Destiny 2’s ‘Shiny’ Weapons Are Its Best Loot Pursuit In Ages, Minus One Thing

“I experienced being genuinely excited for a loot drop for the first time in probably 4+ years thanks to the holofoil (shiny) versions of weapons. I forgot what that was like.”

That’s a quote from Datto, one of Destiny 2’s highest profile content creators, putting forth a thought that has been on my mind not just since Into the Light launched, but for years. The concept of “shinies” is mainly from Pokémon, rare, alternate-colored versions of Pokémon you can find that are often impossibly rare, and more recently, they’ve been a staple of hunts in Pokémon GO.

Now, with its BRAVE arsenal, Destiny has brought the concept of shinies into the game. Those shinies have a unique look to them that set them apart from the base model. They come fully masterworked. And they have four perk options instead of just two. And they are rare.

To me, the concept of shinies dropping is a much, much more satisfying loot pursuit than it is finding five red borders to craft almost any weapon in the game, or even getting an adept drop with a good roll. There’s something about the visual rarity, the scarceness of the drops and the mildly useful extra utility with the multiple perks that yes, makes it one of the most “genuinely exciting” loot drops in Destiny in years. Datto is right, Destiny 2 has many great weapons but that feeling about getting hyped for a drop has mostly faded for a long time now. My opinion is that crafting made that infinitely worse, even if it is a guaranteed path to get “perfect” weapons (still, through red border RNG, which is far less exciting).

I talked about this a long time ago, that I wanted to see Destiny 2 get shiny weapons. I wrote about this after my fabled quest to get The Other Half, the purple Halo-ish sword from Dares of Eternity that had just a few different perks but was…purple. And rare (at least it used to be). Here’s me talking about how this would work with other weapons:

“You could have one unique shader that only drops shiny weapons, and we’ve seen that a few times in the past with rare shaders (remember that one Black Armory one?).”

I didn’t think that shinies needed to have a better perk pool like The Other Half did, though:

“As for a better perk pool? That I’m less sure about. I got lucky with my Other Half roll, but trying to farm an actual roll on a “shiny” weapon like this is borderline impossible, given the drop rates. Granted, I guess that’s similar to trying to find a Pokémon that’s both shiny and 100% IV, but still. I think getting a good base roll would be hard enough, much less having Bungie come up with a completely different perk pool every time they did something like this.”

This was back in 2021, and arriving here today this is…essentially what happened. Shinies have a unique look that other weapons don’t have and can’t get. Shinies do not have a unique perk pool, just more perk options. I did suggest something about shinies being different elemental drops to mix things up more, like in this case, a Solar Recluse or something, but that messes with the element 3.0 perks now that those subclasses are fully rolled out, so that wouldn’t work now.

The one problem I think is pretty obvious, the fact that there is a ticking clock on these limited edition shinies, which only runs for the next two months until The Final Shape gets here. After that, these shinies will stop dropping altogether and only the base versions can be farmed. A true “you had to be there” thing, but everyone just views this as FOMO. Timegated FOMO, in fact, given that six more weapons are being rolled out in the next three weeks. As much as I like the concept of shinies, I cannot get behind this idea of such a rare drop only being live for 1-2 months, and creates a sense of uncomfortable urgency rather than fun.

I do think that Bungie has learned that people like this concept, however, and we will see more of this in the future. For what activities? I don’t know, though I don’t think it will replace crafting or anything. But I’d rather hunt for a shiny raid or seasonal weapon than I would just getting the borders to craft one. And lest we forget, Bungie is introducing a system to enhance these base perks on these BRAVE weapons, so they will compete with crafted weapons soon enough.

It’s a great addition, and if they could take the timegate off, it would be perfect.

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