Link: https://www.bungie.net/en/Explore/Detail/News/50939
Cooler Link: https://destiny.bungie.org/bwu/395
Actually a Link: https://i.imgur.com/fRMxROw.png

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Hi there! The main informational chunk in this weeks TWAB was a drive-by info Molotov. I'm going to quote it here in full and then, in rare fashion, I'm going to add my immediate thoughts and findings intermixed with this. If you just want to read the full chunk on it's own first (along with everything else), two of the links above will take you there.

Artifact Mods Update: *Insert Orbs Meme Here*
Artifact mods have been a huge talking point in our community and with the next Season, we’re making a few changes that will bring back some popular anti-Champion mods while also making some tweaks to the way Masterwork armor works. Here is a rundown from the team on what players can look forward to in Season 16:

Team: One of the consistent pieces of feedback that we have been wanting to act on for a while involves the unlocking of Artifact mods. Starting in Season 16, players will no longer be limited to the number of Artifact mods they can unlock. This means that players could feasibly unlock all 25 Artifact mods by the end of the Season! While we have made some small adjustments to the amount of XP required to unlock Artifact mods 1-12, in general, the pace of unlocking these first twelve Artifact mods should be close to what we’ve seen in Season 15’s Artifact. For each unlock after the 12th, increased XP will be required for the next Artifact mod unlock, so the choice of which order to unlock mods still requires some decision-making. And if you change your mind? You can still reset your Artifact and make your picks again.

When it comes to the Artifact mods themselves, we are bringing back a few perennial favorite anti-Champion mods, including Anti-Barrier Scout Rifles and Bows, and have done some work to make disrupting an Overload champion (which can be done this Season with Auto-Rifles and SMGs) more reliable than in previous Seasons. We’ll also be highlighting the new Glaive weapon archetype coming in The Witch Queen through a variety of Artifact mods (including an option to make your Glaive the solution to Unstoppable Champions) and have a few new Artifact mods that will enhance some of the new weapon perks.

Great! Good to know about Scouts and Bows, and the change with the Artifact seems rather common sense. Rhetorically, Why wasn't it like this before?

To take a little bit of pressure off your vault space, we are also making some adjustments to the way Masterwork armors work. Starting with the launch of The Witch Queen, you can change the energy type of a fully-Masterworked piece of armor for a much-reduced cost. A fully Masterworked piece of Legendary armor can be changed to another energy type for the cost of 10,000 Glimmer and one Upgrade Module, while a fully Masterworked piece of Exotic armor can be changed to another energy type for the cost of 20,000 Glimmer and one Upgrade Module. The costs for changing a piece of armor’s energy type before it is fully Masterworked remain unchanged.

So... yes, mine eyes did perk up a little with the first sentience. And the nature of needing to keep different armors with different elements has been a something that takes up space, unmentioned. This is something I've needed to take into consideration. If anything, seeing this dares give me just a subtle touch of... what is this feeling? Hope? Well, what a MADMAN, THAT's not allowed. Something something "Hope for the Future" something?

As for their available solution presented, I'm kinda 59.8/40.2 about it. It's a very simple and doable change. Some of us may go "why is there a cost for anything", but no doubt there are the reasons, I don't want to even speculate. Here it is. My concerns, my hesitation is how... more valuable, and algebraically more expensive things are. This change makes Upgrade Modules far more valuable to have on your person even after you go higher light, as we know it. Thus my Rhetorical question here is; How do you get Upgrade Modules? And there you see range of true theoretical costs built in this change.

Closing out, we are also making a change to the way Guardians create Orbs of Power with weapons. Elements of the new weapon crafting system will encourage you to use many different weapons and ask you to burn hard-earned Masterwork materials on a weapon that you may only be using for a few hours, just to generate Orbs. That … seemed like a tall order. This, combined with our desire to act on consistent feedback that players want to be able to generate Orbs of Power with Exotic weapons that do not yet have catalysts, led us to the implementation we’ll be using in The Witch Queen and beyond. Orb generation on weapon multikills will no longer be a function of a weapon’s Masterwork status but will instead be provided by a suite of armor mods, which are unlocked automatically for all players and which plug into the Helmet Armor Mod socket. Each such mod will apply the Orb-generation effect to all weapons you have equipped of a particular damage type, so a single mod will cover multiple weapons in your arsenal if they share a damage type (this also applies to a weapon that changes damage types, like Hard Light, or a Kinetic weapon with Osmosis). We will continue to create exciting Exotic catalysts over the next few Seasons, but in the meantime, you will be able to generate orbs with Cloudstrike, Thorn, Thunderlord, Tarrabah, and any other weapon in the game.

This part has been the divisive one. I myself have nothing to say. At first it looked like The "Monkeys Paw" strikes yet again. More and more options are getting CRAMMED into 10 available energy slots, and suddenly what used to be passive changes up a part of the game. If you've jumped around the reddits you've no doubt seen the chatter around this (don't like it), and also there has been chatter about the quest to say only enough. This is due to the after posts on twitter, which I shall finish with here for your convenience and consideration.

I'm seeing people being upset about orb generation being based on armor mods instead of weapon masterwork status, but there is a potentially HUGE upside.

Freeing up the perk budget on weapons.

— Kujay (@Kujay_) January 13, 2022

Early in 2021, Chris Proctor told us that "bad things happen" when weapons have too many perks.

Having orbs be tied to armor and NOT the weapon perk budget means that weapon innovation is now possible: more perks on guns, additional intrinsic perks, etc.

I'm excited for this!

— Kujay (@Kujay_) January 13, 2022

I am very much excited to make some Orbs with Le Monarque. Or Jötunn. Or other Exotics that don't have catalysts. Sure, will come at the cost of some mod slots, but well worth it.

Also very excited for what's coming with Weapon Crafting and other sandbox stuff.

Stay tuned...

— dmg04 (@A_dmg04) January 13, 2022

All for the small cost of 5 armour energy.

Jokes aside, I really hope it doesn't cost an arm and a leg, otherwise this will be a step backwards. @DirtyEffinHippy

— Sagir (@SagirKhan_) January 13, 2022

Definitely wait to get your hands on it, is what I always said even before working here, BUT - we're also always listening to feedback. If tweaks are needed, we'll go from there <3

— Liana Ruppert (@DirtyEffinHippy) January 13, 2022

Tweaks are already needed. This is a bad, bad change. The helmet mods are already super crowded, and now we’re going to have to sacrifice slots just to maintain the functionality we already have. Just so some more exotics can generate orbs? This is an L.

— Nate Grams (@nategrams) January 13, 2022

Taking in that feedback, but I will say that this ties into something we're announcing later and it will make more sense. Once THAT puzzle piece is given, then a clearer picture will be had. We'll have a ton more coming out over the coming months

— Liana Ruppert (@DirtyEffinHippy) January 13, 2022

Changes of this nature need to be prefaced with this information, everyone gets up in arms because current information doesn’t give us enough context. Prefacing it with even a bread crumb of why can mitigate some of the damages next time

— Zach Crews (@ZachCrews) January 13, 2022

That's what our first paragraph is about

— Liana Ruppert (@DirtyEffinHippy) January 13, 2022

I love when you guys have secrets in game that we have to discover ourselves. However when you make a monumental change to gameplay affecting all levels, you need to be able to give more information to the players. This only leads to more confusion and backlash from the community

— Devon Chin (@dchin90) January 13, 2022

Totally valid! What you have to understand though is that there are a lot of changes coming, which you know about (Void 3.0, crafting etc) and we can't really give the full picture yet without giving everything away. Similiar to transmog, it's one of those things you have to see

— Liana Ruppert (@DirtyEffinHippy) January 13, 2022

About the orbs thing:

Not a fan, but willing to try. Would rather prefer it if they were, dunno, leg mods instead.

There doesn't seem to be any compelling gameplay reason.

And if there's a techincal constraint on the number of mods that can be displayed or something, why add a cost to change it all?

There doesn't seem to be any compelling gameplay reason.

Welcome to Destiny. Lol.

You can't have two elemental resistances or both Momentum Transfer and Impact Induction, for example.

This helps them not need to study nerfing any of those mods.

I’ve seen folks theorizing that the changes to orb generation is at least partly an unstated nerf to Charged with Light. Which, intentional or not, it is.

I’m not sure how I feel about them leaning into builds. There’s a lot of potential there, but it’s pretty half baked so far, and it feels like it’s more trouble than it’s worth, or it’s going in the wrong direction. The focus on Chamoions and the recently increased focus on matching energy types feels constraining rather than interesting.

I could see it being fun to lean more into what you might consider traditional RPG roles. I’d love to run a build focused purely on orb generation. That would just be my job for the team. Someone else could use the high damage Super and Charged With Light, and my responsibility is to just feed orbs. The problem is the game doesn’t really allow for that. The high end content requires so much DPS that having one person not pulling their weight there can mean failure.

I love running my invisible Hunter, even when another subclass might actually be more beneficial. Being invisible for revives has saved many runs for me. I’d love to be able to build into that in a way that either isn’t so circumstantial or in a way that also allows me to do more cool things. Bonuses for stealth shots or something?

Likewise, I love running Welllock and using my grenades to heal teammates. I can still remember saving Claude in the shank hallway in the Bunker Nightfall with it. Not that it would have ended the run, but timing that heal while he was dunking the orb so that he didn’t die and drop it was genuinely fun. We need more of that.

Their current philosophy with Champions being in everything and matching elements (both with Match Game and new perks requiring weapon element to match subclass element) are far more limiting choices than they are enabling cool powers and play styles. They really need to evaluate what they’re doing when it comes to build crafting. Because they’re leaning towards making it required to even play instead of making it a cool thing to invest in because it’s fun.

I’ve seen folks theorizing that the changes to orb generation is at least partly an unstated nerf to Charged with Light. Which, intentional or not, it is.

I’m not sure how I feel about them leaning into builds. There’s a lot of potential there, but it’s pretty half baked so far, and it feels like it’s more trouble than it’s worth, or it’s going in the wrong direction. The focus on Chamoions and the recently increased focus on matching energy types feels constraining rather than interesting.

I could see it being fun to lean more into what you might consider traditional RPG roles. I’d love to run a build focused purely on orb generation. That would just be my job for the team. Someone else could use the high damage Super and Charged With Light, and my responsibility is to just feed orbs. The problem is the game doesn’t really allow for that. The high end content requires so much DPS that having one person not pulling their weight there can mean failure.

I love running my invisible Hunter, even when another subclass might actually be more beneficial. Being invisible for revives has saved many runs for me. I’d love to be able to build into that in a way that either isn’t so circumstantial or in a way that also allows me to do more cool things. Bonuses for stealth shots or something?

Likewise, I love running Welllock and using my grenades to heal teammates. I can still remember saving Claude in the shank hallway in the Bunker Nightfall with it. Not that it would have ended the run, but timing that heal while he was dunking the orb so that he didn’t die and drop it was genuinely fun. We need more of that.

Their current philosophy with Champions being in everything and matching elements (both with Match Game and new perks requiring weapon element to match subclass element) are far more limiting choices than they are enabling cool powers and play styles. They really need to evaluate what they’re doing when it comes to build crafting. Because they’re leaning towards making it required to even play instead of making it a cool thing to invest in because it’s fun.

Well and as they lean into it becoming required, the less and less comfortable I am with them leaning on DIM to make it ever feasible.