Really enjoyed the read, truly (Destiny)

by Pyromancy , discovering fire every week, Monday, July 02, 2018, 11:14 (2119 days ago) @ CyberKN
edited by Pyromancy, Monday, July 02, 2018, 11:25

Nostalgia as a weapon of war, Style as a hallmark of victory

In the early parts of the game's life, the SUROS Regime exotic auto-rifle was a staple of the Destiny arsenal. The sleek sci-fi aesthetic, trademark ping-pong-ball firing sound, and dominance in the early auto-rifle focused meta- these traits combined to make it a piece of gear that was as equally infamous as it was prized and sought-after. It was the gun that I put all of my early resources into leveling up, and the tool of destruction that saw me through my first attempt and completion of the Vault of Glass.

Fast forward to the present. Destiny is still a game I engage with casually, and today I found myself beholding a strange sight:

The player vault in Destiny has expanded significantly over time, but one thing has remained constant: the order in which the items contained therein are displayed. The order is such that the first item on the list will always be the item that has been in the vault the longest, without being taken out. The first item in my list… is the SUROS Regime. The same SUROS Regime, in fact, that I used in the aforementioned VoG run.

I loved this about the D1 Vault.
In some ways, I have always felt like the gear that you earn or posess and the order in which you received them or leave them, in some very small way helps to tell the story of your Legend or your path to 'Become Legend'. (Remember that slogan?)

There are some logical reasons for this; SUROS Regime’s early dominance in the Crucible lead to Bungie swiftly and heavy-handedly nerfing the range and damage of ALL auto-rifles, regardless of archetype or rarity. As I acquired more viable weapons, at some point during The Dark Below I had shuffled the gun into the vault, and not had a reason to retrieve it. I never even bothered to “ascend” the gun’s light level to the max value in Year 1, despite the relatively cheap nature of doing so with Exotics.

I never received the Regime when it was The New Hotness in the Crucible. And I don't think I had enough Strange Coin to buy it when Xur first offered it(however early he did offer it, I forget). I can relate to the story though through other weapons which had a similar "story arc" though

The Taken King eventually rolled around, and with it came the wave of enhanced “Year 2” exotics. The new SUROS Regime sported a shiny new black coat of paint, as well as a new optional “Spinning Up” Perk, which allowed it slightly more use in a meta that favoured raw damage output over the accuracy that the old “Focused Fire” perk afforded. In short, even in light-level agnostic activities, it was functionally a better version of the old gun.

Seeing that old gun in my vault piqued my curiosity; the number of times I had used the new SUROS Regime were few and far between. The Rise of Iron expansion had introduced a swath of “ornaments” for exotic weapons, and I could not recall which variants were available for the SUROS Regime. That gap in my knowledge bothered me.

I closed the vault and darted over to the Silver Dust kiosk, paging through the various ornaments available for purchase, trying to remind myself of the options. The first, “Basilisk's Glory”, reskinned the gun completely black, save for a gaudy yellow-range phoenix decal along the side.

But even after running through all the ornaments twice, I couldn’t find a second ornament. Was there only the one? Most had two, save for certain exceptions like the raid exotics.

I returned to the vault and paged through until I found my Year 2 Suros. It DID have a second ornament- “Red Memorial”

Now I was confused. Why wasn’t this ornament in the Silver Dust kiosk with all the others?

A quick Google search revealed that this ornament could only be acquired by completing the seventh-of-eleven steps in the Age of Triumph questline- which I had neglected upon reaching the step involving completion of Shaxx’s Crucible bounties. As far as I am aware, this is the only weapon ornament that is obtainable by means other than Destiny’s silver/lootbox economy (if I am mistaken, feel free to let me know).

When Age of Triumph launched, I was under the impression, from others and my own cursory research, that the only reward from the questline of the same name was an event-themed class item. I had completely missed this.

I double-checked status of my lingering crucible bounties- I only had to compete two to advance the questline, and I was four games total (or so I thought) away from doing just that.

(Side note: The two unfinished steps in the above screenshot had a bizarre text-scrolling bug, which is visible. As someone who implements and fixes such features for a living, this was slightly maddening to me)

After considering my position, my task was immediately apparent.

SUROS Regime was withdrawn from the vault and equipped, I queued up for some Clash…

And got rekt.

I wish I could fill this section of this post with dramatic tales about how SUROS and I dominated just like in the good old days, but reality can be a harsh mistress.

It turns out the people who still play D1 PvP, and not just the featured playlist that gives bonus rewards, are EXCEPTIONALLY good at it. Who would have thought?

Mercifully, the Shaxx bounties don’t require wins, only match completions. It only took me six games to knock out both bounties.

Despite playing a fair amount of Trials of Osiris, my luck with end-of-match drops was always pretty bad; No shaders, no ships. So you can imagine my surprise when I turn in the Shaxx Bounties, and receive two new shaders that I thought any chance of acquiring had long since passed me by. It would appear there’s a few surprises left in Destiny for me to uncover.

After turning in the bounties, The speaker grants me the trophy that started me off on all this. I’m pretty surprised at how much I’ve enjoyed the chase for this virtual trinket. This gun is synonymous with my nostalgia for vanilla Destiny, and as I’ve mentioned before, I’m a sucker for nostalgia, real or manufactured. For that, SUROS Regime will remain out of the vault for a little while longer.

I’ve got an idea about how to make this thing go full-circle.

P.S. After re-reading this, I realize there’s not a lot of substance to this post that most people would find very interesting. It just felt good to write it. Apologies if you made it this far!

P.P.S. The last step in the quest is completing a weekly featured raid. Who’s in?