Destiny 2 always adds some decently big new features with each expansion, but a season and a half after Lightfall, I think it’s time to admit that its two biggest social system additions, commendations and ranks, are just not working, and not really getting better over time.
Commendations have been controversial from the start, but while their requirements for powerful drops or rank progression have been dramatically reduced, the core concept has simply not gotten better.
Commendations feel useful for one thing only: the Best Dressed award. Why? Because you can actually see everyone’s fashion in the commendation screen, so making that judgement in a few seconds is easy.
But the rest of the system? It makes no sense or is implemented badly. Presumably Bungie does not want players to “feel bad” by putting their strike scores or Crucible kda on the main screen, and yet the commendations you’re supposed to give out are often supposed to be based on performance. You can tab over to the score screen and carefully browse everyone’s stats, which is a waste of time to try to match names with Guardians on the previous page, and by the time you flip back most people will have left anyway.
Others commendations are just…nonsense? What does “thoughtful” mean in the context of a Destiny strike? The end result of all of this has now led to everyone just spamming commendations for whatever, or simply disengaging with the system as a whole. Last season I would feel bad if I wasn’t giving people commendations. Now, no one really cares.
Guardian Ranks are not much better. The idea here was to replace seasonal ranks with a system that shows people you’ve done something like a master raid or GM this season. But the system is pointless. Practically everything carries over season to season so you’re doing just extremely basic seasonal stuff to move up, or something like a GM or Master activity. But if it didn’t carry over, people would complain about that too. You keep your number from the last season and you’re supposed to re-earn your gild border. However, this may just be me, but quite literally every single person I see no longer has a gild on their numbers. I have no idea if this is a bug for me personally for some reason, if I’m missing something, or if this is a widespread problem.
I agree that season pass ranks wasn’t a great system, but neither is this. Someone may be a PvP god and be level 6 because they don’t want to do a bunch of random PvE crap and there are zero PvP objectives in the system. Someone could be a GM master but if they didn’t spam enough commendations they’re stuck four levels below where they could be.
To me we already had indicators of how “good” a person was, if they wanted to show that off. Titles! Gilded Flawless x6 or Gilded Conqueror x9 shows A) what your priority in the game is and B) how dedicated to it you are. Better than Guardian Ranks or season pass ranks, at least. I swear to god the only thing I want in that little icon next to people’s names is the ability to tell from a distance whether they’re a Hunter, Titan or Warlock.
Neither of these systems, despite all the work I know went into them, are good. They feel like solutions for problems that really did not exist, and not achieving the goals they set out to accomplish (a nicer community through accolades, a better way to show off your achievements). I don’t know if these systems will evolve in meaningful ways, but they have to, or they will continue to be essentially irrelevant.
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