Season of the Splicer’s launch was a bit rough, but most of the larger server bugs and crashes have been squashed. However, Bungie isn’t getting too much credit for their good work because players are discovering that the new armor transmog system–called Armor Synthesis–is way more stingy than they thought.
Guardians had already been warned in blogs that Armor Synthesis would have a cap per character. Since this is its introductory season, Bungie gave everyone 10 free transmogs per character, but after that players have to grind bounties to unlock more armor ornaments, and each character can only complete 10 bounties per season.
That cap already produced an uproar from Guardians eager to unlock their entire collection to make the next Destiny 2 fashion trend, but now that uproar has reached a fever pitch after Guardians have discovered a time gate on how quickly they can complete those bounties.
Without getting too far into the complicated mechanics of Armor Synthesis (for that, you can read our extensive guide on the subject), unlocking a new ornament needs the player to complete a bounty, and those bounties require 150 Synthstrand to acquire. Players acquire Synthstrand periodically by killing enemies–something that Destiny 2 players do a lot.
However, the rate at which you acquire Synthstrand is limited to one Synthstrand every two minutes. It doesn’t matter how many baddies killed during those two minutes–you’ll still only get one Synthstrand. That was discovered by several players yesterday, but for the complete math, we turn to Reddit user I3igB.
You need 150 Synthstrand for a bounty, multiplied by 10 bounties per character, which means a total time investment of 54 hours and 20 minutes. Multiply that by three characters, and that amounts to over six and a half days of straight playing time.
Even for an ostensibly free-to-play MMO like Destiny 2, six days is a long time for something most MMOs offer as a free service. Of course, you can get around both the cap and the timegated lockout by paying real money in the Eververse, a fact that another Reddit user has immortalized in a Lore Book image.
Along with removing Pinnacle rewards from the Deep Stone Crypt raid, Destiny 2 players are not happy. It looks like the honeymoon phase of Season of the Splicer will be exceptionally short.
