Bungie plans to adjust the shader mechanics in Destiny 2. The shaders may soon function similarly to those in Destiny 1.
When Destiny 2 was released in early September, the shaders triggered the first medium-sized shitstorm around the MMO shooter: Because it turned out that these items are one-time-use shaders. They are consumables that can only be used once. If you change your armor, you need new shaders.
And since you can quickly acquire shaders through the Eververse, the cash shop in Destiny 2, the shader issue became quite significant and dominated the media in the early days.
Although the initial excitement about the one-time-use shaders subsided after a few weeks, the shaders are still criticized in 2018: As playtime increases, Guardians found that they get overwhelmed with shaders in the endgame, making it a tedious task to manage them. You can only dismantle one shader at a time, making it a process that takes several minutes if you want to tidy up your inventory a bit – or have to, to accept new shaders at the Postmaster.
Bungie plans changes to the shader system
In the latest blog post, Bungie takes an in-depth stance on the shader issue. They have been gathering feedback since launch and have heard that players are complaining about the tedious process of deleting shaders one by one.
Bungie has often been asked why they don’t implement a mechanic to dismantle multiple shaders at once. This works with other items after all. Senior Design Lead Tyson Green explains that this is not so easy to implement. There is a problem with shaders.
Every shader, according to Green, is an individual item and individual items trigger individual reward bundles when dismantled. If you dismantle a whole stack of shaders at once, dozens (or hundreds) of reward bundles are triggered simultaneously. This creates a challenge that the developers still need to address.
Because a mass dismantling of shaders is not only difficult because a large number of rewards must be delivered at once, but also because the amount of produced rewards must fit into your inventory so that they do not get lost directly.
They are still looking for solutions to the problem.
Green states:
- It should become easier to dismantle shaders en masse. They are looking for “mass dismantling solutions.”
- Bungie knows that Guardians miss the shader mechanics from Destiny 1. They want to reintroduce this, but without losing the ability to infuse shaders into weapons, ghosts, ships, etc., alongside armor pieces.
- They also understand the community’s desire for greater freedom in using shaders, that their availability is not limited. Therefore, Bungie is trying to bring back the shader collections or find ways to create copies of shaders in possession.
The shader mechanics in Destiny 1 were such that you only had to obtain each shader once. If you dismantled it, you could retrieve it for free from the shader collection and use it again. However, in Destiny 1, only the entire armor could be colored and not individual items separately.
Work on a new shader system in Destiny 2 is in full swing. More information will be available in the future.
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