How’s Trials? (Destiny)

by CruelLEGACEY , Toronto, Tuesday, April 07, 2020, 11:48 (1477 days ago) @ Cody Miller

The lack of adept weapons is clearly due to the phasing out of elemental primaries. And if adept weapons were just kinetic and better than normal, they’d end up getting nerfed just like Not Forgotten when they begin to show up a lot. It’s the same dilemma over and over. If you make it good enough to be “worth” it, then it will just unbalance the game. Make a balanced weapon and it’s just not special to get.

Setting aside the fact that Squid pointed out in his reply (Bungie continued to feature Adept primaries in Trials long after elemental primaries went away), this whole question of balance vs desirable is one of those cases where Bungie’s words and actions just don’t line up with reality, IMO. Year 2 of D2, we were drowning in awesome, unique, POWERFUL weapons, and it was the most fun that the game has been. Then; around Season of Opumlence, the nerfs started rolling in, and the game has become progressively less enjoyable ever since.

Whisper of the Worm wasn’t a problem when we also had Sleeper Simulant, Tractor Cannon, and Legrnd of Acrius along with a bunch of other great power weapons all using the same slot. Not to mention the fact that it was an exotic that required completing a really challenging mission to acquire, then multiple weeks of mastering that mission to complete the catalyst. Let it be a little overpowered in a few niche situations. It’s fun. If Bungie can’t live with a weapon like that being a bit overpowered in a handful of PvE encounters, then why the hell bother with this kind of thing at all? But no, they nerfed it into mediocrity, and now you never see anyone use it outside of maybe 1 or 2 raid bosses. Same with Sleeper, and a bunch of the other standout weapons.

And don’t get me started on Luna’s Howl/Not Forgotten, Lol. They were never a problem over on PC, because none of the other hand cannons on PC suffered from the accuracy/recoil issues that made them so tough to use on Console (if I remember correctly, neither of those guns landed in the top 10 usage list on PC... LH might have slipped in at number 10, but barely). Basically, Luna/NF on console behaved the way all hand cannons behave on PC (in terms of their accuracy and consistency). So while one could argue that the guns needed slight toning down, they certainly didn’t warrant getting slaughtered the way they did, especially on the PvE side.

And more to my point, it’s not like the crucible is any more balanced now than it used to be. Now it’s all Hard Light and Revoker spam. There will always be a new weapon at the top of the heap. So the heavy handed nerfs didn’t really improve anything. All they did was take guns that people loved using and were excited to have, and ruined them.