Guardians aren't happy with Destiny 2's new Armor Synthesis system: here’s how to fix it

In the latest ‘This Week at Bungie’ blog post, Bungie gave the full rundown on how the new transmog system, ‘Armor Synthesis’, would function within Destiny 2 and it would be an understatement to say it caused some slight discomfort amongst the community.

The transmog system that Bungie would be debuting in Season 14 is the type of system that most of the community had been dreading since the announcement last year. Not only is there a cap on how many pieces of armor can be made into Universal Ornaments, but the system itself is incredibly convoluted.

With the recent removal of sunsetting, Bungie has shown that they are willing to listen to the community and rollback on certain changes that have missed the mark. With that in mind, here are two simple things Bungie can do with Armor Synthesis in order to make it much more appealing to the community.

Remove the cap

When Armor Synthesis releases in Season 14, Bungie will allow the player to obtain 20 Synthweave, the material used to create Universal Ornaments, per character as a form of celebration of the release. When Season 14 ends, the number of Synthweave allowed to be obtained will drop to 10 per character, per Season.

This is by far the worst aspect of the new Armor Synthesis system. Any form of arbitrary cap in games like Destiny 2 always feels awful to the players who have time to grind. If you said to yourself “Hey it would be kinda sweet to have Universal Ornaments for all the armor in the game”, this would be borderline impossible due to the cap and the amount of new armor that is released every Season or Expansion. Borderline impossible, that is, unless you pay.

Alongside obtaining Synthweave through Ada-1, players are able to purchase Synthweave directly from Eververse for Silver to bypass the Seasonal cap. This shows the purpose of the cap as a pure cash grab. Bungie is hoping that once a player reaches the Synthweave cap that they will be more likely to spend Silver on some more Synthweave for more armor they still wish to turn into Universal Ornaments.

I understand that at the end of the day Bungie is a business and their prime directive is to make money but this really isn't the right course of action, especially not at the cost of players goodwill.

In a perfect world, when Season 14 launches, all Legendary and Rare armor would be immediately available as Universal Ornaments. This is honestly a little unrealistic though as this would drive down player retention which is a massive statistic for Bungie.

A better system would for there simply to be no cap. Keep the grind for Synthweave, keep the Eververse purchases for those that want to skip the grind, but allow players to set themselves a long term goal within the Season and earn as much Synthweave as they can.

Remove Excess Currencies

Within the Armor Synthesis system there are three different currencies that the player must hold on to in order to create Universal Ornaments. First, you must kill enemies in order to obtain Synthstrand, then spend this on bounties from Ada-1 for Synthcord, then convert this to Synthweave at the Loom in the Tower. This Synthweave can then be used to armor pieces to create a Universal Ornament. This hilarious comment from the TWAB thread on the Destiny subreddit really highlights the absurdity of it all.

The simple fact of the matter is Synthstrand and Synthcord shouldnt exist. You should be able to go to Ada-1 and buy a bounty for Glimmer like every other bounty in the game and complete this bounty to earn your Synthweave. This would also cut down on needless trips to the Tower, something that frustrated players back in Season of the Forge when grinding for Forge weapons, as there is now no need to convert the Synthcord to Synthweave using the Loom.

Some would say that simply buying a bounty and completing it for Synthweave makes it too quick, something Bungie wouldn't be interested in as they want players playing the game. A simple solution to this would be to make the bounties a bit longer, or make earning Synthweave a multi-stage quest. This would keep the overall time the same while removing the fluff from the inventory system.

I don't like making articles like this but when Bungie seems to be intent on making tone-deaf decisions, like sunsetting, its articles like these and voicing opinions on social media that serve to remind Bungie what the most important part of this business is, the players.

What do you think of the new Armor Synthesis system? Are there other ways Bungie can improve it? Leave a comment below or as a reply on Twitter.