Beyond Light ‘confirms that the sunset of the weapons went too far

I continue to work my way through Destiny 2’s Beyond Light expansion through multiple characters, and as I do so, I’m starting to think about the concept of sunset and how it plays out in practice now that it’s finally here.

While I still agree with some degree of extinction as a way to keep the meta new and easier to balance, it seems to me that Bungie took the concept too far and the game has suffered for it.

So what are the issues that have come up with Beyond Light? Some are expected, others not so much.

One thing about sunset was that it seemed like only a small part of the game’s activities would be enabled for power, where you could clearly no use weapons at sunset. But it turns out there are a lot more restrictions than previously thought.

Europe has a much higher level of power, especially its lost missions and sectors. Even the Cosmodrome has lost sectors that require a higher level of power (not to mention Randall), and new Legend / Master sectors lost in both destinations. Really require high power.

But beyond that, even the Vanguard strike playlist is now 1100 horsepower, which means your old 1060 rig won’t do well there. And if the Gambit invasion still influences power as I think it does, that too is out of the question.

It’s hard to even gather what’s left of it It is not power enabled. Regular crucible, and I think Forsaken and Shadowkeep stuff. But even there, the switch to a minimum power of 1050 has changed things. While all ancient dungeons and raids have 1050 power, they’re not like… 800 power. So if you are using a 1060 sunset gear, it only has 10 power above base, which will definitely make it less strong than if it were over 1100, even if that is limited at some point. So sunset is reaching almost every corner of the game’s PvE activities, indeed.

Then there’s the scope of what the sunset was, which was something like 70% of the game’s legendaries, and only a small amount of that is added back with new weapons and gear. I like new things so far, but is missing a lot to return very little. We’re in weird situations where, going into Beyond Light, there are things like a single legendary machine gun that is not sunset (before you get two new ones this season). It looks like Bungie could have gone back at least one more season to allow Shadowkeep / Undying’s loot to stick around, but that’s gone too.

In short, it appears that sunset was primarily invented as a way to prevent pinnacle weapons like Recluse and Revoker and Mountaintop from dominating indefinitely. But the scope of it has been massive, and combined with changes to the power system, the idea that you could still use your old favorites for most of the game turned out to be false. If I can’t even use sunset weapons in the Vanguard strike playlist, what are we doing here?

Finally, Bungie just … really didn’t reissue anything? I’ve seen some new armor pieces appear, but that doesn’t help the weapons issue at all, and the world / vendor group seems almost unchanged. Bringing more guns would have helped alleviate this, but so far I literally don’t see any, which is very unexpected. Maybe they will show up eventually, but I don’t know where they are, if so.

I think that some degree of extinction is healthy for the game, but not this degree. This was more expansive and abrasive than I originally thought it would be, and we’re not even getting into the four-zone, five-raid “extinction” which is a completely different topic.

I hope Bungie reexamines the sunset to some extent after this. Even if the new weapons may turn out well, this system does not feel good in its current form.

Follow me On twitter, Youtube Y Instagram. Pick up my science fiction novels Herokiller Y Herokiller 2and read my first series The Earthborn Trilogy, which is also in audio book.