Bungie Describes Destiny 2's New Armor Appearance System, Fans Instantly Dislike It

Destiny 2 has a new system for letting you customize the look of your Guardian coming next season. It was detailed in the Bungie blog on Thursday, and it's already generating a lot of discussion by players -- and not the good kind.

First of all, the system is more than a little convoluted. You earn Synthstrand by killing enemies, which you then need to bring to Ada-1. She'll give you class-specific bounties, which will earn you Synthcord. And you can then turn Synthcord into Synthweave, which you can then (finally!) use to alter your equipment's appearance. Whew.

As convoluted as all that is, that's not the really contentious issue. Rather, what's got Guardians hot under the collar (or cloak) is the fact that you'll only be able to earn 10 Synthweave per class, per season -- doubled for the first season this will be active. You can, of course, obtain more, by buying it from the Eververse shop for 300 Silver ($3) or five for 1000 Silver ($10).

That means that you'll only be able to fully transmute two complete outfits -- head, gloves, chest, boots, and cloak -- on a character class per season, or four in the initial season without having to shell out some cash. Yes, it's only cosmetic, which is about as far as you can get from "pay to win," but we've moved long past the time when charging -- or at least charging too much, from player's perspectives -- to change the appearance of your character in an MMO won't get pushback from the community.