In Destiny 2, thousands of Guardians agree that Bungie should finally solve the old shader problem. It is said to be one of the last major remnants from Vanilla-Destiny-2.
What’s the problem? It’s about shaders. The old shader discussion flared up again last weekend on reddit. Several user posts revolve around these cosmetic items with partial hundreds and thousands of upvotes.
What is the reason for this? With Shadowkeep, Bungie is revolutionizing the armor system, which allows for reusable Armor 2.0 mods. As became known last Friday, you can also use weapon mods as many times as you want once you have them. All these items that were previously consumables that could only be used once will become permanent items.
Many Guardians are now asking: Why can’t this also work with shaders?
The eternal problem with shaders
The oldest problem in Destiny 2: Destiny 2 was released on September 6, 2017, and already on September 7, many Guardians called for a boycott. The reason: The community found out that shaders became one-time-use items – and this is still a point of contention, with discussions flaring up from time to time.
Over the past two years, Bungie has been working on the shader system, introducing collections and allowing shaders to be dismantled much faster; however, the system is far from an optimal, guardian-friendly state.
It is still criticized that
- shaders are consumed when applied – they should no longer be consumables,
- shaders cannot be applied to all armor pieces simultaneously – each must be activated individually,
- and one spends far more time dismantling shaders than using them to color armor – because they are consumables and inventory space is limited.
What do the Guardians demand now? With Shadowkeep and the upcoming seasons, a lot of new shaders are expected. The shader inventory will overflow even more, and they are already preparing to constantly dismantle shaders again.
Therefore, Bungie should finally overhaul the shader system fundamentally. It works with the mods, after all.
For example, shaders could no longer move to the consumable inventory upon acquisition, but rather directly into the collections, which can be accessed quickly through the character overview, allowing coloring armor for free, without consuming the respective shader.
This would be a “Quality of Life” improvement that many would welcome.
A Guardian suggested a different idea: A system similar to gestures: You can choose a few shaders from the large collection and place them in the character overview to freely color the armor – of course, without consuming the shaders.
On reddit, a Guardian writes that more than 95% of his interactions with shaders consist of dismantling them – instead of applying them. According to him, shaders are some of the last major remnants from the early days of Destiny 2.
While they are aware that there could be technical limitations or long loading times if access to all shaders were constant – as there are many of them in Destiny 2 now – after 2 years there needs to be a different solution. It cannot be that the main interaction with shaders is dismantling them, as the inventory and mail are close to bursting.
By the way, there are even more discussions about shaders. Players are demanding that factions could sell their shaders and that Bungie finally brings back the “Superschwarz” shader from Destiny 1. Because they want a shader that completely colors them black without any patterns or zebra stripes.
How would you like the shader system to be?
