To put it mildly, Destiny 2 players did not react well at all when Bungie announced its new transmog system ("armor synthesis" in gaming parlance) last month. As described, it was incredibly confusing and laborious, and seemed designed to direct players to the Eververse Store and save them all the hassle of simply spending money.

And now the system is up and running, and it is even worse than expected. This means that players have to spend 4-5 hours of gameplay just to get a bounty, which is quite a grind.

The complete flow goes like this: players must collect 150 "Synthstrand," which are obtained by defeating enemies anywhere in the game. Upon completing a bounty, players receive a "Synthcord," which can be converted into a "Synthweave" to convert their collected armor pieces into a universal armor ornament. This allows the Guardian to play dress-up without worrying about status loss.

Complicated indeed, but the real problem is this: Redditor alonie-homie discovered that Synthstrand, the resource behind this entire process, does not drop based on the number of enemies defeated, but actually based on the time spent in combat, at a rate of approximately one every two minutes. He discovered that the drop Since 150 pieces are needed to buy a bounty, it would take roughly 300 minutes, or five hours, to collect them. But wait.

We're not done yet. To get the reward, you have to go get the bounty, and Tim Clark, a brave and masochistic Destiny 2-loving editor, is currently the Sint Strand bounty hunter who must defeat 40 champions in the Nightfall Strike Mission. He tries not to cry.

Another Redditor, 13igB, expanded the calculations further, saying that it would take an enthusiastic player over 53 hours to reach the seasonal synthsweep limit of 10 (which is ridiculous in itself) with one character, and six days and 16 hours with three in each class Calculations. To be clear, this is effectively a solid week of play time, not counting hanging out at the tower.

YouTuber Houndish makes the good point that all of this is just to unlock the ability to use visuals of equipment that players have already acquired or purchased, and there is nothing new here.

Of course, if you want to avoid that, you can buy Synthweave Templates from the Eververse Store: 1000 silver for a pack of 5, or $10 in real money.

I don't begrudge Bungie's money-making efforts, and I'm sure most Destiny 2 players feel the same way. The real problem here is that the system is blatantly designed to make you spend money, not only in the visible mechanics, but also in the hidden systems intended to hinder player progress. There is even an ad for Synthweave in the Eververse Store that pops up after completing the intro quest.

Given that other MMOs offer transmog as a quality of life (QOL) feature rather than an extension of the in-game economy, this appears not only greedy but sneaky. Sure, they also charge a monthly fee, but what is a season pass if not a more diversified subscription?

And Bungie should know better: in 2017, shortly after Destiny 2 launched, players found themselves throttling XP rewards to power grinders. Bungie admitted that Destiny 2 was increasing and decreasing XP based on activity and turned that system off; whether the same thing will happen with Destiny 2's transmog system remains to be seen, but if some adjustment is not made in a fairly short time, I would be very would be surprised.