bungie, for whatever reason. This meant that if a player wanted their complete outfit to match, they would have required to get four copies of the same shader. The odd thing about this scenario, however, is that Bungie appeared to foresee that this would be an issue and decided to take a harsh approach to solving it by providing shaders in stacks of three. This implies that the shader will change three of your four pieces of armor, but to complete the set, you'll still need to locate another shader in the same color scheme.
What happens if you decide to use a different color palette? In the unlikely event that you decide to switch back, you'd best hope you have two more stacks of that same shader.
What occurs when you purchase new equipment? You are familiar with the procedure.
The most unfortunate aspect of all of this is that, in the weeks before the release of Destiny 2, there was absolutely no discussion of this change. Given the extensive media attention and Bungie's own marketing campaigns and press releases, one would assume that such a change would be made public very quickly. Because of this, several gamers were completely taken aback by the shift and turned to Reddit to express their outrage.
As of the time of writing, a thread detailing this same problem has 37.5k upvotes. Redditor WeilageM urges everyone to refrain from purchasing any Destiny 2 microtransactions until Bungie restores unrestricted usage for shaders.
Even if shader drops were so regular that you never ran out of the ones you wanted, WeilageM says that having a library you can use whenever you want is preferable than maintaining a stockpile of shaders. Why even have them be edible at that point? Because the idea is for you to run out, lose patience, and simply start flooding Eververse with cash so you can really accumulate a stockpile.
Of course, Destiny 2 has additional problems with microtransactions, such modifications that interfere with gameplay and Bright Dust. Shaders, on the other hand, are the worst offenders.
As previously said, it is quite feasible to get a whole supply of shaders using free-to-play methods (my editor reports having more than he knows what to do with after 20–30 hours of gameplay), so maybe this conundrum has a different interpretation for various people since, after all, they are cosmetic things. All things considered, however, it's evident that Bungie either deliberately reworked shaders to fit into their microtransaction system in order to make money, or it felt that having frequent consumable drops was preferable to rarer permanent prizes.
Either way, it's evident that Destiny aficionados are unhappy with the modification and are beginning to criticize Bungie for it. It is now just a matter of waiting to see whether Bungie will pay attention.