[Impressions] Destiny 2: Iron Banner

I decided to make my first Impressions post about a game I like a lot: Destiny 2, specifically the monthly multiplayer event Iron Banner. To give you some context, Iron Banner exists since before Destiny 1 released, since its beta to be precise, so there was some excitement from the players regarding this event.

What makes Iron Banner different from the rest of Destiny 2 PVP? Not that much to be honest. Put bluntly, each time Iron Banner is available, an already existing mode is chosen to hold the event (for the first Iron Banner of Destiny 2, Control was chosen, a 4v4 mode where teams hold zones to gain extra points for each kill), and that's pretty much it. During the gameplay itself, the only additions are the daily challenges, which award two Iron Banner Tokens per challenge complete and, at the end of each match, you receive five tokens if victorious or two if you lose the match. For the gameplay, that's it. Oh wait, I forgot the most important part, you should play in a fireteam, because every single match you'll be put against a full fireteam (a party of players, four in this case), otherwise if you go in solo you can expect to lose 95% of the matches you play.

When you're not playing Iron Banner, you can visit Lord Saladin at the Tower (the main social space of the game) to exchange the tokens you've won for legendary engrams. These will be your only source of Iron Banner loot, and, at least for me, you can expect a fair amount of duplicates. From the eleven engrams I've gotten, I was rewarded with the following event-exclusive loot: three pieces of the armor set for my Hunter, the event’s pulse rifle three times, the event’s submachine gun (SMG) four times and a good lot of event-exclusive shaders. Was I happy with the loot I've gotten? More or less. The pulse rifle is a pretty good weapon to use in PVP, and the same can be said for the SMG, but I am still a bit sad I wasn't able to obtain the full armor set (as of the time of writing the event is still available but I'm not going to play it anymore on this instance of Iron Banner).

After telling you about my experience with the first Iron Banner of Destiny 2, let me tell you what I thought was good and bad in comparison with Destiny 1's version of the event. To start with the good: (1) there's no rank system anymore, it has been replaced with the usual token system used with the rest of the game's vendors, (2) from what I played, the daily challenges were fairly easy, even for an average PVP player like me, which in turn was a huge boost to trade in tokens for more engrams compared to what I was getting from just completing matches. For the bad, well: (1) the token system is unrewarding, you're at the mercy of the loot pool and your chance of getting duplicates is fairly high, not mention you can't choose between getting armor or weapons, (2) the matchmaking is terrible for solo players (an already existing problem of the base game), being constantly pitted against full fireteams, (3) as a consequence of the previous point, solo players end up losing almost all the matches we play, therefore getting only a measly two tokens per match played.

Before finishing this first Impressions, I'd like to leave some recommendations for the following Iron Banners and, in extension, for the base game itself: (1), when turning in tokens for a legendary engram give players the choice between armor and weapons for the loot of the engram, (2) improve the general PVP matchmaking so that solo players don't have to play constantly against full fireteams or make a complete separate playlist exclusive for solo play and, lastly, for the love of the Traveler, let players preview the daily challenges from the Director (before starting an activity).

In general, the underlying problems of the current token system and matchmaking detracted quite heavily from my enjoyment of this otherwise good event. Though I do love that sweet Hunter gear set, it's just a shame I have to wait for the next Iron Banner to complete the set. Oh, and that pulse rifle is my favorite pulse rifle in the game so far!

#destiny2 #ironbanner #ps4 #impressions #event