Destiny 2: Lightfallhas finally landed, and with it comes many worthwhile and exciting additions. We finally get a second darkness subclass with Strand; an interestinglyfamiliar location with Neomuna; and an all-new campaign storyline complete with Legendary difficulty for those whoreallywant to test out their strongest character builds.
I’ve got quite a few of those for my Guardian, so the thing I was personally most excited for in the lead up to Lightfall was the new customizable loadout system. For some, that might seem like a small thing to get excited about — but there are many Guardians who take build-craftingveryseriously.
At the launch of Lightfall, I had 37 builds for my Hunter alone. That might sound excessive, but I wanted to make one for each piece of exotic armor in the game. Over the years,Bungiehas added hundreds of beautiful armor pieces to pair with those exotics, so it was really important to me that each of my loadouts was unique in its appearance, its capabilities, and even its personality. I’ve lovingly crafted each of these builds, and I want to continue to use them all.
Admittedly some are far more viable than others in the majority of content. When I’m doing high-level PvE activities, there are few builds that are more useful than my Gyrfalcon’s Hauberk build. I’ve named this loadout The Icarus, because it looks like the falcon on the chest piece is falling away from the sun symbol on the Cover of the Exile helmet it’s paired with. This build lets me stay invisible almost indefinitely, making it one of the strongest loadouts I’ve got. But it gets kind of boring to use it all the time.
When it’s time to switch things up and dish out some serious DPS on a boss, I’m quite fond of Star-Eater Scales. This exotic makes your super, well, super-powered. I think the perfect name for this build is The Whaler because it mostly uses gear from the pirate-themed Season of Plunder, and because it takes down our biggest foes, or as I called them, “Moby Dicks”.
And if I’m jumping into the Crucible I like throwing on my Oathkeepers gear. These exotic arms let you keep a bow drawn indefinitely, and when paired with the Le Monarque bow, you can even maintain your poison arrows no matter how long the bow is drawn. The poison theme plus the snake designs on the Luxe armor set inspired me to name it The Southside Serpent. Yeah, I watched Riverdale. Don’t judge. (Ed Note: So much judgment. All the judgment.)
Those are just 3 examples out of 37. And up until now, we’ve all been dealing with having to clumsily switch around armor, weapons, mods, aspects and fragments any time we want to change our loadout. All of that was meant to improve with Lightfall, and the system itself (mostly) doesn’t disappoint. I’d like to be able to name my builds (clearly), but switching between them is smooth.
So, why am I not jumping for joy like a new celebratory emote in the Eververse store? Well, because I have 37 lovingly-crafted builds, and only 6 build slots.
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The 3 builds I mentioned before already take up half my loadout slots. So, which of the other 31 do I have to leave out of this great new loadout system? The Mad Bomber isn’t the most useful, but I still laugh out loud every time I dodge away from a Titan in the Crucible and they blow up. And there are probably better ways to help keep my teammates alive than by shooting them with Lumina, but when I suit up as The White Knight, it’s because that’s what I feel like doing.
Then there are those times I just want to get back to classics, and use Crimson with Lucky Pants. They used to be my only pants (yes, I watched Futurama, too, and refused to wear other pants for a long time because of that episode). I first put this build together at the beginning ofDestiny 2, and it doesn’t feel right to leave it in the closet.
The truth is, only having 6 build slots means this amazing new loadout system isn’t just being underutilized - it’s downright worthless. It only makes a big difference when you’re switching same-subclass builds; like from one solar build to another that utilizes different aspects and fragments.
It wasn’t actually that difficult to have 4 builds you could quickly switch between before, as long as each one used a different subclass. Whatever capabilities you had set to the corresponding subclass would still be there. With Strand, it would have been possible to do this with 5 loadouts easily enough. So having 6 slots to start with is only shaves a few seconds off of switching things around.
And I know it’s possible to eventually unlock 4 more slots, but it looks like that’s going to be one hell of a grind, and unfortunately during that grind I won’t be able to properly enjoy the new loadout system! It’s truly frustrating. Especially because I can’t think of a good reason to gate these slots behind a level-up system — at least, not for people who have already sunk thousands of hours into this game.
That’s why I’m actually so disappointed with the new loadout system. Not because it’s bad, or doesn’t work well, or doesn’t do many of the things I want it to. It’s just that it’s good, but I can’t really use it to the extent that I’d like to. Maybe I don’t need 37 build slots. However, as a veteran of this game for nearly a decade, youhave togive me more to work with than 6, and maybe eventually 10.
I want to finally be able to seamlessly switch from my Mask of Bakris build (The Scarecrow) tomy Renewal Grasps one(The Cryomancer) without having to reference my spreadsheet. Let us experience the great content you make, Bungie. Please. We’re going to play the game even if we’re not being forced to grind for loadout slots. We’re veterans of this game because welike playing it. So let us spend more time slaying Moby Dicks and less time switching around fragments.
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