Destiny 2’s New ‘Win To Unlock The Ability To Pay’ Ornament Is Bad

It’s always fun when Bungie does something like let a community member reveal a new item coming to Destiny 2, but poor Benny Shmurda was given the short end of the stick when it came to revealing a new Trials ornament for Conditional Finality.

Here’s the gun and the idea:

A “Bungie Reward” is when a player achieves something, like beating a raid early, for the ability to order a physical item like a raid-themed jacket in the Bungie Store. It stands to reason that Bungie isn’t just going to mass send out free jackets to everyone, so it’s a relatively uncontroversial practice.

This? No. No no.

Changing this idea to an in-game system where you are now being asked to achieve something (go flawless in Trials of Osiris) to unlock the ability to buy a digital ornament for real money (this will cost about $7-10 depending on your Silver stores). Even if it will be “free” for in-game Bright Dust later, it’s still a frown-worthy practice.

While most players and creators seem to be in my camp, I’ve seen a few pushing back, including a high-profile player like Saltagreppo:

No, it’s different. Again, a Seal is a physical item that Bungie is not going to automatically ship to everyone, so paying for that is expected. It’s also not the same as getting a dungeon or raid exotic and having the (admittedly annoying) pop-up asking you to buy an ornament after. That is a wholly new gun you just got, which is the prize. Here, the Trials ornament is the prize for a gun you’ve had a while. And you would expect it to drop as a reward from playing Trials itself, not simply unlocking the ability to pay for it. It’s just not the same thing.

The idea that Bungie will offer it for bright dust later feels like a half measure, and if they’re going to bother doing that part of it to make it “free” later, then just offer it as a drop (perhaps not a guaranteed one) from Trials, which lord knows always needs fun new rewards to chase in the decaying state of Destiny PvP. But this went from an idea that was an automatic community win to an example of desperate nickel and diming. It’s worse than simply buying a Trials ornament for a gun in the store (available to anyone), which they’ve done before, given the way it’s being presented and unlocked.

Will the community cause a big enough fuss to change this? I don’t know. Bungie has enough going on with the huge launch of Edge of Fate next week, so this may get put on a burner. But it would have to be resolved before people could start to pay for it, and Bungie may just throw up their hands and not bother trying to escape the controversy as the community moves on to something else. But if it becomes a regular thing? That’s not going to be good at all.

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