Just the other week inIron Banner,Destinyplayers were treated to abrand-new game modeknown as Fortress. All we were told prior to release was that it would feature three capture points and have a Cabal-themed twist. A mere couple of weeks on, and the community is already divided on the new mode, or simply avoiding it entirely.
The new Iron Banner game mode released on January 10, and with it, a juicy new reward that had the community particularly stirred up — a brand-new cosmetic shader that had a unique interaction, turning most cloth into chain mail. While it is a small cosmetic change, these are the kinds of things I, and many others in the Destiny community, foam at the mouth over. The big problem here is that to obtain the hottest new shader, players have to reset their Iron Banner rank not just once, but essentially twice, having to attain 15 of the 16 ranks needed for the second reset. For some perspective, that’s about 40 hours of grinding for the average player.
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You might think that asking an average player to commit a full-time job’s worth of hours to Iron Banner for a silly shader is ludicrous…and the game’s Reddit community would agree. As if that wasn’t enough, players are encouraged to grind later in the week as opposed to earlier, since your reputation gain increases throughout the week as you complete daily challenges. So for maximum efficiency grinding, you have four days to smash out roughly 40 hours of Iron Banner. Granted, players have 2 chances to play Iron Banner every season, so a rational person could simply do a little this week, and the rest next time Iron Banner rolls around. Unfortunately, we in the Destiny community are not generally considered rational folk. Guardians taking to Iron Banner and attempting to grind out the highly sought-after shader, have been finding that the grind is much more than they bargained for.
With more players in Iron Banner than ever before, a new game mode for people to voice their opinion over, and an excruciating grind: all this adds up to is a perfect storm for community outrage, particularly within theDestiny 2 Subreddit. I doubt players would have reacted this way if they didn’t feel stuck in the new game mode. As I said earlier, this was the premier PvP game mode during this week, replacing the casual Quickplay playlist. So instead of combating the lengthy grind, frustrated players simply gave up. Entire six-man lobbies would intentionally run around aimlessly or emote at one another furiously, refusing to participate in the point capture system, and attempting to get mercy ruled as fast as possible (a mercy rule occurs when the enemy team accrues a 50-point lead or greater, which can end the game three times faster than a typical match). Players took to Reddit andDestiny forumsalike to recruit more to their cause, farming ranks as fast as they could by rapidly losing games, which gained reputation far quicker than winning did. One miffed Redditor stating “I want Bungie to look me in the face and say that Iron Banner rep is fine” on a post in which they share a screenshot of the Destiny Companion App serviceclogged up with players loss farming.
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Some players, myself included, assumed people were boycotting Iron Banner en masse because of their disdain for the new game mode, but it was actually an MMO community doing what it does best: grinding. I somewhat enjoyed the new mode and found myself on the winning end of many matches in which the enemy team simply gave up. I truly don’t blame anyone for grinding out reputation this way. While it may go against the idea of the Crucible (a blanket term for PvP in Destiny) and Iron Banner in general, we’re all real people with real lives, and if all you want is a shiny new shader, you are well within your rights to chase it the best, most time-economical, way you know how.
Bungiehas not acknowledged the loss farming yet, but in themost recent TWAB(This Week At Bungie) it suggested that Iron Banner’s reputation gain would be around 40% faster beginning next season. This is no doubt a direct response to community uproar. Players could have simply waited until the next week of Iron Banner, but Bungie should know by now what happens when you dangle a shiny new carrot in front of the Destiny 2 community yet make it so damn hard for them to actually get it.
