Destiny 2’s ‘Arms Week’ Brings Some Unwelcome, Ill-Timed Surprises

Destiny 2 has brought back the concept of Arms Week in The Edge of Fate, a new event meant to paper over the fact that there are no more week-to-week story developments or missions in this expansion, due to there not being an attached season anymore.

It sounds pretty cool, a unique set of weapons for players to hunt and this time, that includes the first ever spread shot Hand Cannon, which is about as close as we’re going to get to a sawed-off shotgun in the game.

The problem? Bungie just cannot resist badgering players for “engagement,” or doing its best to push microtransactions. Add in some more baffling decisions on top of that, and what should have been an easy layup is yet again another series of annoyances. I promise you I am as sick as writing these up as you are of reading them, but it just keeps happening. The problems:

• The event is structured so that you have to complete almost every single daily and weekly challenge in order to get through the 15-rank pass that includes the best rewards, a holofoil Hand Cannon, at the end. There is no leeway, meaning you cannot miss a day in full. Unless…

• The event pushes microtransactions to get around this. You can buy “reroll” chips that let you get 1-3 new challenges for $1-2 in Silver. Or, of course, you can simply buy your way through the mini pass at $1 per rank. We are, quite literally, being nickel and dimed here in a way that feels more gross than usual given how small and easy this event was supposed to be. Just…nothing can be purely for fun anymore. It has to drag out engagement and have microtransactions somewhere.
• Past that, there are bizarre offerings from Ada-1, who lets you buy a whole host of old Hand Cannons from previous eras. Cool, right? Not especially, given that zero of these Hand Cannons use the new Tier system, meaning they do not qualify as “New Gear” to be used with specific modifiers or have bonus damage this season. So, it’s a largely pointless use of event currency.
• There’s also the pricing that if you get every bit of free currency the event offers, the maximum thing you can buy is a single Ascendant Shard. Why.

• There’s one more thing players have discovered in that focusing higher Tiers of the new weapons, the Trace Rifle and Hand Cannon, requires you to hit certain Guardian Ranks. You can’t focus Tier 2 at all unless you’re rank 5. Tier 3 requires Rank 7 and Tier 4 requires the currently borderline impossible Rank 9. It’s part of Bungie’s new push to tie Guardian Rank to actual rewards, and seeing it laid bare like this has upset players, as it appears to be a curled monkey paw when previously it’s been said Guardian Ranks should “matter.”

The fact that I can find this many flaws with a single, seemingly simple week-long event feels like a metaphor for everything Bungie has been getting wrong lately. The good news? The spread shot Hand Cannon is pretty fun, at least.

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